Bridal Boot Camp – Day 19

Day 19 – July 24

As a little girl, I didn’t dream about my wedding as much as I dreamed about dinosaurs, flying through space, traveling the world, and maybe one day becoming president.

Once for Christmas my mom took us indoor sky-diving!!!

Even in college, I told my best friend Sarah that I wasn’t sure I’d ever get married. We would still watch “Say Yes to the Dress” for hours on end and talk about what dresses we would choose. But I never really envisioned what “my big day” would look like. Chris and I went to Sarah’s wedding last year. That was when I told her I thought I might marry Chris one day.

We plan on doing a reversed version of this photo at my wedding.

When I finally figured out that I had found that one person I wanted to be with, I knew I wanted to make the day special. I knew I wanted to look spectacular, because I only ever plan on doing this one time. I’ve spent the last few months doing trial make-up runs, getting fake eyelashes to see if I could wear them, and even playing with my hair. This may be the most girly I have been… ever. But the truth is that I want to look great for Chris. I want to look great for myself, and I want to look great in the photos that we will have to remember this day forever.

I not only want to look great, but I want to FEEL great. Sometimes I have a really distorted view of myself. I think all women can have a distorted view of the way they look, and a lot of guys too. Sometimes the way I feel that I look depends more on how I feel than what I see in the reflection of a mirror. I have days where I feel skinny and sexy and strong followed by days where I feel like I could sumo wrestle a baby hippo and win.

A lot of this boils down to how active I am. The more active I am, the better I feel about how I look. Now I will go through a very fast history of my life as it involved activity.

My mom is a serious babe.

Me as a child. Notice how my face was so large that when I smiled my eyes would close. This was a relatively “no-activity” time in my life. I had a Johnny-jumper that hung from a tree in our front yard. I broke it with my chubby thunder thighs. As far as self-image went, I don’t think I cared. I just wanted more food all the time.

Me at what I think was elementary school age (it’s hard to tell when you are home schooled… those years sort of blur together). I was slightly more active at this time but still carried a lot of my baby weight. Notice my brother here as well. He is older than I am and has always tormented me because he is much stronger physically. My promise to him is that one day he will be old and decrepit and I will still be young and spry and will finally be able to take him down with my sheer strength.

ADAC is going to help get me strong enough so that I can vanquish him and get my revenge.

This was my brother and I when I was in high school. I was still no match for him in strength. You may see that in the way he has me pinned to the ground. At this point in life I was a goal keeper for my high school soccer team. I didn’t like to run a lot so they let me be the goalie. At this point I was just super-self  conscious about everything: my hair, my teeth, my weight. But I had enough other stuff going on, that I didn’t focus on it all the time.

In college I gained the freshman 30 because my scholarship paid for my cafeteria plan and I ate there a lot (most people gain about 15 lbs… I gained twice that). I did a lot of fun activities on campus and Sarah and I would “exercise” together sometimes at our school’s gym (p.s. it was not as nice back then as it is now). What I mean by that is that we would go get Starbucks and then walk the track together talking about life, school, boys and what not. I had a lot of baby hippo days back then, but I hadn’t quite figured out that the way that I felt about myself was directly related to how much I stayed physically active.

Sarah and I were both RAs in college. We went to almost all the school activities.

In grad school I got sick with mono, dyed my hair blond-ish and met Chris. At this point my whole life revolved around classes. I was relatively activity-less until I moved to Columbus. I wanted to stay here and make things work with Chris because I’d fallen for him harder than I thought. I had no friends, no job… I was pretty depressed. He told me to get a hobby, so I started running.

Here we are in the early days. We both had a few more pounds packed on back then.

It was at this point in my life that I was more active than I had ever been. I was running close to 25 miles a week while I was training for a half-marathon. I grew to love the runner’s high I got after each long run. I did my half-marathon in 2:19 and then my foot started hurting. I had developed a Morton’s Neuroma in my right foot. It’s basically a little tumor that grows on your nerve and makes it feel like you are always walking on a pebble.

I still sort of have Thunder Thighs, or as I fondly refer to them now Quads of Thunder.

I see an amazing foot doctor now, at Capital City Foot and Ankle, who figured out what was wrong with me super fast. He explained the options to me. I could have surgery and remove the tumor, nerve and pain forever (that sounded drastic), or I could ease up on my mileage, stop wearing high-heels and get shots of Cortisone in my foot whenever the pain got too bad. I have been trying to stick with the second option, but now I barely run at all so I don’t get my runner’s high.

I was feeling pretty bad about myself and my “small-Beluga-Whale” days where outweighing my “Skinny-Sexy-Strong” days. I’ve been trying to fix it for over a year. I’ve tried spinning at one of the big box gyms by my house. I’ve tried going there to do weight training. I even asked Chris to develop a workout plan for me. The thing was… all my excuses got in the way. None of it worked. I never got the workout I wanted because 1.) I didn’t know what I was doing, and 2.) had no one there to push me to do the moves.

This is all changing now that I’ve started this Bridal Boot Camp at the Arena District Athletic Club. First of all, they are so convenient, that it’s hard to find an excuse not to come. They also have incredible classes that teach you the correct moves. They have such a variety of classes that I’ve never once been bored. The personal trainers that I’ve worked with so far have gone above and beyond teaching me the correct way to engage my muscles and what moves I can do. With them, the possibilities seem endless as far as what equipment I can use to train my body. They have also pushed me much further than my mind would have.

I do deadlifts now.

They say it takes about 4-8 weeks for you to notice a change in your body after starting a new workout regime. This is the second full week of classes/training and while I may not see much of a difference in the mirrors yet, I can FEEL an incredible change (and I don’t just mean that because my butt is still sore from my workout with Aron). Since I’ve started at ADAC, I’ve had way more “Super Strong-Sexy-Skinny-Confident” days and less days where I feel like I could send a walrus flying if we were on a see-saw together.

My confidence is busting through the seams. I can’t wait for what next week will hold!

Do you want to join me for your very own Bridal Boot Camp? Come on in today for a free trial membership and to talk about how you can get a customized fitness plan to help you get prepared, physically and mentally, for your wedding day!

The Arena District Athletic Club is more than just a gym, it’s a premier fitness facility located in the heart of the Arena District in downtown Columbus. We provide convenience and quality, featuring top-of-the-line equipment, top-notch personal trainers, spa-like locker rooms and a wide variety of free group fitness classes daily including Cardio, Spinning, Barre Fusion, Yoga, Boot Camp and more. We offer free 2-hour parking and convenient contract-free memberships, to fit your healthy lifestyle needs. Don’t just join, belong.