30+ Pounds Down - How I Did It

Thanks!

The weird thing is... sometimes I still don't see the difference. And that scares me, because logically I *KNOW* I don't look like I did. I'm certainly not in any danger of being anorexic, because I eat a LOT of food, but I can understand how weight loss can get out of hand for some people.

I went out with my husband tonight, and he snapped a couple of pics before we left since I was rockin' my new size 2 (TWO!?!) capris. And the first picture... it actually scared me a little.



I thought... OMFG... where the F are my hips?! I always identified myself as being bottom heavy or pear shaped. I don't have much boobs... my hips and bum are the only curves I have, and I like them.

But luckily, it was just the angle that made me look freakishly small. I don't have the badonkadonk I did before, but I'm not a walking candy apple, either.



I've been very underweight before in my life. Not an eating disorder in the sense that I thought I needed to lose weight and got too thin, but I had some rough patches in my life where I had a poor appetite and could easily skip meals without feeling hungry. I don't want to go back there. I wonder which is more annoying to the Mister... how I used to ask if I was getting too big, or now asking if I'm getting too small. The answer is always the same either way. He loves ME, no matter what size I am.

Honestly, I don't do much with the weights. I do a round of about every machine at Planet Fitness, typically two or three sets of 10, of whatever weight I can barely do. For most arm stuff, that's 30-50#. If after three reps, it feels too easy, I raise the amount. Same with leg stuff or the ab or back... I do what's almost too hard to complete.

And I do hanging reverse crunches (chair knee raise?) in the Roman Chair. ( http://www.muscleandstrength.com/exercises/chair-knee-raise.html ) Between 30 and 60, in sets of ten. Ten straight up and down, then ten with my knees pointed to the left, then ten with my knees pointed to the right. Repeat if I'm feeling sadistic. And assisted pullups. I can do them easy if I use half my body weight, but I try to go for more than half.

I'm intimidated by free weights. I'm paranoid I'll drop them on my toes. So I do the machines. I'm not sure if it's in my head or not, but I think I probably would have better form since it's a limited range of motion.

It typically takes me a half hour to 40 minutes to go through all the strength training things, and I do that two or three times a week. I've only been doing this stuff at the gym a few weeks, so I don't know if much shows from that.

Before that, it was EA Sports Active 2 on the playstation, with 5# dumbbells. That has some cardio (running in place, skipping), some ab stuff (planks, crunches, reverse crunches), stuff using your own body weight (pushups, mountain climbers), and stuff with weights. Probably all the same stuff in any workout dvd, but I like that it's interactive, customizable and has it's own HRM for calories burned.