Getting Rid of my Bloggers Butt 30-Day Challenge {The “After” Picture}

Today I took the after pictures. And I must say, I personally didn’t notice much difference until I compared these pictures! My body has changed. My bloggers butt is slowly getting smaller – woo hoo, doing my happy dance now!

My total weight loss for these 30 days has been 5 lbs!  Slow and steady weight loss feels right to me. I know these lbs are real and will continue to drop off me if I work hard at this.  Honestly I was worried that these “after” results would be kind of boring since I didn’t lose 20 lbs like some weight loss programs promise. But I will tell you I do feel a whole lot better, and after looking at these results I am super excited to keep going! Every pound I lost I worked for so it makes me want to not forget about this challenge and lose all the work I did. Must keep going!

I am stronger now. Before starting this I couldn’t even do one pushup and now I can do 15-20!

I have more energy than before. When I first started my workout I thought I was going to die. But I find I have more endurance and energy than I had before.

My meal planning was kind of all over the place. The first few days I tried Paleo lifestyle and found that was really hard to do, though I liked the foods and the diet. I may try it again someday.  The second week I went out of town and didnt lose any weight since I went out to eat all week long. The third week I tried to focus on lower calorie foods and started level 3 of the shred. The 4th week I kept at the calorie tracking and worked hard at working out.

There wasn’t ONE week that I was perfect on this diet though. At least one day each week I went over my calories – sometimes by alot. But every morning was a new fresh start on myfitnesspal. Usually I am an ALL or Nothin kind of girl and would have given up…but with this plan it’s easier to forgive yourself and keep going at it the next day.

So for all you new to my blog and wondering what this is all about… I did a 30-day Challenge to get rid of My Blogger’s Butt using the Myfitnesspal app as well as the 30-Day Shred DVD by Jillian Michaels.

The MyFitnessPal is an app or online calorie and fitness tracker. When I first started this I entered my height, weight and how many lbs I would like to lose each week. It then gives you a calorie # that you should eat each day to lose weight. When you work out you get more calories too.

The 30-Day Shred DVD by Jillian Michael’s  is a 3-part workout series consisting of 20 minutes of cardio and strength training. Its the toughest 20 minutes I have done before in my life but it works great and makes me sweat. I can remember training up for a 5k once and not sweating as much as I have with this 2o minute workout. I try to do this workout 6 days a week (taking Sundays off).

A few tips I learned along the way that worked for me:

– find low calorie foods you love and eat them often. Making a Diet Plan works wonders.

– if you like boiled eggs – take out the yolk – an egg white boiled is just 17 calories!  Also raspberries are really really low in calories. Loved adding them to a low calorie yogurt..mmmm.

– I would eat a turkey and cheese sandwich for lunch almost every day. With 2 slices of bread with meat/cheese/lettuce + mustard is was only around 350 calories, which left me with quite a bit for dinner/breakfast. Plus a sandwich is nice and filling.

– I love avocados – they are filling although higher in calories/fat than I like. But at least they are natural.

– While diet soda is zero calories I tried to avoid it a lot (even though I love me my diet Pepsi) just because I have read it can stint weight loss.

– Tried to drink a work-out water bottle’s worth of water at every meal. If I could drink 3 of them I would be at my goal for water for day.

– Smaller portions at dinner time

– Avoid Fast food. This was hard for someone like me who I think was addicted to fast food before this started. Seriously. But when you have to see how many calories are in fast food its shocking and I avoided it because I wanted to eat for the rest of the day too.

– Do not make desserts – I love desserts so I avoided them like the plague. Although I had to bake Snickerdoodles for a church function. I decided to be nice and make some extras for my kids. Well, guess who reached for 5 cookies for breakfast that next morning…(ahem).  That made for a really bad diet day. Sugar leads to wanting more sugar I think…

So anyways, I know I don’t have the body of a fitness pro or supermodel yet, but I am still happy with my results. I mean, come’on…who wants to take on these muscles?  Ha ha ha…..

So do you have any questions for me?  I would love to see your before and after pictures if you have been going along with me on this 30-day challenge. Just email me at karrie@happymoneysaver.com. (Note: you can just show me, and let me know if you want me to share them or not on my blog.)  Thanks everyone for your kind words of encouragement throughout this 30 days, they have meant so much to me!