After baby number 5, little miss Curly Girl, I struggled to lose the weight more than I ever had. First, I had never gotten back down to my pre-pregnant weight since my first child. Second, I was now in my 30's. I have heard for years that it is harder to lose weight once you hit your 30's but I hadn't yet seen those issues myself. I was beginning to think that people said that to help themselves feel better for not being able to lose weight. BOY was I ever wrong.
After Curly Girl was 6 weeks old and I was able to safely begin working out again, I was up and at 'em. I worked out 5 days a week for at least 30 minutes a day. The numbers on the scale were not dropping. In fact the numbers were climbing. Those numbers were making me want to get more and more serious about my weight and health.
Most people need to go out to the gym or join a group like Weight Watchers to lose weight successfully. Having a support system is very important for weight loss. It's not easy to do on your own. My Mom, Gramma, Mother-in-law, sister, and a good friend had all gone to Weight Watchers and I had seen their success. But I was SO sure I could do it on my own. After a lot of frustration and gaining more weight I finally bit the bullet and started Weight Watchers. It has been the best thing I have ever done. It works for me. But you have to find a weight loss program that works for you.
It took me 2 years to finally lose all the weight from having 5 children. 2 years of faithfully counting points and exercising. I like to exercise at home. Again, that is what works for me. I have found that I like certain workout DVD's. I like walking workouts, and kick boxing workouts, but not all of them. It can get very costly to keep buying DVD's only to find out you hate them. I gave several away. I mean, come on, some of the instructors are ridiculous, or annoying. Some of them don't explain what their doing very well. And sometimes I just don't enjoy the workout at all. I found a great website that has all kinds of different workout DVD's. They rate them and have a fairly good description. But the best part is that they have little clips you can watch to see if you'll actually like it. This has worked really well for me. I rarely purchase anything from Collage Video but I use their site to get information. Then I go to Amazon to make most of my purchases. Once in a while Walmart of Target will carry the DVD for less and I'll grab it there.
I have found that what works best for me is to reward myself with a new workout DVD every 3 or 4 months. This method has built up a nice DVD workout library that allows me to switch up my workout on a daily basis. PLUS I am not paying for a gym membership and spend a whole lot less doing it this way.
If you have a hard time motivating yourself to workout, find a friend or two who are willing to do it with you. Set dates and times to workout together. Motivate one another to get healthy and fit!
One of my favorite instructors who is easy to follow and upbeat is Leslie Sansone. She has some great walking workouts for all people. She has some for beginners and some for those who have been working out for a long time. Some people find her fairly annoying and on some days I do too, but she is positive and is motivating for me.
Today I finally pulled out my 4 mile walk DVD. I didn't think I could do it yet, but I actually got through it and I feel great! I am THRILLED to have reached this point again! I didn't think it was going to happen after baby number 6, Littlest Miss. It's scary to lose all the weight and then get pregnant again. I was a HUGE fear of mine that I wouldn't be able to lose the baby weight this time. But, thankfully, I am almost there!
If you want to find out if you like the walk workouts here is a Leslie Sansone workout on Youtube. You can find several of hers on Youtube....here is another one.
The other instructor I enjoy is Jillian Michaels. But I don't like all of her DVD's. I like the kick boxing style workouts. One is Kickbox Fastfix, and the other is Cardio Kickbox.
What ever kind of workout you choose to do, do something that you like, that you enjoy, that makes you feel good and makes you happy. Now go kick some butt and have an excellent day!
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