Still in AWE on Week Two!

Orange is not normally a choice of color for me for blogging, but today I am choosing a bright and wonderful color! Because that is how my world looks from here on out!!! Bright! Yes, I am still in awe of the fact that I am here on the HealthQuest on OnTheHomeStretch.com....a true blessing and gift from above that came out of no where...which they usually do! I've been praying for a real change in my life....a change that will impact the life of my daughter and here I am....getting up at 5 a.m. every morning, meeting with a wonderful team, an awesome trainer and literally working my BUTT off! This week has been just as amazing as the first.....I am totally hating every aching muscle by the time I leave the gym, but all day long and the next morning I am excitedly expectant of the challenges and opportunities the next work out will bring. And I continue to be blessed and honored by the fact that my friend Cindy who works at Magazines.com felt lead to ask her boss about being my sponsor and to send me on this journey on the HealthQuest. I need this. I need Carter kicking my butt every morning. I need the accountability of the new friends I have been blessed with. These women don't know my journey thus far, but yet they step up to the plate at every opportunity to encourage me on the next step...whether it be the dreaded BEAR CRAWL or that last trip up the flight of stairs...I hear them......cheering, rooting for me and I gain strength in that...sometimes enough to finish, sometimes not and still they cheer and encourage.....How Good is My God that He gave me them. He always gives much more than I deserve....He always has! And as my favorite line from one of my favorite movies, Forrest Gump, says....."God Showed UP!" Many of you who read this do not know my journey, so I hope to share that with you. I hope to share with you a hope that you can have to make the second half of your life better than the first....by showing you my journey, my struggles, and my hope for a better future for myself and for my daughter. A healthy future I am traveling towards on the OnTheHomeStretch HealthQuest.

So, let me tell you a bit about myself prior to and what I have experienced these past few weeks.

In my teens I was a string bean, you could have duct taped fat to me and I wouldn't have been able to hold onto it. In my 20s the trend continued and I was always slender and in great shape...I was even a trainer at a local gym in San Diego where I lived...but being from a family where most were heavy set, I was terrified that I was going to become what I am now....FAT....in fact at 119 lbs and 5'8" tall with barely an inch I could pince anywhere I thought I was fat. Little did I know....I wasn't fat, I was seriously ILL! I say that non-chalantly now, but at the time it really stressed me out to find that my bathing suit dug into my thigh just a little too much, etc. I smoked, I drank, I partied and I worked out! I was determined not to be a BAHAMA MAMMA, which I negatively and cruelly called my sister when I was an immature teenager. Which I desperately regret.

At any rate, in my late 20s I met and married my ex-husband. I quit smoking and gained 30 lbs. in 6 months time. A year later, I became pregnant and gained more up to about 195. In 1997, I divorced my husband, became a single mother and started my old habits again....the pounds flew off....either from not eating, smoking...which I'm told speeds up your metabolism....stressing about taking care of a child on my own or what....in no time I lost 65 lbs. after losing about 20 after the birth of my daughter. I was now down to about 119 and stick thin and swore!....I will never be heavy again......in stepped God....He came into my life and transformed it....I quit smoking after a very direct friend told me just how selfish I was being with my daughter....I prayed and told God I had tried to quit again and I needed His help....I needed him to tell me every time I wanted a cigarette to ask him for help. And He has been faithful to that request....I have smoked only 2 cigarettes in 7 years and that was when my father died and I thought I "needed" it.....well....just like before...even though it was a blessing....along with quitting smoking and a job change, came the poundage. A short time before quitting smoking, I was fired from a job managing a horse farm where I walked nearly 20 miles per day along with all the elements of farm management including harvesting hay, cleaning horse stalls, maintaining the barn, bushhogging the fields, mowing the lawns, pulling weeds from the flower beds and maintaining a horse arena, just to name a few tasks....I also managed the full operations financially as well. It was a great job for activity and weight loss. So within about a span of a year, I went back to a public relations job (more sedentary) and quit smoking....and as I said before...the poundage returned. And then a few years passed and more came. And before I knew it I was beyond any weight I had measured to date. I began trying to diet and exercise....and several people told me to lose weight you had to keep your calorie intake under 1500 calories per day and also exercise at least three times a week for 30 minutes. WRONG!!! and then came TheHomeStretch HealthQuest and my enlightenment as to why I have been unable to make the scale move down more than 10 lbs in over 3 years time....and usually it has gone up.

Move forward in time....... After a fracture to my ankle in April 2008, my plan to workout had been sidelined for nearly 2 1/2 months and I was finally able to work out and had been for about 2 months at the local recreation center. Every morning I got up and went to the gym and rode a recumbent bike, swam or walked on the track....I was developing a habit, but not any great weight loss. That habit has paid off. In August, my dear friend from church Beth Dundon, sent out an email notifying me and several others about the second HealthQuest offered by OnTheHomeStretch.com. As I said earlier, I mentioned to my friend Cindy (my normal workout buddy) that I might be bailing on her for a bit if I found a company to sponsor me for this HealthQuest "thingy" I was wanting to do....her words to me were "Honey, I will go by myself , so if you get a sponsor...don't worry about it" and then she said "and let me tell Jennifer about it to see if we (Magazines.com) would be interested in sponsoring you." FAMOUS words if ever there were. I had been asking several companies to sponsor me and hadn't gotten an answer and within DAYS, Cindy had talked to Jennifer and Jennifer had talked to Debbie Alan and HERE I AM! on TheHomeStretch HealthQuest. Do I have a blessed life of WHAT!!!!???? I am so fortunate, so thankful and so blessed to have this opportunity given to me by Magazines.com, my friend Cindy and all the wonderful people at TheHomeStretch, Carter Hays our trainer, and all the participating companies and doctors who are helping us to find out where we are healthwise and helping us to reach toward the place we want to be!

Our journey began last week with our workouts and a bit of nutritional and strength training advice cushioned within each day. The first few days, I was still thankful, but a little worried about if I had bitten off a bit much....5 am was a piece of cake....someone making me do 20 lunges, 20 pushups, 20 squats altogether might be too much....WRONG! I CAN do it, we do AT LEAST that every day, PLUS a whole lot more and as I tell friends daily, "some mornings are hard and some days I have to force myself to walk...unsure of which muscle I can pinpoint hurts more....but I absolutely LOVE it!"

On Tuesday of this week and Wednesday, I did all of my initial testing. The testing that will determine where we are physically that will be measured against the same testing at the end of our journey. I can tell you since I had my first tests on Tuesday, I have been shocked, cried, been mad at myself and others and been more determined than ever to help myself and then others, including my 14 year old daughter, to make the rest of our lives HEALTHY from the inside out. To lose weight, but most importantly to be healthy. We've received alot of tests, some we have results for already and some we do not but that will be posted on this site as they come in.

The tests that I do have the results to were the most devastating to me thus far....I learned on Tuesday after a VO2 test, Metabolic testing, and a hydrostatic "dunking" test at FitnessWave that not only do I not eat enough calories to lose weight, I've probably sabotaged myself, but also that I have a 50.6 percentage of FAT in my body.....I realize that the fat in my body NOW weighs MORE than my whole body weight in my 20s when I thought I was FAT.

HOW did I get here? I am to blame. And I'm the one that will get me to where not only where I WANT to be, but where I NEED to be, if I am going to be around to see grandbabies one day! A combination of things have added to it. A myth that I've long adhered to that women who want to lose weight need to maintain 1500 calorie diets and work out at least 30 minutes a day is WRONG.

You cannot base your calorie intake on that thought process....you can only know how many calories you need to have by knowing your body needs. I found out that because I have been depriving my body of the number of calories it NEEDS to work every day, I have in a sense put it into starvation mode and so it hangs on to whatever I put in it for energy....I have learned that you must give your body calories for it to maintain and then calories for it to burn fat! Is it a shock to me that I am suppose to be eating 400 more calories per day to lose weight, yes, but the bigger shock is that that number will go UP, not down as I become more healthy. My body will require more energy as my body becomes more lean and less fat. Of course, the choices for calories are equally important, but I feel so much more prepared to address this lifestyle change with educated knowledge behind me....knowledge I would have never been able to have on my own, because as a single mom....I would probably not be able to or even think of providing such a "luxury" (as I see it now) on myself and having myself tested. I would have plugged right along doing everything wrong and wondering WHY ME, why am I depriving myself and seeing no results.

And I truly believe....like He always does...that God stepped in......Do I have a blessed Life OR WHAT???? I REALLY am feeling like His favorite this week. I know I sound like a broken record at this point....but I am sooooooo thankful for this.....I am so excited about what lies ahead for me in this HealthQuest offered by TheHealthQuest.....I am so excited about the workout that Carter has planned for us tomorrow and every day between now and the end of this Quest on 12/5/08 and I am so excited to see my friends and companions on this journey meet their goals and receive the blessings of this opportunity as well.

Thank you David Harris for FitnessWave testing, thank you LifeLineScreening for all the testing received yesterday that could be life changing, thank you Vanderbilt Medical Center for doing our bloodwork to test our cholesterol, thank you Perry Smith of ProMotion Physical Therapy for helping me figure out how my body works.......Thank you, thank you, thank you all! I am blessed....

Let's do this!!!!
"Juji"