Jumping Jacks

Jumping Jacks, pretty easy to do, get your heart rate up, good exercise, quite hard to get wrong? I'm not sure. I was fine all Thursday, got up on Friday morning, headed into the living room to work up a sweat with Jillian, I'm almost looking forward to the exercise in the mornings now. Almost. I do enjoy it once I get going though, it's that initial push into activity that gets me!

Straight into the warm up, jumping jacks..... *OUCH* nasty shooting pain across my back. No injuries says Jillian, and somehow I've managed it. I'm not sure if I've done something while exercising, or done something during the day on Thursday that's kicked it off, but pain has arrived. It's frustrating because everything I try and do hurts. Jumping, walking, lifting my arms too much, even driving sometimes makes my back ache.

The only thing in Jillian's work out that doesn't seem to be a massive problem is the crunches, as you're only using your abs. Oh joy. Although the evil that is the bicycle crunches at the end of Level 1 do seem to be getting easier. Has this happened to anyone out there? And any ideas on how to make it better again? It's been a few days now, and everything still hurts!!

We spent the weekend (including Friday) in aeroplane fuelled frenzy. Friday and Sunday were spent running around after an errant Auster and Saturday at Old Warden Park. There'll be a post about our day out on my other blog as soon as I get the photos downloaded. So there was plenty of walking around (and too much driving) over the weekend so I don't feel completely bad as I didn't spend all day on the couch!

We had a pretty healthy picnic to tide us over for the day on Saturday.

Wholemeal rolls with ham and (tonnes of) salad, plus a small amount of low fat mayo.
Bottles of water.
Nectarines.
Peaches.
Salad.
Scotch Egg. Yum.

Despite the healthiness, we stopped at Braintree Freeport on the way and the better half bought a massive bag of chocolate and Wham bars.

So a number of those were eaten yesterday evening at home watching a movie. Bad times. But we're back to healthiness tonight. Fish, steamed veg and sweet potato for dinner.

Ciao

Jo

First Post! Exciting I know....

So, this is my first post to a blog ever....

I started my other blog first (Of a Vintage Air) if you're interested, but I've not worn any suitably awesome vintage outfits to take a picture of yet! But I have started to get healthy, and thought I'd share my journey in case anyone's interested!

There's been a couple of reasons that I thought I should finally get my butt in gear and get fit again, but mostly it's just because now seems like a good time :-) oh and there's that scary team building exercise weekend with my boyfriend's work mates in Goa in January to look forward to. On the beach :-| I think I'll feel slightly more confident if I don't look like such a plonker in a swimsuit!!

So anyways.... I started eating better on the 1st September, stopped drinking pretty much everything but water. Lots and lots of water. And hey, my skin looks better! I still drink orange juice as an odd treat and a glass of wine once in a while, eg anniversary last weekend! :-)

I've been eating tonnes of fruit and veg in various cunning disguises, and hope to share some of my more inventive/better looking/not totally disastrous meals with you!

After a few days, I thought, this probably isn't enough, so being a total sucker for punishment I ordered Jillian Michaels' 'The 30 Day Shred' off of Amazon and waited nervously for it to arrive.

Image from Amazon.co.uk

I'm currently on day 7 of level 1 and it's been good. Knackering and painful for the first three days, but my jeans are a tad looser (wishful thinking...?) and I feel much better. I've lost 10 pounds since the start of september, but I think that's just my body's grateful reaction to eating and drinking so much better!

I've been exercising at 5.30am in the morning before work and before the Boyfriend can get up and make too much fun of my floundering around the living room! It's ok. A banana before and my whole wheat, seeded toast and marmite for breakfast after and I'm ready to start the day! But whatever you do, try and get enough sleep! Otherwise it is hard, hard work.... Even harder than before I mean, what with Jillian's twenty minutes of bullying first thing anyway!!

That's probably enough from me for now :-)

I hope to update you of my progress for the next twenty three days of the shred, and post recipies etc as often as possible.

Ciao!

Jo :-)