I’ve been following Elisha on Instagram for quite a while now and each time she shares I am SO inspired by her journey! Not only is her transformation AMAZING, but she is kind and has such a heart for other moms looking to make changes in their own lives! It is my pleasure to introduce you all to this week’s Mom Crush Monday, Elisha Villanueva!
SFM: Tell us about yourself. How many kids do you have? What are your hobbies?
Elisha: First off I would like to say that I’m very honored to share my story here on this amazing blog it’s everything that I believe in! Thank you so much for the opportunity.
I am a 33 year old stay at home mom turned MOMpreneur. I have 3 children two boys (9 and 6) that I gave birth to and one (15 year old step-daughter) who was born from my heart. My hobbies include anything outdoors hiking, running, CrossFit, and anything that involves seeing my children smile.
SFM: You have had QUITE the transformation and you’ve managed to keep up all your hard work. How much weight have you lost? What fueled and continues to fuel your change to live a healthier life style?
Elisha: My weight loss journey started after giving birth to my youngest son. I was sitting at 220 pounds and knew that if I wanted my children to follow a different path than I did as an overweight child that I needed to change the path that I was currently on. So that’s exactly what I did. I started with introducing small changes into my family. I immediately walked our deep fryer out to the garbage can. I changed our red meats into lean meats, we had lots of ground turkey in our weekly meals, and I started replacing all our high calorie drinks with water. I added one hour of workouts into my mornings by attending local gym group classes.
Those small changes started leading to big results. People started commenting on my physical changes and that added the fuel to my fire. I started learning more and more about living a healthy lifestyle and finding what was working for me and my family. Soon our lifestyle started to evolve into what it is today.
I was able to change the path that my children were on of eating fried greasy foods and sodas as family meals to learning that the healthy foods we eat now fuel their bodies to perform better in their weekly kids CrossFit classes, hike to the top of the mountains that we love to climb, and keep their legs peddling faster and faster on their bikes.
Knowing that I broke the history and cycle of obesity that runs in my family genetics fuels my fire daily. Knowing that I can now run for miles following my children on their bikes, and being able to do all the physical things along side of them make my daily lifestyle choices a no brainer. I had always thought that my body was just made to be bigger, but my entire life has changed and opened a whole new world that I only ever dreamt of before.
SFM: What’s your exercise of choice? How do you balance keeping to a consistent workout program while mothering? Do you ever get “Mom Guilt”?
Elisha: Over the past year I have fallen in love with CrossFit, I still enjoy running and all group bootcamps and classes. I have always tried to balance my workouts and found that by scheduling my workouts in before my children even woke up was the best way to fuel my day and get that workout in without it interrupting dinner, after school activities, homework time, and cuddle time. Many mornings 5:00 am came all too quickly but I never once left with regrets once my workout was complete. I think that every good mother has mom guilt but you just have to remember that by you bettering yourself that includes you being a better mother. Workout all those emotions girlfriend.
SFM: We often tell our readers that it’s ALL about the food! What does your diet look like?
Elisha:
I absolutely agree with you. I can give you a play by play of my day Friday……
I use My Fitness Pal to track and plan my meals to stay within my daily calories and macros.
Wake up and head to the coffee maker.
I personally like to work out on an empty stomach. So I have BCAA’s during my morning workout.
After workout I have a Recovery protein.
Breakfast Protein waffles (Kodiak Brand you can find it at Costco) with a tbsp. of peanut butter.
Lunch grilled chicken salad (includes pear beets, and pecans) champagne vinaigrette dressing.
Snack (grabbed a homemade Protein donut from a local gym).
Afternoon pick me up Amino Energy Iced Coffee made by Optimal Nutrition (also found at Costco)
Turkey meatloaf with veggies cooked topped with Sriracha.
Sometimes if I’m craving chocolate after dinner I will eat a piece of dark chocolate, or make a blended chocolate protein milk shake.
SFM: Tell us about Flex It Pink. What is it all about? Where did you get the idea for it and how did you get started?
Elisha: When I first started losing weight I wanted to shout it to the world how great I felt and I did on Faceboook, but I felt my Facebook friends were tired of hearing about it so I started a closed Facebook group with all my women friends (mostly all moms). Our little group started to be an amazing support system for the moms and they were seeing amazing results. In one year our small group had lost a combined 350 pounds just with the support from one another. I decided to partner with my child hood friend Anna Snyder who was also amazing encouragement to the ladies and who had her own weight loss journey. We thought if we can change the lives of this small group of women imagine what we can do if we opened it to the world, and that’s exactly what we did and that’s exactly what Flex it Pink is. Flex it Pink offers daily encouragement, support, motivation, and inspiration to women around the world. We also have cute workout apparel and virtual runs to keep women motivated and help charities we believe in. We believe that women are the health leaders of the family and we can make a difference for our future.
SFM: What advice do you have for women that want to make a drastic change in their own lives?
Elisha: Start with making small changes and obtainable goals. Know that it’s a lifestyle change and that will take time to change. Your results aren’t always seen on a scale so try to never make it about that forever changing number. ALWAYS remember your WHY, why are you doing this? Most importantly never give! I can guarantee you that you will always have ups and downs but never stay down. Get it girl!!!!
We can’t thank Elisha enough for sharing her story with our readers and inspiring so many everyday! Thanks for the interview, Elisha! We look forward to following your ongoing journey!
You can follow us @stayfitmomblog and @stayfitmom_com on Instagram and on our Facebook page where we love getting personal. You can also subscribe to Stay Fit Mom for healthy recipes, workouts, and most of all inspiration and encouragement!
Did you catch our last Mom Crush Elisabeth Akinwale?
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