Mandy - Day 1

Hi, I'm Mandy.  I'm a single mom to a 2 year old girl.  I have wiggly arms and a jiggly belly, and as hot as that sounds, well... I have a new boyfriend - after 3 years of no boyfriend... and I'm definitely spending a lot of time thinking about my belly when I should be thinking about um... other things.

My dear friend Sarah, I suppose, grew tired of hearing me complain about the above (other than the boyfriend) and out of the blue, Amazon.ca'd me "Jillian Michaels - 30 Day Shred".

I LOVED her for this.  Until I did Day One.  Now, we are not speaking are going to blog about the next 30 days of shredding.

The Shred, in a nutshell, is 3 levels of workouts that increase in intensity.  Each lasts 20 minutes (perfect for single, busy moms - like Sarah and I) and it is meant to be done daily.  After 10 days, you go up a level.  Jillian does 3 circuits of 321 - 3 minutes strength, 2 minutes cardio, 1 minute abs... hmmm... I'm addled from my workout... maybe 3 cardio, 2 strength... I was on the verge of blacking out for most of it, despite the fact that I CHEATED I improvised on most of the moves after the first 30 seconds... so excuse me if that is inaccurate...

My starting stats:
33 years old
5'6"
135 lbs

No upperbody training in ... three years.  Holy crap.
Run on a treadmill 2-3x a week for the past 4 months.  Will run 2x a week while I'm shredding.

My goal is to lose 10 lbs and maintain at 125lbs for eternity.  YOU HEAR ME, JILLIAN!  You've got your work cut out for you.  Er. Me.


So, to kick off in high style, I ate 5 slices of large pizza with red peppers, bacon and extra cheese about 1.5 hours before Day 1.

What?  There were red peppers.  Veggies make it a balanced meal, right?

Did I mention I struggle with portion control?   A definite hindrance.

Do NOT NOOOOOT NOOOOOOOOOT begin your shred with a belly over full with pizza.  After my 20 minutes of shredding, I could taste it all over again... ugh.  Seriously.  Not a good idea.

What I learned today:
-I can't do one "man" pushup.  In fact, I couldn't even really do a single "girl" push up.
-I should not have stolen 5lb weights from my brother.  I should have sucked it up and bought 2 lb weights, or better, just held my Doc Martens.  Those suckers are heavy but not crippling.  Maybe for Day 2...
-The aforementioned pizza rule.
- Jillian Michaels is trying to kill me.

I'll institute a daily weigh in starting tomorrow... I'm fairly scatter brained and failed to weight myself on the digital scale at work (because no selfrespecting woman owns a scale... when she can eat five freaking slices of large pizza in a single sitting.)