Today was such a sweet day - I sparred for the first time and had a ton of fun, but even more importantly - I hit my 1 year goal of getting under 220 pounds today!

When I started this site at the end of July, I set my 1 year goal to be at 220 pounds by July 1st. This morning I weighed in at 219.6 - so I got there a full month early! So I’m now down 58 pounds from the end of July when I started working out and down 70 pounds from mid-June when I started eating better.

My progress has been crazy since I started the 9 week challenge at Kombat Arts. I’m up to being able to do 35 push ups now. I still can’t do a pull up, but I’m working at it pretty much every day and I’ll get over that hurdle soon. I may not do it in the next 3 weeks, but it will happen eventually as long as I keep working at it.

I was worried that I might be under-eating, but I’ve been tracking everything I eat lately and I’m coming in right around where I need to be - also, I’ve still been gaining strength - so I’m not really worried that I’m losing too quickly and losing muscle. I really think that getting more sleep has helped a lot and if I had been doing that all along, I might be even further along now.

Anyway - back to my workout… I had Muay Thai class today - only my second class with the advanced students since passing my Green shirt test. We did pretty much all kicking drills today - focusing on being able to throw quick, strong kicks from our lead leg without telegraphing it by taking a step. For the last part of the class, we got our gear on and sparred!

I’ve never sparred in Muay Thai before and it’s been at least 10 years since I sparred in Karate. It’s amazing how quickly everything you thought you knew just blanks out in your head when you get hit. I’ve got a lot of practice to do before I can keep my head straight while sparring and the whole experience was very humbling. It was also a ton of fun and I can’t wait to do more of it. Each of the students I sparred with was very helpful and gave me some great advice and pointers.

I stuck around a bit after class and did some pull up / chin up work with some other students. It was tough and it ended up being more fast paced than if I had done it on my own at home so I’m going to try to do it more often.

But back to hitting my goal… I promised myself when I started that when I hit 220 I would do something special for my reward. Now that I’m here, I can’t decide. I think it’s a toss up between a freestyle snowboard and some tattoo work… I’m afraid if I get a snowboard it’s going to just make me miss the snow even more… hahaha :D