Ahhh! Only 15 days until the big day, and only 11 until we are at our destination in paradise! I'm so freaking excited to get out of this cold weather!! (and marry Dan of course too). This has been a long time coming, I can't believe it's so close.

Progress update: despite the cold weather and going through the holidays, I've managed to keep off the couple of pounds I've lost and just before Christmas I hit my lowest weight in a long time at just over 135. That quickly (and expectedly) bounced back up and I'm hovering around 137-138. One of the biggest things I've been paying attention to over the last couple of months, and one of the first things we focus on in the PN coaching program for good reason, is not my macros or calories, but my body cues. I've been holding off eating until I'm truly hungry, even if that means going longer than 3 hours between meals. In the bodybuilding industry it gets drilled into our heads that we MUST eat every 2-3 hours or we'll slow our metabolism and lose muscle. While I still believe there is some truth to this and can be very helpful for most people to get into a habit of eating more frequently, FOR ME I've found that when I'm not competing it only encourages me to eat more and totally ignore my body's signals, leading to weight gain and food struggles. It's taken me a while to break away from that and accept that it IS ok to go longer than 3 hours without eating and only eat 4-5 meals rather than 5-6. My goal is to keep up with this body awareness and listening to my personal hunger/fullness cues while on vacation for 10 days to manage weight gain as best I can at an all inclusive resort.

Being a bride 2 weeks out from her wedding, I have to say I'm not stressed at all. Everything is done that can be done, I have my dress in my possession packed and ready to go, and have started organizing all other things to pack for our trip. My workouts are going well, hitting it hard as always. Hair and nails are still being decided, and oh yeah, and my wedding band is not done yet....but I'm trusting my people that all will go well! We'll have a meeting with the wedding coordinator the day after we arrive to go over the final details, and a short rehearsal the day before. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the weather behaves for us when we are traveling and for all of our guests as well.

All in all, I am happy with where I am mentally and physically. I have several new bikinis to rock on the white sandy beach, and I am so happy and excited. Thanks for following, next you'll see are the wedding photos! (actually I'll try to post progress photos before I leave for comparison to my first ones back in October).

~Lia

#wedding #balance #health #vacation