My results were much better than I had anticipated and so emotionally rewarding

Challenge #2 was my first and I have been involved in all but one of the challenges since then.  What I have learned is that in order for me to make any progress, I need the motivation that comes from having goals and structure.

Along with all of the obvious obstacles that come with summer like vacations, barbecues, etc…, I have experienced several different frustrations this summer.  I had two different children spend time in the hospital on 3 different occasions, within a 6 week period.  Sleeping on a  hospital recliner and being confined to a small room put me behind as far as working out goes.  Also, shortly after celebrating 5 years of being cancer-free this year, I found an area of concern and had to go in for an incisional biopsy.  I had that surgery at the end of July and had to go 2 weeks without working-out because of recovery.  Thankfully everything turned out to be ok but I was discouraged and made the decision to not finish the challenge.  I’ve always felt like the last few weeks of the challenge are critical and I usually see a lot of improvement at that time so not being able to work out right at the end seemed like a pretty legitimate reason to avoid pictures and measurements.
I obviously changed my mind and decided that I needed to finish.   Although my summer was challenging, I can now look back and see the positive.  St. Lukes has a really good salad bar so even though I was restricted as far as exercise goes, I had good food choices available and that helped me to feel like I was still a part of the Challenge.  The stress of waiting to hear if I had cancer again, and watching my 2 kids struggle with their health was stressful and emotional.  But now that we are past that and I can say that we are all healthy and happy, I would be ungrateful if I didn’t recognize how blessed we are.  Also, my results were much better than I had anticipated and so emotionally rewarding.

Before:

After: