After I had Madeline I had a decent amount of weight to lose, and to be honest it didn’t want to come off very easily. It literally took me a solid 20 months before I was back to my pre-pregnancy weight with her. It was very frustrating, and I attribute the weight gain, and subsequent battle to take it off, to my nightly ice cream addiction in my 3rd trimester. David and I would go get Blizzards almost every night, and on the nights I wasn’t eating a Blizzard I was over at the custard stand having a raspberry sundae. We even got trapped in a horrible hail storm in which my car was severely damaged all in my quest for ice cream.
When I was pregnant with Anthony I determined not to do the same thing, and I controlled my weight gain much better the second time around. It also helped that he arrived almost a whole month earlier, which probably saved me a good 5-10 pounds. I ended that pregnancy about 20 pounds less than I did Madeline’s, so I was ahead of the game that time around. Then, when Anthony was about 4 weeks old, I gave up dairy because of his sensitivity to it in my breastmilk.
At that point the weight started coming off quite nicely. Then about 3 months after that I gave up dairy and gluten and a whole bunch of other stuff in my quest for health. At that point the weight started pouring off of me and I couldn’t keep it on. Not too bad of a problem when you are trying to drop your baby weight!
Well, now I’m completely off all of those diet modifications and eating anything and everything my little heart desires. Needless to say when you are eating like that weight has a tendency to creep back in. So, now I find myself about 8 pounds up from my lowest point, which is still well below my pre-pregnancy weight, so I’m not complaining.
I’m actually pretty happy with my body, and my weight. At my lowest weight I lost all of my curves and was looking rather gaunt. Random people who barely knew me asked me repeatedly if I was sick, tired, etc. So, I’m happy that the weight gain has given me a little bit of a shape again, and since my clothes still fit me, albeit a little more snug than before, I am happy with it.
However, I have decided that I need to tone up a bit. The excess flab and jiggle isn’t doing much for me. So, I am on a quest to get in shape and regain some tone. After thinking about it for quite some time, I decided to actually do something about it.
So, there is this workout video that I have read about on a number of blogs and everyone is raving about it, so I thought I’d give it a try. It is a DVD by Jillian Michaels, one of the trainers from the Biggest Loser, called The 30 Day Shred. It’s basically a 20 minute workout that you are supposed to do for 30 days and at the end I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to have a new body…or something along those lines.
There are 3 levels, the 1st level is the lowest intensity, and once you master that you move up to the next levels. Each workout starts with a 1 minute warm-up, followed by a 3 minute strength training session, a 2 minute cardio session, and a 1 minute ab session. You repeat that 3 times, and then end with a 1 minute cool down. Anyone can handle 20 minutes right?
So after owning the DVD for a week I finally decided today that I should probably get to work on my new body. So, after I put Anthony down for a nap I went into the basement ready to work out. I told Madeline to find something to play with, and popped the DVD in for my first workout.
Let me tell you that I can not remember the last time I worked out. I am pretty sure it was sometime while I was trying to take off my Madeline weight, which at this point I’m thinking was at least 2 years ago. So, I figured this workout was not going to be pretty.
It started off easy enough with some stretching, but after a minute we got into the workout. The first strength-training exercise we did was push ups. Oh my word, they were difficult! Jillian does not let you take breaks because the whole point of the workout is to work out like crazy for 20 minutes to get the maximum effect. So, you immediately jump from one thing to the next. During the first 2 minutes of the workout I found myself repeatedly muttering “You’ve got to be kidding me”, and “Are you serious?” I honestly thought about turning off the DVD repeatedly, but decided that a toned body was worth the effort.
I also started to regret the 2 large chocolate chip cookies I had downed only half an hour prior to starting my workout. They were bouncing around in my stomach making me feel queasy as I did my jumping jacks. In all fairness I had no intention of doing that workout video when I ate the cookies. In fact, it was probably the sheer guilt of eating those 2 cookies that gave me the motivation to do the video in the first place.
After doing the video for one 6 minute interval I was feeling better and getting into it. I could barely feel the cookies jiggling around in my stomach anymore. Madeline had decided not to play and instead stood next to me trying to mimic the moves on the DVD. Needless to say she has boundless energy, and was not huffing and puffing in quite the same way that I was.
After 20 minutes it was done. It was not easy, but I felt good about my workout. My legs were shaking quite badly and I was sweating (thankfully our basement is freezing cold, so it’s the perfect place to work out). Unfortunately Anthony had not fallen asleep for his nap and at this point was crying, so I decided to go rock him to sleep.
As I climbed the steps my legs were shaking, and burning and I was still sweating and hot from my workout. I was dreading having to hold Anthony as his little body is like a furnace and the last thing I needed was any more heat. I grabbed him and sat down in the rocking chair and was confident that my warm body, combined with my rapidly beating heart, and my heavy breathing would lull him to sleep. Sitting on that rocking chair was just what I needed after my long workout. It was great to rest, and cuddling my sleeping baby boy was pretty sweet too.
As I stood up to put Anthony back in his crib, my legs once again started to shake and now my arms were shaking as well. So, I’m pretty sure that the workout did a good job of kicking my butt. I have high hopes for some serious toning in the next 30 days, if I can just motivate myself to keep doing the video…and maybe stop eating 2 chocolate cookies at a crack.
I should probably not admit that as I type this I’m eating a bowl full of Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream. I couldn’t help myself, because I had bought it for a date night that David and I had a few nights ago. It was almost gone and as I was scooping it into my bowl I was faced with a dilemma. There was enough in there for my bowl, but then there was just a little left in the container, but not enough for another bowl tomorrow night. So, I decided to just finish it up. So, now I’m eating an extremely large bowl of ice cream. Not necessarily the best idea on my first day of working out, but it sure tasted good!
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And since no post is complete without pictures, here are some…along with a little story.
Today I was outside on the deck eating my lunch, reading a book, while Madeline played in her sandbox and ate her lunch (Anthony was napping inside). I was lost in my book, and heard Madeline crying/whining which I must admit I have done a pretty good job of learning to tune out. She whines quite a bit these days, and it drives me crazy so I don’t respond to it. I happened to look up for a minute and noticed that Madeline was trying to climb around the outside of our deck, something which she had started doing a couple of weeks ago. She’s an adventurous little girl, and is always looking for things to climb on and jump off of.
I happened to notice that her head was through 2 of the posts of the deck…and it was stuck, which was why she was crying, and she had once again stripped down and was stuck on our deck, naked.
So, I quickly dropped my book, and ran around to the outside of the deck. Thankfully she got stuck in a place not too far off the ground so I could easily reach her. I did my best to get her head out, I tried pushing her ears flat to try to make her head fit, I tried squeezing her body sideways through the posts, I tried raising her head up high, and then low but nothing worked. She was crying the whole time, and since she was on the outside of the deck she didn’t really have anything to stand on.
So, I propped my leg up and told her to sit on it while I thought. I couldn’t think of anything so I called David, who was at work. He told me to try to pry the pieces apart, but they wouldn’t budge. He told me to break one of them, but I am not strong enough for that either. Finally, I ran into the house to grab a hammer. I used it to pry the piece off of the deck and her head came free. I was even able to nail it back into place, so no damage was done to the deck.
Madeline was relieved to be free and then wanted to play with the hammer, and “fix” the deck for us. She also informed me that she wouldn’t be sticking her head through any of the posts again. I was thankful to have gotten her out of there on my own, because David suggested I get one of our neighbors to help, but I didn’t really need them questioning my parenting skills when they discovered Madeline was stuck on our deck, naked.
Of course I couldn’t let an opportunity like this pass without first taking pictures before freeing my daughter.

As you can see, I even went to the trouble of putting underwear on her so I could have some blog-friendly photos (although I did take pictures of her before the underwear so that one day I can show her just what kind of trouble she got into as a child!)

And there you have it. It was definitely not a day for the faint of heart!