the battle has begun!

I have now waged war on my winter-me struggles, it's been pretty bad lately and will only get worse as Christmas approaches. I'm starting to hibernate and become less active. I can feel all my hard work for the past several months slipping away from me!

So, I took drastic measures last week on this battle. I got up at 7am on Thanksgiving morning, quickly got dressed and headed to my church for a 1+ hour step aerobics class, led by our biggest loser organizer who is a fitness instructor. It's an annual tradition at our church but this was my first year. Have I gone completely mad? Yes, yes I have. It was 25F out when I left the house.

I exercised alone during biggest loser so this was a good litmus test for me since I was in a group and doing something completely different. I was doing really well for the first 30 minutes, the next 10 minutes were just ok but that last 20 minutes...um, really not good. Gasping for air and just trying not to trip over myself. :)

Then we went into abs work. We put the step supports under one side of the step so that it was on an incline. We had to lay on it and curl ourselves up for stomach crunches. It was hard and it hurt. I was glad when we were done but I surprised myself because I still had more in me. Oh yeah, bring it on.
I thought we were then going into push-ups and arm work but we didn't, we went straight into stretching. Granted, we had already exercised for over an hour but I was ready for it.

So what I learned from this experience...
My whole biggest loser journey was about weight loss and what I forgot to consider is that in the process I've gotten into pretty good shape! I have areas to work on obviously. I'd like to build up my endurance a bit more and by the way, for 2 days after, my calf muscles felt like they were on the verge of a full-blown charlie horse every time I moved.

But other than that, I realized that I'm strong. I'm physically strong and that just feels really good.

I just have to keep moving!!