Piloga my Yoga!

I've been on a fitness kick for at least the past two months. My job as a nanny has been a big help for that, in that if the weather cooperates, I'll take little Mara for a walk in the stroller. Working as a nanny has really altered my perspective, well, maybe just enrichened. BJ likes to joke that when we have our first baby, I'm going to be a pro. Thank you Mara for teaching me how to take care of babies for more than a couple of hours. Seriously, I've gone with her parents for doctor's appointments, I've gone grocery shopping with them, for eight hours a day during the week, I get to be a mom. And I really really enjoy it. She's a great little baby, very calm and easy to please. And she makes me want to have one of my own, like yesterday!
So how does this baby conversation tie in with the fitness idea I just launched? It's all about preparation. I am overweight. Like a lot of people, I'm carrying around some extra poundage that I just don't need. Are you ready, I am about to shock you with this story. I am 6'2" and I know I am very overweight, although nobody else seems to think so. BJ's siblings Eric and Roxana were visiting one weekend and we were shopping in BJ's Wholesale. They found a weight scale and were taking turns weighing themselves. For those of you who are curious, Eric weighed 80 pounds. I won't tell you Roxana's, but suffice it to say she was still in the two digit area of the scale. I weighed myself, and then felt a little bit sick. 335 pounds, the heaviest I have been in my life! Now to look at me, you would not realize that I am all that heavy. I told my buddy Mary that I am a sneaky fat person, because I distribute all my extra weight well, she laughed and then there were several jokes about fat ninjas. I love that we have such similar senses of humor. The part that really got to me was BJ. He weighed himself too, and the stinker was only 270. We look pretty similar, so I was even surprised that our weights were that different.
Now, I want to have a baby relatively soon. Here's the kicker though, both my Dad, and my Grandma have diabetes. Women who are overweight when they get pregnant are almost guaranteed to get gestational diabetes, and women who are predispositioned toward it (like me) are more than likely to keep it after the baby is born. Not to mention there are all kinds of risks and developmental issues that can stem not only from gestational diabetes, but just being overweight while pregnant can cause all kinds of issues. I want our child to have the best advantages in life. Not to mention I want to be an active and healthy mom, so that hopefully the little Garmon will have a good body image and develop healthy eating habits because that's what he or she is exposed to.
I have to decided to give myself, at minimum, one year, to try and lose 100 pounds. This way it will be gradual, and safe, and less likely to rebound back on. I have bought a couple of things to help me out with this journey of mine. I went to Dick's sporting goods and picked up a good, thick pilates mat, and started doing some exercises I found on youtube. I looked into gym memberships, but to belong to the Y would cost almost $75 a month for me and BJ, and they only offer a pilates class one night a week. I looked into different pilates studios, but they were more like $20 a class, and that's just too expensive. I think that when I am pregnant, I will join a prenatal exercise class, because there will be more at stake than me just pulling a muscle, and that's well worth the cost. Until then, me, youtube, and the apartment complex fitness center are buddies.
I bought a book, called the Gabriel Method. What is interesting about the Gabriel method is that it's more about visualization than about counting calories. It talks about reasons your body may feel like it needs to be fat to protect itself, and how to get past those stumbling blocks. I, being a visual person, found the idea of imagining myself disliking certain things really interesting and decided to turn my cognitive powers on my number one foe. Coca-Cola.
For those of you who don't know, I have always been obsessed with Coca-Cola. Anytime my parents offered us a drink from the store or gas station, I was ready, 20oz of the black liquid in hand. Any time of day, morning or night, I would kick back with that red and white label, and feel my stress just melt away. After starting in on the Gabriel Method, I started thinking to myself, "Coke tastes really bad." And saw myself drinking coke and then making an icky face. After two days of this, I met BJ at a Chick-fil-A near his work, and bought, of course, a coke. Here's the interesting part, it tasted horrible to me. I couldn't believe that the idea could have worked after only two days, but I tried coke from another place and it tasted the same, icky. I had successfully turned myself off from something I had struggled with for a really long time. The next time we ate out, I ordered a sprite, no surprise here, it tasted icky. Apparently my visualization was so strong in my mind, I turned myself off from all soda products...whoa. Now I drink at least 8 bottles of water a day, if not more. I do kind of like lemonade, so I'm not at a complete loss when we eat out, but I don't want anything carbonated, and it feels, liberating.
As of last night, I weighed myself. The scale told me I weighed in at 319, and BJ is at 256. I feel pretty good about myself. Now, I just have to see if I can find a good exercise/ stability ball...