30 IN 45 Challenge

It has been a year since I've had true focus on fitness and eating right.  Things were going well the first 4 months and then a negative change began to take shape.  June of 2016 I started working out taking boot camp style classes at H2 Health & Fitness Center just 2 X week for the first month, incorporating some cardio at another gym.  Then in July I bumped up my boot camp classes to 3 X week.  Amazed by the change in just the first month only going 2 times a week, going 3 times a week I could only get better.  And then by the third month I started going 4-5 X week and dropping my other gym membership.  I was able to get enough cardio at H2 Health & Fitness; there were days where we had H.I.I.T. classes and sometimes I would even take 2 H.I.I.T. classes back to back.  October 2016 I went on a missions trip and I was in the last weeks of a fitness challenge at H2.  I brought along resistance bands to try and keep up somewhat of my workouts.  And I was able to eat pretty healthy because of my disease; I was given more low carb meals than they typically eat.  Coming back from the mission trip I had to do my final body analysis and turn in the results.  I was so excited and proud of all that I had accomplished over the last 4 months- gained 3 pounds of muscle and lost 4% body fat.  I continued to check my body composition each month to keep in check and make sure I was improving but somehow things started to shift and I began to put back on body fat.  Yes the holidays came and went but I still ate pretty well because of my disease.  I am very proactive when it comes to my disease.  That is why exercise and eating right is so important to me.  

I have always been active as a kid playing sports and then teaching fitness in my early 20's.  But of course when you get married and have a kid your focus tends to shift a little and exercise can fall short often.  I still ate well for the most part given my family history.  When I discovered I had diabetes my focus shifted back to exercise and eating even better than I was; I did my first 5k in Oct of 2011 and continued to run entering 5k's throughout the years.  October 2016 I ran my first 10k and finished 15 minutes earlier than my goal.  I was pumped and decided to set a goal of running a 1/2 marathon and 1 marathon by the time I was 50 years old.  Being 45 years old at that time, I had plenty of time to meet those goals.  I started running 4-5 times a week and doing boot camp classes, working out 7 days a week not giving my body any time to recover.  Most people would have lost weight doing all that exercise but not me.  My body got thicker including my midsection; my body % fat began to climb back up.  It didn't make sense to me because when you look at runners they are pretty slim.  The only conclusion I could come to was that I was putting my body under so much stress that cortisol was being released at a constant rate and that was causing fat to be stored in my body rather than fat being burned.  I started to back off on the running and just kept up my boot camp classes, pushing myself more and more.  I wanted change so bad and wanted to loose that body fat and get back down to where I was in the earlier part of November 2016.

As the year is quickly passing by us I had reached a year being at H2 and then a new season of life began.  I had stopped working out because we sold our house and had to move quickly; focusing all my attention on getting the house packed up, working out was no longer a priority.  My eating habits started to decline.  I hadn't eaten this bad for over 6 years, I felt depressed and frustrated.  I was determined to get back on track just as soon as we got settled into the new house.  I had set a date to get started and realized there was just too many things happening that month.  So I pushed it further out and setting a date for September 1st.  I began to seek out gyms in the area, H2 was no longer a convenience.  Looking for a gym similar to what I was doing wasn't too difficult but the cost of memberships seemed to be outrageous.  I was considering the YMCA since it was just down the street and has a variety of classes including boot camp.  But then I saw Pure Barre driving down the road.  I had seen them on the East Coast of Florida and in the Tampa area but nothing here before.  I always wondered what it was especially with the word Barre in it.  Ballet classes perhaps???  I looked them up online and found that I could get a FREE WEEK.  The video on Youtube looked pretty easy, after all I had been lifting weights for the past year and this involved very little weight.  It had been 3 months since I really worked out and thought this would be a good way to start- nice and easy.  Boy was I wrong!!!  This was pretty tough!!!  My arms and legs were on fire most of the class.  I didn't really sweat nor did my heart rate ever really get to high so I wasn't sure if this was really for me.  I wasn't really exhausted after class either and was wondering if I was really going to feel something the next morning.  Low and behold I did feel something the next morning.  I wasn't horribly sore but my muscles knew that they got a workout.  Sticking with it for that free week I went as many days as I could giving me the opportunity to receive a discount on my first full month.  I wasn't ready to commit to a full year contract just yet.  After all it was more money a month than I wanted to spend.  I wanted to see what changes if any would occur that first month.  

Noticing a small change in the area that mattered to me the most within just a short time I was really enjoying this new style of working out for me.  I cut back more on dairy and started trying to add more greens back into my daily diet.  My sugars do very well taking these classes and tend stay pretty level.  Typically if I do a lot of high intensity cardio my sugars come crashing down, often I would have to turn my insulin pump off while doing cardio.  If I did moderate to heavy weights my sugars would go skyrocketing up because my liver would spit out sugar for energy.  Not having my sugars crash or spike is another plus to this Barre workout.  After 12 visits on your first month membership you have the opportunity to take advantage of receiving 50% off your first month membership on an annual contract.  That time was quickly approaching and I needed to decide if I was going to commit for a year or go to the YMCA with my husband.  Checking in with him to see when he might be ready to get back in the gym himself, I didn't get the impression it would be any time soon.  I still wasn't 100% positive I wanted to spend that much money a month on a gym membership though.  And I was hoping my husband would want to workout sooner than later.  But who was I kidding, he doesn't like working out first of all and second he is so busy right now with work and then the holidays are right around the corner, I don't see him working out till at least next year.  So I made the decision to join Pure Barre and commit to 1 year.  "Go Big or Go Home" right?  Not to mention that Pure Barre was starting a challenge that I wanted to be a part of and could only do so if I became a member.  Otherwise my membership would have ran out and I would no longer be able to part take in the rest of the challenge. 

The challenge- 30 IN 45, you must go thirty times in forty-five days.  Seems pretty easy but that means you must go at least 5 days a week in order to succeed in reaching your goal.  The only other goals are goals you set for yourself- eating healthier, toning and tightening up, and/or losing weight.  This challenge will take you right up to Thanksgiving.  You definitely don't want to throw away all your hard work during the holidays.  I believe this is a good way to keep you to stay on track; hopefully 😉.  Would you really want to just give up all your hard work, not me!  This challenge
began yesterday, Oct. 9th 2017 and will go till Nov. 22nd 2017.  Yesterday- day 1/ I took Pure Classic- low impact, isometric movements, light weights, total body workout.  Today- day 2/ was Pure Empower- multidirectional, dynamic movements using ankle weights and a plyometric platform to target the entire body while keeping a faster pace.