If I had a penny for every time I started to exercise...

A few months ago I decided that I was finally going to get serious about working out. I’ve made this promise to myself dozens of times before so I can’t guarantee that THIS will be the time but you got to start somewhere.

I’ve joined the Zumba craze via the wonderful world of a DVD player. Logic? It was more expensive than the monthly gym membership but I paid it once instead of every month. Plus I have no faith nor desire to see my booty shaking at all in a public atmosphere (neither do you, trust me!) So I felt it best to save other’s eyes and suffer my living room walls to my “dancing” (if these walls could talk…)

Do you know what Zumba is? A simple google search will tell you all that you need to know. Youtube it if you want to watch others acting crazy. Or read my blurb below:

Basically it’s dance fitness. The dancing tends to mostly be Latin styles (although there is the occasional hip-hop thrown in there. There is also an aerobics perspective guiding a lot of moves so you can be sure you will keep your heart rate up throughout the workout. What do I like about it? Well, it’s fun. Zumba’s claim to fame is that “it’s just like a party”. I wouldn’t go that far, but I do have fun. I’m not checking the clock every 10 seconds calculating how much longer I have to do this (like I do with all my other workout attempts). I’ve even found myself saying that the end of a workout, “man I could keep going!” I promise those words have NEVER come out my mouth before. Ever. So I guess Zumba is working for me. Yay!

Now I could take a class at my local gym. In fact, most zumba fanatics will say that is the only way to do zumba. My biggest excuse is, of course, lack of gym membership and lack of desire to embarrass myself in front of others. Maybe someday…

I’ve also started counting calories. I have the least amount of motivation to do this. It is such a pain. I want to just eat my food, okay? But every diet guru out there will tell you to count your calories. The way I’ve found that works for me is to make my computer do it. There are plenty of websites out there, but I like myfitnesspal.com. I just type in what I ate and it tells me how many calories I have left.

And then this week, while surfing pinterest (yet another obsession of mine) I saw a post about the greatest ab workout ever. So I clicked and found the blog that explains it. It’s 11 exercises with 25 reps each, which, for some reason, sounded small to me when I first read it. So I wrote down the exercises and on Monday I attempted this. Oh my goodness. Let me highlight the word ATTEMPT cause this is hard!!

Now I’m on day 3 and I am so SORE. My hips, my hip flexors, my abs. It’s crazy. Somehow I’m sticking with it. I actually love the feeling of being sore and knowing it’s cause I got a good workout. It’s a satisfying feeling. At the same time I hate that it hurts to walk down the hallway or even to sit at my computer chair (yeah I’m discovering muscles I didn’t know I had). I know from experience that in a week or so, the pain will disappear. I guess that’s my motivation to keep going now.

Cheers to exercise!