The Juggling Act

A woman's guide to finding the elusive balance with fitness, food, family, and SELF!

Categories: Fitness

My Results after doing Yoga Daily for 30 days!

I was able to lose 12 pounds and 22 inches all over my body in 30 days doing yoga daily!!

Today I’m sharing with you my results after doing yoga daily for 30 days! Early September 2023 I hit my wall of frustration with my weight again and decided THIS TIME I was going to stop complaining internally and to my poor husband and finally just make a change! I had been “watching what I was eating”, weighing daily and taking some nutrition classes since August but I was gaining and losing the same 3 pounds and very discouraged.

**Warning; This article may contain affiliate links listed throughout. These do not cost you anything but I MAY earn a small commission if you choose to purchase from these links. Thank you for supporting my love of writing and sharing!

So I’m going to break down exactly everything I did the first 30 days and HOW I lost 22 INCHES all over my body, in 30 days!

  • Spent 90 minutes on myself every morning
  • Started taking Barilife powder complete vitamin https://a.co/d/5R1PZHX in water with Benefiber https://a.co/d/h9AeO7w DAILY. The Barilife is full of a TON of essentials we all need. It’s watermelon flavored and I just add it to 4 oz of water a day and shoot it!
  • Did 19 minutes of a custom yoga routine I created
  • Listened to a weight loss affirmation meditation on the Super Human app while doing yoga. And then ended with a 5 minute gratitude prayer.
  • Tracked my Food & water in my free Samsung Health app. (also used my Samsung watch for EVERYTHING and freaking loved it!) If you are a Samsung lover already and trying to get healthy, I can’t recommend a Samsung watch enough. The watch is a total game changer! I got mine on Amazon here: https://a.co/d/6FZDNqJ . It is pretty expensive but it has a lot of features. If you compare to other types of wearable technology, you’ll find that you get way more for your money with Samsung Galaxy!
  • Drank 60-90 oz. of water daily
  • Set a goal to sleep 7.5+ hours per night and met that most of the time
  • Set a goal of 100 grams of protein daily and I was at 70+ most days!
  • Started a crazy line up of pill supplements I now take daily to FUEL my body’s health and vitality!

Vitamins

In my hand above I’ve got 3 prescription medications as well as my vitamins I started taking. I take prescription medication for ADD, allergies and then just very recently my doctor put me on Metformin. They wanted to see if it’d help with my weight because I tested at ALMOST insulin resistant. (I don’t think the metformin helped with anything). Note: I am not a doctor nor am I giving medical advice. I’m merely sharing my experience!

Again, this article focuses on my results after doing yoga daily for 30 days!

I added to that:

  • Collagen for skin, nails and hair.
  • “Beat the Bloat” by Olly
  • “Happy Hoo-Ha” by Olly (no issues to report, was just curious how a probiotic for the Hoo-Ha worked! Ya never know!)

So, my results after doing yoga daily for 30 days, this is where I was. The first time I ever felt confident enough in this sports bra and legging SET to even take a posing photo for myself.

Subscribe to my Newsletter for weekly emails with recent articles!

Progress Photos

If you’re loving the vibe of a workout set like this as much as I am, you can find a similar one on Amazon here: https://a.co/d/fvr2YGJ

The only before pictures I had in that same outfit was on 7/14/23 when I bought the outfit. My weight didn’t change much from then to early September when I started this challenge. And since the outfit was the same I chose to use it for the comparison.

If you haven’t noticed prior, I do have a lower stomach that hangs. I have excess skin from losing 100 lbs over the last 13 years. I am actually scheduled for my tummy tuck and thigh lift in late 2023, so I am very eager to remove that lower stomach skin. As of now, I wear high rise pants to TUCK IT IN and hide it as best as I can. But even still, it is nice to see this area of my body getting smaller still!

I am really surprised that with my results after doing yoga daily for 30 days. I didn’t do any extreme dieting, I only lost 11 pounds but I was able to lose 22 inches all over! In the first photo comparison of the side image I feel like it’s really noticeable where I shrank! My butt is slimmer, my mid section is thinner and my side roll is starting to go away! In the back photo you can see I went from 4 back rolls to 2, wow! I love that!!!

You can see my yoga mat back there behind me, I’ve had that one for years but if you’re looking to jump into trying yoga you can find a great one on Amazon like this one: https://a.co/d/h9AeO7w

This is actually one of my favorite workout sets but on this day I was really particularly empowered as I was doing leg exercises in the middle of my yoga routine! I specifically added an exercise here because I want to strengthen the muscles that run along my outer thigh to my glutes. I knew this will help support a stronger core as well as stronger lower back to prevent the back injuries. I’ve been dealing with back flare ups for years when I garden too much! So I just added that in for myself and I started with 12 reps per leg and by day 30 I was at 36 reps per leg! Progress!!! So I made multiple physical improvements in my results after doing yoga daily for 30 days!

Quitting Smoking

During this time, we went out of the state on vacation and I maintained my daily yoga through that and didn’t gain a pound while on vacation for 5 days! I was also in the process of trying to quit vaping during this time! I successfully quit the habit of vaping and transitioned to the Nicoderm patch right in the middle of these 30 days!

If you are feeling that urge or desire to quit vaping or smoking but are REALLY tied to the idea and habit of it, or it feels really entangled with a part of your personality, I urge you to try the NicoDerm patch. You can get them at Walmart, grocery stores or here on Amazon: https://a.co/d/9VwGYrA

I bought the gum for myself as well and thought when I put the patch on I’d still want to vape. But the hardest part was getting through the first 3-4 hours. The nicotine began being introduced to my blood and from then on I never felt like I was missing anything or needed nicotine. I THOUGHT to reach for my vape pen probably 1000x, no lie! But I’d use anywhere from 2-5 piece of nicotine gum per day and be just fine! I also chewed on hard candy a lot during this time and I think coming off the vape and me feeling more munchie and slightly more stressed out, caused me to snack more and gain 2 pounds. Thankfully I did lose that the next week but it was definitely a hitch in my progress.

I had numerous family members who happen to be quitting smoking or vaping at the same time and we all tried different methods. Some of them just switched to a 0% nicotine vape and I did try that initially myself. But for some reason that 0% nicotine vape juice burned my throat and I just couldn’t tolerate it. I quickly realized my physical habit of reaching for and hitting the vape, was my biggest enemy. So I really wanted to try to cut that out entirely out the gate. I’m glad I did!

Thank you for reading my story!

Thank you for checking out my article on my experience with doing yoga daily for 30 days! If you’ve been wanting to try it out I hope you’ll give it a try! Follow a beginner routine online and be careful and listen to your body. Because too many people end up injured from the first few times they do yoga. Don’t push yourself too card, remember it’s all about progress and consistency!

You matter! Thank you for being here!

If you’d like the full back story on who I am check out my original article where I shared a part of my story!

Please do follow my blog or subscribe to my newsletter to be notified when I share new recipes or health & fitness tips! <3

Xoxo, Elizabeth

Categories: Family, Fitness, Food, Wellness

Welcome to my world

Welcome to my cozy corner of the web! I want to start out this new home online by sharing with you a little bit about myself and why I was motivated to launch this blog in the first place! I’m 38 years old, I’m a mom to 2 biological children and 5 step children, 3 of which are grown and 4 we’re still actively raising, ranging from ages 7 to 23.

My family and I are located in Arkansas on a quaint 6 acre small family farm just a few miles down the road from where my family on my dad’s side settled here 9 generations ago! Our family roots in this community are deep and strong but I did spend 22 years of my life in Arizona living south of Phoenix and loved it! So that time in the desert definitely shaped who I am today!

I love home life and mom life, cleaning and cooking and DIY’ing anything in my spare time but I don’t have much spare time as I’m the classic over-achiever! I’ve been an entrepreneur for 13 years now, working in real estate and finance. I own my own consulting firm that I launched in 2019 and it has happily kept my plate full ever since! But in my spare time I love writing, gardening, redecorating our house for the 100th time, reading, hiking, going on nature walks, playing with our 1 year old chocolate lab Maple or canoodling our adorable barn cats Ernesto and Sterling!

A lot of us get to an age where we decide we need to take better care of ourselves so that we can be healthy grandparents or just feel good in our older years. For me, that concern started when I was in my early 20s, a single mom to two little boys and morbidly obese, as seen below.

So in 2010 after much research and inner turmoil, I had a bariatric (weight loss) surgery to help me lose weight. At the time my children were 4 and 6 years old and I was only 25 years old so I wasn’t sure if I’d ever have more children so I opted for the lapband surgery as the band itself is adjustable. Which means, they could remove saline from the band to allow me to eat more if I were to get pregnant, so I could have a healthy pregnancy. Plus all other weight loss surgery options then were newer and very invasive and very…permanent. So I went with the band.

It looks something like this!

My journey with my health, weight loss, healing, personal discovery and self love is such a long one I actually wrote a book about it, but have yet to finish it! Keep an eye out for that in 2024! But I’ll sum up my journey and say, I took me 13 years to lose 130 pounds. My weight loss was very slow, I’d sit at a weight for 1-2 years before I’d progress another 10-15 pounds. In the process I was tackling a lot of inner demons, working on myself and breaking bad habits one at a time. I knew this had to be a slow, permanent lifestyle change for me. I learned how to actually cook, learned about nutrition and exercise, learned how our body actually functions on the inside (still learning more on that all the time actually), I quit sodas in 2010, quit cigarettes for vaping in 2016, quit a monster energy drink addiction in 2017, quit sweet tea in 2019 and finally quit all nicotine (vaping) in 2023 ending a 20 year addiction!

I learned a lot about myself during this time but the biggest thing I learned was that I LOVED being active! I became an athlete for the first time in my life, completing my first 5k in 2011 and my first half marathon in 2012! I also picked up Tennis and wasn’t too bad at it, fell in love with hiking and exploring and just haven’t quit! Then in 2016 I started yoga and that lead to daily yoga for 18 months which was the most transformational time in my life! I happily call myself a yogi and a hiker, because these things make my soul happy!

In 2019 when I cut out sweet tea, I lost an additional 30 lbs from where I had been sitting for a good 2 or 3 years and that put me down at my lowest I’ve ever been! The pictures below are me at my lowest and I was there 12-14 months. I honestly don’t expect to ever be this size again as my band was really tight during that time and I don’t believe I was consuming enough calories to actually BE HEALTHY.

For reference, here is where I am today in late 2023, 50 pounds heavier! Hint, I had all the fluid removed from my lap band in December 2019 and I immediately began gaining because really I hadn’t become more mindful, the band just hardly ever let me eat and that’s how I got down to my lowest weight. Above I was not exercising, I was not eating well, I was not taking care of myself. Within 3 months I had gained 50 lbs!!!! I know, shocked me too! And then I’ve been working to lose the same 10 pounds for the last 3 years, literally! But by working I mean not really working but just mad about it all the time and unhappy in my clothes although NOT hating myself because I have a lot of grace for this body after all we’ve been through!

The difference is that where I am today is an “almost 40 year old” woman, the number on the scale no longer matters to me and my ultimate goal is physical fitness and internal health as well as mental health! And so I’m starting this blog 45 days after starting a new lifestyle change with myself where I’m actually tracking my food, protein, water, sleep, steps, exercises, etc. I started a powder vitamin I add to water daily to make sure I’m getting all my nutrients since my lap band restricts how much I can eat, I set a goal to eat 100+ grams of protein per day to build muscle and burn fat, I’m doing yoga, strength training and walking daily! My steps have gone from 1500 a day having a work from home desk job to now meeting 8000 per day since I walk 2 miles a day!

So my goal for this blog is to share not my journey but rather the tips I learn along the way that could help you too! I want to meet you where you are and if you’re here because you came across a research article comparing Samsung wearable or because I shared an amazing low-carb, family friendly recipe…then welcome! I’m glad you’re here! I feel like in order for each of us to be well rounded and really taking care of all parts of ourselves, we need to remember the mind, our inner peace and that inner happiness! So I’ll be sharing tips on ways I discover that make it easier to be mindful, how to be present, the benefits of meditation, apps to use, etc. And I hope you find it all so interesting and useful that you subscribe to my blog and the email list and enjoy every article I post! Please do comment on an article if you have a question, insight, encouragement or love to give!

Thanks for being here!

You matter!

xoxo,

Elizabeth

[youtube-feed feed=1]