I did it!!!!! I woke up this morning and did the video! I have a new work schedule (which I'm still trying to come to terms with) I used to work 8-6:30 Tuesday through Friday. I'd have to be up at 6am to leave by 7, since I work 36 miles from home. This is why all of my workouts had to be after work. I just couldn't bring my self to get up at 5am to do any sort of exercise besides breathing.

Well starting this week I'm working Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 10-6:30 and Wednesday 9-5:30. Some how I wasn't able to get up and work out the last two days but this morning (when I had to leave by 8am) I was able to get up and do it. I'm actually really proud of my self because I LOVE to sleep. When my alarm went off I just kept saying "get up, come one, lets go GET UP!!!!" lol

The work out was difficult. I have a hard time breathing when doing this level. I do have asthma which is both due to allergies, exercise and anything else that can agitate it. Just the shear fact that I'm doing cardio at all is fantastic. In School I was sooo miserable, that was before Advair (which I have a love-hate relationship with) and my asthma made me so sick and in gym I just wanted to crawl up in a ball and cry. When I started running a few years ago EVERY one was shocked, including me. I think I should keep in mind how far I have come since then, and not beat myself up when I can't do the workout just perfect, and without stopping for even a second. I'm getting better. I know I'm hard on myself.

I think the best advice I could give right now is that no matter how hard the video is KEEP MOVING! She says it a few times during the workout. And that I think is very important. Even when I think I'm about to die and I don't think I can do anymore, I keep going just not at such a huge impact. I don't stop, except for a couple seconds right before that jump and twist move. By that point I'm practically gasping for air.

As far as results. I don't see or feel any, in the sense of weight loss or inches lost. People around me say I look good, and that they can tell a difference but I really wonder if they're just saying it. I'll keep going, thats for sure.

I guess the real testament will be when my dress gets in.

We re-ordered a 6 (after the 10 fell off me) and at the body size I was then (2/14/09) they were going to need to take in the boobs and maybe let out the hips a tiny bit. My goal is for them to not have to let out ANY thing. I know there's nothing short of implants that I can do about the boobage lol. But my dress is already coming in 3 weeks before the wedding and I want them to have to do as little work as possible.

Last night after work I did my 4th day on level 2. I was hoping to do it yesterday morning but that hadn't worked. This work out is still kicking my butt. I have to do the "easy" way for the plank jacks and the other plank where your supose to jump back and forth. I'm also doing the easy one for the ab work where you are to use the weights. no way I can do those yet!

I'm also having some difficulty with the lunging forward and backword while doing the hand weights. At first I can go all the way down in the lunge and even touch my knee to the floor but by the time I'm almost done with the second leg I'm only going half way down.

I do have to admit I LOVE the walking push ups. I don't know why but I actually think they are fun! lol.

I didn't make it to the gym last night. I instead caught up on House and watched the season finale! Love that show!

ok, it's taken me a couple of days to post this, but better late than never right? I did day 3 on level 2 on Saturday morning. I actually did it before my Wedding Shower! (Which was so great). I know I had a little more endurance on this day. I think it helped that I hadn't worked for 10 hours before doing it. I'm still doing the easy sets, not following "Natalie" but I'm just happy that I'm doing it! Those planks really kill me. I'm switching between my 5 lb weights and those cans of fruit and that seems to be helping.

I also bought that making the cut book. I haven't been able to do anything with it yet as far as the 30 day diet or workout, but I've almost finished reading the entire thing and I love it. I can't wait to actually start using it.

Today it the 12th and I haven't been to the gym yet. I wanted to start yesterday but it just didn't work out for me. I also haven't done The Shred since Saturday. Sunday was mother's day and I was very busy. And yesterday I wasn't feeling well. I was going to do it this morning but slept too late lol. Man I'm full of excuses. But I will do it again tonight...oh joy :-)

This level is sooo much harder for me. I'm having a hard time keeping proper form. The plank position is very difficult. I start the move and think "oh this is easy" and then I realize that I'm in push up position not plank and then I can't take it lol. Both tonight and last night I actually felt like I was going to throw up. What the heck is that about?!?! I don't have too much more to say yet. It's hard, and I hate it, and I just wish we could all her perfect bodies without ever having to work and we could eat all the oreos and chewy oatmeals cookies we want.

I'm litterally still panting. Crap that was a tough workout!!!!! I have never sweat so much in my life. Wow, all day long I couldn't wait to get home and do level 2, and at the begining I was thinking "oh this isn't so bad" That lasted about 4 mins. After that I was done. And oh my god.........those stomach exercises I was so excited about?!? What the hell is my problem??? I couldn't do one! lol. Like I said before I hold on to the bottom of my bed frame or I put my hands under my butt, I have NO idea how I'm going to do these. I even put down the weights and tried it the "easy" way.....I truley don't know how to work up that muscle I guess.

Ok, I'm not panting any more. I think that means I have a good recovery time. If I know correctly the longer it take you to recover the worse shape your in lol. It only took me about 6 mins. My arms already feel like jello. Boy oh boy, can I just stay at level 1?

Ok, I've had a few people ask me about this. I finished it the day before Valentines Day so I can't remember every single element of it. I thought for sure I had posted about it but I don't see it in my categories so I might have just mentioned it here and there.

Basically it is a juice fast, you may also have heard it called The Lemonade Diet, The Syrup Diet or the Cayenne Diet. Now, if you haven't figured it out already....this diet consisits of lemon juice, grade B maple syrup and cayenne pepper. There is a very small book you can buy  that goes over any questions you might have, how to do the cleanse, and tips and advice. I had googled this SOOOOO much that by the time I did get to the book store I just sat in one of their chairs and skimmed through the whole thing in about 30 mins. The advantage to reading about it on-line is that you will come across MANY blogs that people have done to follow them through this. Also any advice, instructions, reasons, explanations, all of this is online for you and it's easy to find.

The only adivce I can give is to really prepare your self for doing this. Know that it is HARD, but that it is worth it. It's really big on washing the toxins out of your body, so if you don't believe you have toxins in your body either don't do it, or do it for the weight loss effects. Which is pretty much why I did it. I do believe there are toxins that can be built up but I really was doing this to stop drinking so much damn coffee, loose weight and feel better. The fast instructs you to drink only filtered water, use organic lemons (no using the lemon juice you buy from the store, for many reasons). I used the filtered water for the actual juice mix only, but then through out the day I drank tap water. Again this is up to you and if you think you are consuming toxins from the tap water drink only the filtered.

It does take time to prepare the juice mix. If you want the full benefits of this fast you should not make more than a days worth at once. If you make more than that some of the nutrients die. When I did it I would come home from work and make enough for the entire next day. I put it in 3 16 oz water bottles (roughly) which equaled 6 servings and split it up through out the day. You really need a fridge or some way of keeping the lemonade cold. You have to allow for enough time to actually squeez the lemons, this does take a while and again don't do more than a days worth. You also need Grade B Mable Syrup. It is a little expensive but you won't use more than one bottle. I can't remember how big my bottle was but it was $14.00 and I bought it at Whole Foods (I coulnd't find a single grocrie store that carried it.) You don't want to use the regular table syrup because Grade B has extra nutrients you really need (seeing as how this is THE only thing you are consuming). Also Cayenne pepper. This was really hard to get used to. Put in only 1/8th of a teaspon at first, then work up to more. The more you can tolorate the better. Please look up all of the benefits of this part, I know the peper has nutirents, it also helps your metabolisiam (or so we're told) and has some other good properties about it. Other than that you mix those three ingrediants with water and then drink lots of water on top of that.

If I remember right you are suposed to drink 6-12 servings a day. If you want to lose more weight stay at the low end of that, if your just detoxing stay on the high end. Also each serving calls for two table spoons of the syrup. I did one, again because I was doing it for weight loss.

The biggest thing I can warn you about is Day 3...This is where most people give up and I almost did. Apparantly this is true for smoking, drinking and thing you are addicted too (yes even food). But if you can get past that third day your in the clear. For me day 7 and 8 were also difficult but I'm not sure why. Not as bad as day 3. Also, DO NOT COOK FOR ANYONE! At LEAST during those first 3-4 days. Trust me, you will not be able to stop your self from nibbling on every thing and eventually giving up. This is in EVERY blog and website I read. People eating around you is difficult those first few days but after that it gets better. My sense of smell was AMAZING the entire time lol.

As far as energy. You will have plenty. I did at least, and this is also something I read a lot about. Most people keep up theri workout routine and reported having more energy and working out better because of it. I did use water with electrolights in it while working out but I don't think many do. I didn't get any headaches after the 3rd day, and I think those were due to the caffine withdrawl.

Oh,....I almost forgot about the laxatives. There are two. The first one is in the morning. You are supose to drink I think 16 oz of water with Sea Salt, A lot of sea salt. It tastes HORRIBLE and I only did it 3 times. And those three times were on my three days off. If you wake up early enough and give your self about an hour to hour and a half before leaving the house you'll be fine. This part is really gross. I'm sure it would have been worse if I had done it the first few days, but since I waited till about day 4,5,6 my insides didn't have much to get rid of lol. It's bassically water coming out. Lets say you normally leave your house at 7am, drink it by 5:30 - 5:45 and then you should be fine.

The laxative at night is a tea. The tea tastes good, and for some people have as different effects. For me I would take it at 9 and wake up at 2 0 3 am and have to REALLY use the bathroom. That would last at leave 15 mins (again I know this is gross) but it didn't bother me too much. Again you'd have to do a trail and error your self.

All in all I thought this was great. I will most likely be doing it again before the wedding, and I'm actually kinda excited to do it. Afterwords I craved the juice.Some people go on drinking it witj breakfast (I think the book even reccomoneds it). I know there are websites that help Ease you into the fast, that is not what I did, lol I just jumped right in. But at the end it's VERY important to do exactly what is rec before you start eating solid foods. They have a vegitarian option and a meat eater option. I used a combo. I didn't do the whole 10 days, I did 8 and then started the "ease out" for the last two days. Otherwise its 10 days with ONLY the juice and then you eas into it. One more thing I just remembered, they suggest using Orange Juice as your first "real day of eating". Orange juice has always upset my stomach but I thought I'd try it any way (I have this problem where I feel like I have to do every thing by the book.) and then I found out I'm allergic to it. I started getting little hives and my mouth was very itchy, and that was the onl;y thing I drank so I knew it had to be that. I switched to 100% pure squezed Grape Fruit Juice. I'd do 8 oz of water to 8 oz of juice. I loved drinking that.

Well, I'm sorry if there are any typos, and if it's not very clear jsut ask me. I'm at work and checking in pt's.

Good luck and please feel free to leave a comment. When you do I get an e-mail and I can e-mail you back directly 

I thought I'd make this a different post. I wanted to keep The Shred sperate.

I'm a little upset that I don't believe I've lost any weight at all. I was teetering between 122 - 125 and I don't think it's gone down at all. If anything after our Florida trip it's now between 125 and 126. I know some of that was retained water from the flight and alcohol and no workouts and lots a crab. But still disconserting either way. I also don't think I've lost any inches. I know it's only been 10 days of working out but come on! Give me some thing to work with. I think that's all I'm dissapointed with as far as the work out. I'm really trying to keep going and be positive but it's hard. I think part of my prbolem is tht I was at 137 or so a couple months ago. I did The Master Cleanse and lost 15 lbs!!! I only did it for 9 or 10 days, I can't remember right now, I think it's supose to be 14, anyway, I lost a lot of weight really fast. The best thing about it was I felt GREAT! I wasn't drinking coffee, I was sleeping soooo much better at night, I'd wake up long before my alarm (5:30am) I didn't have headaches, my allergies and asthma was better. I felt amazing. Then of course you slowly start eating and for me after a few days of eating really well it all kinda fell apart. I was still going to the gym every other day for 2 months. But then we went to Rome and it's been down hill until now. I'm doing this Shred video hoping I'll get back into things. BTW I only gained back 2-3 lbs. I did really good on it.

I hope I'll see results soon.

My goals: I bought "Making The Cut" By Jillian Michaels today and am about to flip through it. I'd like to try to follow some of the reciepes, but I don't have a lot of money right now, and I know some elaborate cooking at home can get expensive. I'll look through it to see what I can do. I'd also like to do what ever work out she has in there. And next week I'm going to start going to the gym 4 times a week. I hope with all of this working out I'll see some differences in my body.

My biggest issue (no pun intended) is my thighs and butt. Those are the HARDEST places for me, as most women, to loose weight. It drives me crazy. Of course all my first fat came right off my already too small boobs lol. My second issue is the backs of my arms. Have you ever seen "The Sweetest Thing" ? You know when they are looking in the mirror and Christina Apllegate is flapping her arm back in the air..." What is this???" lol THAT part. I know the exercises I need to do to get rid of it, but I'm not doing them. My FI said that just by loosing weight I'll notice that fat will start going away, and then to work on strenghening them. He also said that most of the workouts in Level one will help this as well.

Ok, I'm done venting. I feel a little better now. Even if no one reads this, I feel like someone is listening.

Wow! I was sweating like a pig! I didn't stop for one second, I did everything has hard as I could, if someone would have been standing in front of me during those punch/squats they would have died! lol. I should mention that part of my sweating was due to the fact that my bedroom door and window were shut ALL day and I'm upstairs so it was HOT! Either way, sweating = more calorie burn. I really feel like I got in a really good workout. Maybe part if it was because I knew after tonight I was done with level one.

Things I noticed: Each workout at some point my left side will hurt. I can breath through it but it's still painful. I'm sure most of you know what I'm talking about. I get it when running mostly. Tonight though I didn't feel any pain until the last set of jumping jacks and it was very brief. I did the chest flys, dumb bell rows/squats with the 5 lbs weight and then the sqaut/shoulder press and side lunge/shoulder raise with the fruit. The shoulder press was a little eaiser but those shoulder raises (I may not be calling these the right name, I'm talking about the time you raise the weights up to eye level while doing a side lunge) are killing me still! I guess I most not have *any* top shoulder muscles haha. The pushups weren't too bad. Still doing them on my knees. This time though my cat was in my room and he kept trying yo get underneath me, and I couldn't stop laughing. Then he noticed the string on my pants and attacked heehee.

I did sit down right after the workout and watch level 2. I like to know whats coming...and now I'm scared. I am predicting that my thighs are going to huuuurt! Wow! But a couple good things I noticed about the next level:

They seem to have a LOT more energy, very peppy. I like this. I didn't realize the lack of motovation in the first level. I'm sure this is because it's a "warm up" to the next level so they tone it down a little. I like the high energy though. It makes me more motivated and I feel like there is actually someone doing this with me. (even though I have a pretty good feeling they stop recording at some point and start again as if they haven't) Also I saw they do the reverse sit up I LOVE. I mentioned then a few times before. But they go one step further and add the hand weights over your chest. I'm so excited they have these as a work out. I am curious as to how I'll do. normally I have to hold the bottom of my bed or put my hands just under my butt when I do these. It's kinda funny, I end up scooting across the floor otherwise! Let me know if anyone else has ever experianced this heehee. I know if I work REALLY hard on keeping my belly button pushed into the "floor" it's not as bad, but we'll see how I do tomorrow!

I think thats it for tonight. I can't wait to do this tomorrow. Tomorrow I might be singing a different tune....

I know Three Blog Postings in one day is a lot, but I have a lot to say! :-) So, As I said in my earlier post my FI and I were in Florida. We went down there to get some Sand Dollars, Star Fish and Sand. We have flight benefits so that cost us nothing, we found a cheap hotel and car rental and had a great time! We love the beach. Not to mention, we live in Colorado and all of the beach stuff we needed is SO much more expensive here! So, the sand came from the beach,...is that legal? His aunt owns a condo on a private beach, and they pay a lot for that beach, so does that count? lol, we really weren't sure. But we have it now. Then we went around to all of the shell beach stores and bought a TON of stuff! I'm so excited to have all of that. It was fun picking out pretty sand dollars are star fish, we also got some shells. I really want to put the center peices together now but everyone is telling me it's way too soon, lol and they don't want my cat to mistake the sand for his! I guess I don't want to worry about them getting tipped over or broken. I think I'll wait until two weeks before the wedding.

I also bought some little tiny shells, they were only .79 for a scoop from a shot glass, I bought two scoops worth. They have been dyed really pretty colors and I thought I could buy a cute little pouch or box for them and give them to my cousin. She is carrying my train for me, and I'm going to buy her necklace too I think, but I thought she might like this as well.

Today we had our walkthrough with Lionscres and Spice of Life. "Walkthrough" isn't really a good word for it though. My FI, mom, FMIL and I all went up and sat with the owner of Lions and Kathy our contact at Spice and another lady from Spice. I think it took about an hour and we just answered so many questions. Are we going to see eachother before the ceremony, how many in the bridal party, what kind of head table, toasts?, blessing?, first dance?, pictures? linen colors, flowers, oh man, so many questions. I think we got pretty much every thing figured out. I'm really happy to have that done! It's exciting to see how every thing is going to come together and where people will be coming in and sitting and I'm just SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO happy :-)

 We also went to the liquor store that we are going to get our "bar" from and found it that won't cost as much as we thought! Well, my mom and sister are home and they brought me a salad and my cat is sitting on my paper work, I gotta go lol.

 

Alright, I just finished the 9th Day of the Shred. It was a little difficult today. My endurance was deffinantly lacking. This I blame on travel and alcohol lol. My FI and I was to Destin, Florida this weekend and just got back last night. We drank every night we were there and even drank last night when we got home. Drinking will always make your workout less efficient, and you will be less motivated and strong during the entire session. I remember a few years ago my mom had been watching Oprah and she had been talking about her personal trainer. I guess one night she was talking to him about drinking a glass of red wine and he said ok so I'll see you in a few days? They had been working out together every day and she questioned why he wouldn't be back the next day, he went on to explain the effects of just one glass of wine and how badly it will mess with your workout. Now he went into a lot more detail of course, and I can't remember it all but it made sense at the time. And I've noticed it significantly effects my endurance the next day. But, it's not something I'm going to give up. We drink once in a while and I'll still go to the gym, I just know ahead of time that I won't be as productive.

Todays workout proved that. I did do all of the workouts, still the same ones with the can of fruit. I'm begining to think that I shouldn't eat this fruit after I'm done lol. I'm not sure how edible it'll be after I'm done shaking it up. I didn't do any of my extra workouts around the video. But I am hopping that FI and I are going to the gym later this evening. I know I need to.

I'm really going to start stepping up my workout. This video is doing great and I am going to do all 30 days of it, however, for me to get the results I'm looking for I need to add more gym time. I'm going to start going to the gym 4 times a week and do at 40-60 minutes on either the tredmill or eliptical. I'll be keeping my heartrate at the fat burn level which means I have to walk slower and at an incline. I'll do that for 2 of the 4 days and the other 2 days I'll do interval training, basically that just 5 mins of "fatburn" heart rate, which for me is about 145 and then one minute of hard running/elipitcal to get my heartrate up to 160 or a little higher, then slowing it back down to 145 for 5 mins. That will also be for the 40 -60 mins. I'm going to really watch what I'm eating, which I am doing now but I need to eat more veggies and a little less sugar.

I was reading an article the other day on the plane that said if your 4-6 months before the wedding start easing up on the "bad" habits, ie:smoking (I don't), pop, sugar, fats, fried foods alcohol ect. Then at 2 months it said STOP. No more playing around and thinking that your going to make a huge difference if you wait 2 weeks before the wedding. And that where I'm at. This Saturday May 9th will mark the 2 months count down, so I'm really ready to kick my butt into high gear! :-)

Wish me luck! (And I really hope everyone else is reaching their healthy goals!!!)