ROAR!!!!

Remember THIS start to our 8 week Warrior Challenge?

Well....

It.is.DONE!

8 weeks - 8 nutritional challenges which were cumulative and 8 physical challenges which - thank goodness - were not!

This is what I remember:
Drink one large glass of water before you do anything in the morning (then proceed to spend the day calculating your distance from the bathroom)
No eating after 8pm (no problem.....on weekdays)
Drink a glass of water 20 minutes before every meal (see above for bathroom impacts)
Have 20g of protein at every meal.  40g for Allan.  
Prep all meals for 4 / 5 days at a time.
Have Vegetables at every meal (Please note: Bacon is not considered a vegetable) 
No sugar (no comment)
No alcohol (whatever - it was one week) 

500 push-ups (somehow continually cursing made these go faster)
Sleeping 7-8 hours a night ( ha ha ha ha ha ha - it's been over 2 decades since I put up those kind of sleep numbers)
A lot of V-ups (my abs, my abs, where the hell are my abs?)
20 minutes cardio 3 times a week (excluding gym time)
A jumpy, inchworm combo thingy for 5 minutes a day (total fail for me on this one - there are certain things one can do in a hotel room with a colleague - I felt this crossed the line)
1400 body weight squats (these were a pain in the butt... as they should be)
Ankle Grabs (I like these - I can do a lot in one minute, but in 2 and 3 and 4 minutes - UGH it's like time stood still and so did my core...but I ground them out while moaning loudly on the livingroom floor)
400 burpees (no words can describe my disgust at these but man my push ups are so much better than they were in week 1 - I have arm muscle bulges)

Anything I missed I must have blocked out.

But we DID do it - almost all of it... almost always together.

And some things will totally stick with us beyond the Challenge.  

Our water consumption is WAY up and more consistent. 

We have added spinach and protein powder to our normal morning smoothie and cut the orange juice making it a much healthier start to the day.  

We experimented with egg bites - egg/veggies and protein baked in muffin cups and then taken to work and reheated.  Allan loves them.  I cannot.  My egg pickiness cannot be overcome.

Our carbs are way down.  We cannot get through even a small loaf of bread.  The occasional bagel with peanut butter is still my comfort morning treat though. 

And beyond that we have much better awareness of good nutrition, the many ways sugar is hidden in everything, the muscles that hurt the most and the hate we have for burpees is unchanged. 

So today we measured and weighed in - we already knew we weren't going to see staggering numbers but we lost a couple pounds and a few inches between us.

When we got to the gym today - Coach Jeff walked over to congratulate us - we thought it was for surviving the Warrior Challenge but it wasn't... it was for being named the Clients of the Month at the Dojo - I choked right up and blinked really fast - to be recognised for the 66 weeks we have worked our butts off, through injury and pain, for having conquered some demons in trusting my body again, for having met so many incredible coaches and new friends and to be in the company of some of our greatest fitness inspirations, feels incredible.  

We couldn't be more grateful for this challenge, even the burpees and no beer week.   and all the support from our Coaches and Team mates #halusa!

We are warriors, even if only in our own minds... we have more battles to come ... I have yet to conquer the famed Hurricane class and we have aged bodies that still need a fair bit of conditioning.

But we are doing IT... one class, one day, one burpee ankle grab at a time.

Roar!!!