The life of a single mom while training

"The person who says you can't, and the person who says you can, is usually the same person"
~on the wall at Crazy 88 Brazilian Jiujitsu gym

I like the above quote because it is on the wall in the workout room where we hold women's boot camp training.  I started training at this new gym at the beginning of March.  I was telling a friend how hard it was for me at first.  It was unlike anything I have ever done in my life.  Doing Brazilian Jiujitsu was a totally different activity for me and they also have this women's only class which I describe as body conditioning lead by the most chipper fit happy-go-lucky blond bundle of energy that says her name is Ally (I sometimes called her Satan for the things she made me put my body through).

For months I looked at the quote on the wall and didn't really give it much credit. I don't know...my mind just sort of went through the motions, and tried to just survive those first two months while trying not to lose my grip on my first passion of running.

Then a group of the ladies from class came out to support the local Girls on the Run in Howard County, bringing out their children, nieces, and friends.  It totally blew my mind seeing this sort of support from people who I had only met two months before.  I came back to class shortly after seeing them all at the 5k and looked up at the wall and thought...

"Hm, the only person stopping me from the things I want, is me."

I know, right! Seemed so obvious from the beginning.  I mean honestly, I am a runner, I know this, that my biggest enemy is myself.  But I guess I didn't want to accept that my weight was something I could control, the amount of time I dedicated to training was in my control.

And something set off like a fire in me.  I started coming to more classes and instead of just doing the minimum weights, I started pushing higher weights, instead of making an excuse about some bad knee, I adjusted and did the exercise without complaint.  I started cheering on my fellow workout partners during workouts.  And I changed my diet to include cutting out junk, alcohol, soda, and fast food (not just restaurant fast food but those packages of ready make meals and rices and pasta).  Over the upcoming weeks, I would see something I never thought possible.

I lost weight.

And why is this so amazing that a diet and exercise would help me lose weight?  It brings me to the title of this post, The life of a single mom AND training.

Kids are notoriously picky eaters at certain stages of life.  I have two just such eaters that I struggle to cook for and get them to eat without having to make two completely separate meals.  So like most single moms, I resort to hot dogs, mac-n-cheese, nuggets, veggie sticks, fruit, sandwiches...pizza.  See the problem with this sort of diet for someone who is trying to get fit?  Fat and Carbs.

NOW HOLD UP-I love carbs but there is a difference between pizza, fries, mac-n-cheese and baked potato, whole grain bread, and pasta.

But suddenly...I wanted to attempt to see if losing weight was possible while still somehow managing to shove food down my children's faces and still all no a budget.  Along with all this...I needed to squeeze in training!  Lots of training.

So when I would pick up the kids from day-care I was rushing them home and feeding them something quickly. Some nights I would go all out and make them steak (yeah, I have those kids who absolutely love steak) and other nights I would make them pb&j.  When finished, we would gather our things, and head to the gym for up to two hours.  poor things had to spend two hours playing on rock climbing walls, making arts and crafts, playing video games, you get the picture...they had fun.  And I would work my butt off thinking the whole while how I was going to manage to find 600 calories of food that balanced out the rest of my daily needs.

But I got creative.  A meal is what you make of it, a bowl of fruit, toast with pb and a big glass of almond milk, a cheese stick, and maybe some pepper slices.  I would get stuffed, have gotten carbs, vitamins, protein, fat, dairy.  I started trying to live better and make the better choices.  The first weeks were the hardest.  Saying no to the stops at Drive thru's, saying no to the treats brought into the office, avoiding vending machines...etc.  It was hard changing our lives around to meet my needs.  But my goal was to lose 5 lbs in 2 months to feel like I was trying to participate in our class's 10lb challenge. I just couldn't see it being possible to lose 10lbs on my frame.  I am really not a big girl.

Starting weight 163.9 . Yep, I admit it...I was...not fat by any measure but..room for improvement existed (I am 5'8" so this is well within my safe weight range).  And what I told myself was this-Imagine every one of those lbs as brick.  5 lbs =1 brick.  Imagine running with that brick strapped to your waist and then imagine ripping it off in the middle of a race and throwing it away.  I wanted to lose one brick.

July 7th -Just a week over two month goal and I stepped on my scale at home.  I was feeling bloated, heavy...I had ate some chocolate the night before.  I was so sure I had killed 9 weeks of hard work.

And I almost cried when I saw something I haven't seen in almost 8 years-
149.5 lbs.  I had lost almost 15 lbs!!! 

That is three standard red clay bricks!

I looked in the mirror and realized for the first time that my arms and face actually looked smaller, that I could see muscle definition and for the first time in almost a decade, since I left college level cross country, that I was starting to get a flatter more tone looking stomach. 

And I wanted to dance around, scream, cheer, hug someone.  I just wanted to shout out to the world, I DID IT! 

For those of you who have experienced feeling overweight, fat, or just not comfortable in your body and then got to go through the transformation, you know what I felt like. 

And funny thing, when I used to lose a lb or two before I would reward myself with food!!  Seriously...!

But now, my reward to myself was to go to the gym and brag to my fearless trainer who constantly gave encouragement and support through my whole journey.  So as I walked into the class room, set my kids up with arts and crafts and games, I could barely contain myself as I blurted out to the trainer and my partner for the day:

"I weighed in under 150 lbs for the first time in years!  "

And what happened next is why I love going to my gym, both women hugged me and said such nice things.  Desima (I know i don't know how to spell her name) and Ally both have been encouraging me the entire way, telling me on days when I was feeling down about things that they could see improvement in my body and fitness. They could have been lying that day, but so many of those days I needed to hear it and now here they were giving me a hug and congratulating me. 

And I realized as I saw the sign on the wall that day during training, that I finally had listened to the right person, myself, I can do it.  It's like the lesson we teach our teams.  Tuning into the right message and choosing our friends.  I finally did what I teach.

So while I am 100% about how the numbers don't matter, I have one more small goal in my weight loss dream and that is to lose one more brick before this Triathlon.  Just 5 lbs in the next 5 weeks.  And this time, I know I can do it. 

And the whole time, I did this as a single mother who still feeds her kids short cut meals some nights, who still has a million things to do when I get home tired from the gym, and who still gets "mom-guilt" for dragging my children to races, training, and gyms.  However,  I finally stopped making excuses and started making choices.