Day 15

So the first 2 weeks is over and to be honest it wasn't that bad, maybe the calm before the storm, because I've done Jillian dvds before and I knew so much worse was yet to come, and I wasn't disappointed. 

In workout 3 there were alot more moves that I recognise from previous dvds and some new ones thrown in for good measure.  I was mildly terrified that straight away full military (or what I would call MAN push ups) were expected.  A few times in this dvd she tells you to just try something, you might think you can't do it but maybe its because you haven't tried and in this case she was right.  I managed 5 in the first circuit before I had to modify back to girly push ups but that's 5 more than I would have gone for if it hadn't been on the dvd.

Other old favourites were sumo squats with tricep dips and squats with raises.  The cardio intervals were familiar, jump rope and my absolute favourite - half squat and punches.  I think next week I might go for those with weights too.  And then there was something I wasn't really prepared for.....

I've noticed some yoga moves cropping up in these workouts and warm ups and I've been really enjoying that until last night!  As circuit 4 came around Jillian says to get LIGHT weights, now that doesn't often happen so I knew something serious was coming!  So first things first, we get into a tree pose.  Now I don't have the best balance so getting into tree and staying there was a challenge in itself but that wasn't it - of course not, whilst not falling over and breaking my face I had to do lateral raises too - HA.  I was pretty crap at these.

Anyway pictures for the day:

 

I might be being a bit optimistic but I think the side view looks a bit better than it has done lately.

Breakfast was my usual, lunch was a turkey and veggie salad (which I ended up having at gone 3 because I was mad busy) and for dinner we had a red Thai prawn curry (homemade) with wholegrain rice and it was seriously yummy.  Snacks were a braeburn apple and another one of those mega fruit bagels - I think I might have a problem!

Day 14

Two weeks down!!  I wonder whether I should start blogging weekly rather than every day... daily was ok when I did RI30 because it was only 30 days but I'm sucking hard at getting the time to come on here and blog and lets be honest I don't have al ot of inspiring stuff to say right now and the pictures make me want to heave with how hideous they are and how nothing is changing.  Don't believe me?  Then take a look at the pictures for day 14:

And just to really compound how crud I'm feeling my hair is really roots and looks seriously bad in those pictures - oh dear.

Food was on the whole pretty good - pecan oat crunch and black grapes for breakfast (what else?)  lunch was leftover quinoa quiche with rocket and for dinner I had Fitness Kitchen pizza, for an afternoon snack I had an apple.  Now I know that seems like a pretty good day and it was.... apart from the caramel latte and maltesers Mr D dropped round with in the afternoon.  He also popped in with this:

A new charm for my bracelet - being married is ace.

Day 13

Last workout 2 on day 13 - I've really enjoyed this one, especially the last two circuits so I was a bit sad to do it for the last time. 

Here are the pictures for day 13 and you might notice a bit for a change of scenery... I had laundry drying in the spare room I normally use so used the new wardrobes to take my pictures instead - sadly it didn't improve them!

I might have a look back through the Ripped in 30 pictures to make myself feel better because I really feel like 13 days in I should be seeing a bit of difference by now and I'm starting to get disheartened.  Even though I have enjoyed workout 2 this was the first day I really felt like giving up and not doing the dvd.  I know you can't expect instant results but sometimes I do really wonder why I bother.

Food was ok, pecan oat crunch (yeh still not bored of it) with some black grapes and a green tea, lunch was leftover roast beef and veggies, and for dinner we had quinoa quiche and after that I had a New York fruit and oat bagel.  Looking back and writing it down I think I need to have a refocus on food I think it could be cleaner and I probably need more veggies in there too.  Something to work on.....

Days 11 and 12

Day 11 was Saturday and in a change from what I had planned I decided to take it as my rest day.  We'd been out the night before and early on Saturday when I'd normally get my exercise done we had a handyman over to help us sort out the new house - strangely I didn't fancy getting my Jillian on when he was around.  Even though it was a rest day we were mega busy getting as much of the house sorted as we could and whipped into town to buy a few things ... mostly photo frames so I could frame my Olympics posters and finally get them on the walls , here they are before we put them up:

Anyway, Sunday day 12 meant my last phase 1 workout 1 so I decided to go really hard!  I used the heaviest weights I could and did the advanced versions too (apart from the jumping squats).  Here are the pictures from day 12:

This pictures looks hideous - not much else I can say about that.

 

This one looks like its getting worse too not better.

Ew.

Food on Sunday wasn't great.  I had scrambled egg for breakfast then we went off to Ikea where I had a hot dog and shared a cup of meatballs with Mr D.  Dinner was roast beef with parsnips, steamed broccoli and cabbage and was delish.

Day 10

Been slack for updating this so I'm about to do a whole bunch in one go - SORRY!

Day 10  meant Cardio 1 again and thanks to the snow I ended up getting a little extra cardio going on because Mr D had the car and I needed to get home, do the dvd and get ready to go out for our anniversary!

Here are the pictures for day 10:

 

 

 

Bleurgh!!!! 

 

Food today was not bad - until I went out for dinner.  Breakfast was pecan oat crunch, lunch was a duck wrap with lightly salted popcorn and for dinner I had carpaccio and rocket to start, cod goujons and triple cooked chips and for pud I had a chocolate sable, all washed down with a gin cocktail and a a bottle of white wine (I didn't drink the whole bottle by the way!)

 

 

I know that's a lot of food, and god knows how many calories but if you can't have a night off for a special occasion then when can you????

Day 9

Day 9, workout 2 again.  I worked late so Mr D picked me up and after a swift detour to TK Maxxx where I picked up some amazing Emma Bridgewater for Comic Relief stuff I made him do the dvd with me (yes I know what you're thinking, what a lovely wife I am)

 

Here are the pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That bottom one looks gross.  I always hated the pictures taken when it wasn't daylight and this year its no exception, everything looks worse with overhead light shadow!

 

 

Anyway workout 2 I think is my favourite so far I love the dead lifts with bicep curls, the donkey kicks are ace too and really hurt my bum - but the feeling of the burn is great in a way because you really feel like its doing something.

 

 

Things I'm not so keen on??  I seem to have really crap balance doing the lunges with torso rotation - maybe because I'm using weight and haven't always been wearing trainers. 

 

 

Other than that I really like this dvd I'll be sad (scared) to move on to the next lot of phase on on Wednesday, at the moment I'm enjoying these and adding weights and feeling a bit confident, I hate it when it feels like you can't do it but I suppose that's the magic of Jillian.

 

Food today hasn't been so hot, breakfast as usual, then a cheeky caramel latte when I went out to do the banking as I was absolutely frozen!  An apple as mid morning snack, left over chicken and quinoa for lunch, a pre dvd cookie, post dvd bag of pop chips and then because I haven't been able to go shopping due to snow and work we had a freezer cupboard meal of fishcakes and beans.  Not ideal by any means and tonight it's going to get worse as we're out for dinner for our dating anniversary and as its a special occasion I'm not going to think AT ALL about what I'm eating..... so there.

Day 8

Phase one workout one again today.

I foolishly decided to look back at the before/after Ripped in 30 pictures and realised how much I let those results go, I know in the first couple of weeks this set of dvds isn't as hardcore as that dvd so I decided to go hard.

When I did RI30 I mostly used my lightest weights and those hurt but yesterday I did everything with at least my medium weights and some things (chest flies, tricep kick backs and a few others that my brain can't recall) with the heaviest weights I have.  I also added at least my lightest weights to all of the cardio moves and I don't mind saying that I can feel it today and I'm glad.

Pictures for day 8:

 

 

Bit blurry soz.

 

 

So seeing as I've been working from home due to the snow whilst I have my lunch I've been watching Jamie's 15 minute meals and I caught him making greek chicken with couscous (how do you spell that?) so I decided I'd give that a go seeing as I have the book.

 

One massive flaw - I had no couscous in so I used quinoa instead, I also didn't have allspice for the chicken so I used a random mix of what I did have - smoked paprika, chilli powder, ground cumin, ground coriander, cinnamon, salt and pepper and actually it tasted pretty good!  I added a red pepper, a deseeded red chilli, petit pois, and celery to the quinoa and the whole thing was yummy and pretty low in calories.  Here it is (yes I had already started eating it when I took the picture!)

 



 

 

Breakfast was pecan and oat crunch, and I totally forgot to have lunch because I was so busy but I did have a graze flapjack pack for morning snack and graze copacabana for afternoon snack so it's not like I totally skipped food.  Must try harder though!

Day 7 - one week down!

Woo one week done!  Only.... actually I don't even want to think about how many days are left!

So day 7 (Tuesday) was cardio 1 again.  I went hard on it, for the "easier" moves like on the spot jogging I used weights and for things like suicides I went into the kitchen for more room to really run as hard and fast as I could - I was an absolute sweaty mess by the end and felt like I'd worked pretty hard.

Here are the photos:

 

Not sure if its wishful thinking but the side view looks slightly less bloaty.

Yeh that's not so hot.

 

 

 

So food was ok, breakfast as usual (still not bored of it)  lunch was another fitness kitchen pizza and for dinner me and the Mr had this:

 



That's a fat organic rump steak, homemade paprika wedges, peas and a little blob of Bearnaise sauce, which I didn't end up eating as the steak was so nice.  mmmm.

I think I might start taking photos of my food again because I'm being a bit crap for eating 5 a day - but then again normally I totally forget to take pictures until I'm half way through the meal... we'll see.

Day 5 and 6

Sunday (day5) was a rest day, not much to report really.  We took another snowy walk into town and got the train to London to do a bit of shopping.  Breakfast was pecan oat crunch, lunch when we got back from town was leftover lamb shank, mash and peas whilst watching the rugby and for dinner we had Fitness Kitchen Fast Fit Pizza  I've put a recipe on here before for a wrap pizza but this one is absolutely delicious! 

We had meli melo tomatoes, bresaola and mozarella on ours - here's how it  looked before it went in the oven:

Once cooked it is topped with a big pile of rocket and a few shavings of parmesan - my favourite!

Whilst Mr D was sorting the pizzas I had a bash at another recipe from Francesca's website, Fitness Kitchen Guilt Free Peanut Protein Cookies  and what do you know?  They were awesome too!


And so on to day 6!  Workout 2 again and this time I went harder with my biggest weights for as many of the moves that I could manage as well as weights in with cardio - ouch.

Pictures for the day (including massively unflattering leggings)

                                                          Urgh, that looks gross.

Food was pecan oat crunch (what else?) a protein cookie for morning snack, fast fit pizza for lunch, afternoon snacks of 2 more cookies (where is my will power??) and dinner was 3 slices of bacon, 2 XL organic eggs scrambled and a pack of griddled asparagus.  Must try a bit harder with food I think if I want to get that squishy fat gone.

Day 4 and a little help.

Saturday meant the return of workout 1 and seeing as it was the weekend and he was home Mr D decided he'd see what Jillian had in store too.

He agreed with me that this workout isn't at hardcore as her usual stuff but seeing as its a 90 day programme and its week 1 phase 1 that its likely to get a lot worse.... can't wait.

Here are day 4 pictures:

                                                Ha I look super rough in that photo.

So after our date with JM we went for a 5 mile walk in the snow (had some serious heel blisters by the time we got home) and stopped half way for a cheeky early dinner and glass (or 2 whoops) of wine.

After that we didn't much fancy dinner so shared a bit of sticky toffee pudding - double whoops!

Day 3

Friday brought my first attempt at cardio 1.  If you've ever done a Jillian Michaels DVD you'll know that the cardio intervals can be brutal so I wasn't looking forward to an entire session of it.

Thankfully as its phase one she's taking it easy (by her standards) and I quite enjoyed it!

Here are the pictures from Friday:

                                                    (whoops a bit blurry - sorry!)

Because of the snow I worked from home and had pecan oat crunch for breakfast, lunch was left over sausage & veg roast and for dinner we had lamb shanks with mash and peas - not clean and lean but totally yummy!

Day 2

Not much new to report... did workout 2 yesterday this was more lower body focused but still had a bit of upper body and abs in there for good measure - it is Jillian after all!

Here are todays pictures, clearly there is no difference but for continuity purposes you're getting them anyway:

Have had to swap to taking picture on my phone as I can't seem to upload pictures from my camera on here anymore so sorry the pictures are a bit crud.

 

 

Food yesterday wasn't so hot, breakfast was ok pecan and oat crunch, then lunch was mid meeting so I had half an egg sandwich which was brought in for me and was rank and 3 biscuits (not great), dinner was sausages with parsnips, cabbage and broccoli.

Today I've done cardio 1 for the first time.... but I'll tell you about that tomorrow.

BODY REVOLUTION....and the return of the belly

Hello blog lovelies! 

It's been a while and it's all change here.  I've had to make the decision to withdraw my place from the London Marathon, I'm absolutely gutted but I think I had to admit my legs weren't going to get me round the full 26.2  I'm not saying never ever but right now it's not achievable for me.  I'm going to carry on running and hopefully now the pressure of such a massive event is off I'll be back to enjoying being out there.

Anyway one door closes and another opens.... so that brings me to body revolution!!  When I was training I really missed Jillian in a love/hate sort of way and I don't like what running (and Christmas!) has done to me, I'm a few pounds up from my comfy weight and all ms muscle has turned to podge so I went on line and shelled out just over £100.00 to have Jillian and her crew whip me into shape!

If you've read this blog before you'll know that the daily pictures are set to make a return and as my BR dvd's arrived yesterday I wasted no time putting on the sports bra and leggings and getting the camera out and just so you know after the success of Ripped In 30 I'm really not proud to show you where I'm starting out:

This one I think is the worst, I look so thick and bloated in the middle - bleurgh.

This one is disappointing too after how hard I worked last year.

Well after taking those there was only one thing to do - GET ON WITH IT!

Body Revolution isn't your normal Jillian experience, for starters there are 15 discs which spread over 3 x 4 week "phases"  There are 5 discs per phase 4 workouts and 1 cardio.  As yesterday was day 1 I started with workout 1 and this is how my week will go:

Wednesday: Workout 1
Thursday: Workout 2
Friday: Cardio 1
Saturday Workout 1
Sunday: Rest (Yes rest is actually included in this plan)
Monday Workout 2
Tuesday Cardio 1

I'll repeat that for 2 weeks and then replace workout 1 with workout 3 and workout 2 with workout 4 for 2 more weeks and then phase 1 is complete.  Still with me?  Good.

So what was it like??  I was a bit nervous before I started, but actually it wasn't as bad as I was expecting, in some places I opted for the advanced version (usually adding weights to the moves) and today I feel ok.  Workout one was mainlu upper body, she doesn't make you work upper and lower together too much yet and these dvds aren't based on her 3,2,1 method like ripped in 30 or 30 day shred which oddly I preferred as I didn't really have any idea where I was in the session so it seemed to pass by pretty fast.

Tomorrow I'll let you know what I thought about workout 2 which is lower body - I might not like it so much then!

Food is ok at the moment, just trying to eat as clean as possible and break the bad habits I picked up during the graze-a-thon that is Christmas!  At the moment I'm trying out more recipes, this week it was a new breakfast and as I'm really enjoying it I might blog the recipe over the weekend.  I'm also going to try out some protein peanut cookies that www.fitness-kitchen.com tweeted the recipe for this week, will let you know how yummy they are soon.

So that's it for today, I'm off to see what dvd number 2 has in store.... see you tomorrow.