One morning I was reading Joanna’s great blog Fitness & Spice and saw her talking about Gym In A Bag. I thought the product looked really nice – especially for someone like me who doesn’t belong to a gym. Later that day I was contacted by the Gym In A Bag people who asked if I’d like to try the product and then give one away on my blog. I was excited to try the system out so I said, “Definitely.”

A few days later this came in the mail.

How fun. The system includes:

•4 resistance bands in varying strengths

•wrist and ankle cuffs

•custom hooks designed to be used with the cuffs

•a padded steel bar that unscrews into three sections

•a DVD featuring Kim Lyons

•a flip-chart instruction book

•a door attachment

•a very nice looking carrying bag

•and the potential to make you stronger.

We’ve all seen resistance bands before right? Well, the thing that makes these different is the cuff system. Instead of grabbing onto a handle like traditional bands, you let the cuffs either rest in your palm or on your wrist, depending on the exercise you are doing. Why?

Well, as Jerry from Gym In A Bag explained to me, when you grip anything, be it a glass of water or a resistance band handle, you are expending energy in your hand and forearm, which makes sense. By using the cuffs, you can avoid that and isolate those targeted muscles, be it biceps, or whatever.  From their website, “Flexsolate’s Grip-Free approach to exercise has been scientifically proven to assist in isolating targeted muscles during exercise, by more than 400%, while eliminating the use of non-targeted secondary muscles by more than 8 times. By reducing the use of secondary, non-targeted muscles, we enable targeted muscles to fatigue properly.”  At the Flexsolate website they even sell cuffs that you can take to a gym and use with the gym equipment. You can see some gym exercises here. And I have to say – that Gunter Schlierkamp is really fit.

I have been using Gym In A Bag system this for about 2 weeks now and have really enjoyed it. I like that the exercises are laid out for you, but you are free to mix and match them to meet your needs. There are upper body, abdominal, and lower body exercises included. The bands can either be used alone, or combined to give you stronger resistance. The bar screws together and then unscrews, and can be stored in the bag which is great if you are space challenged. And the door attachment is really strong, but be sure and follow the directions on making sure your door is securely closed! If you were travelling you could definitely stick this in your suitcase and take it with you – it’s that compact.

You can buy the Gym In A Bag from their website, GymInABag.net and you can have a chance to win one right now! Unfortunately, the giveaway is only open to US residents. You have three chances to enter. Leave a comment telling me why you’d like this bag, write a blurb about it on your site and link back here, or twitter this post, using @fittothefinish. Please leave a separate comment for each entry so when I do the random number generator I can be sure to count you properly! I will close the contest Wednesday, February 9th at midnight CST. Good luck!!!

Disclosure: I received a Gym In A Bag for myself to keep, and one winner will receive one for winning the contest. The winner’s Gym In A Bag will be shipped from the company!

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You would think with all the days in the year available for someone to be born it wouldn’t be on your anniversary – right? I always thought that until my oldest son was born on our 10th anniversary. Right smack on the day. Here I am right after his birth. (It was after his birth that I lost all my weight!)

So today that tiny baby turns 13 and we have been married 23 years. I really don’t feel old enough to have been married 23 years but that’s what the calendar says. Here’s our wedding picture – pure late 80’s to be sure. You can see that I was an average size when I got married. I took that size for granted and even then thought I probably should be smaller. However, 10 years later I longed for that average sized woman to come back!

 So on this my oldest son’s 13th birthday I’d like to wish him a happy birthday. And to my hubby John – Happy Anniversary. I can’t imagine life without either one of them.  Diane

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I still can’t believe that this is happening to me, but next week I am flying to New York City to be on the Dr. Oz show! The show will be taped on Wednesday and will air at a later time. I will definitely let you know when it will be shown!

After I do the taping I’ll fill you in on the behind the scenes of the taping experience. I’m sure it will be very interesting and exciting.

You know, there are a lot of talk shows out there but Dr. Oz’s show is my favorite. I like how he is very passionate about helping people fight obesity, heart disease, and other medical diseases. So I’m very excited to have the opportunity to meet him.

Throughout my years of maintenance I’ve done a lot of interviews and talks but they have always been on a local basis. So this is a wonderful blessing  for me. It’s also a little bit scary of course. But before I got too worried about it, I realized that a lot of the things in my life that have been challenging and hard have been the most rewarding.

Losing weight was hard but it ranks right up there with one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. Raising a large family isn’t always easy, but seeing all the children grow and mature is a blessing beyond words. And learning new things about myself is sometimes stressful but always teaches me about a part of myself I didn’t know was there.

So stepping outside my own local area may be a bit frightening but I know that the rewards and experiences are irreplaceable, and I wouldn’t miss them for the world.

Thank you for letting me share my exciting news with you. It was fun to tell my friends and family and I’ve been bursting at the seams to share the news with my blogging friends too!!  Diane

By the way – I’ve got a really, really fabulous giveaway on Monday. I get asked to do them all the time, but this one is one of the few I’ve been sold on!

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My favorite food group used to be chocolate. No kidding. A day without chocolate was like a day that had gone wrong. And since I didn’t want any day to go wrong, I made sure to eat way more chocolate than is considered healthy. Way more.
My least favorite food group used to be vegetables. If [...]