My First 100 Days...

I can't believe its been almost six months since I updated this blog. My apologies! Time surely flies! So much has happened and no I am not pregnant! Ha!

So 100 days ago I woke up at like 4:30am and went to Planet Fitness and joined their gym. I have a really consistent internal clock and I kept waking up between 4-5am totally refreshed and ready to take on the day but I have a crazy commute that includes a bus that doesn't start running until 5:30am and I found myself just home, wide awake, watching Law & Order. Needless to say by the time I would get home 12 hours later I would be too tired to think about the gym... so 100 Days ago I woke up and went and  joined a 24 hour gym so I could make use of my internal clock.

I want to stop here and say years ago like in high school I came up with the idea of a 24 hour gym and 24 hair salon. And in college I came up with that idea of the 100 calorie snacks. I called them "Dieters portions" but I am just ahead of my time and not old enough to get investors apparently. Pre-Shark Tank life. I could be retired by now. Anyhoo... that's why I joined Planet Fitness...

Ok that was the short version which you know I am long winded so here's the whole story...

So I was watching one of my Link Sisters (Hey Lisa!) participate in some kind of gym challenge. Every morning she would check in at the gym around 6am. I don't even know how many weeks she did it but she was counting "Week 4 Day 2, Week 4 Day 3," etc. it was a lot of weeks and enough for me to notice and congratulate her on her commitment to exercise! It reminded me of this fitness magazine article I read like 20 years ago where they interviewed several top CEOs about their fitness regimen and one of them said that he wakes up and exercises every day the same way he wakes up and brushes his teeth.

I always thought that was so impressive. Like who does that? The quick answer is...Someone who puts themselves first even if they are in charge of a muli-million dollar corporation.

I saw another article about The President and he even works out five to six days a week. So I started thinking why can't I? I was almost done with my year as President of the Junior League of Baltimore and I was telling myself when I was done I would go back to the gym. Now with all the work and stress I knew better; I should have been in the gym constantly but nope!

So while all those other things were swirling around in my head I thought about all the work I was doing with the JL and I had a mantra for my year as President that came from an awesome trainer (Vickie Clark) I spoke with about a huge conflict that erupted at the beginning of my term last year. She told me that in everything that I do as President I should ask myself "Does it move the mission forward?" She said if you can say yes then stay the course. She reminded me you cannot make everyone happy but my job as President was to make sure the mission was the focus.

So I woke up that morning thinking about MY mission. In 2009 when I wanted to lose 100 pounds I told myself I wanted to live a happy and healthy life; so I woke up and asked myself what am I doing about moving MY MISSION forward? I gave the Junior League almost a year of my hard work, dedication, commitment and money and why should I wait one more day to get back on track with my health and fitness goals. So I got up, got dressed and joined their gym.

I didn't have a goal or plan other than to work out every day. I told myself it didn't have to be a grueling workout because a lot of time if I didn't have at least one hour to give I would skip working out so I told myself  go with the medically recommended 30 minutes of intentional exercise every day. That is for health, not necessarily just for weight loss but to improve your overall health. I read several great articles about it and about how long it takes for something to become a habit and I began working out everyday for at least 30 minutes. Some days I was up at 4am and at the gym other times it was after 10pm on my at home treadmill. I had several trips and still stayed on track! I went back to Weight Watchers and I started back with my Personal Trainer Charles Chizel it Harris and we are doing lots of weight lifting which is so important.

I am happy to report I am down 7 POUNDS!!!! Summer is not weight loss friendly to me so this is a HUGE victory. I participated in the WW Summer TRY aton and went to all 12 weeks except one! I am really excited that I was consistent over the summer... between Las Vegas, Atlanta, Martha's Vineyard, a busy work schedule and just life in general I'm just really happy, excited and proud!

And working out everyday is going to be my thing. I can always find time to do so much for so many people I enjoyed sharing the importance I am placing on myself and my health. I came to the conclusion that if I do not lose any more weight I am ok where I am. Ideally I would like to lose at least 29 more pounds and get back to my 100 pound weight loss goal from four or so years ago. But honesty I am ok here. I know I can eat better so that's my focus for this fall now that the exercise part is MY THING now (lol).

In an effort to kick start that I am still sticking with Weight Watchers because the fact of the matter is I love to eat. I don't know how other people do it but I could eat all day and not realize how much I have had so Weight Watcher works for me because it gives me boundaries. So along with WW I am going to do Whole 30. Its like the mean version of Paleo  (lol) which I love and works wonders for me.

I must say I feel a lot better when I do not have a lot of dairy (especially yogurt) and wheat products. I am not a huge bread fan and I do not miss Greek yogurt. It encourages you to cook more and eat healthier foods. Similarly, WW encourages you in the same way based on the point values of certain foods. I notice lately I am relying a lot on processed foods for snacks and by the middle of the afternoon I have run through a gang of points on things like granola bars, chips, and the like. Fruits and veggies are 0 points so carrots and guac for 4 points vs a small bag of chips for 10 and when you only get 30 points you can see how snacking like that can add up quickly. So Whole 30 will be a good opportunity to reset my eating habits for the Fall.  Between today and December 31st there are 121  Days or 17 weeks + if I lose even 1.5 pounds on average every week I will be almost at goal by the new year! How exciting as that?!?!

So I'll be blogging more regularly about my Whole 30 journey. The goal will be to share daily on Instagram what I'm eating and I'll share the recipes on here so if you want to come along please do!! #SeptemberWhole30  is their hash tag and you can follow me with the hashtag #CyliaWhole30

I have a big trip planned in the middle of all of this so we will see how that goes but I have the book and I'm pretty excited to try something new! So hope you join in and enjoy the journey! I am overdue for a new vision board so hopefully I'll work on that over the holiday weekend and share some tips for you to get your 2017 one started!

:-)