The 30 Day Shred, Day Twenty: Join the Shredding Army

People, yesterday I did my twentieth 30 Day Shred workout, in an exclusive local fitness club known as the basement of Pretty Neighbor. Then we each drank a single light beer, as is our custom. When I got to her house, I said, "Let's just get, as quickly as possible, to the part where we drink beer." It really should be my twenty-first workout, because I started 21 days ago, but I skipped the night that dude got his car stuck in our front yard and I ate a bunch of Wendy's. You know, progress in this life is sometimes uneven.

One thing that has really motivated me to keep it up is that some of y'all are doing it too. In addition to the folks I know about--Michele, Gretchen, Barbara--I think there are others. If you're shredding, comment and tell us how it's going.

So, visible and tangible results as of Day 20: My shoulders have muscles, y'all . Or like, there is this muscle that connects my shoulder to my neck. I bet there is even a name for it. I never saw that muscle before, not on my body.

I have two-pack abs. Two is good, right? I am pretty happy because I don't know if I'll ever get the other four. But right under my boobs, there is this twin pack of more-defined muscle.

My legs are just harder and firmer all over.

Now, invisible and intangible results: I feel great. I'm in a good mood most all the time. Not that I was like, on a downward spiral before, but this is a really distinct feeling of well-being. I can't really tell if it's physical or mental or both.

The struggle and sweat of the workout has become kind of. . .fun. Okay, fun might be too strong a word. Maybe the level right before fun. Satisfying, I guess. I definitely want to keep going.

It makes dieting easier. This workout goes really well with Weight Watchers. I didn't start back on WW right when I started shredding, but it's been a couple of weeks. There have been days when I didn't eat all of my points, even counting my nightly cosmo and my occasional post-workout beer with Pretty Neighbor.

We were talking about this today: this workout is just so short. You can do it, and keep it up, because it's so short. Twenty-two minutes, that works for me. My friend Brenda was talking about how she prefers a workout to dieting, and said, "The exercise is so easy in comparison--once you do your 20 minutes you're done for the day, but with eating you have all day to screw it up." How true that is. But the thing is, if you're trying to also lose some weight, like I am, the Shred is not going to get you there alone. It needs some kind of food management to go with it, but like I said, they work really well together.

The other day at Costco we bought a bathroom scale. We hadn't had one before. So we brought it home and turned it on, and I used it the first week I did Weight Watchers. I lost the expected two pounds, and all was well. Then we moved the scale to a different part of the tile floor, and that two pounds was gone, gone with the wind. Overnight I went back up to my starting weight. I thought that I'd just screwed up my eating somehow, but then Matt said, "We shouldn't move the scale because the floor is uneven, and it will give a different reading." So I just sucked it up and endured the chiding message that Weight Watchers Online gave me when I entered my weight. Like, "Honey, what happened? Did you expect this result? If you didn't, let's talk about how you can do better. Don't cry, you'll get puffy."

So this is the continuing adventure of my sensibilities as I shred. I do recommend it. And I will let you know if I get a lot hotter.