Megan C Healthy Challenge Intro

Hello Ladies!

My name is Megan and I'm super excited about the opportunity that this challenge will hopefully provide in helping me achieve my fitness goals and getting healthy alongside all of you!  Although this is set up as a type of competition, my desire is to be a support to all of you in meeting your own personal goals.  I've never participated in an event like this, but I do know from working with friends and family how powerful a group like this can be in terms of providing a strong foothold to reinforce whatever your health desires are.

I love and am so interested in fitness and nutrition and am a natural competitor having played competitive sports from the time my Dad could see that I could dribble a basketball.  I played basketball and was a high jumper for a couple of years in middle school and high school.  After moving to Southern California my freshman year, I was introduced to the sport of volleyball and fell hard.  I went to college on a volleyball scholarship to Utah State, but unfortunately did not finish with my degree.  So here I am years later happily married, a mother to 4 kids, and trying desperately to make up for lost time scholastically.

I recently got done with a 24 day challenge that I did with my trainer from the gym.  Basically what it entailed was cutting out refined sugars, milk, bread, and alcohol.  Like many of you with kids, I was very nervous about giving up sugar.  I too love to bake and will usually indulge myself in a treat of some kind at the end of a long day.  My trainer told me that after 2 weeks my sugar cravings would go away and, quite honestly, I thought she was totally full of it but she was right!  After sticking to the plan religiously I was experiencing tons more energy and feeling really good mentally and physically.  My take away from the 24 days was that "empty calories" are our enemy.  I totally see now how eating whole foods are the true way to feeding your body what it needs while at the same time keeping calories at a manageable level for your body to burn more efficiently.

Since this is a challenge I really want to push myself in terms of what I expect to accomplish in the coming months.  Unfortunately (and fortunately) this challenge goes through some of the major holidays involving food consumption.  This is what gave me the greatest pause in consideration of hopping on board.  Not one to shy away from an opportunity to improve myself I've decided to focus my goals on some specifics that will be difficult but also allow me the greatest success.  The first thing is that I want to cut out refined sugars ENTIRELY for the extent of this challenge- only allowing myself a treat on Halloween day and Thanksgiving day.  I also want to be diligent about working out for an hour at least 5 times a week.  Lastly, I want to get stronger.  I've been lucky in that I have pretty good metabolism, but I haven't always been "fit".  There are jiggles to my wiggle that I want to focus on firming up (some areas especially in the nursing department where there is absolutely no hope ;)

I'm also a part time blogger.  If you want to get to know me better check it out here:  Training Child Dragons: A Blog on Motherhood (and whatever moves me)

Good Luck Everyone and I look forward to getting to know each of you better through this process!