We came full circle!

Ok so I know I am behind in staying up to date with this Blog, but I've been a little busy....to say the least! As you know I first started my 'Fan page' because I was going to the casting call for the Marilyn Denis show. They were looking for people who had a 'passion' for something, so I decided that I would try out and go tell my story. They required you to make a demo tape to bring with you. So I made my demo tape (you can watch it here) and then I posted it on the Fan Page I created in order to get some support......well my friends all I have to say is follow your dreams/goals/hopes no matter what because this is how we came full circle..... - I posted my demo video on Facebook - Other Woman saw it and started e-mailing me asking for help in starting their own journey to healthy living - I got certified as a personal trainer in order to learn more personally, this then helped me out professionally as well - I then started my own One-on-one Personal Training Business called Bring out YOUR Awesome - While learning about how to own my own business I found Tweeter - In 2 weeks of being on Tweeter I met Sam who has her own Business training pregnant woman and post-partum woman - We stayed in contact for 2yrs through Facebook here and there - Then one day I saw that she posted she was looking to interview someone for TV about their personal journey to a healthy lifestyle. -I responded to the post saying I could do it if she wanted, what was it for and when? - She replied back that it was the next week and it was as a guest in the audience for the Marilyn Denis show!!!!!! WTF!!!! Are you kidding me!! That was all ment to be in a really strange way. I had put the idea of being on the show as something that wasn't going to happen but have always been grateful for what did all come out of it. With meeting all the people who asked me for help and starting on a new career path that I totally LOVE! Being on the show was totally awesome! It wasn't the way I thought it would happen that's for sure! LOL!...I had more in mind being on the show healthy and fit and looking normal...instead I was on there healthy, fit and huge pregnant!! I gave birth 2 weeks after the show aired! LOL!.....but I must say, although my body might not have been small anymore I was still very healthy and getting the rewards of it. I took the train down to T.O and then walked my 8 1/2 month preggo ass from Union Station to her studio in a fancy pair'o boots with no issue....it was almost 2k each way!!! Who does that! LOL!!

Then/Now the pregnant edition :)

I must say this has been another interesting journey this whole being pregnant and still being healthy and active. If there is one main thing I have learned that I want to pass on, that is that you don't have to let your body be taking over totally and that pregnant woman can be active through the whole pregnancy. Now that 'being active' looks different as you go along and will change, but from the start my goal was to stay in motion :)

So here is the now for 2 months (I didn't have any 2 month ones from before) I was very fortunate that I didn't have morning sickness or felt sick at all. I would just get REALLY dumb tired in the afternoon. So as long as I made sure I had a nap I was good to go train in the evening. Differences that I noticed was that I would have to stop sooner or couldn't go as fast as I needed to stop to catch my breath....I also would stop before I needed to, I stopped pushing it at this point and made sure that I didn't get to hot :)

Here is the 4 month one. The runs were becoming walks at this point. Sometimes I'd go for a run and could run the whole way other times I had to walk...I just went with my how my body was feeling. I did start to find some other low impact things to do. Like climbing the stairs! Normally I do it 4x I was only able to do it 3x and I was slow but I always felt great after I did it and I was keeping up my goal of 'staying in motion!' I would also head to the gym to swim/bike and go on the cross trainer. I found the days that I got some exercise I felt less 'pregnant' LOL!

Here is the 6 month ones. I was finding anyway I could to get outside and move. LOVED the day the family walked around Crawford Lake on the board walk. It was awesome when my son said, "Can we go back around the other way?!" I was able to say "yes!" and go with them :) We were out there for over 2hrs...stopping to have snacks of course! ***** Now comes in the really life and I'm not going to lie. From the 6 month mark to almost 8 months I had a hard time. The weather had changed and I couldn't walk outside anymore, due to it being SO cold and icy and snowy. It was also Christmas and everywhere you go there was 'treats' out. I didn't come up with a plan to do something else since I wasn't going outside anymore. I also stopped going to the gym cause I just couldn't handle everyone staring at me, and the normal workouts I was doing was starting to take too much out of me. Then the monster pregnant cravings for sweets kicked in EKK!!! One night I ate 3 brownies while I was making dinner!!! :O AND at the doctors she was surprised to see that my weight had gone up 10 lbs in 4 weeks!....but then at the next doctors visit 4 weeks after that I had gone up another 12 lbs!....but what is more important then the numbers is that I was feeling it :(....I was getting sore and achey and not moving very much. I got into a groove of asking others to do things for me so I didn't have to go up the stairs or walk over to some where etc....I was NOT feeling awesome :( SO I got my shit together! I committed to a group of ladies to meet them at the mall Sunday mornings and do mall walking with them. It was a little hard the first time because I hadn't moved in awhile but afterwards I felt good about doing something healthy for my body again and I was proud of myself....so I got a little taste of the awesome again and I was off!!!!!

So here is the 8 month one. This is me out walking with the boys as they ride their bikes (Hubby came to). It was a very warm day in Jan and I was in the mind frame of moving again so I said, "OK family come outside and join Mommy for her walk!" We were out there for 45min at least :) Since that first Sunday mall walk I now go out and walk pretty much everyday. Instead of leaving to get the boys off the bus for 3pm I leave at 2:40pm instead and walk up and down the streets until the bus comes. This makes such a difference in how my body feels!! My tail bone doesn't hurt me, my hips don't hurt me and I am back to going up and down the stairs to get things myself again. My last doctors appointment showed that I have lost 5 lbs! Don't worry people this was not baby weight I lost it was the extra ass weight that I had gained.....but most importantly it just shows that I have made some good changes to the path I was starting to go down. I have the food back in order again. I spent a day prepping healthy homemade muffins, oatmeal snacks and peanut butter energy balls, as well as freezing a bunch of fruit and yogurt to be ready for some whey protein smoothies :) So Mama awesome is back!!!! :-D and really grateful for the lessons that I have learned along the way. Now I am gearing up with the head coach of Mommy's/Babe's in Motion to start our Triathlon training in the spring. I am due on March 7/13......come on out baby awesome!!!! Tri season is starting soon!!!!! LOL! 'Live in YOUR Awesome!'

Two angels kick'n my ass!

So this is the first time that this whole healthy lifestyle has come back and kicked my ass!! LOL!!! I am doing surprisingly well with keeping up the good food habits while pregnant. Although I must say I HAVE eaten things that I wouldn't normally have and it is a lot harder to not give into the cravings while pregnant (and more often I have given in these days). However all I have to compare to is the last times I was pregnant and I am leaps and bounds in a better place then then. For example even though I am 23weeks (6mths) right now I am still 109lbs LESS then I was last time....gulp....gosh! Just remembering how that felt makes me feel like...WHOA! So as you all know this has all rubbed off on my kids and the other night we had ordered pizza. By the Mon there was still a can of ginger ale left. So after school I got the kids their snack and I grabbed some clementines and the can of ginger ale and sat down to eat with them. As I am taking a sip of the pop my youngest says, " Mommy the baby doesn't like that, it's too spicy" Then my oldest says, "Yes Mommy that's not good for you or the baby"...........I just sat there looking at them thinking, "How do I explain pregnant craving to these two?!" LOL! I did admit that it is a sometimes food and that yes it's not the best thing for me or the baby to have. I was then bombarded with, "Mommy don't have that then the baby doesn't like it!", "Yeah Mommy maybe you shouldn't be drinking that!", "The baby is just little and you have to give it's body healthy food", "Yeah Mommy we have to help the baby be heathy" .....o.....k boy did I feel like a smuck! BUT I still wanted to drink the pop!! LOL!...when you get a taste that you want while pregnant you HAVE to have it!! So I said they were right and pushed it aside with a little tear in my eye...cause I still wanted to drink it!, it was the hardest thing I have had to do in awhile LOL!! So my two healthy angels were kicking this prego Mama's ass.....makes me SO proud xoxoxo 'Live in YOUR Awesome'

A body in motion.....

....stays in motion. This is what I am finding as this belly grows! I've learned that there's more to exercise then just the exercise. I am not able to go at the pace I was before or do the things that I have done before but the main point is to stay in motion and feel awesome! I find that the days that I do exercise I feel the most 'un-pregnant' and for the rest of the day I am able to move around well and don't have the normal aches and pains of pregnancy. So I get asked a lot about what kind of 'training' I am doing. Just to clear that up, I am not really 'training' anymore I am more just keeping my body moving in ways that it has before so it doesn't forget and because mentally it makes me feel better :) So I'm not doing it for a high calorie burn or to lose weight or to beat a time or to go hard. I am not able to run anymore so I go out with the dog and walk as far as I need/able to and it feels so great to be out in the fresh air and see all the nice fall colours.

I also go to the gym and either do a cardio and core class (with modifications of course) or I go on the upright bike (20min) then on the Cross-trainer (20min) and then laps in the pool (20min). After the first time I did my laps I text my coach saying, "When I swim I feel like a happy baby seal then when I get out of the pool and gravity kicks in again, I feel like a beached whale" LOL!!! So this week will be climbing the stairs at Chedoke. They are 300+ stairs that go up the escarpment and I will see how many times I can do it....update to come later ;) This weekend we had some really warm weather and so we took the kids out to Crawford lake and we hiked around it twice and through the forest there and back (2+hrs). As I was walking I thought to myself, "OMG! I could never have or never even wanted to have done this the last two times I was 5mths pregnant" It was really cool to be able to still be out with the family and enjoying the day.

So my goal continues to be finding ways to keep moving and feeling good about it, I am also open for suggestions!! :-D 'Live in YOUR Awesome!'

Bringing the family along....

So at the end of 2010, Phat Chicks put up an "I will.... in 2011" statement on their Facebook page asking us to fill in the blank. After my experience of that first year of being active and seeing who was still left standing beside me as a support I realized just who the most important players were in my life. I know that we always say "family comes first" and "family is the most important thing" but this experience really made it hit home in my heart. So the above was my "I will" and that is just what I did. I signed up for races that only had the kids 1k fun run first, so the whole family could be involved. I traded out trail rides with the girls on the weekends and did bike rides with the family instead, and I asked my hubby to be my partner in the Rockstar Adventure Race that year. I also got my oldest son to join me on my short runs (I ran while he rode his bike) Now the side effect of this was that I am not as strong or fast as I use to be, but I am and other around me are happy :) Although for 2012 I never officially said this was going to still be my goal. I have kept it in mind and still have the sign on my fridge. This year in fact it has happened even more then I realized it could :) Hubby and I ended up doing back to back weekend racing together this summer and for my last race of the year, The Island Girl race. My Mom and sister came out to do it too!! They walked the 10.5k together while I did it running...well the last 3k I had to walk...but more on that in min :)

I had the boys involved in making signs for the me and the other Mommy's/Babe's in Motion and it was awesome the boys LOVED doing this. They kept saying to me, "This is SO much fun right!?!!!" "This is going to be awesome right!???"" LOL! They even LOVED the fact that on race day I gave them party horns and said, "Blow them as loud as you can for as long as you want today!"....they looked at me wide eyed in amazement and said, " COOL!!! OK!" It's been so great being in motion as a family we've had so much fun that we have decided to add another little Van Awesome to the team!! :-O

.....so while I was doing all this stuff through the summer I was also bringing another 'someone' along with me....I am currently 4 1/2 months pregnant!!!! :-D

(hence the reason why I had to walk the last 3k in the final race) We are SO excited and the this pregnancy has been such a majorly different experience for me. Health wise, body wise and attitude wise as well. I have been checking in with my Doctor all along the way because YES I have been pregnant all summer and all through the Triathlon training and all the races I did. But I did everything at a very comfortable pace and listened to my body, when I needed to rest I did, when I had to walk I did and when I had to stop I did. My attitude about it all is that I am not out to win gold but just to stay in motion :-)

"Live in YOUR Awesome!!"

Du-ing a personal best!

No I didn't make a spelling mistake in the title of this post read on and you will understand! So the summer of 2012 Triathlon training with Mommy's/Babe's in Motion as their Assistant Coach is over!!! WOW! 14 weeks just goes so fast and of course this year brought new people, new experiences and awesomeness into my life. I was SO hounored that these ladies embraced me as one of their coaches this year and trusted me to help lead them in their journey. I don't think we didn't have a night where tears were not shed by someone, including me :) Tears of frustration turning into tears of 'I did it!!', tears of fear turned into tears of "I'm doing this!' and of course tears of laughter :-D I looked forward to every Tues night and being able to watch in awww as these woman went out of their comfort zones and lived 'out of the box' with us all for 2hrs. I loved seeing each week seeing their confidence and abilities grow. Some ladies who were scared shitless of even riding their bike on the road never mind up the hills and 15k out and back at the start of training changed into woman who rode their bikes out to meet us to train and then rode their bikes home!! :-O So wicked!!! Some ladies at the start struggled with even running around the whole race track and at the end of the season they were telling me, " I just have one more lap to do" and this was after they had already run 2-3 laps already!!!! I also added in another day to train because I wanted to make sure I got out on one day of the weekend. So we meet Sun mornings to do a bike (hill repeats) and run. I really enjoyed the Sun mornings as well as it was always a smaller group and I got a chance to get to know some of the ladies better and the roads were nice and quite then too. They always thanked me for being out there with them and I always let them know that it was my pleasure! I really felt like the lucky one as I was no longer just having my journey but I got to share in 97 other woman's journeys too. Sooooo 3 days before the race Kelso had to close their water because it was too low and therefore high in bacteria....what does that mean for the race you ask? Well that means that instead of doing a Triathlon (Swim/bike/run) we all now had to do a Duathlon!! (run/bike/run)....oooooooooo...kkkkkkkkkk. 12hrs before the race I had to let the ladies know this news. There was mixed emotions about it but I think the biggest one was defiantly disappointment :/ including myself and mostly I was sad. Not for me and how my goals for the race were out the window but for all the ladies who had their goals and got ready all summer for this. The swimmers were sad cause that was their strong sport, the runners were sad cause they weren't going to over come the challenge of the swim and the none runners were not looking forward to running so much. As their Coach I wanted to stay positive for them but something I think the would like more was honest....so I said that I was disappointed too HOWEVER this was NOT going to take us down and that we would Du this and be awesome!

The ladies pulled it together that morning and there were SO many purple shirts in the crowed it was awesome and everyone cheered on everyone else at the start, during the race, on the side lines, as people headed out on the bike, came in on the bike, on the run, heading up the 'big ass hill', and heading up the 'big ass hill' AGAIN!!! So as Coach Nancy said, " No one had ever done a Duathlion before so we all got a personal best that day!!!"

Back to back awesome!

So we just had back to back weekend races....woooooo, tired, but FUN! Hubby ad I don't go out to the movies and we don't go out to dinner. The only time we have my parents/friends watch the kids is if we both have to work OR if we are racing together....cause that's seems to be what we do now :)

On Sat July, 21 we did a race that is new to us this year. I had heard about it from some girls friends that did it last year and asked hubby if he wanted to try it out. It's called the Warrior Dash and it's a 5k course at Horseshoe Vally with obstacles you have to go through it as you go along, including a fire pit jump and mud pit at the end. What was neat about this race was that it was a first for both hubby and I, where before he had joined in on races I had already done. We hooked up my Dad this weekend to watch the boys and shipped them off from Fri night until Sun morning!! Kid free all weekend...I don't care what we are doing, I call that a romantic weekend away :)

So during the race we just took our time. It was hot and we had to head straight UP, UP, UP the ski hills to start. At each obstacle we would stop and take pictures of each other and just took our time and enjoyed our self :)....at one point we were walking along the path for awhile and I turned to hubby and said, "So what's new?!" LOL!

At the end we did the fire pit jump and went hardcore crawl through the mud pit and crossed the finish line holding muddy hands :) xoxo

We then got sprayed down by the fireman and changed into dry clothes and sat and enjoyed a big turkey leg Warrior style :)

This past weekend we did our 4hr RockStar Adventure Race as Team Van Awesome!! Once again shipped the kids off to my Moms this time on the Fri night and headed out early Sat morning on the 3hr drive just to get to the race site. The weather was beautiful and we were in good spirits and excited. This year they changed what happen at the start of the race. So we were given our stage 2 map ahead of time so that we could map out where we wanted to go and what points we were going to collect. 15min before race start they gave us the stage 1 map that we had to complete first and get 2 flags. The first one, one of us had to run a trail and get the red flag in the waist deep water. Hubby looked at me and said, " You can run!" LOL!....once I did that we both had to hop on our bikes and go counter clock wise through a path the get the 2nd flag......now I have run this path before and knew that it was pretty rough going. LOL!! Oh man it was hard and tiring and the race started at 2pm so it was hot out!

We passed one girl on the path throwing-up :S...a few people changing their tire from the flat they got and some people were breaking out the first-Aid kit!!! I said to my husband at one point, " You forget how hard this is until you get out here again eh!"...it took us the first 1hr to get through that run/bike part but we pulled over on the path a few times to sit in the shade and take off our helmets for a good 5min to try and cool off and catch our breath.

Although we had 2L each of water in our Camlbak's it gets all warm from being against our backs, so it wasn't very refreshing!......once we were done that I suggested that we go do the underwater points so I could dive down into the lake and cool off....that was a good plan. Once I did that I felt great. So we jumped in the canoe and went out to get our other points. The day ended up going really well for us. We got all but one of the points we planned to get (20pts) and we finished with 5mins to spare. So out of a possible 800 and something point we got 580 :)

Once again we sat and had our victory dinner together....now normally I don't like ice cream, but they had that for desserts and I had a big bowl of it and it was the best thing I EVER tasted after everything we had just done!! LOL!!! WOOOOOO HOOOOOO For Team VanAwesome!!

It's funny, as I have been telling people that we just did a 4hr race, they are most impressed with my husband and how he kept up to me! LOL!!....guess I'll take that as a complement :).....but I must say it is pretty cool being out there with my best-ist friend xoxoxox Live in YOUR Awesome!!