The 30 Day Shred

This post is more for me than anyone else. I think I tend to do better at things when I write them down, especially in a public forum.

This week I started the Jillian Michaels 30 day shred, which is a workout program that is very popular with new moms. Here are my thoughts and goals in relation to this undertaking.

Where I am now and where I want to be:
I pretty much have lost all the weight I gained in pregnancy. I think I gained 25 lbs total and about 20 of that fell off within the first month, just by breastfeeding and, well, not having a person inside me. The rest came off by month 4 or 5. I can fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans which is great, but I doubt I could buy those jeans in the size they are in brand new, if you know what I mean. And while they fit, they don't look good because of the "mommy tummy" and thighs I have acquired! As for new-ish clothes, I have probably gone up a size, and NONE of my tops fit me correctly (which again is probably because of breastfeeding.) HOWEVER, while these are all great things and I am blessed, I needed to lose about 10-15 lbs before I got pregnant to begin with! I really want to be back to my "wedding weight," give or take a few pounds, which is actually a very healthy weight for me and not at all my lowest or most obsessive weight. I really think I can get there and still have a healthy "mom body." Even if the weight does not come off, I REALLY need to tone up and build endurance. I mean, I am carrying around a progressively bigger child every day! I need to keep up with her! Also, I know myself and when I get unhappy with myself physically, my self image goes down the tubes and I get to a dangerous place. God made my body and it is His temple, so I need to care for it, respect it and not hate it! I am doing this to inspire a lifestyle in myself that glorifies God through being healthier!

Why I chose Jillian:
Honestly, I chose Jillian because the workout segments are 20 minutes long (so totally do-able with a baby) and because I actually personally know people who have personally tried this workout or have read "real" testimonies of it working. It does not claim to make you perfect or require you to go through a crazy long routine coupled with a crazy diet. The promise is simple: you do the workout every day for 30 days, and you lose up to 20 lbs. The understanding is you are making healthy choices while you do the workout (so no fast food every day or anything,) but again, there is no meal plan.

What are the workouts like:
There are three 20 minute workouts, that get harder by level. It is recommended that you do each level for 10 days and then progress to the next one, though some women skip level 1 (not me!) Each 20 minute workout consists of several cycles. First there is a one minute warm up with active stretching. Then you do three 6 minute cycles which consist of 3 minutes of strength (hand weights,) 2 minutes of cardio, and one minute of abs. Each cycle is different, and often you repeat exercises more than once within a cycle. After the 18 minutes of working out, there is a 1 minute cooldown of static stretching. This 3-2-1 method uses something called muscle confusion to burn fat and build muscle, and if you go on Jillian's website, it is based in a lot of science. It makes sense when you think about it, and if you hate a certain part of excercise (like for me, it is using weights,) it is OK because you only do it for like 2 minutes at a time! Jillian Michaels is a really good trainer too (she is from the t.v. show The Biggest Loser,) and she leads the workout in an encouraging and intense way that makes me want to push through it!

How I am doing it:
I do want to do 30 days of shredding, but I am giving myself six weeks to complete it, exercising 5 days a week in the beginning with a 2 day on, 1 day off approach. Therefore, I understand that my results are going to be a bit slower and probably not as drastic. Why am I doing it this way? Well for one, I have not worked out in a while. In college, I used to be a workout-a-holic and took spinning and pilates classes severael times a week, but even then it was not daily. I can't imagine it is good for my body in general to go from very little to daily workout with no warning. Secondly, I have juvenile rhumetoid arthritis which will surely be impacted by this. When I work out, I have to be aware of my joints and not over-work them, lest they flare up. I have been in remission for a while, but even day 1 yielded some pain in my knees. Finally, even after the 30 days are over, I find it unlikely that I would continue to have time to work out every single day. I want this workout to inspire a healthy lifestyle where exercising becomes a habit, and I realistically can't see myself getting into the habit of doing something like this daily. Not to mention the fact that with a mobile baby, I am getting some activity in whether I have a dvd on or not. So I have until September 30 to complete this shred, and then hopefully I will buy some new clothes!

What about food:
Well, again the workout does not require a dietary plan, though it is with the understanding that you are eating wisely and healthy. I do not always eat wisely and healthy, however I have not re-gained any weight back since I had Lorelei. I am trying to meal plan better, snack less (or at least only snack purposefully,) and not eat more than one helping at dinner unless I am famished. The nice thing with breastfeeding is you have a little grace there. I am burning like 300-500 calories per day (well that is the average at least) and am supposed to consume more than normal. All that said, I have heard that it is common to couple the 30 Day Shred with Weight Watchers.

My impressions so far:
It is HARD! The 20 minutes are intense and Jillian definitely kicks my butt. However, it is totally a workout that I can DO and that feels good. I work up a sweat and I hurt the next day, but I am not dying or anything. I feel good about myself and am excited to see how this goes!

Thanks for the support, encouragement and prayers!

Missing her...

It is 11 p.m. and I am in our room. Allen is asleep. I am not (obviously.) I tend to get second winds late at night these days, which stinks because 5 am (Lorelei's average first feeding) comes rather early, and this morning it took an hour to get her back to sleep. Anyway, my daughter has been sleeping in her own room for a little over a week now. Maybe it was not the greatest idea to keep our baby in our room for five months. It seems that most parents do it for like 6-12 weeks. But it felt right for us. And even though the habit was harder for me to break than her, I would do it again with subsequent children. It is just such a beautiful experience. And I must say, I miss her. I miss leaning over and hearing her sigh or feeling her breathe. I miss snuggling with her after Allen left for work, or being able to just lean over and pick her up to feed. I liked having her in our room and she was never a bother to me (well until she started waking up 3-4 times a night again...that was no fun.) Now, I have the static of a monitor keeping me company, and in order to lay my hand on her back and feel it rise and fall, I need to walk across my house. It is storming tonight, and I wanted to bring her back in here to sleep, (in case she got scared,) and then I admitted that she probably has no idea it is thundering outside or what that means or that she could be afraid of it someday. So there she sleeps.



I do not know how parents who sleep on different floors of the house do it!

My latest favorite picture:

Re-Decorating

I have always loved to decorate. When I was a child, my bedrooms were always covered with posters (normally Beauty and the Beast and Audrey Hepburn- not much in my interests have changed.) When my college roommate of three semesters and I moved into our little studio apartment (as in ONE room + a bathroom,) we took hours getting movie posters and calendars and pictures of old movie actresses up. I made big collages of photos of my friends and (now) husband. I framed my bed with cards and letters. I hung artwork drawn by the kids I babysat on the walls.
While that type of decorating definitely had personality and was very appropriate for that time in my life, once I got my own home I decided I needed to start decorating a bit more like a "grown up" and a bit less like a college student. Unfortunately, I always had one major downfall: I seem to have a tendency to be majorly cluttered. Allen's and my first home (a tiny rented townhouse) had lovely pictures on the walls, but every surface was covered in knick knacks, figurines, mementos from our wedding and just...random crap! But it worked for us because we did not intend to stay there too long.
We moved in November of last year to our first home of our own, a place we intend to stay in for another several years, and I was excited to decorate...but was also about 4 months pregnant! This meant that the nursery was beautiful finished, while the rest of the rooms followed the same pattern every other place I have ever lived; lots of random stuff covering every surface.
For a while, I was content with this. We were on a budget, I tried to achieve some sort of "order" to my clutter, and if anything, my home was full of memories. But now that I am a stay home mom, I sometimes get choked with the clutter. It is just SO much to keep tidy and to keep out of reach of small children who come to visit (and soon our small child who will be mobile before we know it.) Additionally, I kept being a little bit jealous of my friends who had really cohesive rooms in their houses which looked like something out of a Real Simple magazine. Their rooms were not just full of family pictures and knick knacks; they had art and simplicity and flowers and themes. I wanted that.
However, there was still a problem; I am still on a budget (like MAJOR) and have a little one around keeping me from concentrated decorating time. So, I gave myself a good long week, and I enlisted the help of one of my best friends (Justine) and my mother. Justine has one of those apartments that I described above. She has an incredible gift for taking a bunch of random things from the dollar store or your kitchen cabinets (like for instance, a wine glass, a mirror, a candle and a couple of silk flowers,) and creating something really artistic. I knew she would be able to look at my limited resources and create something beautiful. My mom is extremely good at organizing, speed cleaning and keeping my daughter happy. The three of us made a great team.
So, here is what we did:

Budget: $20. Seriously. This is what I had to spend on decor. We spent another 20 printing some pictures and buying nails, but that does not count. For the alloted $20 we bought (at the Dollar Tree):
-1 hand towel
-3 bunches of fake roses/greenery
-2 four feet strands of fake ivy
-2 packs of votives (four total)
-3 small baskets
-2 magnetic dry erase boards (one was a weekly calendar, one was normal)
-One pack of shells
-3 bunches of plastic grapes
-1 mesh wire letter tray
-1 bottle of water (because shopping makes you thirsty!)

Here are some of the items from home that we used:

-a bunch of mismatched vases
-little glass beads
-silk roses I had laying around the house
-about a gazillion pictures and frames
-some gold lacy cloth stuff
-some greeting cards
-big books to pile things on
-a large wall shelf (actually more like 5 shelves joined together) which we took got from a pile of "trash" on the side of the road in my parents' development.
(BEST TIP EVER: Go for a walk around a nice neighborhood the night before trash day. You will be shocked at what people throw out! Lorelei also has a gorgeous wooden dollhouse as a result of this.)

Here are the rooms we tackled:
EVERY ROOM IN THE HOUSE
(3 bedrooms, 1 hall bathroom, living room, dining room, kitchen.)

Anyway, it may not make sense, but these items together created quite a beautiful decor for our home! Our rooms have "color palates" (sort of) and not every single surface is covered with a million things, but I still feel like my memories and creativity are being preserved. I will post pictures and details on what we did to each room when we are done; but for now, I am going to bed in my "new-to-me" bedroom!

Beautiful Lorelei

I love this sequence from the beach house...




She is just so precious! I thank God for my girl :-)

Steam of Consciousness

One of my favorite bloggers (www.kellehampton.com- bookmark this and read it. It is good for the heart. Seriously I am not kidding!) frequently does these posts of randominity. So I am going to try it because I do not have the energy to think up a creative, topical post. Now of course, Kelle's are filled with gorgeous photography, but whatever. Here I go.

We are at the beach. Lorelei and I are currently in a beautiful beach house with my mom, dad, brother (+ 1 friend) and sister (+1 friend) and two obnoxious dogs. Allen will be joining us tomorrow. I love being surrounded by family and feel a bit less lonely and overwhelmed than I do most days. I am still getting used to the Stay at Home Mom thing.

So for the past three weeks, I have been super congested and stuffy. For two of those three weeks, I felt like I had been hit with a truck and had to even take it easy around the house. I thought it was my less-than-great immune system responding to my new lack of sleep (and yes, we are still partying at 4 am. on a regular basis,) but then my husband and child started showing the same systems. Yes, I gave my daughter her first cold. Except she has this pathetic little cough to go with it, and it breaks my heart to hear her little congested breaths. And let me tell you, the only thing that is worse than shooting salt water from a high pressure can into your nasal cavaties only to have it burn down the back of your throat, is to do the same to your almost-five-month-old. Ugh. It makes me feel awful.

Tonight while walking on the streets than ran off the boardwalk, we wandered into what looked like a bookstore. But it was so much more than a bookstore; it just kept going and going with box and toys and dress up clothes and puppets and one of the best children's sections I had ever seen. We bought Lorelei two books: Madeline and Pat the Bunny. I wanted to buy her the whole store. I want my daughter to read (or hear me read) every book she could ever want and every book I have ever loved. I find that our reading list is a little much for a baby right now. We are more likely to be found reading poetry (everything from Shakespeare to Shel Silverstein,) than little baby books (though I LOVE Sandra Boynton,) but I am sure my days of "see the dog. The dog barks. Bark, dog, bark" are coming. And side note, but I think I would love to be a children's book author. I mean seriously, I have read a lot of childrens' books and while some are pure genius (see link above,) some are like a bunch of random nouns strewn together with embellished stick figures. And people get paid for that? Sign me up!

And speaking of paying for things, does anyone have this toy? Sophie the Giraffe is apparently nicknamed "baby crack" because it is the most addictive (but beneficial, unlike crack) baby chew toy out there. I am missing something though...it is a giraffe, and a strange one at that, which cost eighteen dollars. And if I pay this $18, my daughter is going to stick it in her mouth and nom on it all day. Worth the cost? I also have this sound machine on our wish list, to aide in our transition from our room to The Crib. Yeah. That hasn't happened yet either.

Anyway, I will leave you, my two or three faithful readers, with a couple of pics, and am going to go try Grottos Pizza again and see if I like it this year.