Lies!! All Lies!!

That’s right!! I LIED!!! With the best intentions of course.

Ok so for the past few days I’ve been doing the 30 Day Shred in place of my normal treadmill run. I started it because we moved and the treadmill is currently banished to a TVless basement. Now, running on that thing with entertainment is torture enough, but I refuse to run without any distractions. (Music just isn’t enough for me.) Thus the 30 Day Shred. I started it with every intention of simply replacing my normal M-F routine with this DVD. Then I got ambitious and said maybe I would do it for the full 30 days straight… LIES! The very next Saturday I took the day off… and the next day… and the next day (Well kinda… I’ll get to that.)

The past few weeks I have been a stress bucket. This is not normal for me. Usually I am optimistic and upbeat… a genuinely happy person. Well, moving is stressful… getting sick is stressfull… unpacking is stressfull… cleaning the old house is stressful… the list goes on. In the midst of all this stress I was severely lacking my favorite time of the day - “me time”. It’s the time when I get a break. It used to be the time when I would run to a TV show for an hour, then make lunch, then veg out until the grumbletron woke up (yes “Grumbletron” - it is one of my hubby’s nicknames for the girl.) My “me time” has been non-existent lately. Sadly the Shred is partially to blame. You see, if I’m watching workout people while working out I’m not getting any kind of treat. I love my TV shows. They are a pleasant escape from reality… I only get to watch one per day… Somewhere in the inner depths of my brain Desperate Housewives makes me feel warm and fuzzy while Jillian Michaels only makes me feel muscle pain.

Not to say that it’s a bad workout - it’s not!! But I can’t sacrifice my sanity for a good workout.

“So,” you ask, “How are you going to keep up your exercise?” Good question! For the past two days I have run very tight very dumb looking circles around my living room while the TV plays. Yesterday Ugly Betty watched me alternate walking and running… doing jumping jacks when that got old… butt kicks when that was hard… jump rope (without the rope) when my legs were about to fall off…. then rinse and repeat. I figure as long as I’m moving for the full TV show that I’m getting in something. And hear me on this, I am most certainly breaking a sweat and feeling it!

Ultimately I would like to get into a routine where I run 3 days a week and do something like The Shred for 2 days. Muscle building is very important to the weight loss process and I don’t want to neglect it!! But I also don’t want to be the scary stress monster from the swamp of doom. It’s a compromise.

So what have we learned here? 1.) You can get cardio in anywhere. You don’t have to have a treadmill or a gym membership to burn some calories. (Oh and yes, you “state the obvious” people out there, I do plan on getting outside and running, but it’s been cold and rainy so that much more logical solution will have to wait.) And 2.) you need to find something that’s right for you. The Shred is not right for me. On a workout stance it is AWESOME and I would love to do it… while watching Grey’s Anatomy… maybe I’ll write down the intervals and figure out a way to do it without watching it, but the bottom line is the video does not work for me.

Quick warning because I’m OCD… it’s easy just to say “I don’t enjoy any exercise so I guess I won’t do it”. Every exercise super stinks in the beginning. I do not enjoy working out and people who do disturb me. (No, seriously if you love working out I will look at you with a mixture of awe and respect while wondering what kind of extraterrestrial species you are.) That said, some things work better than others. The point is to keep moving!!