Starting September 4, BFFs Hoops, Coke-Is-It, and I started Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred. Technically you are supposed to do this everyday for 30 days along with her diet system to lose pounds. The DVD says up to 20 in those 30 days.
Now, we have other things going on in our lives so we decided to try to do this 3-4 times a week and see what happens. No diet plan was involved.
I liked this DVD because the actual work-outs are 20 minutes. For someone who HATES doing any kind of work-out, this was big because it wasn't a huge commitment of my time. There are 3 levels, each getting harder with 3 rounds of 3 minutes of strength, 2 minutes of cardio, and 1 minute of abs.
The strength moves, I hate. I am not strong at all and this just emphasizes it. However, over the past two months, I have noticed that my arms don't scream quite as loudly as they did when I started.
The cardio is challenging but not too awful. It definitely gets my heart going.
I found the abs sections the least challenging. I think it is because I have been doing pilates for awhile and we do a lot of these moves in class.
Jillian has two helpers, Natalie and Anita. Anita shows you a beginner version of the move. Natalie shows you the advanced version. I stuck with Anita for most of the levels when I initially started them. As soon as I felt like I was getting better, I would try the Natalie version.
The best part is that because the circuits are only a few minutes, when they really stink and you are hating life doing them, they are soon over.
Going into this, I knew I was out of shape but I still thought "How hard could it be?". Um, after doing it once, I could barely walk the next day. I had the same effect once I felt qualified to move on to level 2 and did that for the first time. Mr. mocked me when I first started this so I challenged him to do it too. He barely made it through the warm-up before he was sweating like there was no tomorrow and whining about his knee. I recently started level 3. Oh my. It is rough. But, I am sticking with it because I am seeing results.
So far I have not lost any weight (boo!) but I have been losing inches:
Bust -1 (boo!)
Waist -2.5 (yeah!)
Hips -1 (nice!)
I wish the hips were losing more but I am still working. My booty looks way more toned now (IMO anyways) and Mr. says my legs look skinnier.
I think it would move things along faster if I didn't eat my face off in New Orleans or spent the past few weeks gorging on sweets and Halloween candy. But alas... I hate working out so this is a big enough sacrifice.
Side by side from September to now:
I'll concede that it's not an extremely huge difference visually and I think I can feel it more than it shows. However, the left picture was taken on a day I was feeling pretty skinny in September. Now that I look at it though... Yikes! I like the new toned booty and smaller waist that makes me not look like I am expecting.
I still have some more work to do but this is a decent start.
One final note... If you are looking to try the Shred out, I bought the DVD for $9.99 at Best Buy BUT I have since found out that Levels 1 and 2 are available on Exercise TV On Demand if you want to test the waters for free.
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