Six weeks, and a block of butter.

I signed up at my gym about a year ago and my only goal was to be able to walk up stairs without being puffed out (it's funny how something so innocuous can cause so much respiratory distress!). My lack of goals resulted in me dragging myself to the gym every once in a while to halfheartedly workout. I was frustrated with myself for not caring more but I felt like I had no reason to invest in myself - a feeling that was related to lack of self worth caused by a myriad of factors.

Li'l pic from when I signed up.

A few months ago everything changed: I had a sudden bout of motivation brought on by a desire for a career change. I wanted to change careers into something that was more secure and lucrative and I found something that interested me, but the catch for me was the fitness requirement. Knowing that I now had a set fitness target to achieve, I decided to do something about it. My trips to the gym became more frequent and more enthusiastic. I had previously avoided classes at the gym because I felt self-conscious, instead preferring to go after-hours when it wasn't so busy, but I found myself upgrading my membership so I could access more classes.

Recently I signed up for my gym's 6-week winter challenge. It involved a meal plan, a points system for recording workouts, and two bootcamps each week. From the get-go I felt a bit disenfranchised because a vegetarian meal plan wasn't available (I occasionally eat meat but I prefer not to), and even though it wouldn't have been too challenging to work out meat-free alternatives, I ultimately just got lazy and didn't follow the meal plan as well as I could've (my baaaaad). I also got sick halfway through the challenge so I barely ate for a week, but I'm just making excuses now!

I found exercising easier to stick to than healthy eating, and I found myself getting into a routine. My favourite part of the challenge was bootcamps, and even though I always felt like I was the slowest runner and the worst at every exercise, I took solace in knowing that I was there with a "can do" attitude and that had to count for something!

Boot camp action shot taken just as we were losing our gym ball!

My weight fluctuated the whole time during the challenge, but at my "after" bio-scan, the difference between my start and current weight was a whoooooole 500 grams! Upon seeing the pained look on my face, the trainer guy said "hey, that's a block of butter!"

Pictured: me and all the weight I lost! hahaha

I noticed more of a difference in my fitness than my waistline or weight. At our last bootcamp we did a fitness test and I achieved a 3.4 on the beep test, 24 push ups and 50 sit ups which was significantly better than my starting results so I was pretty happy with that.

I'm one of those people who cringe when people refer to their achieving of fitness goals as a "journey". I'm not sure why, but it probably has something to do with my disdain towards cliches. This six weeks was only a small portion of an overall overhaul and it helped me to identify my strengths, weaknesses and helped give me perspective on where I am and where I want to be. I enjoyed it so much that I've already signed up for the next challenge: a 4-week Ninja Challenge. I might be able to do a single chin up by the end of this challenge - who knows?!