The pictures above were taken exactly one year apart. New Year’s Eve 2017 and New Year’s Eve 2018.

A little (or a lot) bit of a back story:
It was just another boring afternoon. I got home from work, plopped down on the couch and scrolled through Instagram. I came across a sponsored ad and something about it made me stop. I saw the name of the gym that was being advertised and thought hmm…I know that gym. Oh yea! It is in the same parking lot as Five Guys! I remember seeing those women running around outside when I was binge eating my food in the parking lot.

I was at a low point. I was stressing out about my wedding, my job, amongst other things and I used emotional eating as a coping strategy. I knew I couldn’t keep living my life that way. This was in April of 2018. By this point I had been starting and stopping going to the gym for years. Lose weight, come across a major life change like moving, grad school, or starting a new job. Then emotionally eat and gain it all back. A vicious cycle. I realized the traditional gym setting wasn’t working for me. I was consistent with classes and I wanted to find somewhere that offered that. I had e-mailed and called many other gyms. I went to the website for Burn Boot Camp and saw that they had a free two week trial. Not just one class people. A whole two weeks which is 12 classes worth! The head trainer actually messaged me when I signed up and I was impressed by that. It felt so personable, which made me even more excited to go. When I went to my first class everyone was so helpful and genuinely excited to have me there. It has been that way ever since. My gym is literally my happy place. I never thought I would be the kind of person who wakes up an hour early to work out BEFORE work and actually enjoys it.

First things first: I am in no way, shape, or form an expert. Please take everything I say with a grain of salt. What works for me may not work for you. It’s all about trial and error to see what makes you feel good inside and out.

My gym is only classes based. You have the opportunity to go 6 days a week as many times as you want (although two-a-days are discouraged based on the kinds of workouts we do. It doesn’t allow your body to rebuild the muscles you are tearing down if you don’t allow your body to rest). We have trainers that coach us through workouts. Each class is about 45 minutes. Each day we focus on a different muscle group or skill set. In the simplest of terms a week may go like this: Monday: Arms(some form of chest, back, triceps, biceps, push, pull etc.), Tuesday: Plyometric (cardio), Wednesday: Core (abs), Thursday: Legs (all of those major muscle groups) Friday: maybe more cardio or a mix of two. Saturday is usually some type of very strenuous full body workout. That is just the gist of it. We never do the same workout twice and that keeps it interesting! We will do the same moves and variations, but always in a different way.

Just showing up to the gym and doing my own thing did not work for me. I was inconsistent and I felt like I wasn’t making any progress. At Burn I feel a sense of camaraderie. They will text me to check on me if they haven’t seen me in a few days. The workouts are hard, but I feel so accomplished when I’m done. I don’t have to plan for anything. I just show up, get it done, and go home. They also do focus meetings. Every month I meet with a trainer to have my body measurements taken. We talk about nutrition and what I should be eating to fuel my body and how to make healthier choices. That worked really well for me. It checked a lot of my misconceptions on what was “healthy” and how I thought was the best way to lose weight. To my knowledge I have only lost about 15 pounds. I don’t have a scale at home and I only weigh myself at focus meetings. However, my body composition has drastically changed due to decreasing my body fat percentage.

With all that being said here are some key things that I feel will be helpful for anyone just getting started:

Know what your goals are.

Set realistic expectations. If your goal is just to lose weight you are going to have to rethink that and dig a little deeper. Are you losing weight because you think that will finally make you happy? Because your mom said you were getting too fat? Because you want to look like an Instagram model? That won’t stick. You should desire to become healthy, not skinny. Don’t fall into the trap that only “perfect” bodies are worthy. You are absolutely stunning and fabulous in the skin you are in right now no matter what size you are. However, there is nothing wrong with seeing the need for a change and making it.

And let’s just tackle this notion of “losing weight”. I thought that’s what I wanted. In reality I wanted to conquer my emotional eating and become healthier. There are so many other amazing things that happen on a fitness and health journey that are way better than just simply losing weight. NSVs: Non-Scale Victories. Like your clothes fitting better and at some point too loose. Like when you can now wear clothes that haven’t fit you in years. Or when you feel so confident in your clothes because of how hard you have been working. It’s about more than just the number on the scale. You owe yourself more than that.

Nutrition

I don’t know how true this is, but I have heard multiple times that fitness is 80% nutrition and 20% exercise. Regardless of the actual numbers, I find that to be true. You can’t out train a bad diet! (What I eat is a whole different ball game so if you all are interested in reading about that please let me know!) I believe that a lot of people think that getting healthy means always being hungry. For me that hasn’t been the case. I started off only eating about 1,300 calories a day. That was okay for a while. I started to feel like I was lacking energy during my workouts and getting headaches. I talked to my trainer and she suggested that I bump my calories up to 1,700 and increase the amount of protein and carbs I was eating. (I will include information about my macronutrients grams in the what I eat blog if you all are interested!) I had so much more energy and felt like I was seeing better results when I started eating a little more! DO NOT BE AFRAID TO EAT! I feel it’s a huge mistake that a lot of people make when they are trying to lose weight and exercising. You are not going to eat 1,200 calories a day for the rest of your life. You want to set yourself up for success so that when you meet your fitness goal you can sustain it.

I hope that any, all, or some of this was helpful. What are some ways you all stay active? I would love to hear about it!

Until next time,

Lacadia