Jessica Smith's Thin in 10 Exercise Plan Day 5

What I did and why

If you've been following along, I read Jessica Smith's Thin in 10 weight loss book a few weeks ago and decided to do the exercise plan. When I took the quiz, I tested as a Novice, but I didn't think the Novice plan was challenging enough since it was only 20 minutes a day. I decided to do the Intermediate plan. This was mistake number one. Mistake number two was continuing on with the Intermediate plan once I realized that it was a bit more than I could handle. I did Days 1 through 4 last week on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The weekend was a bit scattered and I didn't want to make plans for this workout plan knowing that I probably wouldn't keep to the plan. Today was Day 5. I just need to get through one more day and then it gets easy! Day 7 is just a 10 minute walk and a 10 minute stretch! Come on Wednesday!

Day 5

The Walk

I did Jessica Smith's 10 Minute Interval Walk on YouTube. The book talks about actually going outside and walking, but this thing burns more calories than she says the outdoor walk will do and I just don't like walking around outside in the dark. I have to get my workouts in before work. Well, that could change now that hubby's schedule has changed, but for now, I workout before I go to work. I grabbed the wrong bra this morning and opted to save myself the pain and skip the jogging option. I didn't want to go back into the bedroom and wake up hubby.

Strength Shot Times TWO

Day 4 was the Cardio Quickie times two and Day 5 is the Strength Shot times two. Oh the insanity! Whatever possessed me to agree to this madness. Oh wait, I hadn't actually looked at the DVD first and the book workout just didn't seem very scary. I wasn't a big fan of Strength Shot the first time I did it on Day 1. It's got the trifecta of things that I hate in a workout. It has squats, lunges and planks. Let's throw in some jumping jacks and really make me want to run screaming. 

The workout is all about 1 minute intervals. You go through five moves at one minute each. Once the five are done, you go back through them, but she gives you a more difficult version. Then once all that was done, I was supposed to do the DVD again! They can be broken up over the day, but there was no way I was going to do lunges at night. I knew my legs were not going to allow that malarchy, so I just pushed through.

The first minute is squats. Then we move to a plank. We're supposed to hold it for the full minute. Last week I made it about 15 seconds. This week, I was smart enough to put a blanket between my elbows and the carpet! I managed to keep a plank for the whole minute! I doubt I had perfect form. I'm sure my butt was too high, but whatever. After the planks we get back up for rear lunges. We did that for one minute. Then we were back on the floor for wait for it.............push ups! Is there such a thing as a quadfecta? If there is, adding pushups to a workout with planks, lunges and squats is the quadfecta of hell. Once we were done with the push ups we stayed on the floor. YAY! We did this thing that she referred to as a Y. We had our hands out in front of us with our thumbs up. We raised our chest off the ground using our back muscles and the arms went up too. We only held that for a second and then released. We did that for a full minute.

The next five minutes was oh so much more fun! When we came out of the squats, we did alternating knee lifts. When we did the plank we were supposed to come up off of our elbows and up onto our hands and then go back down again. I opted to try another minute long plank, but failed. The lunges involved sticking are arms out in front and twisting to the front knee. I love these so much that I just did regular lunges. The push ups had our hands cockeyed. One hand was in the normal position and the other was out a few inches. I did the harder move until it just got too hard. The Y thing turned into a Y, T, I. We started with the basic move but while our chests were off the ground we moved our hands out to form a t and then back to form an I. Then we were done! Oh wait, not so much since we had to do it all over again. I did all easy moves on the second round and barely held the plank for 30 seconds. I'm going to hurt so bad tomorrow. Walking up stairs might not be an option. I might have to reduce the water intake just so I can reduce the trips to the bathroom. 

With all of that said, I'm pretty damn proud of myself for making it through the workout. I'm not really sure at what point my thoughts changed, but I went from feeling like a sorry out of shape blob to being impressed with what I can actually do considering the girth of my gut. How many 293 pound people can do what I did this morning? Whenever we go on hikes, I'm always the biggest person on the trail. In the past that's bothered me, but now it's okay. I might be the biggest person there, but I'm there with all of these skinny fit people. I'm doing what skinny fit people are doing!

Tomorrow is a 10 minute walk and the Total Body Band twice! I'm pretty sure it has squats. I'm pretty sure that I shouldn't do it. I'm pretty sure that I'll do it anyway though because I said that I would and I do stupid things just because I said that I would. 

BodyMedia Screen Shots

Here are my BodyMedia Screen shots. They are pretty much hat I expected. BodyMedia just doesn't deal well with strength training stuff. I was sweating and breathing hard for the strength training stuff. My heart was beating fast, but according to BodyMedia, I wasn't even active for most of the workout. Whatever! I'm so looking for a heart rate monitor. I think this device does well for cardio stuff. I tracked my food for a week and all of my exercise. The weight that I lost was consistent with what I should have lost, but I didn't do strength training that week as far as I can remember. You can read my blog post about My Seven Day Commitment to Food Tracking for more details.