Hellooooooooooooo World!!!
Long time no write, eh? I think I warned you before though, I am awful at these things. Really hard for me to keep on track.
Anyway.... Aren't you curious about what I've been up to???
Sure you are!!!
*everyone groans and clicks the back button*
Well, recently, the fiance and I are trying to get healthier. Yes, yes, I know it's cliche and that every bride-to-be tries to look better for her wedding. But do you know why it's cliche? Because it's so popular/everyone does it! So, yes, we are trying to look our best for the wedding. We'd always wanted to look better, and there's been a few half-hearted attempts in the past, but the wedding really gives us motivation. It gives me the ability to paint a mental picture in my head of what I want to look like on my wedding day. In the past, when I've worked out, there's just been a vague picture of "I want to look healthy sometime in the future." But now... now my picture is specific. And sure, I might not actually get to that point before my wedding. I understand that and I'm not going to stress out about it. However, it gives me something to focus on when I'm pushing out that last lunge/curl.
So, organized me, of course, has a calendar written out of when I exercise and what I do. It hangs on the back of my door. So...
Sunday
Walk the dogs (0.5 miles each, so a total of 1 mile for me)
Arms (alternates every Sunday)
Rest
Monday
Walk the Dogs
Wii Fit Strength (do all the strength exercises on Wii fit in a row)
Cardio (this means use my crappy elliptical in my room which wears me out horribly)
Crunches (100 of them, alternates every Monday)
Tuesday
Walk the dogs
Zumba Beginners
Zumba Abs
Arms
Wednesday
Walk the dogs
Crunches
Rest
Thursday
Walk the Dogs
Cardio (for this cardio and Fridays I go to Stewie's house and use their nicer stuff)
Arms
Friday
Walk the dogs
Cardio
Crunches
Saturday
Walk the dogs
Zumba Beginners
Zumba Abs
Arms
Sunday
Same as before, only now I do crunches instead of abs.
So, all planned out, written in ink on my calendar. I have two rest days, Wednesday and Sunday (the days right after Zumba) though I still walk the dogs on those days and I do either arms or crunches daily (alternating each night). I've also been watching what I eat, making sure I don't go over my allotted calories, though, truth be told, I'm more focused on exercise than on dieting (on the other hand- Mr. Fiance is more focused on dieting than exercising)
But then..... a snag in my nice pretty calendar.
The zumba I have includes Zumba Beginners, Zumba Advanced, and Zumba abs/thighs/glutes. I turned on Zumba advanced... and it's way too hard for me. It's just the guy on stage and an audience full of regular people dancing. And there's no directions, they just all seem to somehow "know" what to do. So, I turned to Zumba Beginners. Now, this one, I can do. But, it just doesn't seem like a workout- it's more just teaching you how to do the moves so you can eventually move to advanced. For example, you tend to only do movements on one side. So you'll work on the right side for awhile, and instead of switching to the left side to work, he would move on to a different move. As fun as Zumba is... I just wasn't feeling like I was getting a workout. Now Zumba Abs was a pretty good workout, but it just wasn't being paired with another good workout.
So then I started looking for new options. And then..... that's when I met Jillian Michaels.
I'd already been hearing about the 30 Day Shred from Wedding Forums that I hang around in. People talking about how sore they were, how they really felt the exercises, how Jillian Michaels is the devil sent up from hell into a lean human woman form sent to torture us until we sold our souls for 10 seconds of rest. And for some reason I still don't know.... I decided to try it.
So, a few days ago, I popped in the DVD and did level 1. And I sweated, panted, grunted, cried throughout all 27 minutes of it.
Yesterday, I woke up and my muscles (wait, there's actually muscles in my body?) were so tight that I really didn't want to get out of bed. Plus, I had so much going on that day, did I really have time to do a half hour workout? I didn't want to get all sweaty before leaving the house. And yet... I popped in the DVD and did level 1, Day 2.
This morning, I woke up in pain. Stiff muscles, sore arms, tired. I dreaded getting out of bed. And yet... Got out of bed and popped in the DVD. And yes, once more, Jillian tried to kill me. But, once again, it is about an hour and a half later and I'm still alive. Still achey...but alive.
And guys.... GUYS.... I have a bump!!! My arms have always been my weak spot. In fact, my calves aren't too horrible looking, but get to my upper body and I've got so many wings, I'm more like an insect than a bird. But... I can now run my hand across my arm and there is the beginning of a bulge!! There IS a muscle up there under all that flab! I guess those science books WEREN'T lying when they talked about the muscles in the human body. It's all I did yesterday and today, rubbing my arm. In fact, I think that's part of the reason my arms hurt is cause I couldn't stop flexing and rubbing. Sure, maybe nobody else can tell or feel it (and believe me, I tried to get everyone to feel it and all they did was touch it and roll their eyes) but I, who has lived with this body for 24 years, can definitely tell a difference. There is something there and it's getting stronger.
Today was Day 3 of the shred. 27 more days to go. I've taken Zumba out of my weekly plan, and I'm doing the shred daily. But if I'm getting these results in the 17 days that since we started this "get healthy kick"..... I can live past the pain and keep up with it. You know what they say... No Pain, No Gain.
