Getting Fit to Walk Down the Aisle
If you’re alter-bound now, much like I was before last December, you’re probably thinking of all the ways you can look and feel your best for your big day. I had the exact same thoughts, and since I will be giving you health and fitness tips on how to walk down the aisle feeling confident and beautiful, I wanted to first start by sharing my fitness journey.
I was always active as a child, and when I went away to college, I made it a priority to workout and eat healthy. I avoided the “Freshman 15”, the “Sophomore Slump” and so on. However, once I moved to Columbus, I started working my first full time job in corporate, and sometimes I wouldn’t get home until close to 8:30pm. I don’t know about you, but the last thing I wanted to do was lace up my sneakers and workout. Plus, Brad (my husband) traveled a lot for work, and cooking for one was something I didn’t want to do that late, so I would usually stop for something quick.
In October of 2014, three months after Brad proposed to me, I decided it was time to start looking for dresses. I had an idea of what I wanted; deep back, lace and a sleeve. It wasn’t until I found THE dress that I realized I had gained a lot of weight since starting my full-time job just a year and a half earlier (30 pounds, to be exact).
I was the heaviest I have ever weighed, felt sluggish all the time, and overall, I didn’t feel wedding-day-ready. After seeing pictures of me in the dress I chose, I knew I had to make a change in my health and fitness habits. After doing some research and talking to a few friends who work in the fitness industry, I realized I needed to focus on both my portion control (something I was never good at) and fitness. With my schedule, I knew I would have to workout in the morning, so I needed something I could add to my morning routine. That’s when I found a program called Insanity Max30. It’s a 60 day cardio based, at-home fitness program. All of the workouts are 30 minutes long and it came with a nutrition guide to help me better understand what foods my body needed for me to see results.
Every morning, I woke up around 5:30am, walked downstairs to our basement and pressed play. By 6am, I was drenched in sweat, and according to my heart rate monitor, burning around 360 calories per workout. At the end of the sixty days, I had lost 28 pounds. I was only two pounds away from my goal weight, and had over eight months until my wedding. Over the next several months, I lost a few more pounds, gained muscle and found my passion for the health and fitness industry. But what I really found was how exercise was such a huge help in lowering my stress level throughout the whole planning process.
Body image and weight shouldn’t be an added stress or burden, like it is for so many people, during this happy time, and a number on the scale shouldn’t determine how beautiful and confident you feel on your big day. Hopefully, by incorporating some of the health and fitness tips I plan on sharing, you will feel nothing but beautiful, healthy and radiant as you walk down the aisle to meet your groom.
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