No pain no gain? At the halfway point of the 30 day shred.

Ok so before I got pregnant I was in decent enough shape although I had been a bit lazy with exercise for about a year before so I wasn’t anywhere near as fit as I should have been. Pregnancy came along and with that extreme morning sickness and insomnia which meant that I really didn’t feel up to exercise so although I didn’t put on more weight than your average pregnant woman I felt so unfit.

Since having Izzy I have wanted to lose the baby weight but when I dieted strictly I found I had little energy to look after my bundle of fun and I’d rather be healthy and happy. I struggled to find the time and motivation to start up an exercise routine but when my sister gave me a stepper and I found it exhausting after 5 minutes I realised it was time! A lovely lady I follow on twitter had been talking about The 30 Day Shred and how it was working for her so after a bit of google research I decided to buy it from iTunes. As I wasn’t sure if I would be able to handle it I only bought the first video which was a bargain at £3.99. The idea is you do level 1 until you are ready for level 2 then onto level 3 to finish.

This is how it works:

30ds is a combination of strength, cardio and abs. The whole workout from warm up to cool down lasts just 25 minutes and it is totally doable even if like me you are ridiculously unfit. The trainer is Jillian Anderson (biggest loser USA personal trainer) who I had not heard of before but now just the sound of her voice makes me feel sick. This is a good thing, you are not supposed to like her. There are two intensity levels you can choose for (most of) the different exercises and I started off ( very sensibly) with the easier option. I found the first session hard and almost quit after the first circuit but somehow I continued and felt tired but pretty pleased with myself afterwards. The next day I ached a LOT but I carried on and for the following 9 days I used level 1.

On day 10 I felt able to complete the higher intensity exercises of level 1 and wasn’t feeling too uncomfortable the following morning so I moved onto level 2 which was a shocker!! It was so much harder but I am now on day 16 and am so happy that I have pushed myself to get this far. I have skipped a few days as had a pretty nasty flu bug but it just means it will take me that little bit longer to complete the 30 days. So I now have 14 days left of the challenge and don’t quite feel ready to move onto level 3 in fact I am little scared at what it might entail but I am aiming to switch at day 20. Wish me luck.

The results so far:

I didn’t measure myself all over as most people do at the beginning of the shred which maybe I should have but I did weigh myself and so far I’ve lost 6&1/2 lbs which I have to attribute to this as although I have been cutting back for a while I’m not strictly dieting. I am also starting to feel more toned all over already, my arms, legs and bum feel so much better than before and my clothes fit better and the best part is that I’m only giving up 25 minutes of my day to do it. I mostly do the exercises whilst Izzy is napping but she will occasionally play next to me or try to get involved in her walker as I do them and she finds it pretty funny.

I would definitely recommend this to anyone who wants to get back into exercising, as although it’s difficult there are ways to modify the exercises if you can’t handle them and you see/feel results very quickly which is an excellent motivator.

New things that I hate: Jillian Anderson, planks, walking push ups, plank jacks, plank thrusts etc etc.

After the shred I may consider trying Insanity so if anyone has done that let me know how you got on.