My Post-Partum Weight Loss Journey by Liimu - Week 4

Well, we are in week 4 of this weight-loss journey and I am AMAZED at how the Universe is providing me with so much to support my success! First, I've decided to provide an update on how I'm tracking to target on a monthly basis. It's week 4, so it's time for an update!

Week 4 loss: 5 pounds

Post-partum pounds left to lose: 40 pounds (P-40 and counting...)

Second, big thanks to Robin Gorman-Newman for giving me this vehicle to say accountable at a very public level. It definitely has helped me to right my boat when it's tipped over during this process. I can say with conviction that I am now sailing along downstream toward my beautiful, pre-pregnancy body (or better). Not only has this blog been an essential part of my success, but Robin has also pointed me in the direction of wonderful products that I'm given the opportunity to review to see how they may help me along the way.

One product I am so incredibly excited to have been given the chance to review is the BodyMedia FIT armband. The FIT armband is a wearable armband that tracks calories, activity and sleep patterns, and it has an online activity manager that measures calories burned and calories consumed, sleep patterns, steps taken, it tracks all that to the overall goals set to keep me on track to my goal of being at goal at just about the same time Max celebrates his first birthday.

I LOVE IT! It is SO me. While the site wasn't entirely intuitive and the quick reference guide didn't give much help in how to use the Activity Manager online (it was more focused on how to get started), I did finally figure it out by using the online tutorial and now I am hooked! I have customized my activity goals to match how much I generally work out so I'm realistic about how much I need to eat, calorie-wise, and I sync up with the activity manager a few times a day to make sure I'm staying on track with my goals. It took a little while to get used to having an armband on all the time (and I felt like a bit of a dork at the gym because I had the armband on one arm and the iPhone on the other) but I slept in it last night and it didn't bother me, and for the most part I can forget I have it on now that I've gotten used to it. And, it's slim enough that you can't see it under my clothes, so now that we're in colder weather I'm pretty much the only one who will know I have it on.

What I plan to do is have a BodyMedia FIT update every week to let you know how I'm doing with staying on track with my BodyMedia FIT goals, and then we'll see how that aligns with the success I'm having on the scale. All in all, I am REALLY psyched to have the opportunity to try this out. I knew when I saw the Biggest Loser contestants wearing something similar that I would be hooked if I ever got the opportunity to try something like it, and dang if I wasn't right! If you want to learn more about it, or if you want to get your own, go to http://www.bodymedia.com/ or click here.

OK, the other thing I want to share with you guys is what a wonderful experience this has been for my family. I shared last week that my daughter said she wants fruit for her next birthday. This week, she said she wants to start to eat healthier on the weekend, and even admitted that she loves cucumbers and if I cut some up she'd eat them as an after-school snack. I made it a point to cut up cucumbers and put them in a baggie the very next day. She has yet to eat them, but I still feel like it's progress. Maybe I'll see if she wants some for her school snack today.

Well, that's all for now. Time to finish syncing the armband, wake the kids, run four miles and then get off to work. I look forward to giving you next week's update - hope to see you then!

Weight Loss and The Law of Attraction (oh, and Money and Abundance, too)...by Liimu

Both because my blogging day is nearly half over and because I recently downloaded and listened to Esther and Jerry Hicks "Think and Get Slim," I am inspired to share a blog I posted to my own site, Recreating Liimu, not long ago.

While I am still waiting for the scale to show the numbers I want to see, I remain as confident as ever. I recently ran 5 miles outside ofr the first time, and just a couple days ago ran 2 miles in 20 minutes! That's my first time running my old 10 minute pace I was happy to be running before I got pregnant. I am SO happy with that because I know I will be ready for the half-marathon in November.

I have really made some significant progress since I had little Max. My body has definitely toned up and I have lost 15 pounds since the beginning of June, more than 30 pounds overall. I still have 40 pounds to go, but I know the Universe is going to suck that off of me with the quickness. One reason I know this to be true is that I have experience with affirmation prayers of abundance working WELL and now all I have to do is come up with an equally powerful prayer around my weight loss.

The abundance is prayer is amazing. Since I have been saying it consistently, I have been seeing contracts that were already for a good amount of money get DOUBLED by the client, have seen checks come in weeks early that were for thousands more than I expected them to be, have seen small projects pop up out of nowhere for work I've already completed. It's amazing - like magic.

I have a friend who is skilled in the Law of Attraction and she swears that since she figured out how to apply the Law of Attraction principles to her weight loss, she now has the figure of a Victoria's Secret model. She says what she does is to put on the best music she can think of (for me, that's currently "Moves Like Jagger" by Maroon 5), gets all into an uber happy state of mind and then and ONLY then, she envisions herself at her perfect weight.

I know for a fact that I have been disallowing my ideal body to manifest by making the mistake of thinking and talking about weight loss from a negative mindset. Only starting today, I have started getting really excited about the fact that I KNOW the Law of Attraction works, so it absolutely has to work in this area if I am diligent about keeping my thoughts and words positive.

I know how it feels to be in really good shape. I know how it feels to be eating healthy and exercising, to look in the mirror and like what I see. I know that's right around the corner. I'm just going to focus on how good it's going to feel when I get there. I have seen it work with regard to manifesting abundance. Now it's time to see it in action with regard to achieving my ideal body. Oh, and case you're wondering, it looks like THIS:

Week 17...The Brawn - by Liimu

So, last week I promised we would talk about The Brawn. It probably won't surprise anyone to hear that my focus couldn't be any farther from that. I'm not the slightest bit interested in gracing the cover of any magazines bearing my pregnant belly, a la Demi Moore and Vanity Fair. My relationship with exercise has changed, much in the way my relationship with my weight has changed, with this pregnancy.

I am exercising regularly again. I made a commitment to myself that I would slog through a two-mile run at least 4 days out of the week, however clumsily, and then tack some weight training onto the end. Yesterday, the whole thing took me a half hour. Today, I was at the gym for over an hour and actually felt some soreness in my muscles. It felt good. And I realize that feeling good is what exercise is all about right now. I could use whatever endorphins I can get, basically. And after I exercise, I feel all glowy and beautiful. Why wouldn't I do something that makes me feel like that?

I guess I want to share this stuff with you guys because it applies whether you are pregnant or not. You're beautiful if you say you are, if you feel like you are, if you strut like you are. Similarly, whether you are pregnant or not, you will benefit from making the time to exercise. Hell, I'm working 60-70 hours a week right now, holding down the fort with three kids and have one on the way, and I'm finding time to work out - even if it's just for a half hour - not because I'm trying to lose weight (clearly) but because I know it will make me feel good. And I'm not leaving that to anyone else but me. So, if I know there's a guaranteed way to get my day started off right (or finished off right), I'm damned sure going to do it. And if I don't, and I feel all yucky and bloated and blah, I have no one to blame but myself.

Give it a try. You make time to shower, to brush your teeth, to help your kids with their homework, to make dinner, whatever it is you've decided is a priority. Get yourself back on that list and see how much more you get out of every single day when you add a half hour of exercise. You'll be surprised how much more you can do when you've got an extra spring in your step.

OK, nuff said. Don't mean to preach. Now I have to keep working out so I don't look like a hypocrite. Or a hippo. Tee hee. Is anyone reading this, anyway?

Good night, all...

Why I Run -- by Liimu

I have been obsessed with dieting and changing my body for as long as I can remember. My mom was a dieter my whole life, even my 94 year old grandmother confessed to me while in the nursing home that she still replaced two of her daily meals with SlimFast and weighed herself daily.

When I had my children (all girls), I realized that I was going to have do something to counteract this way of thinking so that I wouldn’t pass on this lack of self-acceptance on to them. Every year since I turned 30, I had run the Susan Komen Race for the Cure, a 5K run that benefits research for a cure for breast cancer, a disease from which my mother has been surviving for nearly 30 years.

About a year after my second daughter’s first birthday, I decided that a better motivation for going to the gym than to lose weight would be to train for a longer race. I set a goal of running a 10K by the end of that year. That April, I ran the 10K and I met a woman named Amy who would change my life. Amy and I began to get to know each other as we ran that 6 miles, and what we learned was that we both thought of ourselves as the last to get picked for the teams in gym class, and yet here we both were, completing an athletic event that not many people we knew had ever accomplished. That fueled our fire and we were off. That year alone, Amy and I ran the 10-mile Broad Street run, the Philadelphia Distance Run (a half-marathon) and the Philadelphia Marathon. During our training, I started a new job, and Amy moved away to attend law school. We didn’t talk on the phone or via e-mail, we saved our best stories for when she would come back to Philly for us to complete our long training runs together or complete the races we had promised each other early on we’d support each other in finishing. When we ran Broad Street and I got a side stitch a half-mile into the run, Amy hissed, “Keep going…no one ever died from a cramp,” later confessing that she’d had no idea at the time she said this if it was actually true. When I was injured in August, Amy encouraged me to take the time I needed to heal, adding only half-jokingly that she couldn’t afford for me to start back too soon and injure myself so bad that I wouldn’t’ be ready to run the marathon with her in November. She was counting on me. And I was counting on her.

Amy and I are still friends, and she married the guy she started dating during that training season. We got to know a lot about each other during that period, but what I didn’t anticipate was what I would learn about myself. When I ran across the marathon finish line, I was no longer just a girl, no longer even just a mom, I was an athlete. I had crossed another line, the line that separated the runners from the non-runners. Without intending to, I had found a way to break the cycle of self-loathing and insecurity that had plagued the women (and some of the men) in my family for generations. I now look at my body for what it can do, rather than what it looks like (most of the time…all bets are off when my hormones are in the driver’s seat). And this Mother’s Day, the gift I look most forward to receiving will be having two new running partners as I cross that familiar finish line of the Susan Komen race, for my two daughters, Devon and Amelia, will be running it with me.