New-obsessions week: Day 1 - Exercise

When Jillian Michaels says "Just a couple more," she means ten. When she says "Nearly done" she means "Halfway through, maybe." When she says "You're well on your way to being shredded," it's true, but maybe not exactly the way she wanted. As I lay panting on the floor this morning with drips of sweat running into my eyes, those are the things that came to mind.

You know, this might be hard to believe but before last week I didn't really know who Jillian Michaels was. This is what comes of not having had cable TV for three years. Apparently I never really watched The Biggest Loser because I was too busy watching Top Chef and Project Runway when we did have cable, and I think I had her a little mixed up with some red-headed chick in the UK who tells people what they should eat. Is she a different Gillian, maybe?*

Anyway, I heard once again recently about this 30-Day Shred thing that's only Very Old News, and, always being last to run after the bandwagon and try to jump on board just as it's leaving town, I decided to give it a go, with my self-imposed motivator of BlogHer attendance coming up apace. It checked a lot of boxes straight away:

• Not all lying down like Pilates, so the kids have less opportunity to jump on me
• Level 1 available free on YouTube; I bought Level 2 for just 1.99 from Amazon downloads this morning
• Indoors in the heat and humidity of the summer
• Quick - half an hour and I'm done, and I can actually do it with the kids in the house and no extra adult for distracting/restraining

Not that that last is easy, mind you. The first day I had the seven-year old pacing me jumping jack for jumping jack during the entire aerobic part of the workout, and he barely broke a sweat. Which was great for my ego, of course. In between times he was bugging me to have a turn of the weights (I have measly 2lb ones that the kids love to swing around terrifyingly) and getting between me and the screen.

Sometimes the four-year-old would come and try to snuggle up beside me as I lay on the floor trying to do my reverse crunches or my arm flies (see how well I can say all the words now?), and generally my panting would be interspersed with the following monologue:

"Put down the weights. No. At least, don't hold them there. Move them AWAY from the computer. Don't hold them over your head. Fine, just do it that way. Yes. NO. No, don't drop them on the hardwood floor. No... okay, now I need them again."

At least it distracted me from the pain of the lunges, I suppose. Also, my feet are too small to do lunges without falling over. Some might say it's bad balance, but I'm going with the small feet thing.

Anyway, the point is that this morning I started level two, which means I have been working out for 30 minutes a day for ten of the past eleven days, and I'm quite pleased about that. I also stepped on the scales this morning and may possibly have lost some pounds too. If things are really spectacular, I might have some before and after pictures in another 20 days, but don't get your hopes up because I might totally chicken out on that front.

Tomorrow in my new summer obsessions: coffee. Wait and see.

*Aha. That's Gillian McKeith. Verrry different Gillian, apparently.