Making the Cut: Day 8

Now that we have our plane tickets bought for Spring Break, I am reminded on a daily basis that bathing suit season isn't that far away (my daughter has a countdown going until we are on the beach...gee, think she's looking forward to the vacation?).


Anyway, even though I have lost almost all the weight I wanted to, and gotten almost to the size I wanted to be, I wasn't quite there. And though I didn't gain anything over Christmas, the three weeks off from working out and cookie-based meals (cookies are FAB for breakfast, if you ask me!) weren't exactly a help to my physique.

I had turned on the On Demand Exercise TV the other day and tried out one of Jillian Michaels' workouts. She's the trainer on The Biggest Loser--and when you watch those people drop 15 pounds in one week you wonder what on earth she's doing right. So I tried the workout, which she does with a half dozen or so contestants from The Biggest Loser. These folks are in the middle of their weight loss journey, so they're still battling a bit of a bulge and they were doing all that Jillian asked of them--which take it from, was NOT easy. But it wasn't killer, if that makes sense. It was a tough workout, that made me feel like "wow" afterwards. I thought if she could do that in 20 minutes, what about a longer workout?

So I went to the bookstore and picked up Making the Cut, which is designed for people who have less than 20 pounds to lose and who want to just finish that toning/sculpting process. It's a diet and exercise plan, based on how you metabolize food.

I looked at it, thought it was doable, and set right to work the next day. The diet is definitely livable--most days I have trouble getting in all the calories I'm supposed to have. I think that's because there's lots of fiber in the diet, so that fills me up, and I'm not hungry enough to eat that much. But when I do as she advises and stick to my BMR number of calories every day, I do lose weight. The recipes are actually quite good, especially considering it's "diet" food. There's a salmon with prosciutto that I loved, and a chicken and black bean burrito that my whole family loved. The Apricot Glazed chicken was okay, not great, and the stuffed eggplant was fabulous. And healthy :-)

And I've done the workouts faithfully. She wants you to do the circuits twice, which I try to do, though I'm not successful every time. It's a constant, fast-paced interval training workout, with dumbbells and a little gym equipment, and one-minute bursts of either jump rope, treadmill or running sprints in between each circuit. I'm sweaty, tired and ready to fall down at the end of it, LOL.

Okay, so I'm eight days in (out of 30 total in the book) and what have been the results?

I've lost 6 pounds. I've lost an inch off my waist, an inch off my hips, an inch off my thighs. (My daughter always asks me where all that weight goes...I tell her it goes to her size 0 hips, LOL).

I'm committed to this 30 days, though I do have a wedding to go to this weekend, so that's going to make things hard, and a basketball game, where the siren call of a beer and pretzel are going to be hard to resist. If I just keep trying on that swimsuit, though, I think I can stick to it ;-)

Shirley