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 Okay. So a goodly number of you are going to do this crazy Making the Cut thing with me, but we've all solemnly sworn to not be crazy about it, right? If we can't do a side plank, we're not going to burst all the tendons up and down our bodies trying to do a side plank, and if we can't sprint at 9 miles an hour for 10 minutes, we're not going to sprint at 9 miles an hour for 10 minutes, right? Right. We're going to eat enough to not feel dizzy, exercise rationally and not to the brink of exhaustion, and we're going to drink plenty of water and take our vitamins. Or I'll come to your house and kick you. So far, this is what I've got: I've read the foreword carefully. Jillian is very committed to being your god. That makes me uncomfortable. But she's also very into the whole mental preparation, if you believe in yourself, you can do it! Exclamation points! And that's something that is extremely dorky, but also kind of nice. Okay, Jillian! Let's do this thing! High five! Please don't kill me! Before you begin, there are pages of preparations that one must make. She suggests "goodbye photos," which I'm going to have to skip, mostly because I am not down with photographic evidence of me in my underpants. Maybe you are braver than me. Then there's body fat analysis, measurements, and a fitness test, all of which make me want to close the book, go get a cupcake, and frost it with butter. But okay. I've got a Tanita scale. I've just got to figure out how it works, with the body composition. And the fitness tests are all easy to perform at home, and make me very sad. Push-ups? DO NOT WANT. But I'll do it. And I'll post my results in the comments, and you can laugh at me. And then, you better be posting yours. In the meantime, I've calculated my basal metabolic rate (the minimum number of calories my body requires to allow me to lie in bed all day and keep breathing). If it's to be believed, that's 1,410 calories a day. That seems terribly low. I am not going to worry too much about sticking to this number--I'm going to try to stick, instead, with the general eating plan as a guideline--it emphasizes a lot of cooking healthy stuff at home, avoiding sweets and alcohol and drinking a lot of water, and that sounds pretty reasonable to me. The recipe section is organized in an irritating way, and it took me an endless amount of flipping back and forth between the meal plan and the pile of jumbled recipes to figure out a grocery list, which is two pages long. For five days, to start. The whole thing is starting to make me wonder what, exactly, I'm doing here, and can't I just keep eating granola bars for every meal? No? Shit. There's also way too much flipping back and forth between the exercise plan for each day and the description of the exercises in the back of the book. I kept losing my place. I kept getting frustrated. I wanted to rip apart the book with my teeth, which is totally aerobic. I persevered, however, and wrote out my exercise plan for the next week. I wrote down the descriptions and even drew helpful stick-figure diagrams (you want me to do what with my left ankle and my right elbow?) and I am sure I will look just the tiniest bit insane at the gym tomorrow, pulling out my crumpled sheet of paper and consulting it between manic yankings at the various weight machines, but I'm okay with that. I think. Please don't let the gym be crowded. So. Preliminary preparations: prepared. Loins: girded. Grocery shopping: tonight. The gym: tomorrow. Am I ready? No! But I'm going to do it anyway. Are you ready? 4 CommentsLeave a comment |
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Woo hoo, I've been waiting for this all day! I spent last night writing the exercises for Day 1 in a notebook and familiarizing myself with the exercises so I wouldn't have to flip around in the book. I just took the notebook with me to the gym.
The placement of the exercises and recipes is annoying to me as well. They are arranged alphabetically but are apparently grouped (it took me awhile to realize this).
My BMR is 1338, but I rounded to 1350. I'll be using that as my "magic number". I've found that her diet outlined requires you to add in your own foods. So I put in some energy bars, salads, fruit etc. to get closer to my BMR. Just following her outlined meals didn't give me enough calories. Plus, I snack a lot and there was only one snack...not nearly enough for me.
I didn't do the fit test specfically, so I can't report my number for that. Nor do I have a BF% because my scale doesn't have it. I could guesstimate but then that wouldn't be very accurate. I know from other fit tests that I can do about 22 pushups before I collapse to the floor and 45 situps in a minute.
First workout - Honestly, I had to take some breaks, I was definitely winded and it was challenging. Some of the moves I had to modify because I didn't have the strength to balance in those positions.
So far I'm enjoying it. It's definitely a nice change of pace from my normal workout routine. Hopefully I won't be too sore tomorrow.
So I'm going to give it a go as well, although I'm going to be modifying the training portion because I'm involved in sports and I don't want to overdo it.
My BMR comes out around 1500cal/day. I think that sounds low, but maybe not... I mean if I'm substituting a giant coffee shop pastry (400-500cal) for apples and almonds I have a feeling I'll get a lot more milage out of the apples and almonds. However, if I'm genuinely hungry, I'm gonna eat.
Groceries tonight, starting tomorrow. I'm going to try and get to the fit test tonight, but it may be tomorrow instead.
Yay, Stephanie and Loey!
Okay, my stats: I am not fit. I am below average in aerobic endurance, poor in upper body strength. I am average, however, in sit ups, huzzah! And I held my wall sit, like a champ, for exactly 30 seconds. And then I died. I think this program is going to kill me.
I'm not going to worry about my weight or measurements, because I just want to focus on my fitness (I be up in the gym, just workin' on my fitness).
I worked through the food and fitness introductions (I'm thinking Day 1 will be June 1 -- sadly, I will inevitably become confused otherwise), and I figured out that (a) I am a slow oxidizer, and (b) oh hey, that doesn't matter, because I'm a vegetarian also, and her eating program really, really does not permit that option.
Also, I hate gyms and always end up not going, so I don't belong to a gym; I have weights and an exercise ball (gathering dust currently, but I have them). And I do Pilates twice a week with an instructor, and I'm not going to stop that for 30 days (it would be cheaper, granted, but I don't want to).
So...I really don't have any option but to modify the program to fit me, it turns out. Obsessively following it is not possible. But that is probably a good thing. I will try eating her breakfasts instead of getting a latte and calling it breakfast, and I will try sticking to various combinations of the foods she recommends, and eating every four hours, and seeing whether 1500 focused calories a day plus exercise works for me. And I will do as many of the scary, scary exercises as I can, even though you guys, they look really scary.