Completed My Holiday Challenge!

While most people are just getting started on their New Year's Resolutions I'm wrapping up seven weeks of very healthy living!  This is the first time I've ever found myself at the New Year in better shape than I was at say......Thanksgiving.  In fact I'm in best shape of my life and I'm 46 years young.  For the past seven weeks I've been a challenger in the Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle Holiday Challenge.  For the past seven weeks I've been tracking everything I eat.  I've been making sure to get enough high quality protein to help me get strong and lean.

Thank goodness for 20,000 little brown organic cage free egg laying birds.  Well I didn't eat that many eggs but I did eat a bunch of them.  Eggs are so economical and such a wonderful source of protein.  I have to admit that I never separated an egg white from an egg yolk.  First, it just seems like a lot of work.  Second, nature made it that way, Third, the fat in the yolk helped me stay full longer.  Eggs are a nutrient dense food.  The amount of vitamins, minerals, amino acids and healthy fats (remember that many vitamins and minerals need fat present in order to be metabolized properly) present in eggs is high for the number of calories in an egg.   Okay can you tell I like eggs?  I make my living supplying these eggs for the grocery stores so I hope you like eggs too. 

For the past seven weeks I've been going to the gym at least four times a week and working out.  I've been lifting weights and performing a workout routine that was recommended by my friend Audrey.  She was the Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle Summer Challenge Champion.  If that workout was good enough for the past champion it was good enough for me.  The workout is by Tom Venuto and is called TNB (The New Bodybuilding)  It's a great full body routine you can perform at any gym, it features a split workout routine which is great.  That way only half my body was sore on any given day instead of my entire body.

In addition to the strength training I've been doing some sort of cardio workout every day, sometimes twice a day.  Going into the challenge I still had a bunch of fat that needed burned so that the muscle I was working on so hard would show up by the time the challenge was over.  It was important for my cardio to be enjoyable, or at least as enjoyable as possible.  I will have to admit that an hour of cardio on the elliptical machine at the gym was not the most entertaining type of cardio I performed.  Great music to jam to on my I-pod helped me stay motivated.  I also used all time spent doing cardio as "visualization time".  Cardio tends to be a little mindless so I though; why not utilize that time with constructive mental exercises? It soon became a habit for me to really get a picture in my head of my dream body and what I wanted to achieve.   I have to say this visualization habit has flowed into other parts of my life I now visualize my dream body achieving great goals.  My biggest goal is to be inspiring.  I want other people who are struggling with their weight and with their health  to know there is a safe sane way transform your life.

Okay.......enough about what I've been doing the last seven weeks.

Here's some before and after pictures that represent what I accomplished in that seven weeks.

 
So as the title suggests I've completed my seven week Holiday Challenge.  I entered myself for judging.  Thousands entered!  Only ten to twenty percent of the people who enter finish.  Out of those only one female and one male will be crowned the "Champion" and win a killer vacation to Maui!!   It will be about two weeks before I know how I placed.  I'm hoping to at least be in the top ten and of course my goal all along has been to be the Champion. 

If you've followed my blog or just read back to the beginning of it you'll find out that my transformation from fat to fit began back in May of this past year when I first found Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle and competed it a fourteen week long Summer challenge where I placed third overall for the women.

Here's a picture of me at the beginning of that challenge and then the end of this challenge.  This pictures represents my total transformation.......Thus far!!

 

Please if you've stopped by my blog and you were inspired in any way or have any questions, please leave me a "comment".  I'd love to hear from you!

If I could do this, so can you!