Day 25 - The end of the beginning!

Well it is morning here for me on Day 25 of 100 (1/4 of the way through!) and day 14 of the group shred. I thought I would do a quick update on yesterday and share a little about the shred, as it comes to a close. Yesterday I did antagonistic jump sets and fat loss circuit training in line with my second round of MS. I have been able to do the workouts pretty easy in this Level 1 version of the plan so I know that I'll be ready to go to the full program when Mission Two comes along because I am not pushing myself as hard as I could go. Part of that is my fault, because I could do more weight but I have just been testing the waters a little to see what each workout is like before I ramp it up seriously. When I looked at my goals at the top of the page, I have not reached all of them, but you know, I don't really care becuase I am working toward them and I have achieved a lot more intangible results that I could not have hoped for so overall I can't be disappointed. However, I haven't lost any weight in the past few days so maybe I should start working harder. I feel guilty because I know some of you out there are really going all out and I just have kind of been saving a little back to make it through the long haul. I guess that's okay. I love the group shred but at the same time I have my eye on the larger goal of getting through 100 days so I don't want to burn out. Anyway, still doing low carb, I have been good with that but I felt like I had a lot of fat yesterday. I know that I can have some but I don't want to go over calories so I can't have too many days like that. And I was craving something sweet in the evening so I made myself some sugar-free jello and added protein powder to it so it would have some nutritional value. It tasted great! I highly recommend it if you need a low carb dessert because there isn't much out there!
Today is a rest day and I am glad for it because my neck has been hurting for about 4 days now and I am not sure why but exercising definitely aggravates it so hopefully with a day off I can get over it. So not much going on today, technically my pics are a day ahead so I already took my day 14 picture so even if I did have a workout today it wouldn't count toward the shred. But I wish everyone out there good luck today, I'll be checking all the blogs to see the results, but I know this is only the beginning for most of us, I am so excited for the future! But I did want to post my comments that I put on Adam's blog here just in case someone who's not on the shred would be interested in it. Here's what I said:
Wow what to say about my experience so far...??? For me, it is actually hard to describe because I have struggled so much in this area and this shred has been, to be honest, pretty easy comparatively. I used to have such a mental battle ALL THE TIME, and I guess since so many are watching and counting on us to succeed, I just don't fight that battle as much, I just do what I know I need to do. Not that there aren't tough times, but before I just felt so stressed and guilty and down all the time and during these 14 days I have felt excited and uplifted. And when you are doing what you committed to do, you don't have the guilt because you are doing the right thing! And you think less about it because you aren't analyzing decisions you made or didn't make over and over again. Like I said, hard to explain, but the biggest change I see in myself is mental and I think that's the hardest battle we all fight. If we didn't have a mental struggle going on inside of us, we wouldn't have let ourselves go physically in the first place. We would eat what we know is healthy and exercise regularly like we all know we are supposed to do to just be a healthy person. Doing this together in a group is so much better than doing it alone. I mean, this has been proven because even if you look at a program like Weight Watchers, the people who go to meetings are MUCH more likely to succeed than those who don't but it's tough to put yourself out there in the beginning and admit you are out of control. And then to take the pictures and prove where you are starting from. That was my first obstacle. But after the decision to do it was made, it got easier all the time and I am so glad I did it because I can see such a difference that I wouldn't have given myself credit for. And really, although the first smile was a little forced, the ones after that did get bigger and bigger like you said because I really am happy to be doing what I am doing and I am proud of myself. People don't usually give themselves enough credit, like I think it was Mike was saying, we never acknowledge our own success in a healthy way, and I agree. I am usually the first one to wave off encouragement because I don't want to seem like I am vain but I really am proud of my accomplishment so far and I am looking forward to the next phase of this journey so I can keep giving myself reasons to be happy. So anyway, the best experience that I take away, and that I can tell other potential shredders, is to take the chance on yourself because you will learn that you can overcome the battle in your mind, stop feeling guilty, have the chance to do it alongside others who are going through the exact same things, and learn to love yourself and the journey. And that all happens in a very short period of time, you won't even believe how fast you can turn it around if you really commit!
Here's my Day 25 pics, I am putting my Day 24 in a separate post.
PS Check out my pic on Adam's blog, it's a little different than the one here!