There have been some ups and downs

August 28, 2014Leave a comment

This past week has been filled with some ups and down. I’m a little more than 9 weeks out til my show and I’m still steadily losing, but with the lose does come frustration. It’s mentally exhausting having to keep up with the changes. I’m not trying to complain about my loss. I can’t be more excited, but at the same time I didn’t realize my body composition would be what it is.

I’m going to be pretty damn honest right here, but I have a consultation with a plastic surgeon in two weeks for both a breast lift and implants. A few years ago, I probably would’ve laughed at the idea of implants and maybe would’ve made a few horrible jokes, but with the amount of breast tissue I’ve lost, this has now become my option. As you’ve all seen from my pictures, at my thinnest I was small breasted and at my heavier, I was pretty large breasted. I went from a 34B to a 42D and now I’m at a 34D with a ton of excess skin. This is one of the main downers of the week. Figuring out clothes that fit my top half has been difficult to say the least. I have some dresses that no longer fit well in the chest because of this loss. My body has gone through a ton of changes, and I couldn’t be more proud to have come so far in the past two and half years, but this whole journey has been about decisions. Eat healthy or not, go to the gym or sleep in, change it up or do the same thing. I want to feel comfortable in my clothes and out of them. I’m hoping the doctor will agree that I don’t need a huge addition, but something that makes me look full and will allow me to feel proportionate.

I’m excited about the appointment because it means I’m almost done losing weight, but I’m very nervous because surgery is a huge deal.

Some of the positives of this week, however, have been just as powerful. I haven’t weighed myself since the beginning of the week, but I can see changes already since changing my daily carbohydrates and adding two days of HIIT and two days of steady cardio. I added a few pounds and PR’d weighted squats with 95 pounds on Wednesday. I had the best cardio workout Wednesday morning in the dance room and I had the room all to myself. One of the perks of being up and in the gym at 6 am :] My competition suit has shipped and should be here Saturday! My protein powder was on sale and should be here this weekend too!

So for every one thing I get frustrated with, there are bunch of things I have reason to be excited about… Like buying a size 6 dress on my lunch hour :]

Here are some photos from the week to recap. I’m excited for lifting tomorrow on lunch and then an action packed weekend involving everything, but working out.

Transformation Tuesday photo. 2007: Freshmen year of college, 2011: Senior year of college, 2014: August 20th prepping for my competition

Size 6. New dress for the fall :]

Dance room :]

OMG it’s almost here!

I take sexy post cardio photos

I hope everyone else enjoys the end of their week and beginning of their weekend!

❤ Cristina

Morning timed run

August 25, 20142 Comments

Since I worked yesterday, my boss is letting me come in late today. However, I feel asleep at 830 last night which resulted in not being able to sleep in this morning. So off to the gym I went! I ran for time this morning. Decreased my speed and increased the incline. I’m down another half pound bringing my loss this summer to 18 pounds and my new weight to a solid 156. I’m 10 weeks out for my show and I’ve recalculated my macronutrients to fit my new BF%. I’ve also changed up my workouts adding 2 days of steady cardio and 2 days of HIIT to my 5 days of lifting. I’m working with two different friends to make sure I’m getting the most out of the next 10 weeks.

I’ve ordered my suit, booking my glamour appointments, and practicing in my heels. I am so damn excited and I can’t wait to take those progress shots right before the show.

I hope everyone else has a great Monday!

❤️ Cristina

Pic-spiration: Johnny Cash

August 23, 2014Leave a comment

I’m willing to fail

August 19, 2014August 19, 2014Leave a comment

I’ve thought about what to write for the last few days and I think I know what I want to say. I’m not scared to fail, but I’m scared of not trying and therefore not knowing if I could’ve succeeded or failed.

I have failed a lot in my life, in many different parts of my life. You can learn from failure and not repeat the same mistakes, if you’re smart. By not trying, you are ultimately telling yourself that you aren’t good enough to succeed. You aren’t worth working on and your goals are worth pushing harder for. Maybe this extreme, but I see giving up and not trying as worse than failure because failing means you at least took the steps to accomplish something.

I’m down another half pound and while some might brush that off as nothing, I’m looking at it as a success. I’m now 156.5, which is 17.5 pounds lighter than I was at 21 weeks out. I’m almost a size 6 and I was a 10 when I started. Mentally, I’m still up in the air when I receive unsolicited opinions about my body, my food and my workouts, but I feel for the first time I’m doing something because I want to. Of course my weightloss journey has been about me, but this competition is about going out of my comfort zone, trying new things, trusting a process I’m continuously learning about and lifting heavy things and putting them down.

I was never been someone who would get excited about dead lifting or lifting until failure, but it’s something I thrive on. I love setting a goal, crushing it and setting a new one; while losing fat and gaining some tiny bits of muscle. I am surprising myself all the time with what I have and can accomplish. Having the ability to fail doesn’t mean I necessarily want to fail, but to me it means that I understand I have a lot to learn and that I will learn from my mistakes and failures.

Tonight’s workout is a great example of failure and success.

After meeting this fantastic women named Laurie a few weeks ago, and working out with her this past Friday I learned about drop sets. Tonight’s sets were back and arms. I think this was a perfect wake up for me and my lifting partner because we could feel what it was like to low row higher than our usual weight as well as bring the weight down to where we were when we first started in July. It was easy to laugh at how light the weight lower weights that we mocked used are. For example, we did dumb bell shoulder presses; I used 20, 15 then 10 pounds. I was always the girl in the back of the weight class using 5 pounds, I now use 15 pounds for many dumb bell workouts. I was shocked at how light the 10 pound dumb bells were. We also started using the squat rack, which has made it easier to increase weight and not fear potential injury. While these are clearly successes, low row kicked my butt when I prepped the first set for 70 pounds and I’m sure I’ll feel it in the morning!

Just knowing how far I’ve come in the past 10 weeks makes me hopeful, excited and curious about the next 11 leading up to the show.

I’m not going for perfect, I’m going for the best version I can present at the time. I can always do another show. I can always do more training post the show. But before I get ahead of myself, I’m going to work as hard as I can to make this version awesome.

This is from yesterday before I weighed in this morning!

This morning HIIT cardio and weigh in 🙂

I hope everyone else had a great Tuesday!

❤️ Cristina

Official times are in!!

August 16, 2014August 16, 20141 Comment

I got my results from last nights 5K! Out of 181 participants I was number 108. In my age division I was number 12 out of 22 females ages 20 to 29. Out of all females I was 52 out of 109. My official time was 31:26. The fastest time was 16:55 by a 35 year old male, his average pace was 5:27! My goal isn’t to become that fast, but I do hope to continue to be active and keep my health as a priority as I approach my 30s and beyond.

❤️ Cristina

My first timed 5K

August 14, 2014August 14, 2014Leave a comment

Today I ran my third 5K, but my first timed race. The first two were considered “fun runs” i.e. Color runs. While I had time those myself with my heart rate monitor and running app for my phone, I never felt the pressure to run a race and hit a specific time. I had goals for myself, but without a huge time clock at the end I didn’t feel this sense of push like I did tonight.

My goal was to run 3.1 in 31 minutes or less. My mile has been averaging 9:30 so I thought this was a pretty solid goal. Well, I ran 3.27 in less than 32 minutes (I’m waiting on my official time to be posted). My first mile was 8:53, and I blame this on lack of resistance as well as wanting to get away from the pack. I love pushing my boundaries and running that hard didn’t hurt, but when I checked my HRM I was sitting at 187 bpm. It happens all the time, but I was like holy crap, I should slow down. Slowing down is an issue for me, when I try to adjust my pace I really screw it up in either direction, too slow or too fast. Head phones in my ears I was waiting for the coaching alarm to say my mile and pace… When her little voice said “1 mile pace 8 minutes and 53 seconds,” I was like no wonder I feel like I’m going so fast; it’s because I am!

During miles 2 and 3 I had asthma attacks. Now, I don’t have an inhaler because only ridiculous things set it off and it was a fun medical condition added from my weight gain. I ran passed a woman with the strongest perfume and while I had been controlling my breathing, one inhale of that and I was gasping for breath trying to my throw up. It was the worst feeling ever. I actually stopped running and put my hands in the air to open my lungs.

After a minute I got back on my merry way.

The second attack happened when I passed a man wearing cologne. I am so proud for choking back my quest bar.

After the coaching voice went off that 3 miles were complete, I took everything in me and pushed as hard as I could to finish. My lungs wanted fresh air and my body wanted to lay down. The best way to finish faster is to go faster. I ran the last stretch with a pace of 8:27. When I was done I laid on the ground and gulped down a bottle of water.

I hadn’t trained for this race like I usually do since I have been working on my lifting and hitting new weight PRs, but I’m pretty pleased with how I did. Now that I know the route I can practice for next year and hopefully get faster. I have another 5K in October. It’s the Color Run, so it’s another fun run, but I’m still very excited about it. My bib collection is coming along nicely. So is my racing shirt collection 🙂

Below are some pictures I took tonight of race things!

And here’s a little throwback Thursday to my first race!

I hope everyone else had a great Thursday! I’m gearing up for before work HIIT by heading to bed early!

❤️Cristina

Day 57 and Day 58: back progress and weight check-in

August 9, 2014August 9, 20142 Comments

I’ve been tracking all of my progress carefully and relentlessly with photos. Last night I had my friend, Monolina take back progress photos! It’s crazy how much can change in a little time!

I also weighed myself before cardio this morning and I’m down another pound! I now weigh 157.5 pounds and I have 22.5 more to lose to reach my goal weight for the show, which is now 12 weeks away! I am so excited for these changes. I ordered my shoes last night and I’m going to order my suit in a few weeks. I’m hoping to ordering it when I hit 150. Fingers crossed my progress continues to be steady and I hit the marks when I want to!

I hope everyone has a great Saturday!

❤️ Cristina

87 days to go!

August 6, 2014August 6, 2014Leave a comment

It’s been about a week since I last posted. It has been a crazy week to say the least! So I think we should recap before moving forward. I visited a friend last week in New York and it was great to see her. This is the second birthday her and I have spent together. Last year I bought us a hotel room and Luke Bryan tickets at Saratoga Performing Arts Center- oh how Luke shakes his booty 😉

This year we were in Syracuse and since it was rainy we went to lunch and walked around the mall, which is HUGE so you can literally walk around for hours and not get bored. She picked the restaurant because she’s the birthday girl, and I won’t lie this made me nervous. While I’ve been macro counting, I have been eating a mostly clean diet. So I made the executive decision to not track my food for her birthday. It was definitely a hard one to make, but I knew I would be much happier. And I hadn’t had a cheat meal or day at all in my training. One wasn’t going to hurt me.

She picked Johnny Rockets and it was fucking delicious.

To hold myself accountable, I posted this picture to Instagram because like I said I don’t eat like this often and you know sometimes enjoying someone company is more important than being paranoid about what you’re eating.

Here’s my disclaimer… One bad meal won’t hurt you, just like one good meal won’t help you. You don’t gain weight over night so you can’t lose it the same way.

I also had chicken wing dip that night with another friend. If you don’t know what chicken wing dip is you are missing out!

Anyway… I had purchased the 3-Day Refresh prior to going on my day trip, so when I got home I figured this was the perfect time to try it out. The refresh is a 3 day cleanse that helps you de-bloat and get rid of cravings from excess salts and sugars. Since I’m a new coach I figured let’s do it up!

Holy struggle bus! The second day I was a bit irritable and had to put myself down for a nap. This doesn’t happen to everyone, but I was still doing hard core workouts while using the refresh as my sleep wasn’t the best at night. My friend, Brittany and I did a joint post about this product because we had very different experiences. You can check it out here!

The weekend was pretty packed with work and lifting, but most importantly DANCE! Growing up I danced competitively and in college I was on the dance team and the cheerleading squad for football season… Prior to my weight gain. I never thought I’d be able to dance like that again even though I maintained most of my flexibility. Well, I realized that the classroom at my gym is empty Sunday nights. So I got my dance on after work. It was fantastic.

Then came Monday and I was having some gut issues. I mean I was looking down and looking in the mirror and going “WHY WON’T YOU SHRINK FASTER?” I started going through pictures on my phone… because there’s a million selfies on there. I paired two photos together. The photo from the day before I started lifting and a photo from about 50ish days after I started prepping and lifting.

Remember that hater post I wrote? Yeah, here’s your fuck you :] 15.5 pounds different, clearly inches lost, down a pant size and I’m still going! 13 weeks until the competition and I’m beasting through my macro counting and lifting. I’m lifting heavier and eating smarter. I’m getting my cardio in and taking my vitamins. My sleep could be better, but whatever.

This photo has basically shut me up, well at least for this week. I can’t wait for these next 13 weeks to go by. I can’t wait for more progress. This has been a crazy roller coaster, and I couldn’t be happier with the challenges I’ve faced and have overcome.

I can’t wait to show you more of my journey, but until then here are some photos to keep you entertained!

TBT July 31

❤ Cristina

Run, Sweat, Eat, Repeat

Looking at Life through a different lens

Month: August 2014

There have been some ups and downs

Morning timed run

Pic-spiration: Johnny Cash

I’m willing to fail

Official times are in!!

My first timed 5K

Day 57 and Day 58: back progress and weight check-in

87 days to go!