Day 1: The 30 Day Shred

As you all know, I just had a baby. And though I tried to be active and not let my eating and weight gain get out of control, it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. Around the time I hit my last trimester, I lost all my energy. So even though I felt great, I didn't have the energy to keep up the walking, etc. I also let my cravings get the better of me and had a few too many desserts and french fries (my ridiculously stretch marked thighs and bum will testify to that).

So I was browsing some different movies and tv shows on my AppleTV the other day and came across the Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred. For those of you who don't know, Jillian Michaels is one of the trainers on the tv show, The Biggest Loser. I decided to read some of the reviews and saw that almost everyone who had commented had at least moderate success. So for $8.99 I purchased the 3 different workout levels.

My friend, Ashley, asked me to blog about my workout experiences; so here I am, humoring her. I agree, I think it will be good to be able to look back and track my success. Every week I'll weigh and measure myself to gauge my progress.

Here are my starting measurements:
Weight: 151 lbs. I gained 51 lbs. during my pregnancy. I went from 132 lbs. to 183 lbs. Two weeks after I had the baby, I weighed in at 155 lbs. Not bad for having a 9 lb. baby. Eleven weeks later I am still in the 150s so I know I'm going to have to do this with exercise, not just eating better.
Upper arms: 12 in.
Waist: 32.5 in.
Hips (or what I like to call, my big fat bum): 43 in.
Thighs: 25 in.
Calves: 16 in.

Let me tell you, for a 30 minute workout, this is hard. Especially for someone as out of shape as I am. The workout consists of a warm- up, three six-minute segments beginning with 3 minutes of strength training, 2 minutes of cardio, and finishing with 1 minute of abs, and ends with a cool-down stretch.

The Warm-Up: I was totally winded by the end up the warm-up. Who would have thought that jumping jacks could get you so tired.

Three 6-minute segments: I wanted to quit so many times but Jillian keeps reminding you through the whole thing that it's only a 30 minute exercise and you have to keep at it if you want results. And I want results.

The Cool-Down: This was great because after all that work, some of my muscles were starting to cramp from all that time not being used.

I have confidence that after 30 days I will feel like a new person. I'm putting it out there for everyone to see that I'm committing to do this at least 3 days a week for a month. Please ask me about this if/when you see me. I want to be accountable to everyone reading my blog so that I'll have the motivation to keep doing this. I wanted to quit a couple of times in the middle of the video but I know that if people are going to ask me about it, I'll keep going. Wish me luck!