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Thursday, December 9, 2010

Kicking My Butt, Literally

Butt kicks. If you're a Jillian Michaels (JM) fan at all, you probably know the exercise I'm talking about. For anyone else, it's an old school calisthenics exercise wherein you're essentially running in place trying to kick yourself in the butt. Ha, ha, hence the name.

Now, imagine those butt kicks in the same circuit as high knee runs. Then add in some jumping jacks. And just for fun, another grueling exercise with some kind of plyo component or such crazy jazz, and then do it all over again. This, my friends, is ONE CIRCUIT of Jillian Michaels Banish Fat, Boost Metabolism (BFBM). There's a full on five additional circuits of this hell (it's frakking relentless). And this is the workout I - willingly - did this morning.

Yup, my butt has definitely been kicked - both metaphorically and physically.

Honestly, Jillian Michaels scares the living sh*t out of me. If I see a workout with her name on it, a little shiver of fear runs down my spine. One might think that if I'm sooooo afraid of her and her workouts, I - like any reasonably logical person - would stay as far away from them as humanly possible. WRONG. SO WRONG. OH NO, instead my crazy self has to go buy the freaking thing, let it sit on the shelf for a few months just so I can fear it a little bit more, and finally work up the courage to have my ass handed to me after being pounded into mush.

The most frightening part of this whole thing? I love it. If a workout isn't scaring the hell out of me, kicking my ass or pushing my limits, I'm bored. Like walking, for instance; it just doesn't do it for me. Walking is a mode of transportation from one place to another, that's all. It's not a workout. The few times I've walked as my daily activity, I got so ridiculously bored. If I have to go someplace a mile or two away, I'm happy to walk it. But tell me to go walk two miles for no reason? No thanks.

Lately, I've noticed that most of the workouts I did when I started out exercising last year and thought were hard are barely blips on the radar. That WW Get in Shape (or whatever the title was from ages ago) with the low, medium and high intensity workouts? Yeah, I don't touch the low or medium intensity workouts anymore. And the high intensity workout? Barely difficult enough to keep my attention for thirty minutes.

Thing is, this is such an unusual feeling. Really. When did I become that chick who has to do the super hard workout (and don't get me wrong, I know there's waaaaayyy harder workouts out there than I do) to feel like she's actually working? That isn't me. But it is. It's the new me. The new me has the desire to be in the best shape she can because it feels so damn good.

It makes me realize that my secret ambition, that thing I've always wanted, but never thought possible, really is in the realm of possiblity. This deep-seated desire to just be able to run isn't a pipe dream. All those butt kicks? high knee runs? jogging in place? If you really think about it, that's running. Or at least a prelude to it. Maybe I've been making excuses all along. Well, I'm not making excuses anymore. If I can face the terror that is JM, I can learn to run.



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Small goals are the key to success or so I've been told. To kick off my weight loss journey I wanted to give myself a visual tool to see how my progress is going. For your viewing pleasure, the ticker for my first goal of losing 20 pounds: