For a while now, I've been reading accounts of bloggers doing Jillian Michaels' 30-Day Shred and having great success with it. Motherhood Uncensored has a whole site dedicated to the Shred. Back in April, I ordered the 30-Day Shred DVD from Netflix, bought myself a yoga mat and hand weights, and then made a bunch of excuses about why I had to wait to start doing it! Then two of the bloggers I read became Shredheads. Lindsay at Suburban Turmoil began Shredding recently, as did Frema at What Are You Looking At?. Inspired by these two ladies beating me, I finally got around to doing the Level 1 workout today. I took 'before' pictures, and those will NOT be shared here! I'm not that brave yet. I might share them with the 'after' pictures later. If you think there's a compelling reason you need to see them, email me.
I plan to gauge my progress by waist/hip measurements, the way my clothes fit, and improvements in strength and endurance. I guess I will measure the last two by whether I can do pushups or play with kids without feeling like dying. I carry most extra weight between my waist and knees, so I think that measurements other than waist and hip won't show much change, unless I gain a lot of muscle. I took all the measurements anyway, just to see what happens. I don't plan to weigh myself very often, since I am hoping to gain muscle. Also, I don't have access to a scale. I wrote out my weight history in my last post.
My starting measurements are:
Neck: 12.5"
Bicep: 11"
Upper Arm: 11"
Ribcage: 28.5" (bust measurements are useless, since it changes hourly because of breastfeeding)
Waist: 28"
Hips: 37.75"
Upper Thigh: 21.75"
Calf: 12.75"
Weight: 123# (I am 5'3", FYI)
Clothes: Size 8 is not comfortable. Size 6? ha ha ha
Strength: Not much (yeah, I know that's not much of a quantitative measurement, sorry)
Endurance: OK (again with the not-so-quantitative). I 'ran' a few weeks ago, and made it 13 minutes. When I calculated my pace later, I was doing a 17-minute mile. I could probably crawl faster than that, so this is not much endurance.
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Hm, I might have to check out this shredding thing. I've been desperate to get in shape but totally at a loss. Most home-based programs seem to require some kind of expensive equipment. Running is too hard on my joints right now but I need some cardio. Thanks for the idea!
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