20 Years of Fitness!!

20 years!!  What a journey it has been.   I know that I've said it in other posts that I was NEVER a fitness person.  I was that girl in 1979 as a Freshman in High School, horrified that in order to pass P.E. class I would have to run 3 miles.  I was not a runner back then & I'm still not a runner.   I got a Doctor's note to excuse me from running the 3 miles, instead to pass I had to write a term paper.  What topic did I choose?   The dangers of running on concrete!  

I was never into playing sports, I did in grammar school because everyone did.  It's what you were expected to do, but I was never very good at competitive sports.  I played Volleyball & Basketball.   I was usually the bench warmer in Basketball & was really heartbroken by it because my dad would take me to the courts every weekend to practice.  Unfortunately, in those days it really did come down to who you knew & if you were friends with the coaches or your families were friends with the coach's family, etc.   

Dance always has and always will be my preferred form of exercise. In grammar school, I was always taking dance classes at a studio a few times a week.  In High School, for my P.E. electives I took dance.  In college, for my required G.E. Physical education classes, I took dance.  I will ALWAYS choose to dance. 

In 1999, when I actually started to visit a gym on a regular basis I fell in love with Group Exercise, specifically Body Pump.  In 2000, I went through a two weekend training the last two weekends of July.   On Sunday July 30th while driving home from training with a conditional pass,  I received a call asking if I could sub the next day.  So Monday, July 31, 2000 at 9:30am in San Carlos at the 24 Hour Fitness, I taught my first Body Pump Class.   I remember that Sunday night taking a hot bath to sooth my aching body & reviewing all the choreography over and over again because I needed to know all 10 tracks to teach.  

FUN FACT:  Part of all Les Mills (formerly Body Training Systems) trainings back then and still today include some sort of "challenge".   Wouldn't you know it that my Body Pump training challenge was running 3 miles???!!!!!  Seriously, I can only imagine the  look on my face when our trainer said that was our challenge.  It's almost as though my High School P.E. teacher (Ms "Log" Lagomarsino) had something to do with this! 

And so it began, my side-gig of teaching group fitness!  I eventually took on more formats over the years, attended numerous training classes and loved every bit of it.  But Body Pump always remained my first love.  In 2002, 24 hour fitness decided to stop offering Body Pump, my heart was broken!   They brought in "Rep Reebok", which was a half-assed wannabe version of Body Pump, I taught it nonetheless.    At that time in 2002, there weren't any clubs along the Peninsula who offered Body Pump.  It took awhile before clubs in the area brought in Body Pump, I was always looking.  A few years later Pacific Athletic Club brought in Body Pump, but they didn't need instructors because all of their existing instructors who were interested became certified.  I was put on their sub list and it literally took about 2 years before I was called to sub; however, it was a long-term sub while an instructor had surgery.  It felt wonderful to teach Body Pump again and I even ran into some of my old 24 hour members who had ditched 24 when they learned they could take Body Pump at PAC.   I remained a sub at a few clubs for Body Pump until I finally landed my own regular class at the OFJCC in Palo Alto back in 2011 & shortly after that I landed 2 classes at Gold's in Mt View.

Over the last 10 years or so, I have modified my teaching schedule and stopped teaching formats that no longer brought me joy.   I also went back to my roots and picked up line dancing along the way roughly 16 years ago.    I've picked up two more certifications in the last 7 years: Les Mills Body Combat and Les Mills Body Flow.  I love Les Mills programs & I love teaching Les Mills programs.  Due to various injuries, a thriving Travel Business & scheduling conflicts I had to give up my Combat & Flow classes in 2018, but remained a sub for both & participated in launches at both the YMCA's and OFJCC up until Covid-19. 

What a way to bring in 20 years of fitness, 2020- the year of Covid-19!   I have not taught class since March 11th.   I have not even looked at the last 2 releases.  Our gyms closed about 2 weeks before we would have launched the 1st quarter releases & I had not gotten to learning them yet.  2nd quarter releases arrived, I downloaded them, I uploaded them to my devices but still have not looked at them.  3rd quarter releases are coming in about a week.  I will make a better effort with these releases.   It's been pretty depressing these past several months & I'm not normally one to be depressed.  As many of us have experienced this year- the loss of so much & in my case the decimation of my travel business, the loss of the fitness job, the inability to gather with friends, the inability to go dancing 2-3 times a week.  It's been rough! 

I have thought off and on over the last 2 years with various injuries if I should step down and stop teaching fitness, but then I go teach a class and a member will give me a compliment or I'll get an email from my Director telling me they received a favorable comment card & then I'm on cloud 9 again and want to continue teaching.   I can't say that I've missed teaching these past almost 5 months, but I'm sure if I was back in that room with my people I'd feel right at home again.   I think saying that I don't miss it is also quite possibly a defense mechanism to protect myself from the unknown at this point.

I don't know when my gym will resume classes.  They have just started offering outdoor fitness machines/training but currently no group fitness classes.   With the way California is looking with Covid-19 cases right now, I have a feeling it's going to be a long while before they can offer indoor classes & to be honest, right now I want no part of it.  I do not want to be responsible for cleaning equipment, I do not want to go early to set up, stay after to clean up, I'm not comfortable being in closed spaces with too many people &  I don't want to teach in a mask.  I won't teach in a mask.  

I do know that I won't let Covid-19 determine my fitness instructing retirement date.   I will either go out of my own choice saying that I taught 20 years or I will get back at it when this challenge is behind us and be happy that I kept my foot in the game.  Time will tell. 

Pictured above:  My ORIGINAL certificate from Les Mills Body Training Systems in my 1st married name & then sometime along the way I asked Les Mills if they would reissue my certificate in my new name which was a combination of my maiden name and newly married name. 

Be Kind & Pay it Forward

I wanted to share a story that touched me yesterday.  One of my Facebook friends was out having dinner with her daughter, the server was working the entire restaurant & in conversation shared that she had been working since 10am and was closing at 1030pm.   That's a long day & she was the only server.

My friend admired just how hard of a worker she was and how hard of a job this is for one person, non-stop.  She posted on Facebook about this waitress & that she'd love to bless her with an extra tip.  If anyone would like to donate to this tip, to send her via Venmo the donation & she would pass it all along to the server.  Within an hour, she raised $250 for this waitress.  When she settled the bill, she asked the server if she had a Venmo account, she did not.  My friend explained what she had done, they made arrangements to meet up today.  There ended up being a few more people who wanted to donate, so the final tip ended up being $290.  Of course, the server (Melissa) has already said that she's taking the kindness and paying it forward. 

Good things come to good people.  Feeling so blessed, lucky, happy and with a restored belief in the human race, Melissa stopped at the store on her way home from work last night.  She purchased a scratch off lottery ticket for $30 and she ended up winning $500.  It was definitely her day! 

We're living in a very sad time right now.  Our country is so divided, people are so mean & angry.  You can't voice your beliefs for fear that you'll be attacked.  Everyone has to be "right" at all costs, it's exhausting.  All of it. This was a bright light in my day & I wanted to share.   It was very refreshing to see and to be a part of this act of kindness (yes, I did send a donation). 

Let's Get Real

So this blog is supposed to be about pretty much anything that I feel like writing about.  However, the summary of the blog implies that I post about my weight loss journey.  I have not done that in a VERY long time.   I am coming upon my 20 year anniversary of teaching Group Fitness.  July 31st will be 20 years since the day that I taught my first BODYPUMP class.

Blogging wasn't a thing 20 years ago, so here is the hopefully short story!  Who am I kidding, I am my mother's daughter- we can tell stories.   July of 1999,  I started Weight Watchers.  I knew that my diet was lacking severely.  I was the junk food junkie.  In hindsight, I believe I was also depressed with regards to my 1st marriage at the time.  I was married to a man who said a number of times, "If you blimp out, I'm gone."   I think he said it enough times that I finally figured that I better do something about it.   I went to WW completely expecting that it would not work for me.  I even told the leader (my dearly departed friend BobbyJo) at my first weigh-in, "this isn't going to work for me, I don't eat any vegetables."  She asked me a few questions & reassured me that I would be successful.  I began my journey.

All my life, I've struggled with a little extra weight.  I was teased in grammar school, I was never "FAT" during my school years, but I always had some extra padding.   Once I started to see results with WW, I wanted to start getting active.  The "rule" with WW is that they don't push activity on you until you've lost 10% of your starting weight, but I was eager to get started.  I joined 24 hour fitness and went to my first BODYPUMP class.  I was the student in the back of class, not sure what to expect & God forbid if I couldn't do it all, I did not want to be up front for everyone to see.    I fell in love with the program & began going 3 times a week.  In addition to class, I started going for walks in the neighborhood.   By the end of 1999, I had lost close to 40 pounds & soon hit  50 pounds a few months into 2000.   July of 2000, one of my favorite instructors (Elizabeth) gave up her Saturday class & there wasn't an available instructor to take it over.   That is when I inquired about what was needed to become an instructor.  As luck would have it, there was a training in July up in Fairfield, back to back weekends.  I signed up & was on my way!    In between the two training weekends, I visited a weeknight class taught by Elizabeth & she called me up to teach the Bicep track in her class.  I just about died, but I did it.  It was amazing!   As I was driving back from Fairfield at the end of training having a provisional pass until I submitted my certification video, I received a phone call from Elizabeth asking if I could sub a class Monday at 930am.   Not many instructors get the chance to teach a full class all by themselves the day after completing training.  The confidence that Elizabeth had in me was amazing.  She talked me off the ledge & I agreed to teach the class.

The rest as they say is "history".  It didn't take long before I had several of my own regular BODYPUMP classes.  Over the years, I took training in a variety of other formats & at my peak I was teaching 18 classes a week ranging from BODYPUMP, yoga, aqua aerobics, turbo kickboxing, boot camp, spin, etc.  I had a pretty awesome & busy instructor schedule. 

Because my husband was an avid triathlete, I encouraged him to get certified to teach Spin class.  He did & he started to teach classes at the gym.   Eventually, that suggestion backfired on me but in hindsight everything works out for the best.  He met a personal trainer at the gym & they had an affair.  I found out pretty early in the affair, we separated and a year later we were divorced.  I met Bill a few weeks later, we knew right away that we were meant to be together.  We were engaged a year later and married the year after.  We have now been together for 16 years.

Eventually, I scaled back on my classes when they started to conflict with my new life with Bill.   For a long time though I had maintained between 5-10 classes per week & we went dancing 2-3 times a week as well.  I was in the best shape of my life.  But then you live the good life of eating out, wining and dining, staying home more because you just love to be together and the weight starts to come on. I did pretty well at maintaining a 20 pound gain for a long time & I was very healthy regardless.  My Doctor has said on many visits that all my test scores are where they need to be, it's just my weight that doesn't fit what they like to see.

Then Menopause happens....TWICE. Yes, twice!  You are officially in Menopause if you can count 2 years without a period.  I went 23 months and then bam, my ovaries came out of retirement for two months.  After that I was back on track & officially made it to full on Menopause.  Well one of the side effects of Menopause is weight gain.  I gained 10 pounds with round one and started to lose it when round two arrived.  With round two, I gained close to 20 pounds.  I kept teaching classes, though not as often. But it helped to keep me accountable.  We were still dancing 1-2 times a week, so I was active.

I started consuming Isagenix products, which I know have made me healthier.  I love them & they did help me lose about 20 pounds, it is a lifelong commitment and it can be a challenge.  I don't always want to have 2 shakes a day, but I'm not always making better choices if not a shake.  Covid-19 has presented me with a whole other challenge.  March 11th was the last time that I taught BODYPUMP, over 4 months ago.  I have been eating crap, drinking more often than normal because I usually don't drink when we go out dancing, which was 2-3 days a week.  I stress ate, I stress drank, it's been a rough couple of months.   I have had little to zero motivation to work out.  Though the scale says that I've only gained 4 pounds, I know that I've probably gained 10 pounds of fat and lost lots of muscle.  I am VERY fluffy, flabby, whatever you want to call it.  I DO NOT like the way that I look in photos and a photo surfaced this weekend at a group line dance gathering and OMG.

20 years ago, it took me seeing a photo of myself to see how bad I had gotten.  Here we are again with a photo telling me I need to get my crap together- AGAIN.   But now more than ever it feels more urgent.  Covid-19 is no joke.  If I were to get sick, just being obese  puts me in the "at greater risk" for a less than favorable outcome.   I'm actually not entirely convinced that I didn't have Covid-19 back in January. I have never been so sick & I had the main 3 symptoms: fever that was hard to get rid of, persistent cough for weeks and shortness of breath in situations that would normally be easy like going up the stairs.

I need to get serious AGAIN.  I need to get on the weight loss train.  Back to measuring portions, logging all food and beverage intake & limiting the empty calories: i.e.  wine and ice cream!   And getting my ASS moving again!   I will get back to doing BODYPUMP at home 3 times a week & start my walks or do my line dancing to get my 10k steps per day.  I know that part of me has held back at doing these things because I feel as though I'm so out of shape, it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

I don't know when my gym where I taught BODYPUMP will resume classes, it may be awhile & I'm OK with that.  I'm not eager to rush to the gym anytime soon.  They are just about to open with outdoor fitness options only.  At this point, I'm embarrassed to go teach.  I would not feel comfortable in front of a class right now.   It may very well be time to retire from teaching fitness, but I think I need to get comfy in my own skin again before making that decision to make sure that I'm making it for the right reasons.

Original Journey before & after:

 2nd Journey, photos are backwards--but after & before, about 6 months between.

3RD JOURNEY STARTS HERE!! HEAVIEST THAT I'VE EVER WEIGHED & I'M DISGUSTED THAT I'VE LET MYSELF GET TO THIS POINT. 

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Random Thoughts on Covid-19

It's been a rough beginning to 2020.    Aside from the immediate and direct impact from Covid-19 to my business, my livelihood, I find myself in very uncomfortable territory regarding the entire situation.

My job is to sell travel dreams.  My job is to help people explore the world, meet new people, new cultures, explore new beaches, new ships, etc.  Even though some destinations are starting to re-open to tourism, I find that I just can't promote travel just yet.  Part of me wants to get up and get out of town, take a vacation even if it's just a road trip in CA & part of me says "stay home, it's the right thing to do", then devil's advocate says, "but your husband has been going to work every day this year, he needs a vacation.  A stay-cation won't do because he will still get on the computer."  Part of me wants to get on the next plane to Mexico because I have several colleagues who have been in the last few weeks and have talked about how wonderful it was & then part of me just wants to curl up in a ball & wake up when this is all over.

Aside from not being able to travel or to sell travel, I miss our life.  I miss going dancing, I miss going to sporting events, I miss just deciding to go out to brunch or dinner, I miss getting together with friends on a whim.  I am a planner by nature, but the planning required around Covid-19 is a whole other game.

I hate being conflicted.  I have strong feelings, but then they change on any given day.   I know that this virus is very real, I don't doubt that it's contagious and that it can be deadly.   I also believe that we are being played to some degree.  I don't think the numbers are being reported accurately.  I've heard too many stories & read too many articles that cast that shadow of doubt.    I think it's bad, but not as bad as the numbers portray.  I do believe a large part of what is being reported is politically motivated.

I hate the mask as much as the next person.  But I'd rather wear one when required & find out months from now that it was not necessary vs. not wearing one now and being dead in 3 months or infecting a loved one who dies or has serious health issues from being sick.  I do not think wearing a mask makes me a sheep, I do not think wearing a mask makes me a liberal & I don't think wearing a mask says that I live in fear.  I believe wearing a mask means that I err on the side of caution, it means that I want to protect you just in case I am a silent carrier of this virus, I would hope that you want to protect me.  Sadly, that's not the case in our "ME" society.   I'm saddened by the level of selfishness that our nation has become.   I do not believe that wearing a mask is a 100% way to prevent Covid-19, but they can reduce the spread of the virus, they can slow the spread of the virus.

I hate that some people simply do not get it.   The people who think it's OK to co-mingle with multiple households every weekend, have gatherings, have parties, disrespect social distancing guidelines and wearing masks in close social situations.  Just because your gathering is outside does not mean you don't have to keep 6 feet apart or wear a mask.   I feel that these people are part of the problem.  I fear for some of my friends & loved ones who I see disrespecting these guidelines & pray that they don't inadvertently infect their loved ones or get sick themselves.

Do I think we should SIP indefinitely?  No.  I support the re-opening of our economy.  That being said, there are too many people who think because the economy is opening up, it means that precautions do not need to be taken.  I've seen tons of social media posts of people at bars, boating parties on the lakes, NO social distancing, NO masks, taking group photos with friends who clearly are not living in the same household.  It's the actions of these people who are causing several of our counties to dial it back a bit and close some businesses again.  This is not fair to those of us who have been staying at home, not seeing our friends, pretty much not going anywhere outside of essential and if we have it's been with the required protocols.  My business will be one of the last to recover & the fact that I have to reply upon others to "do the right thing" so that my business can get back to planning trips is very upsetting because our society has forgotten how to do the right thing.

Bill goes to work every day.  He's had 2 possible Covid scares at work in the last 5 months.  He did have to get tested & fortunately, tested negative as have everyone else at work.  He goes shopping during the week at Costco and/or Trader Joe's since the stores near his work are very low key, no lines, etc.  We both visit the chiropractor and go shopping on Fridays.  We have gotten our hair done since the salons have re-opened & I've gotten my nails done.  Both salons exercising all the required precautions, all of us wearing masks, etc.  Other than that, we've attended one social distanced line dance parking lot party that was perfect, I've had a socially distanced picnic lunch with my sister & we had one evening gathering with our best friends in their backyard mostly socially distanced.  It's hard to say "no" to your 10 year old Goddaughter when she asks if she can give you a hug.  It's also very awkward that we even have to have that conversation & ask permission to hug someone when you would have naturally done so to begin with.

We have dined outside 4 times & felt that every precaution was taken and we felt safe.  We also spent one night at a hotel on the coast for our Anniversary and felt very safe there as well.  I firmly believe that we can't stay locked up forever or until there is a vaccine.  We have to live our lives to some degree, but I still remain guarded.

It all makes me very sad, depressed & at a loss for words. Some days are better than others.  I wake up and wonder "what is going to happen today?", Sometimes I am happy to be home alone & escape to the patio, take in the sunshine and pretend that I'm on vacation somewhere.   I'm not sure what I'm going to do when fall & winter roll around and I don't have that escape.  Maybe then I will finally bite the dust and plan that vacation.