Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Ready, Set, Get Active!

It seems as if we are starting a flurry of activity this week! Busy, busy, busy! Coley, Logan and I are all beginning new fitness/sports classes this week, as well as a Fitness Challenge for myself! I guess January is just THAT time of year for this sort of thing, but it feels good to pull out of the winter blahs and get active.

Coley started her next session of pool class Saturday, and she is still loving it. Her favorite parts are jumping in to the pool from the deck, and walking around on her own two feet in the very shallow end (of course, if you know Coley you will not be surprised that her favorite parts are the ones where she gets to be independent!) It's really nice to have a class to do with just Coley; I am used to having both kids together. A little one-on-one structured activity with her is great, rather than the puttering around the house we usually do. :)

And that brings us to Mr. Logan. He has done swim classes for so long, but is taking a break this time. He swam in lessons pretty much non-stop between the ages of 6 months and 2 years, and has taken numerous classes since then, just not CONSTANTLY. So this time around, we gave him a few choices and let him pick his own class. From swimming, dance, and trampoline/tumbling he chose... Trampoline/Tumbling! He had his first class today and he absolutely loved it. He has been talking about it for days, and getting so excited about it. He woke up this morning and it was the first thing he said to me: "Mommy, my trampoline class is today!" It really seems like it will be a great class for my bouncing boy! They did some running, crab walking, mule kicks, Spiderman hand stands, somersaults, a trampoline/mat run, and jumped on a HUGE trampoline. I was so glad that they started right off with learning hand stands, because that is what he was most excited about. For the last week at least, he has been talking about learning to stand and walk on his hands at trampoline class!

And then there is me. Monday I just barely made the deadline to enter a Health and Weight Loss Challenge with a group of local ladies. I am tracking my calories on myfitnesspal.com, trying to get in lots of exercise, lots of fruits and veggies, lots of water... and hopefully in 4 weeks I will be a few pounds lighter and a few dollars richer (prizes awarded for weight loss, points earned, etc.). As some of you may know, I lost 72 pounds between last April and October on the Medifast plan, which was almost halfway to my goal of 150 pounds. Well, the Medifast plan got a BIT expensive, so we decided to give it a try the old-fashioned way ("we" = did I mention Larry did this with me and he lost 50 pounds as well?). Anyway, since going off of Medifast in the autumn I have gained back 11 pounds... ugghhh. So I would love to use this challenge to shed those 11 pounds again, and get a jumpstart on the other half of my goal.

In addition to this Challenge, tonight I started up another session of Belly Dance classes, which I just LOVE. Five years ago, if you had told me I would be belly dancing now, I would have thought you were crazy! Belly Dancing seems so "showy" and outgoing, and that is just not me. But I tried it, and I am now hooked. It may LOOK "exposed" or flashy (of course, this also depends on which style of belly dance you are watching), but what I have found is that it is really a very beautiful thing outwardly, but very meaningful and empowering inwardly. Hopefully I will gather some thoughts and do more of a coherent post on this later, but all I can say simply now is: I am more aware of my body when I am Belly Dancing: it's strength, abilities and beauty! Belly Dancing helps (immensely) to give me a better self-image, and I can literally feel myself standing taller and prouder because of it.

So that has been our week - full of exercise and activities and -now- tiredness!!

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