Need Even More Fitness Inspiration? This Will Get You Off the Couch

*Editor’s Note: When we first shared this story back in April the response was astounding. It would seem that we want our fitness inspiration not to come from rock hard bodies with zero body fat but rather from people we can relate to. The journey hasn’t been easy for Cherie-Lynn since April and still, she is winning. We couldn’t be happier. Read below for an update.

I’d like to start with a huge thank you to all of you for the the comments, tweets, and-messages of support after my first post. You have definitely inspired me and motivated me to push harder.

So here goes. This is where my journey picks up since I last updated you.

The first couple of weeks after my post I was on a high with all the love, so I ate some food that wasn’t on my plan and drank some wine. No surprise then that I didn’t see the results I was hoping for.  I quickly got off the “you-look-great-and-have-worked-so-hard-treat-yourself” path. The beginning of May saw me back at the gym a minimum of three times a week plus walking at night. My husband, Andy, bought me a bike for Mother’s Day so I started biking 10-20 kilometres a day a few times a week on top of the gym.

My nephew, Andrew, spent some time with me going over my nutrition goals. He quickly made me realize that I wasn’t eating nearly enough calories for what I was burning. He set me up with a plan and explained the mystery of macronutrients to me. As well, my personal trainer, Eric, was changing my workouts. I was getting stronger and could lift heavier weights and push harder on cardio. It was only when I started eating more that the scale started to move again. Here’s a hot tip – if your body thinks it’s starving it wont let go of any weight!

So there I was chugging along doing my thing when I started not feeling well. Unfortunately since mid-June I’ve been sick and in and out of the hospital. First I had an infection in my leg that required strong antibiotics. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, my Crohn’s went crazy because of the very antibiotics helping my leg. Needless to say, it’s been a bit of a crazy summer.

Now that the worst is finally behind me, I have been given the green light to work out again. It’s shocking to me how hard it’s been getting back into it. When you go from being as active as I was to not doing anything and then back again, you lose some of your gains.  I don’t like it! I fully expected to just pick up where I left off and keep going; apparently it doesn’t work like that. There is some good news though. On the upside I have continued to eat clean and make good choices. I do have the odd meal off my plan and a glass of wine here and there. I find now though that after I eat something with gluten I feel really yucky; it bothers my stomach something awful. Many Crohn’s patients don’t eat wheat and now that I’m off of it I can completely understand why.

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As for my brother, of course I still miss him terribly but I’m actually coming to terms with it a little more. I no longer pretend that we are just busy and haven’t talked in a while. I’ve accepted that he’s gone. There are still many tears but there is laughter as well when I think about the fun times we’ve had. As a family, it’s been a tough time as his birthday just passed on the 11th of August. It was so strange not having him here to celebrate it, but we did take the day to still celebrate him. Although we wanted him with us longer we were so fortunate to have him in our lives at all.

I am now down a total of 38lbs (I know it doesn’t seem like a lot for the length of time I’ve been at this and I wish it was more as well but believe me it isn’t for a lack of trying) and 32 inches. Still a way to go to get to where I want to be but I’m a lot closer than I was a month ago.

Post Script: The one comment I keep hearing is “but it’s so expensive to do it the way you are”.  They are referring to the workouts I do with a personal trainer. I’d like to tackle this in my October update. I’ll be talking about the cost and youmight be shocked at what I learned once I really started keeping track of my expenses.