Oh Fitbit how I love thee!

So I love my fitbit! I know what you are saying to yourself. What is a fitbit and why does Kate love it so much? Right? Well, a Fitbit is a calorie tracking device that tells you how many calories you burn, how many steps you take a day, how many levels of stairs you climb,how many miles you walked and how active you are in a day. Then to compliment the fitbit, they have a website that also has a great app for your smartphone so you can log your workouts, food and water for the day so it can help you stay on track for weight loss. I love this thing because I am seriously pushing myself to be more active because I will not miss my goal for the day which is 10k staps, 10 flights of stairs (it also counts your flights if you walk on a hill with an incline), 5 miles, and 2300 calories burned. It even has a flower that grows as you become more active but if you are sedentary, it shrinks so you have to stay active. The other thing that fitbit has is it tracks your sleep because that is an important thing to be successful because if you do not get enough rest, you will not get the best results possible. The one thing that is my ultimate favorite thing is if you enter your food on the journal, the fitbit can tell you if you are on track with what you have eaten and what you have burned for the day as well. Check out my images at the bottom of the entry. IF you are wanting to lose weight, this is the ONE thing I tell you that you MUST have to be successful. It runs around 100 bucks and you do not have to pay to use their website. ITs a win win for me. The only drawback is , it is a small device but you wear it 24hrs a day except when you need to charge it. I have friends who have washed their fitbit and stuck it in a bag of rice and it came back to life weeks later. So if you can remember not to put it in the washing machine, you are good to go. For more information about a fitbit here is their website http://fitbit.com .

I want to know what you would like to see in my next entry or what topic you would like to know more about? post below and I will do my best to cover it for you.

Change up your workout routines.

I have a lot of fitness friends and I have a lot of friends who struggle with weight loss. I myself, have struggled with weight loss and know how it feels to get frustrated with the scale not moving at all or worse, going up. Yea it sucks and yes I have experienced it happening to me a lot. Sometimes I have wanted to throw in the towel and give up. But if I did that when the scale was seriously "smoking crack or lying to me", I would not be where I am today. Our body is a machine that you have to fuel and maintain. With that being said, workouts have to be challenging when you do them and your body gets used to the routine after about 6 weeks. So, you have to change it up or you will not see the results you want. Hi my name is Kate and I am a turbo kick addict! Yes I go to a lot of Turbo kick classes and Hip Hop Hustle as well! But I do lift weights 3x a week. And I am not talking about going to the same weight training class that does the same boring routines every class. I take Lean Extreme which is based off of the product By Chalene Johnson called ChaLEAN Extreme. I am fortunate to take Chalenes Class that she teaches 2x a week and the third day of weights I either will do a piyo class where my body weight is used instead of lifting weights or I will throw in a body pump class here and there. The cool thing about Lean Extreme, is that the class changes every 6 weeks because our bodies get used to the routine and we have to shock our body to get it to see results. Yes I am sore but you know what? I love to be sore because I know I worked the muscles I was focusing on and I know I am progressing even if the scale is not moving or it goes up. I try to go more by how my clothes fit instead of what the evil scale in my bathroom that almost became a casualty of being tossed off my 2nd floor patio because I was so irritated with what it said. When I hit a plateau, I tend to get frustrated that i hit the "wall". So What do I do? I add a class or two that are formats I want to try out or that I like but I just have not gone to in awhile because it will shock my body and help kick the plateau right where it counts thus causing the scale to move down! So, when you hit that wall of a plaateau and you are taking in the right amount of calories based on what you are burning, change up the routine because your body has adjusted to what you are doing. Make sure you take in enough water as well because that is another wrench that will hinder your progress. Want to know what you burn as far as calories go? Get a fitbit or something like it like a bodybugg or a nike fuel band. I say fitbit because its 100 bucks and the website is not a fee based site like the bodybugg. I love my fitbit because I can put in my food and it exercise and it will tell me how many calories I can eat for the day based on how many lbs I want to lose per week. It is handy too because it will tell me how many calories I can eat to the minute of the day meaning if I have a little too many calories in my lunch, after I journal it on the fitbit site, it will tell me if I am in the goal zone of if i ate too much and this is based on the calories I am burning that day. What do you do when you hit the plateau wall?

Hey all I am back to this fitness blog.

OK So I have not posted on here in a long time. I had to lick my wounds for a bit after being told I am no longer a mamavation mom. I cried and was devestated. Ultimately I had to sit there and wonder why. What did I do? Why was I not losing the weight? What was wrong with me? Well between last Feb-March 2011 and July 2011 I gained a lot of my weight back and was all the way up to 220lbs. I had a pity party all the way to Camp Do More aka Camp turbo kick. When I went to camp which is the most awesome experience ever and I highly recommend it, I met some great people and we worked out three times a day and then we had some camp team competitions which was cool. But the best part of camp was not the workouts, fashion show, shopping, or team competition. No the best part of camp was the lectures from Chalene Johnson (creator or turbo kick, Piyo, and Hustle as well as the trainer in such DVDs as Turbo Jam, Turbo Fire, and Chalean Extreme and New York Times Best Selling Author of Push) At the time I was listening to the lectures and taking notes but I was seriously in denial about my attitude. The point that was made was something along the lines of how you talk about yourself will come out. Like with me for example, I worked out at the gym 6 days a week sometimes 2-3 workouts and yea the weight was not coming off at all no matter what I did. I used to look at myself in the mirror and say to myself I am going to be fat forever no matter what I do it wont come off and I keep gaining. And guess what? The weight did not come off! It just kept packing on no matter what I ate or drank and no matter how hard I worked out at the gym. When I finally realized what I was saying to myself was detrimental to what I was trying to accomplish for myself. The whole camp ordeal was so much fun but I was so uncomfortable within my own skin to enjoy it completely because of my negative attitude and self talk that had been hindering me from accomplishing my goals of losing all 70lbs of baby weight from my twins before my 35th birthday. But now after camp, I started looking at myself and saying how beautiful I was and telling myself that no matter what, the fat is going down! Two months after camp, I had lost 25lbs! Yea 25lbs! I was not going to be a prisoner in my fat suit any longer so I made a accountability statement in the 2012 Camp Do More Facebook group saying that by July 2012 when I come to Camp Do More in Anaheim California, I will be 160lbs meaning a 60lb weight loss. I had to do it so I have 700 people behind me and making sure I am going to get where I need to be. Because when you set out to do something you have to make a public declaration and what was more public than Facebook? Not only did I say this on the Camp Do More Facebook page, I also tweeted it and put it out there onto my personal Facebook page. At the time I was so scared to make the declaration that I almost did not do it but I thought about it and said you know what its time to take the plunge and do it! I was tired of being fat and unhappy. It was time to be accountable and stop blaming it all on my water retention and whatever else I was blaming at the moment. So Fast forward to now April 11 2012, guess how much weight I have lost? !0? 20? 30lbs? Nope! Today I am 50lbs lighter and I have my success because I changed my mindset and some of my diet. I read a book, I took a 30 day challenge, and I got real with myself. And I have lost 50lbs. I have changed my attitude and that is the biggest thing anyone can ever do when they are stuck. I now look at myself with 10lbs left of my goal to lose before camp and say hey fat you are going down! It's time for the fat to die! And When I go to Camp Do More at 160lbs I will have another goal to set for myself. Maybe this post will help one person realize that until you are ready in your own head, you will not lose the weight, no matter how well you eat and how hard you workout or what supplements you take, you will be a prisoner in your own body until you realize you are beautiful and give yourself the credit you deserve. It is ok to be selfish if you are fighting for your life.