Your life is yours alone, Rise up and live it! ~Terry Goodkind

In case I were to come back to the Shred at a future date and wanted to compare and see if I improved, I am going to outline my strengths and weaknesses while doing level 3.

Circuit 1:

Strength:

The Superman was not that hard. I was able to get my knees and thighs off the floor and when I worked at it was also able to bring my chest off of the floor. The traveling planks hurt my elbows/arms. I am not sure why but sometimes I would just do this on my knees. I could physically do this move with Natalie, but when I did my elbows hurt. Better safe than sorry.

Cardio:

I did the mountain climbers with Anita. I could do the plie squats, they were ok but I just didn’t get off of the ground so I didn’t hurt my knees.

Abs: I do this move alot in my Pilates dvds so this was easy for me. Scissor kicks were easy too but I kept my legs up at the angle that Anita’s were.

Circuit 2:

Dumbbell Cleans, I had no problem with this!

Jumping Lunges, haha. So I do think that since level 1 I have improved with lunges. In this level I again follow the easy intensity with no weights. I think that when you lunge forward, your front leg that is at 90% is the leg that is doing the work? That leg has to push backwards to get your body back to standing. At least that is what I have been doing, if that is wrong then I haven’t figured it out. A few times I lost balance, but I tried to keep a straight upper body and not fall off balance.

Cardio: Punches with dumbbells I can do, the same with buttkicks with dumbbells. Cannot do jumping jacks with dumbbells, I just repeat the butt kicks.

Abs: Sit ups…can do them with legs down or back but need to keep my arms out like Anita. Tried it with Natalie and couldn’t get up.

Circuit 3:

Traveling push-ups, yikes! I do these on my hands and knees. The plank/dumbbell row also hurt my elbows but I did it with Natalie a few times. Afterwards I either lowered the weight to my Walk AWay the Pound 2 pound balls and did it in plank, or did it on my knees like Anita with the 5 pounds.

Cardio:

Jump squats: I can do these with Anita, I avoid doing them with Natalie because of the pressure on my knees. I could never do the rockstars…I am not a rock star. I just did other things like butt kicks, jump rope ect to keep my heart up.

Abs: I can hold a T stand but to lower myself and then push myself up make it hard so I do these with Anita. The one they hold at the end I try to do with Natalie.

So this concludes my 30 ish days with the 30 day Shred. It is funny that it says you can lose up to 20 pounds but I haven’t really lost any. Not that I believed that…

My next plan/goals will be to get over this plateau. Anyone have any advice on that? It seems that even when I am on track with everything it doesn’t help. I exercise and eat within my calorie range. Any advice would be great, but this is what I came up with.

I  read Jillian’s advice on this in a blog. She suggests eating 2000-2400 calories a day (for about a week I guess?) she says that probably sounds crazy, and it does, but she says it works. Another person on a different forum suggested eating more too because when they eat more fat and food, it seems their body starts losing weight again. They said it is as if their body thought it was starving and the introduction of more food and fat sends the message that they killed a Mammoth and the famine is over.

I changed my sparkpeople calorie goals to maintainance and it reccomends 1990 to 2340 calories to maintain my weight. So I am going to aim for at least the lower end of that. I am going to try to get enough healthy fats, protein and nutrients. I am not sure what I would eat that would have lots of fat in (at least healthy). I guess if I can eat more calories I can incorporate nuts and peanut butter into my snacks?

I don’t want to eat a bunch of crappy fat, but I don’t want to restrict things either…but I know that even if I don’t count calories I am still going to be accountable for what I ate, on here with the Wildcats.

Then for exercise, someone told me to rest my body, not quit exercising, but bring down the intensity I guess. I was going to do a different strength training routine either by Jillian or the ones I found on Sparkpeople, but I think I might start doing the Walk Away the Pounds dvds again and use the resistance weights/bands ect that they come with. This way, I get my cardio in and mild strength training. It is less intense than the Shred and gives my muscles some time to recoup before trying something difficult and new again. Does this sound good?

I just don’t want to quick strength training and lose strength because I think that could happen? This way I give my body a break without stopping completely.

Any suggestions or opinions on my plan?