May Report Card & Holy Cow it’s Time for June Goals!!

Yah, yah, yah…we are a little late to get this up, but we are started on June goals already! Have no fear! A lot has been going on over in our parts of the world as we are sure it has been with lots of you too! Anyways, let’s get on with it…

Teal:

1.  Lose 5 more lbs. I have tons of motivation right now because I will be on the beach June 6-11 for one of my best friend’s weddings in the Dominican Republic! C: lost 2-3ish depends on what time you weigh me (don’t you love that) BUT on a side note I am back to where I was before the marathon!!

2. Ok, I’m just going to change this yoga goal. The goal is to go 3 times per week. After looking back on the last 2 months I think this is doable and still a stretch.  I had a 6 time month and a 5 time month so hopefully just 3 a week will be a big enough push that is actually time possible!  B: Close… I went to yoga 9 times. So basically 3 short, not bad for a crazy month!

3. Stop skipping my morning workouts. My gym buddy and I got a little off track due to crazy lives and schedules. The goal is to go all 5 mornings. I had done this for over a year so it’s doable, just need to get back in the routine! I have been going at night more, but it’s not as easy to do and gets in the way of my yoga goal! Domino effect-boooo!!  UMMMMM, not 100% sure how to grade this, I worked out the same and went most mornings, it is just sooo much easier to go at night when I don’t have grad school or something else. I did most of the runs at night but still went about 3 days a week in the morning, PLUS, if you remember from earlier in the year, I wanted to do more weights alone…. DONE!! Feeling so much better about this, well except for the super creepy guy who told me my aura was beautiful. What??

4. Be nicer! I am not evil, but stress has taken over this month with preparing for graduation, looking and interviewing for counseling jobs, planning showers and events, tax season at my dad’s, state testing for schools, blah blah blah. I have NOT been the picture of niceness at all and have become way more annoyed at things than normal. I am not sure how I am going to actually do this or prove it, but I’ll come up with something and let you know how it goes at the end of May!  B-: Ok I was nicer for sure. I did some random things, that at least made me feel nicer including, walking to teacher friends to talk instead of email, putting shopping carts back in the shopping cart thing even if they weren’t mine,  waved at the people in my neighborhood when we passed each other in cars, I never once honked my horn, I bought the lady’s order behind me at Starbucks in the drive through line, and I just got a better attitude about work and stuff like that. Not too shabby BUT I still have a lot of room!

Beth:

1. I’m still chasing those 5 pounds to lose! Ha, one day…one. freakin’. day. I will be able to say I did it so. This goal is sticking! C: I lost two pounds! Haha

2. Survive my first 10 mile race!  I’m currently freaked out by this distance since I’ve never raced it and it is getting hotter down here in Texas!  A+: I DID survive!! It was a hot one, but I did the White Rock ‘n’ Roll 10 miles!

sprintin’ it in!

3. My wedding related goal is super vague, but the goal is to have at least 3 items on my checklist marked off and report back to you what I’ve accomplished them! B-:  I have a CAKE!!! 🙂  I also bought all the supplies for two projects I am working on and while that doesn’t seem like much of a feat, well, it is in my world! Finding time to work, workout and get to stores before they close is hard for me! Ha.  I’ve also done a lot of research into decorations I want to use, so while it would be amazing if I was further along I am proud of where I am!

This isn’t really what my cake looks like – I got more of a simple yet elegant look to mine! 🙂

(source)

4. I want to continue on with my preparing food for the week on Sunday’s goal, but to make it different the goal here is to find two new recipes this month and make them! Must add variety to what I’ve been doing! F:  I did do a lot of food prep in the month of May, however, I only ended up finding one new recipe that I wanted to try and then I didn’t even try it. Ha! I’m not going to make this a goal for next month, but I will make the recipe I have and find at least another to try soon! So help me God!

My extra goals each month – a. Hill workouts weekly! I actually hosted hill runs in the month of May for NTX Runners, but Teal had to cover one of my hill runs because I was sick. :-/  Which means I did 4 hill runs in the 5 weeks of May.  b. Read two books a month.  Well, I actually finished 3 books in May! 🙂  I was a busy reader!  I finished The Girl in the Green Sweater: A Life in Holocaust’s Shadow by Krystyna Chiger, Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close and Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford.

(source)

Joint Goal:

We will be participating in #runchat’s May challenge which is pretty much to run a different route, a new trail or try a race you have never done before.  For more information please visit the #runchat site.  Beth & Brent found a trail area by his house to explore during this month.  You might remember it from Wordless Wednesday No. 25

Onward to June goals….How are we in the 6th month of this year?!?

Teal:

1.  Clean out the garage which involves properly deposing of all old paint, chemicals, and random things you can’t through in the regular trash, donating anything that  should have donated a long time ago, if it belongs to my brother it’s going to his house, and then just generally cleaning. Why I pick June to work outside in the heat is beyond me but whatever!?

2.  So I graduated at the beginning of May!! Yay, but I have very annoying things that I have/need to do

  • Consolidate and move all my student loans to one place and get on a better plan to pay off faster. YUCK, YUCK, YUCK!
  • Register for the LPC exam and not cry when I pay the $300 to take it
  • Organize all the grad work that I did that I want, toss the old stuff, bind what I am keeping ( anyone have one of those spiral binding things?)
  • Organize, bind, toss, or give away my teaching stuff! I will be moving to counselor next year and have a billion teaching things to go through

3.  Follow my under 2 hour half marathon runkeeper running plan as close to possible! I will eventually run and under 2 hour half marathon if it kills me! Well not really, I want to live, but you get the point!

4.  Eliminate random eating. Raise your hand if you stand around trying to figure out something to eat and you find yourself eating crap in the process! ME!! This has to stop!! It’s not like am eating like crazy stuff, but it is mindless and when I finally figure out what to eat, I’m annoyed that I ate weird random things in the meantime!

Beth:

1.  This time around my weight goal is simply: DON’T GAIN ANY!!! Ha, sounds simple right?  Well, this is my birth month and my parents are divorced so this usually means multiple celebrations with good food, good drinks and dessert.  So it’s a dangerous time of year for me. No weight gain in June!!

2. Yoga 2-3 times a week.  Ever since I finished my goal of completing 200 classes in a year I’ve been kind of a slacker, so let’s get back to yoga goals! It’s soooo good for me!

3.  Finish projects at Brent’s house.  I volunteered his house to host a friend dinner (like this one) towards the end of the month and I haven’t finished some art I started for the walls, since I’ll eventually move in there (you know when we are married) I had already left all of my racing medals, hook to hold them, awesome race bib board my SIL made me over there they just need to be hung up.

4. Finish the two wedding projects I have ALL of the supplies for! 🙂

Joint Goal:

We are doing and have asked YOU to participate with us in our Tone It Up Challenge for the month where we do as many days of pushups and planks!

Hope you all have are working hard on your June goals and have a fabulous month! Check back with you when it’s July!  But July please do not come TOO FAST!

Up’s & Down’s & Johnny to the Rescue

A few weeks ago you heard from Teal on her lifestyle changes that got her to the weight she is right now.  So I guess it would be my turn. 🙂  Probably like any girl I have my own body image issues, but I tend to blame the private school I attend on that to some degree.  It seemed like all the girls in my grade were skinny little stick figures and well there’s really no way my body can/will resemble that.  I have hips! Ha, they aren’t going anywhere and I’m still learning to love them.  With that said I had weight gains in typical points of my life.  I started college – hello ten pounds!

I spent two summers (2002 & 2003) in college working at a family camp as a counselor and a life guard.  We were SO active that the pounds just melted off.  Then I had a year in college which where I *think* I attempted to be apart of as many organizations as possible, hold positions in some of them and still be a full time student.  I look back at that year and still don’t understand how I survived it. Ha, but with that busyness came absolutely NO time where I was working out.  The pounds came creeping back.

Left: August 2004 Right: May 2006

My last year in college I had a lighter load than my previous years as I spent the majority of each week in a class room observing and/or teaching.  Because of that I spent little time in an actual classroom where I was the student and had homework to turn in.  The beginning of that last year I had a break up with my boyfriend and in about a week lost 10 pounds which was about what I’d put on in that previous busy, busy year.  Once I dropped those 10 pounds I didn’t want to put them back on, so I picked back up with my running.  Most days you could find me up on the 3rd floor of the Rec Center putting in 3 miles on the track and depending on the weather out running the streets of College Station.

Cancun Girls Trip in 2006 (with Teal) and this is literally the only swimsuit picture I have no qualms showing to anyone

When I moved back to Dallas the summer of 2006 I was determined to stay fit, so I joined a gym.  And just as quickly as I signed up for a 3 year contract I’d stopped going. 🙂  I hated that gym.  I won’t discuss what gym it is but this particular location I hated going in there after awhile I just realized the gym itself  was dark and dingy and just didn’t make me want to be in there.  I managed to stay at my ideal weight for quite awhile and it wasn’t until some of my friends and I had the brilliant idea in early 2007 of starting a weekly happy hour that the pounds started coming back.  In reality I had a combination of weekly happy hour and new relationship weight coming on. Well, in December 2006, a new gym had just opened up RIGHT by my house.  I went and toured it, liked what I saw and signed up with them!

So for 2.5 years I’d be paying for two gym memberships until my contract ran up with the first one.  Am I made of money? No, but I thought my health was important enough to sign up at a gym where I would actually go and be active even if it meant sacrificing somewhere else each month to cover the cost of the gym I did not go to.  I can still hear my cousin, who owns a few gyms, saying “You signed a contract with a gym? What were you thinking?

One day I decided I’d try a spin class – I’d been to one in college taught by a friend, but before I knew it I was going to spin class every time Angie was teaching! I loved her personality, her music selection and enthusiasm to get us all working hard!  Angie’s husband singing and dancing around on the spin bike was just an added bonus to the hour workout.

After a class somewhere in late August or early September of 2007 Angie approached me and offered me a chance to go workout with her husband for free in one of his group training classes.  I was still in a rut with the weight I’d gained that year from happy hour and the new relationship that I was happy to take the opportunity.  So off I went that week either on a Tuesday or Thursday morning to workout with a group of ladies I’d never met before at 6:00 a.m.

Oh my gosh, we did so many lunges that morning – lunges with weights, now switch weights with the person behind you and lunge, walking lunges….lunges, lunges, lunges!  I am not sure I have ever been so sore from a workout in my life!

Then I was sold on working out with Johnny and I have been ever since that day!  See I was working out with other women doing weights with some cardio mixed in, and because it’s group you aren’t paying $75+ for a personal trainer although he does do personal training as well. 🙂  For the first year of working out with Johnny he was renting space from a gymnastic center and then he got his very own place just down the street in August of 2008.

Have you ever been to the Coppell location of Run On!, well, if you have then you’ve been next door to Johnny’s…more specifically Johnny’s Health & Fitness!  Actually right before Christmas JHF moved to the bigger space next door to help with their growing needs as a gym, so you can now find them two doors down from Run on! You can see me there pretty much every Tuesday and Thursday morning from 6:00 – 7:00 a.m.

Johnny & Angie really came into my life RIGHT when I was needing someone to help me get the extra pounds off.  Johnny discussed my eating habits and nutrition with me.  Ultimately I started drinking Premier Nutrition protein shakes on his recommendation, and I also incorporated a digestive enzyme pill into my everyday life based off of one of his recommendations.  What I can appreciate about Johnny’s recommendations is that if he wouldn’t do it, he’s not going to try and convince you to do it!  He gives it to you straight.  That’s also the approach he takes with his clients when he sees them slacking on their diet or not getting in the cardio outside of working out with him.  He gives it to you straight in this nice balance of here is the truth but not being a jerk about it.

(read more about Digest Plus here and Premier Nutrition Protein shakes here)

At this point I don’t remember how long into my training with Johnny it was that I had taken 12 pounds off.  Not only has he helped me keep my weight under control, but he’s also been a great resource to me as well with all of my running!  Because I know that he really wants to see each of his clients be the best that they can be!

I would be completely devastated if I were to move and/or no longer be able to workout with Johnny.  In my opinion truly good, dedicated trainers are hard to come by!  It’s also my opinion that the majority of trainers at big chain gyms are rarely going to push you the way Johnny pushes me and every single one of his clients.  I feel like I can say this based on trying out a workout with one of the trainers at my big chain gym I go to for spin class and other cardio machines.  Plus I know that for me having a personal trainer is just not in my budget so having a place where I can do group training is doable!

Johnny & me

I’ve made some great friends from my workout group and couldn’t even imagine where I would be right now if I did not have Johnny in my life!  If you live in the Coppell/Lewisville/Flower Mound area and are looking for a trainer check out Johnny’s Health & Fitness! I drive 15 minutes from Plano to workout with him.  I know other clients of his that drive from Dallas proper, Sasche and other places I don’t even know about to workout with Johnny. If you are interested in trying out a training class with Johnny get in touch with me!

Or you can check out his website here.

Follow Johnny on twitter.

Or like him on Facebook!