Jillian Michaels: 30 Day Shred (and a weight loss logged too!)

In all my Mother's Day weekend excitement I forgot to post about my weigh-in on Friday.  I lost 2.4 pounds last week!  Yes ma'am, that's how I roll.  So now I weigh 160.2 pounds.  Do you know what that means?  I am 1.4 pounds from my mini-goal, which was my lowest weight before having these babies.  I am so close, and I've  been feeling somewhat emotional about it lately.  I got back on track on June 3rd, 2011.  The one-year anniversary of that is two weeks away.  I might actually reach my next mini-goal by then.  To be back at that weight within one year is just a dream.  A real dream that I, me, moi - turned into a reality.  I made this happen.  I made a choice to change.  See?  Told you I am getting emotional about it.  I wasn't sure this could happen, I had doubts, it seemed like such a huge mountain to climb.

I am also quite close to my goal weight, 15.2 pounds to lose to get to 145.  Wowza!  Soon I will have less than 15 pounds to lose.  This whole thing is almost surreal.  I am working hard to have my mind catch up with my body, it's slow going in that department but I'm working on it.

So, on to Jillian.  I got a call at work today that Myra was sick and I would need to pick her up.  She has a fever, which Marek had late last week, so I guess now it's her turn.  I had plans to go to the gym after work but now my only option would be to go after dinner.  With my chest cough I don't want to do that.  Anyway, I picked up Myra and came home.  I gave her some Tylenol and put her down for a nap.  Then I remembered the Jillian Michaels: 30 Day Shred DVD.  I picked it up at Target a couple months ago ($9) for situations just like this.  The funny thing is I have been meaning to return it because I've never used it.  Until today, that is.  I figured, 2 minute warm-up, 20 minute workout, 2 minute cool-down - perfect!  A quick workout goes along well with my recovery week too.

I changed into my workout clothes and started the DVD.  There are 3 levels (1, 2 & 3).  Initially I was going to do level 3 and then I figured I better check myself - these have a reputation for being kick-butt and this is a recovery week so I settled on level 2.  After the two minute warm-up (which included some jumping jacks!) we started in to the workout.  She does 3 cycles of strength training, cardio and then abs.  It was all good stuff...here's a few screen shots:

This is part of the warm-up

This is a good example of a kick-butt part.  She has you get in this squat position and hold it for what seems like forever while you do shoulder presses.  Ouch!

I enjoyed the pushups and the planks and all the other fun stuff she throws at you.

All-in-all the workout met my needs.  I watched level 3 after I was done and I think if I were looking for a more intense workout I'd do level 2 followed by level 3 (skipping the cool-down at the end of level 2 of course).  I had a couple of complaints, the main one being that Jillian will stop what she's doing to point out how the others are doing the exercise, but she gives no warning and a couple times I thought she was stopping because we were changing exercises.  Also, she doesn't tell you how many reps you're doing, which makes it harder for me mentally.  If I know I'm doing 15 I'll focus on that and it helps a lot.  Finally, the cool-down stretching was really skimpy but what can you do in 2 minutes?  I'd just do more on my own.  But the workout itself was plenty tough - I was sweating like crazy at one point and had to stop and breathe sometimes - I couldn't keep up!  Like I said, it was a good workout and met my needs perfectly today.  Glad I had it around.  I'm sure I'll use it again for days like today.