Tomorrow I Begin the Next Part of my Journey
I like calling it my Journey to Fitness, cause I’m not just “dieting” or am “in a phase” or “being careful with what I eat” you get the point. This is part of my life now. No turning back, just moving forward and closer and closer to becoming that woman I always dreamed of, but thought it was just that, a dream. I can finally see her, she is so close!
Tomorrow I begin the next part of my Journey, tomorrow I start the most disciplined 30 days of my life. I and 5 others will be doing the Elimination Diet. If you look back at my prior posts you can read more about it, or go here: http://www.daxmoy-pts.co.uk/elimination.pdf for the actual instructions.
I love a good challenge and so I thought it would be awesome to do a challenge through my new blog here, and I really feel like this is the start point of my fitness career! I am so proud and empowerd that I have 5 others who have taken a step up and decided to join me. I am still shooting for 10 by the end of the day 🙂
So to my participants: please reply to this post with your name and why you want to do this, even if it is cause I guilted you into it 🙂 I also want you to take a before picture (which you can keep private or e-mail me), take a few measurements (your waist and hips for sure!), weigh yourself and take a deep breath. We are in this together and we will get through it! You will be so blessed with this process.
It’s not about losing weight, but it’s about getting healthy. I heard it put like this “every fit person is not necessarily healthy, but every healthy person is fit”. Made me think of nutrition in a whole new light, it’s not just a way to lose weight, but you really clean your body and be healthy.
I am a big believer in the fact that our God says our body is a temple, remember how Jesus reacted when He saw the filth in the temple? I think about this now when I go to put things in my mouth. Is it pure? Is it glorifying to the Lord?
This will be an interesting next 30 days, my husband is doing the Elimination Diet with me and I have removed every processed item from our kitchen, please join us and keep us in prayer as we begin this journey together!
It’s not too late! Join us! as I posted before, there will be a PRIZE for the biggest change!
Why join?! Because the next 30 days of your life is going to pass by anyway, why not dedicate yourself to treating your body the way the Lord intended it 🙂 Hope you join us! The more competition the better!
Email your starting stats/pics to me: rbustillos@gmail.com I will never share your information without your permission!
I challenge you!
I will not turn down a challenge…. . There is something about a challenge that gets me pumped, there is something about winning things that is so motivating for me.
Well, I have a challenge for you! Join me as I get ready to do the Elimination Diet for the month of May, well May 1-30. All I am asking from you is to do something nice for your body for 30 days! That’s it! I am asking EVERYONE who reads this to participate, the more the better! It is very simple, very doable and very beneficial.
Why? Why would you or anyone want to do the Elimination Diet? Let me answer your question with some more questions, just for fun. Would you like to feel good? Would you like to know why you get all those mysterious headaches, body aches, constipation, migraines, tummy aches, swelling, bloating, gas, etc? Would you like to get rid of some lbs of fat? I’m not saying you have to have all those symptoms to do this, but I think almost everyone suffers from at least one of those on occasion. Are you always sick? fatigued? Have no energy? Feel depressed, sad, lost or frazzled? So I basically described pretty much everyone right? Well, the Elimination Diet can really open your eyes to your nutrition and allow you to understand and listen to your body. Nutrition effects our bodies so much, and it suffers so badly when you’re constantly giving it crap or nothing to run on.
How does the Elimination Diet work? Like I said it’s doable, easy and only 30 days! Come on! we can do 30 days! This link is to the diet: http://www.daxmoy-pts.co.uk/elimination.pdf, everything is there. It tells you word for word what to do. I highly recommend to print it out and read it over, and have handy as a resource as you get started.
Will you join me? Will you finally do something nice for your body? What do you have to lose? A couple lbs of fat, those chronic pains, annoying fatigue?
There can be nothing bad to come from this, so why won’t you join? Please comment below if you are in! and lets see how much we can accomplish this May 1st-30th!! Who’s in?!
The prize: Well, since I’m pretty confident that we are all going to rock this, I am offering a prize. Unfortunately my poorness does not allow me to know what that is for now, but there will be a prize for the biggest change! Now all I gotta do it kick all your butts at this so I can keep whatever awesome prize I come up with for myself! ha! But seriously, if you participate, post a comment saying so and then updating us with your changes after we complete the 30 days. The biggest change will win a prize! Please weigh yourself, get your body fat % read somewhere, measure yourself a few places (waist, belly button, chest, hips & where ever else you’d like) and take a picture- I seriously recommend this because often times we cannot see the changes in ourselves, but a picture can help us see our results. You may keep this information private if you’d like or post them in the comments. I will be posting my beginning stats on May 1st!
We can do it!
first things first!
When I started my journey to fitness in March of 2008 I was lost, but I had motivation; 1- my daughter and husband & 2- my pre-pregnancy jeans.
When I got home from the hospital and quickly grabbed my jeans and put my feet into the legs of the jeans and pulled them up. I was still bent over when the tops of my jeans with zipper undone came to an abrupt stop at the bottom of my thighs. Though this and stepping on the scale the same day were the most depressing realizations of my life I was determined! I didn’t know how, or when, but I was going to get those jeans back on!
At this point of my life I knew two truths about losing weight; 1- I needed to eat less & 2- I needed to workout longer.
It was about 5 months of working out 2-3 hours a day 5-6 days a week and eating what I thought was about 1000-1200 calorie diet before I found out that my fitness truths were the biggest lies!
I don’t even know how, but I stumbled upon an amazing resource called clubfym.com. There is where my whole world was rocked and everything I thought I knew about getting fit was thrown out the window.
I will blog about clubfym in the very near future; I really urge you to check it out yourself, but for now I want to clear up something I think EVERYONE will think is crazy- to lose the weight I have in the last 6 months I have eaten MORE then I have ever in my life! Yup, you heard right, I eat waaaayy more now then I did ever before and I am still losing weight!
What stops you from wanting to believe me is the programing we have all done in our minds that eating less(aka- dieting)= losing weight. But let me school you a bit 🙂 Your body is an amazing machine perfectly designed to work in your best interest and keep you alive. So with that let me explain some extreme basics of nutrition.
Calories=energy
your body uses energy for EVERYTHING that is does, breathing, eating, digesting and every other function your body does without you doing anything to actually get it done. So your body needs energy! another words- your body needs calories. Naturally you want to know how many, your BMR basal metobalic rate- is your bare minimum. Your BMR is what your body needs to do all of those basic things. Before I help you find that number (which is different for everyone, let me explain further). If you are currently eating lower then your BMR then you are telling your body that you will not give it the minimum it needs to stay alive and this is when your body goes into starvation mode; holding onto anything it can to keep itself alive. Want to guess what form it keeps it in? You guessed it! FAT! yay!
So! if you are eating below your BMR, cause of whatever lie you have bought into, but you are so frustrated cause eating should= losing weight OR you say, well I’ll eat less for like 2 weeks and I can drop 5lbs and then I’m fine. Let me school you some more. Dropping your calories will make you lose weight, but the drop on the scale is going to be water weight or worse, muscle loss!
Then you may come back at me and say “I don’t care what I lose, I just want to lose lbs!” I beg of you to keep on reading and listen to this! Muscle is where your metabolism lives! Muscle burns fat! Muscle takes up less space! You lose muscle if like you are losing horses pulling a chariot. Less horses pulling, the harder the others have to work to pull the weight. Get it? more horses= easier, faster, smoother ride. I’ll get off my muscle soapbox now and return to my calorie one 🙂
ok, lets recap; BMR= the least amount of calories you can eat to keep your body alive, you go under your BMR and you are spinning your wheels and packing on more fat- no matter how hard you work out.
Now, lets visit the other end of spectrum. Max calories (for someone wanting to maintain or lose weight) is your TDEE(total daily energy expenditure). This takes into account your BMR and how active you are. Going over your TDEE is extra calories and what do you think your body does with the extra? yup! right again! FAT!
When I learned this last Oct. when I joined clubfym.com I was blown away. I was being told that my BMR(or minimum calorie intake) was 1550 and my TDEE(or max calorie) was 2300! And all my prior information from various sources told me that I should be eating 1200 calories! This was epiphany #1
Epipahny #2 came when I decided right then and there that I was going to log my food intake with a food log, I was going to eat normally and just write it all down and count calories- I had never done this before. But I could eyeball a serving size, calorie ranges etc, right?… WRONG! After week one this is what my calorie intake looked like:
monday-800 calories, tuesday: 2300 calories, wednesday: 400 calories, thurday: 2800 calories, etc.
So what was I telling my body nutritionally? I was telling it, I’m not going to consistently give you enough calories to live, I will give you an abundance one day and barely anything the next. My body was out of control and all my efforts were in vain.
Up until these epiphanies I really thought I ate healthy and that I didn’t need much help nutritionally. Everything I bought was low-fat or fat-free, I bought 100 calorie packs instead of the regular stuff, we drank only soda. What I failed to understand is what my body needed. I was feeding my gut, now I feed my muscles- more on that to come!
So here are some links for you to find out where your calorie intake should be:
BMR: remember this is the bare minimum calorie intake your body NEEDS!
http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/
TDEE: this is your max to stay exactly where you are! you can minus 500 to go for -1lb/week w/ exercise and good nutrition!
http://www.bestdallaspersonaltrainer.com/energy-expenditure-calculator.html
Find out what it is! I bet you’ll be surprised, now this is not a free pass to make you feel like now you can order that six-dollar burger 2x a week, but fill your body with clean food- you will be so surprised how much more you will have to eat to make up your calorie goal- on the other hand you will be surprised how fast it can go if you are eating out or eating a lot of processed foods.
Track your current calorie intake! I was sooo surprised that my calorie intake was out of control before, I seriously thought I eyeballed about 1200 calories a day- I was so off. I love thedailyplate.com to track my food, I tell it what I eat and it tells me how many calories! use it! They even have a cool iphone app!
First things first- everyone needs to know their daily calorie range/goal to lose fat and gain lean body mass(muscle), whether you are a calorie counter or not. I now only count calories one week a month to make sure I am still on track. I also use a food scale to make sure I know my portions better.
To your health & fitness!
ps- I got to my pre-pregnancy weight and fit back into my pre-pregnancy jeans on December 21st, 2008 🙂
it’s my first time
Hello world, yes, this is my first official blog here on my Fat Mom to Fit Mom blog! I’m excited about where this will go and who I might be able to help, and where I personally will go!
I set up this blog because I want to make a difference in this world…. well, really I want to help people. I feel like God has given me a heart and passion to help people in the areas they feel the weakest. The area this blog with focus on is an area that is near and dear to me. I was sooo lost and alone for a long time, but all that I have gone through and learned has made a world of a difference!
The area in which I speak of is fitness, some call it weight loss, fat loss, looking good in a bikini, whatever- I call it my journey to fitness. It’s so much more then just losing some weight, or looking good in those jeans or losing the baby weight. I strongly feel that it is about being the person God designed me to be.
Let me give you some abbreviated background:
I grew up in a loving Christian home with a mom who struggled with her weight my whole life. I was taught to never waste and to eat everything I was served on my plate. I was not very active because I was busy helping my mom. So needless to say, I was a chubby baby. I then became a chubby kid, a chubby teen and a chubby adult.
Then- first came love, then came marriage, then came the baby in the baby carriage…. and 30lbs- and that’s just from the baby, that’s not including all those happiness lbs from dating, marriage, etc.
So there I was March 2008, I came home with baby and looked at the scale, I weighed 201lbs with a 42″ waist…. 201lbs don’t look cute on most anyone, but on a 5’1″ latina- it ain’t pretty!
That’s when my journey to fitness began. I didn’t want to be that person I saw in the mirror, I didn’t want to hate myself like I truly did at that point. And what I never want is for my new baby girl to EVER have to go through this ever in her lifetime. It’s painful, the scars we inflict on ourselves or that others do run deep, and at this point I don’t know if they ever heal entirely, but I am proud to say that I am not her anymore. I am a completely changed woman. I have learned and found out so much and I want to tell everyone I know. That’s why this blog has started.
Something I have learned during my journey to fitness is that it’s not just for the fat girl, it’s not just for the new mom to lose her baby belly, or anything like that EVERYONE should be working toward fitness. We, as a society, have grown comfortable with just looking good- what about feeling good? headaches, body aches, sickness, allergies, no energy, tiredness, depression, anxiety, high blood pressure, and so much more has so much to do with how you treat your body and what you put into it. My journey to fitness is soo much more then about losing a certian # of lbs or “dieting”!
I hope you continue to check this blog out, here is where I want to help change your life with the experiences and knowledge God has blessed me with on my journey. But why listen to me? who am I? I don’t have a degree in nutrition or in excercise. I’m just an Orange County girl trying to make a difference and am working my butt off to try to help you too!
I have just recieved an e-mail that stated that I have passed my Turbo Kick certification through Powder Blue Productions and I have my Primary Group Fitness Instructor’s certification through AFAA. I hope to soon start working as a group fitness instructor in the South OC area- most likely in women’s gyms. I’m gonna work hard to get as much credibility I can so I can be a somebody worth listening too.
okay, that’s it for now- read more about my story and me at www.TeamBeachBody.com/rruppe this is my site where people can go order supplements and at home workout DVD programs through BeachBody- I’ll blog about this soon, but this is one way that I hope to be able to stay at home and make a few $ and be with my baby Bella.
God Bless you and your fitness goals!
Fat Mom to Fit Mom 