Recap: The Shred

It's finally over. Hallelujah.

The very last day of the Shred, on the last cardio circuit, Benjamin started crying... less than an hour after putting him in his crib for the night. Never a good sign. He woke up congested and ever since, we've all been dealing with the wrath of a sick baby and then getting sick ourselves. Quite the celebration party. Gah.

Before you ask how much weight I lost, I'll tell you this: We don't own a scale. Nor was my intention to use the Shred as my weight-loss tool. Unfortunately, there are no before & after photos of what my abs look like or anything. I didn't have much weight to lose, to be honest... so even if I lost some, I wouldn't have lost much. Though, considering the difficulty of the Shred, I can see the impact it could have on someone who is hoping to lose weight. Instead, I use working out as an excuse to eat. It's like food is my reward. There were no calories being counted here. I still maintained my pizza-eating skills throughout. However, we don't recommend an entire Chipotle burrito before workouts. I'll spare you the details on that one.

We chose to take this on because winter in Chicago is brutal and neverending. And hey! Thirty days later and it's still as cold as ever outside. But at least we're done with January.

Personal Shred Results & Commentary:

• Abs - Not that I'll ever obtain a 6-pack again, but I definitely have more definition than I have in a very, very long time.
• Endurance - We're both able to do more pushups and situps than we have since college. The workouts definitely get easier with time. Good thing, because I was ready to quit after day 1. 
• Reality check - Our bodies, while still young, are definitely not college bodies anymore. At different points during the 30 days, we both complained of some kind of pulled muscle or knee pain. I blame it on the jumping lunges.
• Time - We actually found the 20-minutes (well, 18 minutes + warm up/cool down) to be a perfect length of time to keep us engaged and actually stick to the program. We'd put B down for the night and head straight to the basement where we'd immediately knock it out before showering and relaxing on the couch for another hour before bed. It was just long enough to feel like we got in a decent workout, but not too long where we felt like our nights were robbed of any relaxation time.
• Accountability - Having my husband do it with me was huge. I would have never stuck with it if I knew he was upstairs watching our favorite TV shows while eating chocolate. 

Just a Few Favorite Quotes by Jillian, the Beast:

• If we're going to make big promises to you, we've got to deliver.
• Your neck was not invited to this party; this is all abs.
• See these abs? These kind of abs don't come for free, people.
• Don't phone it in, don't stand up.
• You think you can handle it? We'll see. {fake intro nonsense}
• I could always use a good chest fly in my life.

Other Shred Nonsense:

• Anita is way more rockstar than Natalie. I mean, did you see her body?
• In Level 1, please pay attention to Natalie phoning it in on those lunges. Chick is a cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater.
• I curse the fact that you have to sit through Jillian talk about the 3-2-1 routine for 30 straight days. There needs to be a fast-track to getting straight to the workout.
• On that note, why do you have to scroll down past "recommendations" to get to the workouts? I will read the recommendations once and need to press the workout selection thrity times. Please make this more convenient.
• While torturous, working out every single day was really smart. We didn't have a choice to make concessions or excuses about why we couldn't work out that day. We just did, no matter what. On days we didn't get started until 10 p.m., we still did it. They may not have been our most fruitful days, but we kept with it. That has to be part of the success. Don't skip days!

Final Piece:

• We really did love the 30-day requirement. As much as we loathed putting Benjamin to bed at night because we knew the inevitable was ahead, we did like feeling like we weren't such lards sitting on the couch each night.
• We've discussed doing this each January! We'll see if that comes to fruition. It did take us four years to even buy the DVD
• It's been a solid week of being sick and caring for a sick Benjamin, and we haven't worked out again. However, I do plan to see what else our library has in stock and make a trip every week or two and continue short basement workouts for 5-10 days straight after B goes down for the night.

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I'm being syndicated over at BlogHer today {in the babies & toddlers 0-2 section! Hooray to exposure of loss!} about my recent Grief Lit. topic and how that shapes or alters the grief journey. My first syndication!