I am so happy to announce that Leslie and I have met, and in many cases actually exceeded, our goals in the 1 Million Kilo Challenge that we started all the way back in January.
We began the challenge as a way of raising money to aid research into preterm birth at the Royal Women's Hospital, where Max was born. The challenge was also a chance for us to make some positive changes to our lives, in the hope that we would gain fitness and strength to help us through what has been an immensely harrowing time.
Friends and family donated money to us after we pledged individual weight loss goals. Leslie pledged to lose 8kg and I pledged to lose 5kg.
I am so proud to say that Leslie exceeded his weight loss goal by 2kg, losing a whopping 10kg as a result of changes to his diet. He is looking so wonderful, and so handsome, and I know he is feeling the benefits in his energy levels, as well as pride in his achievements.
I only lost 2.5kg of my 5kg goal, however I believe I may have been a little ambitious in my goal-setting! I now weigh 54.4kg, which is slightly less than I did when I became pregnant with Max. Though I would have liked to reach 53kg, I am still pleased with the loss I achieved. Both Leslie and I will continue, unofficially, on the challenge, and will report in on our efforts to create healthier lives from time to time.
By far our biggest achievement, however, has been the astonishing sum of money we have raised, with the help of our family, friends, and networks, for the Royal Women's Hospital Foundation. We started with a goal of only $1000, which in itself felt like quite a challenge at the time. Soon, however, we'd met our target and we found ourselves moving our goal posts...to $2000, then $3000, then $4000, and then to a whopping $5000!
Not only did we meet our revised $5000 fundraising total, but we actually exceeded it! Our grand total at the end of the challenge was:
$5236.06
Wow!
We would both like to take this opportunity to thank our very generous friends, family and colleagues, who not only donated money in memory of Max, but some of whom then raised funds amongst their own networks to collect even more money (and lose even more weight!).
Special heartfelt thanks go to Andrea, Kate, my Aunty Jill, her friend and colleague Catherine and my cousin Stephanie for their passionate and dedicated fundraising efforts. We could not be more grateful.
And our congratulations go to all those others who undertook the weight loss challenge with us, including my cousin Kristy, who lost a signifiant amount of weight in her own right, despite having just given birth to her own baby a short time beforehand.
We could not be prouder of you all.
As if that is not enough, at the end of the challenge, In Memory of Max was still the top fundraising team from the whole event!
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| Top 10 Fundraising Teams at the end of the challenge |
The raising of these funds has been the first thing we have been able to achieve, as Max's parents, to honour him. We want to make sure that his life and his memory brings as much light to the world as he brought to ours. Though we do not yet know what our future holds without him, we know that we will always strive to do good things in his name, and to be better people in his honour.
Thank you, everyone, for helping us start that legacy. It means so much to us that Max meant something to each of you.
