Looking Forward and Setting New Goals

As I sit down to write this I can see how far I've come and yet the next part of this journey may prove to be even more challenging. I come to you today to share my success and my failures. On March 6, 2014 I started Isagenix. Around the same time I joined what's called the IsaBody Challenge. This is a 16 week challenge to inspire achieving your goals and a chance to win prizes. I completed this challenge as of last night. In four months, I lost 35 lbs and a total of 23 inches. I planned on adding exercise, but never did quite manage it. So, this release of weight was done without adding fitness.

I dutifully had my husband take my "after" pictures and naturally needed to compare them to the before pictures from March. I'm nervous to post these because there's so much of me in them, but I'm the queen of the over-share so why stop now?

Before and After Photos from March 2014 and June 2014

There you have it. My successes! I am quite proud of myself for sticking it out, but this next leg of the journey I want to make even more changes. Lately, I've done a lot of self-reflecting and I have more willpower and determination that I ever imagined. However, I can see where I really need to put in some serious effort to make lasting changes. My issues with food are far from over. I'm sure my weight loss would have been even more astounding had I managed to better deal with my emotional eating.

I started a new IsaBody Challenge last night. This time I am focusing more on energy and performance than weight loss. Obviously, my ultimate goal is still weight loss, but I need to change my overall focus. This challenge will run until October 18, 2014 and over the next four months I plan to work on my emotional eating as well as getting fit. I've already started a fitness class that I will be doing twice a week for 11 weeks (possibly longer). As for the emotional eating I will be working on awareness and finding new ways to work with my emotions. It took years to develop my emotional eating and it's going to take time to replace bad habits with good ones. I believe support, awareness, and creating a new reward system will be the keys to success in this next part of my journey.

The biggest help to achieving any goal is having a great support system! I'd love to hear about your weight loss journey or struggles with emotional eating. Feel free to contact me anytime! 

Mental Spring Cleaning

So, I know it's been a couple of weeks since my last update. I sorta got stuck in my own head. I'd been feeling really weighed down by negative thinking. So, I retreated into myself and too stock of where my head was at. 

What I found was that March was a month of changes. I stopped drinking coffee, started eating healthy with the Isagenix program and I started blogging again. I kept myself so busy that what I really want got tangled up with a bunch of other things. 

It's taken me a couple of weeks to work through all of this. I did some mental spring cleaning and figured out what really matters to me versus what I do out of obligation. Once I sorted through the clutter I could clearly see where I want to go from here. 

Through this process I missed a couple of weeks of church and last week I felt like I had to go. I'm so glad that I did. The sermon spoke right to my heart. I totally cried. I talked with a number of friends and a couple of them prayed with me. I left feeling a lot lighter. I forget how cathartic tears can be. 

I think today's been the first really mentally clear day that I've had in a few weeks. I'm so thankful to have the support system that I do have. 

In other news, today marks my 37th day on Isagenix. To date I've lost 22.5 lbs and 12 inches. My clothes are now way too big for me which is both awesome and super annoying. I've got to look into getting some in between clothes. 

I'm excited about the future again. I can't wait until I'm ready to share my dream with the world! 

Have a fantastic weekend!