I'm a Member!

Over the past week I have been researching and talking to my husband about joining a gym.  It had always been too expensive especially with child care.  Child care was often more than the actual membership fee and it was basically just a room for the kids to play for a while.  Also, gym playrooms are notorious for being dirty and kids getting sick every time they go.  But then I finally started looking into nice gyms, the ones I couldn't afford, with a membership fee of over $30 a month and what I found amazed me.  These were really nice gyms, not only nice for the adults but the kids programs were absolutely amazing!  The one closest to my house had five different rooms for the kids to play in and they are on 30 minute rotations.  The activities change every day so that the kids never get bored even if you took them there 7 days a week.  You get 2.5 hours every day and they have a separate toddler and infant room so the little kids don't get stomped on by the older kids.  The activity rotations include active play, crafts, science, music, sports, they have two playgrounds, and an indoor play structure, a rock climbing wall and it is basically just amazing.  Here is the best part, the cost for the kids was actually way less than the cost of the basic membership!  Even though the cost of the basic membership was much higher than other places, the kids together were actually less than most other places.  It's more like sending your kids to preschool than to daycare.  Considering the cost for preschool for one kid for two days a week, 2 hrs a day is between $150-$300 a month, this was a really great alternative, and my husband finally said yes! 

I am super excited to have this gym membership, it is an amazing place with about 150 group classes each week, an outdoor and indoor pool area complete with water slides and a splash and play area for the kids.  Yesterday I did a body jam class which was really fun, it reminded me of Zumba a lot but it was more American dancing.  Today we went to the outdoor splash and play pool.  I was planning on going to the begin to spin class at 11, but the kids played in the pool from 10-11:35 and I had still had to fight with them to get out of the pool!  However they were pretty tired by that time and were more willing to go than at 10:30 right after they had gone in.  I made it to the 12:00 Zumba class after dropping off the kids in the kids center (it's like it's own building it's amazing).  Today they had a giant inflatable bounce house in the gym area today, that place is so amazing!!!  Zumba was tons of fun, and the instructor was really great.  I am really glad I can go whenever I want now and that it is so close to my house!  Before the Zumba place I was going to was a half hour drive away, so it took 2 hours to go to class (half hour there, hour class, half hour back).  We got home today and I was so tired!  It was a good tired though, a "I played hard" type of tired not an "I ate like crap and now I don't feel good and have no energy" tired.  The kids ate some pasta for lunch, had some apples and cheese.  I ate a large salad that I had made yesterday with chicken, black beans, corn, broccoli, apples, tomatoes, and pecans in it.  It was so good I didn't even bother with salad dressing.  Excellent, saves me the extra calories.  Afterwards Chloe went down for a nap and Lily and I made this awesome apple craft:

I love pinterest.  I feel really good right now, the past two days have been really great days.  I ate very well yesterday and today, I think I am on the up and up again.  I am happy that I can move on and I am going to restart my Sunday weigh ins, making sure to only step on the scale once a week.  I don't want to become scale obsessed again, and I want to make sure that I am living and eating in a healthy way that I want to continue for the rest of my life.  I don't want to eat well for 5 days and binge for two days for the rest of my life, that is not healthy or sustainable and it's not normal eating behavior.  I've learned a lot over the past month, and I'm ready to keep going.  Yes I had a setback, yes I gained some weight back, but now it's time to look to the future, take what I learned and put the rest behind me.  There may have been a bump in the road, but that doesn't mean I failed.  You only fail if you quit and gain all the weight back, and I have not quit.  In fact I feel better and more excited and enthusiastic today than I have all year, even after I broke my plateau.  I am happy with my mental progression and today the future looks bright.