We have a meeting on Monday and the actual challenge starts that Wednesday so I’ll have more information then, but I do know some of the women at the school are organizing an additional support structure within the challenge.

I’ll have more on the challenge next week, and I invite you to join me in creating your own 90 day challenge to follow along!

My current 2010 fitness goals are:

-Lose enough weight to fit into jeans one size smaller than I’m wearing now

-Exercise for at least 10 minutes every single day

My eventual goals are to lose more weight and exercise more, but as I discuss in my vlog, I like to start with small goals and build up to larger goals. It helps to both make me feel more accomplished and helps me meet my larger goals since I’m able to build a positive foundation with smaller changes. It’s how I lost almost 20lbs last year and it’s how I plan on losing the weight again, but this time hopefully keeping it off.

It is a little depressing to have ended 2009 at the same weight I started it, but I am determined to not let that get me down. As a friend of mine pointed out, I went through a lot this year with the loss of a job and having to relocated back home, several states away from friends I had made and places and things I enjoyed and while it’s difficult to still be essentially unemployed nearly 6 months later, I have to focus on the positive and focus on keeping myself healthy.

It will be hard to be sure, but I’m hoping our new Accio Fitness! format will help provide some much needed encouragement and accountability.

So far I’ve been pretty happy with my weight gain during the pregnancy.  As of last month I had only gained 7 pounds in about 6.5 months!  But, the reality is most of that time I have not had my normal appetite.  I have not been sick, thank goodness.  But, have just felt full and as the baby grows he takes up more and more space.

However, I can’t say that I’ve been great about my nutrition all of the time.  That has totally different implications from just weight gain and I think goes to the overall message of “health”.  My health doesn’t come down to just my weight.  Yes, I need to lose weight – a lot of it.  But, that doesn’t define my health.  When you are pregnant you begin to realize, in addition to all the other issues pregnancy conjures, that what you eat is going directly to your child.  So, if you skip on veggies or healthy food, so does he/she.

I’m happy to say too that I do not have gestational diabetes.  A much more common occurence than I think most people realize – especially if you are overweight.  But, you sort of get to this place where you are happy that you don’t have all of these negative health issues however it is important to realize that bad habits to catch up to you eventually.

My goal at this moment are to continue to not gain a substantial amount of weight, that is important, but to also eat healthy.  Avoid the things I should and remember that I’m growing a whole other being and he needs good nutritional support.  My exercise is a bit limited at the moment but it doesn’t mean that I don’t still keep moving.  Things are starting to get uncomfortable but a good walk every day is a good idea.

Even after my son is born I really want to work on getting my health (including my weight) where it needs to be here.  I’d really like to be here to see my son have children some day.

I’m sorry that I haven’t been posting lately, but that doesn’t mean my health goals are still not being worked on.  Although I’ve completed slacked off on exercise since October, I’ve managed to lose 27lbs this year after a 10lb gain in January.  And I’m not done yet!  Ideally, I’d like to lose between 10-15 more lbs in a reasonable amount of time.  Also, my new goal is to not gain another 10lbs over winter break.

Now, I’m sure much of the video might sound a bit like an ad for Apple, Nike, or a combination of the two. I assure you that I receive no compensation from either company (though wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to it, in case anyone in charge of that sort of thing stumbles upon our little blog (-: ), but I do really enjoy the product.

I’m a person who is really driven by goal setting and results and for me, this system gives me more accurate feedback than my normal method of guessing and is fairly inexpensive compared to other gadgets and gizmos available today (if you already own a compatible iPod, that is). Since Arletta and others asked about my experience with and opinion of the Nike + iPod system, I thought I’d share that information with our viewers (and readers) because some of you might find it useful in meeting your fitness goals.

So now I leave you with the promise of my next video: I talk about/review some books I’ve been reading about running, diet and injury prevention and how my karate class is literally kicking my butt in a really awesome way. You can click on the link to our YouTube channel in the sidebar and check out my current vlog.

Stay healthy, kids!

It has been interesting to see how this has affected my progress, and in some cases, lack of progress with my fitness.  So, going forward everything I do fitness-wise will be influenced by my pregnancy.

Here is the deal… I’m now about 17 weeks pregnant.  When you are pregnant, if you are healthy, you can exercise, within reason.  Basically my doctor’s opinion is do what you feel comfortable with and your body will let you know when you’ve gone too far.  As far as eating goes basically the same principle applies – eat responsibly and generally healthy but everything in moderation.  Somethings are totally off limits, of course… alcohol, sushi, etc.  Fortunately I have not been sick.. yay.. no morning sickness.  But, I feel so and so about food.  I really don’t feel like eating all the time and so when I do eat I really need to make it count.  I haven’t been craving unhealthy things.  I still would like to have my usual junk food but I definitely am not craving anything in particular.  Generally when you are pregnant you only need about 300 extra calories to help support the baby.

In terms of working out I have really struggled with my activity level.  Earlier in my pregnancy I was really tired a lot of the time and so it made exercise unappealing.  Additionally about 3 months in my feet started swelling really badly.  That definitely did not encourage my exercise.  So, I’m definitely struggling with exercise.

My goal right now is not to lose weight.  I should eat healthy, of course, but “dieting” isn’t recommended.  My goal is to eat healthy and exercise.  I definitely want to be healthier for myself and for my baby.  I want to give my baby every chance to be healthy themselves.  I’ve been lucky to find a supportive doctor who doesn’t judge me for my weight and who really wants to see me be as healthy as possible.  I’ll keep you all updated on my new goal- a healthy pregnancy.  And, I’ll definitely continue to blog on healthy topics in general.  I’m posting a new video on you tube.  Check it out and good luck on all of your goals!

~Rachel

I’ve signed up for a 5k on October 11th meaning I have less than a month to really train hard and make a difference.  If I can cut out my short 2 minute walking break and run for a straight 3 miles I think my time will be close to 43 minutes.  My ultimate treadmill goal is to get to 39 minutes at a 2% incline by October 11th.  However, I’m also going to incorporate running on the track much more next week now that it’s stopped being so buggy out at night.

4 weeks to cut 5 minutes off my best time???  I’m going to try.

Well, I’m (trying to get) back on track now. I’ve located a few gyms nearby that are part of the same chain I belonged to back in Boston (I just can’t give up the membership – the price is too good! And no contract!) so when I get the urge to lift some weights or am to much of a sissy/we get a giant hurricane/other natural events occur that make it difficult for me to run outside, I always have a treadmill waiting for me.

Step number two of getting back on track is heading back to some karate (well, now they’re calling themselves “mixed martial arts” – MMA – because I gues it’s big with the kids that like the ultimate fighting) classes that I paid for ages ago and never used, so thank God they don’t expire. I started taking these classes back in college, and the summer after my freshman year lost almost 15lbs due to the hard-core classes, a few additional workshops I signed up for and not eating junk food at 3am. Plus, I felt awesome knowing I could literally kick some butt.

I’m really looking forward to taking up martial arts again. I’m really bad with self motivation when it comes to exercise (why run when there’s Twitter to play with?) so having someone yell and throw me to the ground really helps with that.

I’ll give you the update on that and the Nike+ video that’s a long time coming as soon as I can. I hope you’re all staying fit!

I’ve decided to forgo the intro video for the time being mostly because my webcam hates me and refuses to sync the audio and video plus I can’t find my other camera right now.  I’ll try and include photos in another post. I’m going to write down both my overall goals for the program and my specific goals for this week.

About me:

I will be 20 in two weeks! I am about 5’2” and oh boy, 170lbs.  I have been dealing with weight issues for about the last 8 years. When I was 12 I was diagnosed with a sleep apnea and told to lose weight inorder to help control the problem (okay, I also had to undergo a tonsillectomy and addendectomy but that’s irrelevant right now) and that’s where it all began. One of my biggest frustratiosn is that I feel like people are constantly telling me to lose weight or making me feel that I need to lose weight but no one will tell me HOW! Diet and excercise are seriously broad and vague terms that mean nothing without steps behind them, so I’ll be trying to be explicit in my blogs/info to help anyone out there like me who needs steps to follow.

Overall Goals:

-  Weight Loss: I would like to lose 40lbs in the next 4-6mo.

- Accountability: holding myself accountable for what I eat or don’t eat.

- Sustainability: finding something that will work for the rest of my life.

- Putting ME first.

Goals for this week:

- Begin Couch 2 5k (well everyone seems to like it so much that I thought I’d give it a go)

- Eat 3 meals a day every day (hopefully before this is over I can get up to 5 small meals)

- Buy a scale & weigh myself.

xoxoxo

Taekia

I also wanted to answer Arletta’s question about my progress with Couch to 5k and give a little update since my video (finally) uploaded a little while ago.

I know Malory decided to do the timed training, but I decided to use distance, instead of time. So at the end of 9 weeks, I was able to run 3 miles at once, though it takes me more than 30 minutes to do it (one of my Accio Fitness! goals). I don’t think one is necessarily easier than the other, it just depends on your preference.

I did have a little bet of a setback; I got the LeakyFlu, so post-LeakyCon I had to go back to week 6 again, I think it was. That’s why I made sure to finish before Azkatraz; between the insanity of the con and being out of town for an additional week after the con, I knew it would be another setback if I didn’t get it all done.

Now I’m working towards one of my first Accio Fitness! goals, running 5k in 30 minutes. I cut my time by another minute or so today, but that’s partially due to MoM coming up frequently in the music mix while I was running, so we’ll see if I can hit that time (ish) again and not feel like I’m going to die. I’m going to look for some 5ks in my area after I get a bit more packing done and hopefully push myself even further to meet that goal.

One of the other things I’m excited about is going back to my old karate classes. That will really help me get in shape. I managed to drop my “freshman 15″ back when I first started taking the classes, so I think it’ll probably help again.

I’m getting in touch with a friend of mine who runs community education programs on nutrition, so I’ll try and get that video together ASAP.

Stupid computer.