Are you ready to continue along in my #LoveBodyJourney?  If you are new to the series, be sure to check out the first 3 parts:
​Part 1 – Where it all began 
Part 2 – Let’s get Physical 
Part 3 – Lifestyle Choices In summary here’s what we’ve covered so far…
I removed foods that caused inflammation in my body to get out of pain after a car accident and to avoid having gastric bypass.  I then added the fitness component and started moving my body.  I talked about the progressions of my fitness, hitting my 1 year mark and then adjusting to another life change (commuting for work again) and keeping my new lifestyle part of my life even with the big life change. Be sure to check out the blogs to get the full story and I’ll pick up where I left off this week…

Now, this post is going to be a little bit different in nature and I’m warning you now that I am being very vulnerable as I share this next portion and there is actually a little bit of embarrassment that comes with it.  However, in an effort to be transparent, honest and authentic, I’m sharing it with you today. I’m baring all (well almost)

By the time I hit the one year mark and my workout time had increased my body was looking very different.  However I hit a bit of a lull in terms of weightless and although my priority wasn’t weight loss when I started it happened.  There were times that I just go so frustrated because my body wasn’t letting go of any more weight so I tried to figure out what to do and based on some conversations with people I was basically told that I wasn’t working hard enough and needed to work harder.  So, I did some research online – not always a good idea especially when you have injuries and I started a new fitness and nutrition plan.  So let’s take a look at what this plan looked like….

It meant smaller meals throughout the day to boost my metabolism which was good.  However I later found out I still wasn’t eating enough even with having 5-6 meals a day.  Let’s be clear on small…I’m not saying just carrot sticks – most meals were a balance of lean protein and veggies.  It also meant that I was in the gym 6 days a week and I would sometimes be in the gym for 2 1/2 hours.  I was doing an hour of cardio and trying to do 1 hour to 1 1/2 hours of weight training.  I was lifting heavy, pushing my body and going at it hard.  I started to see some changes in my body but not much but I can tell you that my frustration was growing.  I actually really enjoyed the time in the gym and used it as my time to read, but it was a bit much…

Although my mind and heart were in the right place I kind of got a little carried away and I started putting expectations on my body that it needed to lose more.  The journey to loving my body has literally been a daily choice to look in the mirror and love the body I see, whether it was getting smaller or was staying the same.  The hard part in talking about this is that this had occurred in the last few months of 2015 and although I was encouraging others to be active and love their bodies I don’t think I was being honest with myself even on how extreme I was being.

​The worst part about all this is that even though I was working hard and building muscle, may pain was still soooo bad.  It was like no matter what I did, what I tried the pain was still there.  I was still in therapy (chiropractic and massage) on a weekly basis and regularly having my ribs popped back in during these appointments because they kept popping out of place – and if you’ve never had that happen, I’ll explain what that feels like….its like someone stabbing you in your rib area and gripping onto your lungs so it hurts to breathe and it’s hard to get a breath.

Now, this is probably not what you are hoping to hear from me but I’m telling you this so you can be aware when it comes to your #LoveBodyJourney.  There are so many different elements to loving your body from taking care of it because you love it but also loving whatever state it is when you look in the mirror today and knowing that WHO you are as a woman (or man) is what is important and that your body is a work of art and beautiful.  There is no right way to have a body but in my personal opinion, it’s a good idea to take care of it.

 So, what was a girl to do when she was working so hard in the gym, not really seeing results and still in so much pain….well that’s where Tosh comes into the picture – literally he like came into my life out of nowhere.  I met Tosh through Instagram – go figure and he is a trainer in Toronto who is actually super close to my work (how convenient for me).  He Fuses athletic training methods, functional movement and mobility to create strength and a great physique – that’s his specialty.

I met with him one night after work and we talked about my issues with pain, mobility and such.  He was confident that he could help me but warned me that this would look very different then I had ever seen and, that it would be really hard and that I would just need to trust him.  Following that conversation we did our first ‘workout’.

Now, this workout is very different than any I have ever done and I think because of that it kind of gave me hope that this really could change my life.  We spent the entire time foam rolling and stretching.  If you don’t know what a foam roller is just google it.  By the time we had finished our first workout, the pain in my lower back that I walked in with was virtually gone – say what?!?!  Did I really find something and someone who could help?  With getting me out of pain, getting my body more mobile and stretched out, weight loss was officially off the table as I entered into 2016. The goal is mobility and getting me out of pain, period.

I’ll leave it here in my story for now and pick up again next week but I can’t wait to share with you what Tosh and I have been working on and what has changed for me in the last 3 months.

This whole #LoveBodyJourney is such an important one.  I had learned to love all of me at 320 pounds, my heart had healed from all the pain (for the most part) and I had learned to really love me for WHO I was.  Along the journey to getting healthy physically, new challenges came and I’ve addressed them as they have come.  It also has meant that the old hatful words I used to speak about myself were brought to the surface again as my focus became my physical but I’m proud to say that I flushed them out through this process the last 19 months.  I may have had some weak moments where I let society’s views of what a tummy should look like (flat) take over but the important thing is it didn’t’ stay in the driver seat for very long.

Take hold of your mind and the things that come up to try and bring you down.  You have it in you.  Until next week,

​Stay strong,

Want to connect with my trainer tosh?
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