The Most Positive of Beginnings ...

[TheHappyFamily]

Hello everyone Been lurking and reading and everyone is doing so great! Even the 2-6 week progress pics and updates are amazing.

Our longish intro:

I stumbled across the book a few weeks ago after getting a recommendation from a friend about the actual eating and motivational messages the program offered. I got my fiance to read it as well, from cover to cover and he is on board to do the "challenge".

We are getting married in May and our goal is to be pretty and fit. I mean what bride and groom doesn't want to look dashing in their wedding clothes? Anyway, completely and utterly doable. We have absolutely no fear and believe that we can hit our goal and then some. Even though, between the two of us, we probably have a good 100 pounds to shed.

Bonus #1: I was pleasantly surprised and extremely encouraged by the food lists. I had already altered our diets over a year ago to include the majority of foods on the lists. We cut out sugar and sweets a long time ago, we eat almost everything whole grain, lean meats, chicken, brown rice, etc. In my mind, this is probably one of the biggest hurdles most people face, so that gives us a pretty big leg up, right?

What we don't do - is manage the combination of the foods we do buy, nor do we eat enough. 6 meals a day? Phew. I'm exhausted thinking about that. Combine that with not knowing how to work out effectively and we've been sitting on a plateau for a long time.

Our biggest vice: an occasional cocktail in the evening. A glass of wine or a Captain n Coke Zero. We don't have too big an issue with cutting back on this during the week, but this will probably be something we will indulge in from time to time on a weekend. I think we can work around this. I guess we'll see.

We start Day 1 tomorrow. We stocked up on groceries today, even finding an incredible deal on some vanilla and strawberry Myoplex shakes. 50% off! I've already got a week's worth of lunch simmering in the crock pot as I type this.

Bonus #2: We have a home gym complete with two treadmills, a weight machine, elliptical, healthrider and a stair stepper. We even have a medicine ball and some dumbbells. Seems we may have to invest in some more free weights though, and a weight bench.

I've just had my physical done and my doctor was well impressed with my blood work. Cholesterol was under 140, blood sugar was at 70, kidney and liver working beautifully. Only health issue I have is hypothyroidism. Well, being overweight too ... but overall, I am very thankful that everything appears to be in fine working order for this first 12 week challenge.

Fiance has his physical in 2 weeks, so I guess we'll see how he's doing 2 weeks into the program.

We'll take our pics tomorrow and I'll have to consider posting.... after all that, I'm a little shy. But just maybe.

The BEST Bonus: Ya'll sound like a fabulous bunch to throw our hats into the ring with and I look forward to participating in here whilst we go through this challenge. I reckon we got enough time to fit two 12 week challenges in.

Is there a particular place we should post our goal or shall I just include it in our signature?

Also: I will warn you now, I'm a great optimist, I always try to find the bright side of everything, and reading and listening to the Secret recently had kinda given me a bit of a "happy" high. Life is so good. We really are lucky to be alive and to experience everything we can.... bad and good.

Be well everyone!

[Maljonic]

Hi TheHappyFamily, you seem to have a pretty definite idea of what you're doing with the food, which for a lot of people is actually the most difficult part.

[TheHappyFamily]

Originally Posted by Maljonic

Hi TheHappyFamily, you seem to have a pretty definite idea of what you're doing with the food, which for a lot of people is actually the most difficult part.

Hi! You can call us "Happy" for short

I think, besides the actual goal we're going to achieve, the food part has me quite excited. I love to cook healthy, but need recipes and need to be able to do different things to dress up all that healthy food. The recipe section here was pretty great and I found someone out on the next that offered 100 different BFL recipes and they all look great.

Figuring out how to make the food work for us, i.e. preparing a bunch ahead of time, mapping out meal plans, grocery lists; is going to be the key to our success.

Definitely a bit over the top excited to have found this and to have a plan. My "virgo-ness" really needed a PLAN!

[TheHappyFamily]

there's not too much action around these here parts are there? Is it in between challenges for most people or everyone just busy

I know that scales are usually the devil's spawn, but of course I can't help but just see what they say, and both of us were pleasantly surprised this morning.

Mr was down 4 lbs, and I was down 8 lbs. I know most of it is likely that initial surge of water weight, but the numbers were encouraging nonetheless.

*** When I do lose weight, I do lose it fairly quickly for the first few months. I know targets are usually a pound or two a week as that's supposed to be healthy, but I think this is very normal for me.

Back a couple of years ago I lost just over 90 pounds in 3 months, then 116 total in 11 months by upping the exercise and running 2 miles 6 days a week. I kept most of that off up to about 2 months ago, when I weighed myself and found out I put back on 27 pounds.

I had stopped all cardio exercise and all weight routines for the last 18 months, and it showed.

So for me, I've got to have exercise. Can't maintain without it.

We did our cardio today and I really pushed it hard to hit that 10. Felt real good!

Looking forward to Monday already and wondering if I'm going to miss the gym tomo on our day of rest. :/

Hope all is well with everyone!