Happy New Year!

Hello to the brand new year of 2014!  It has been about 2 months since I've made a blog post here!  This has been a very challenging time for me, and yet coming through it all without totally letting go of all of my fitness initiatives makes me feel victorious.  I have been very busy at work and very busy keeping up with my daughter's marching band schedule.  (This was officially the longest marching band season of my life because her high school football team made it to the play-offs and wasn't finished until December 11th!)

Here I am with my kids one year ago.  I was feeling pretty good about myself, and that is interesting to me because for once my desire to get back into shape did not stem from me being frustrated with my figure or anything like that.

December 9, 2012.  This is a few weeks prior to my beginning my weight loss adventure.  Size 14.
Photography by Amy Bell

Now as I begin a new year, I am very excited.  I do not have a New Year's Resolution that many people have where they are beginning a desire to lose weight or be more active from Square 1.  I am already down the road many, many squares!  In fact, I keep finding new things to keep me going.  In August, as I've written before, my friend Amy introduced me to the Gym-Pact app, and that little app all by itself kept me working out at least 3 times per week every week since I found out about it except one where I wasn't feeling well.  At some point a few weeks ago, I decided to up my work-outs to 4 times per week, and just last week I decided to increase it to FIVE times per week!!!  WHOOOOOO!!!  Remember, each week I fulfill my pact, I earn a teensy-weensy bit of money, but hey!  It's money!

I have new little technological toy to help me with my fitness goals.  I have fancy-schmancey pedometer called a FitBit Zip.  I have only had this for a couple of days, but this little pedometer will wirelessly sync up with my phone which in turns syncs up to GymPact.  If I log 10,000 steps in a day, it will count as a work-out with GymPact.  This will help when I 'm back to work again after vacation.  If I have a tough day where I log 10,000 steps just in the course of my work-day, I won't have to come home and do a separate work-out to count on GymPact.  There are a few days where my steps at work will go as high as 10,000!

Additionally, I've been keeping track of my work-outs on another cool app called RunKeeper.  Initially, I just used it to track runs or walks, but I've since realized it can track any work-out that you're doing.  I now place an entry in the log even for when I go to the gym.

Speaking of the gym, I do still try to go to Curves to work out, and I do still recognize that gym and its eating regimen to the center of what I'm doing.  Everything I'm doing could appear to be haphazard or random, but it really all centers around Curves.  I tell everyone I can, "If I could do a commercial for Curves, I would.")  I am thankful for Curves' travel pass procedure.  Because of my daughter's band schedule, I had to work out quite a few times at a different Curves location.

And so now here we are about 10 months from where I started.  One of my next blog posts will definitely be on my one-year anniversary of joining Curves, but in the meantime I felt it appropriate to mark today with a new photo.  I am feeling so good and fit these days; I really feel more like the Real Me.  I have always felt that I was a sporty, athletic person, and now that person is starting to really come back.  Maybe 2014 will even see me running a few races!