Lace em up...

Lace em up...

Saturday, October 08, 2016

Hello, It's me...

My poor, long neglected blog. What happened? Life happened. I got busy and social media became an after thought. Summer was a busy time in my household. I appreciate the emails I got from readers who were wondering how I was. I honestly thought no one really read here anymore. My most asked question was whether or not I was struggling with my weight and is that why I went silent. Nope. I am currently the leanest I have ever been. Not the lightest, but the leanest. Case and point; the photo below. They're a year and a quarter apart. On the left I was running 5 days a week with no strength training. On the right I no longer run, I strength train 5 times per week and box 2-3 times per week. I'm a bit lighter in the photo on the left. So lighter does not always mean leaner.

Cardio (left) vs weights and cardio (right)

This is not easy for me to write so I'm only going to mention this one time. My husband and I have decided to end our marriage. We have been legally separated since January of this year and we decided to separate in the spring of 2015. No one gets married thinking it’s not going to last forever, but people change. Individual needs change and people grow. Sometimes not together. That is what happened in our case. Our number one priority is, and always will be, our son and his happiness. We will continue to co-parent Julien and display nothing but mutual respect for each other. How we treat each other is a direct reflection on how Julien views himself.



Just because our marriage is ending doesn't mean the love and caring does. It just changes into a different kind of affection. And Julien deserves to have parents who are happy and content. If that needs to happen separately, so be it. There's been some speculation about my marriage through private messaging and emails. This is nobody's business but ours and we will continue to work through this difficult time privately. We continue to support and encourage each other as friends as we enter this new phase in our relationship. After all we share an amazing bond that will always keep us together as a family; our incredibly beautiful son.


Summer was a crazy, busy time. I spent a lot of time at Canada's Wonderland with Julien. It was the first year I got season's passes for us and we definitely got our money's worth. We also went on our first solo trip together. We went to Ottawa for 4 days to explore some museums, Parliament Hill and do some white water rafting. And we went to an incredible water park called Calypso. Lots of awesome mother/son memories made this summer. 

Julien and I at Calypso Water Park in Ottawa.

Something else that made this summer memorable is that my sister got married. It was definitely the hottest day of the year and the venue was at a beautiful bed and breakfast (On the 6) in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Lots of beautiful moments and memories made. It was Julien's first wedding and he loved it. He had a fabulous time and even took the midnight dip with the bride and groom and many of the guests. I had the most handsome wedding date there, but I am biased.

My sister looked gorgeous and I cried when I first saw her. My mom would have
loved seeing her so happy.

 Summer did not end without some drama of course. I injured myself and I injured myself good. While training with Tony, I did an exercise on the cable machine that completely messed up my right shoulder. My shoulder was already bothering me and Tony said, "I don't think you'll be able to do this comfortably, but I want to gauge your strength". Well that's all he had to say for me to think, I'm gonna show him! I knew after the 1st rep I should stop, but I did 2 more and on the 3rd rep, I felt my shoulder pop. Shame on me. I know better. And Tony was not impressed.

Getting IFC (Interferential Current Therapy) at athletic therapy.

It was so bad, I actually went to Urgent Care and had my shoulder x-rayed and got an ultrasound. What we thought was a torn rotator cuff actually ended up being bursitis. I was not permitted to do any upper body (including boxing) for 6 weeks. I'm still being treated by an athletic therapist and through an acupuncturist/chiropractor. I was cleared for boxing 3 weeks ago and I'm back to doing full upper body. I'm working on getting my strength back to where it was pre-injury.

Boxing is going well. Being off for 6 weeks was a setback, but I'm working hard and I think I'm making improvement. Not as quickly as I'd like, but I have to remember that I'm still nursing an injury. And I need to really work on my defence. Brodie's a great coach and we're moving forward, but my biggest issue is protecting myself. My gloves do not always stay up where they should. Definitely lots of room for improvement. Lucky for me, I have a patient coach.

My first time back with Brodie following my injury.

Last week I attended the orientation/tryouts for the Fight to End Cancer. Such an emotional experience listening to the previous fighters talk about why they wanted to participate. Made me think of my mom of course. If I make the team this year, I've a lot of fundraising to do, and I've a lot of work ahead of me. It will be gruelling, but worth it to me. I'd have done anything for my mother when she was alive. I can't think of a better way to honour her memory.

On September 1st, I began working with an on-line coach. I had been watching his work on Instagram for a while and was amazed at how he transformed bodies. I knew that I did all I could do on my own and if I wanted to move forward with my fitness, I'd need professional help. Enter Shaun McAlevey the owner of Mac Fitness and macro specialist. In the first month that I worked with him, I dropped 11 pounds. That was huge for me because it seemed that no matter what I did, I couldn't drop weight on my own. I knew it had to do with my nutrition. I was still following Paleo and eating whole foods, but I'm a firm believer that percentages of carbs, protein and fat was my ticket outta remaining the same. I've seen it work wonders for others.

Shaun sends me macros (specific for me) and workouts to target my areas for improvement. This is very exciting for me. He's promised to help me get into a lower weight class for boxing and I believe he will. Definitely money well spent in my opinion. And I'm seeing changes in myself weekly. I've not experienced this feeling since I was actively losing weight. Exciting times ahead. I will not share my macros as this is a service I pay for and they are specific to my goals and body type. They wouldn't work for you.

And I'm not sharing my weight because no one should be comparing themselves to me. I see it happen all over the internet and we each need to work towards our own goals. Once I've reached the goal I've set with my macro coach, I'll tell my weight. It's not a secret or anything. I just don't want someone to say that we weigh the same but look completely different. I don't like how we (I do it to) compare ourselves to others. And I also don't like to focus on the sclae. I do weigh myself bi-weekly for check in with my coach. Prior to that I'd not weighed myself for ages.

A throwback to that time when I was 2x larger than the average person. The woman on the far leftt is
one of my best friends. She gave me hand-me-downs (both pants and tops) when I reached goal.

That's a lot of stuff that has been going on over the past 4 months. I will be writing frequently here again. I'll do a weekly update and touch on my boxing training and macro counting. Life continues to be crazy and hectic. My family is dealing with a difficult time. My brother's and I are having to make some tough decisions regarding my father. And one of my very good friends is dealing with a nightmare of her own. All of these things have affected me over the past couple of months and my sleeping has suffered and my anxiety has been very high. But still I move forward. Because life goes on and I need to take care of me the best I can. I've a young son to raise and he needs me to be healthy; mind, body and soul. Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian readers!

Left: July 2011; the last full body photo of me before I began my lifestyle change.
Right: October 2016; almost 4 years on maintenance.