Yesterday it was 21 days since my Beachbody box of fitness and nutrition in the form of 21 Day Fix and Shakeology arrived on my doorstep.

Here’s my update…

On May 10th (a couple days before the package arrived) I weighed myself and took some measurements.  Here’s the result of the past 21 days.

Weight – 7lbs lost in just 21 days!!

If you remember from my first blog post, I mentioned that I had started working out for 6 weeks previous and hadn’t changed my diet.  In those 6 weeks I lost 5 pounds.  So in half the time, I lost more weight by changing my diet in addition to working out.  Weeeeeee!

Waist – down 2 inches * Hips – down 1.5 inches * Thighs – down 1 inch

I am EXTREMELY happy with these results and here’s a little more detail about how it went down.

The portion control cups that were so hilarious to me when I first saw them (see my reaction HERE), turned out to be THE BEST THING EVER.  It was exactly what I needed to get my eating sorted and on track.  I had plenty of food, wasn’t starving, and the results I saw were, in large part, due to these pretty little cups. And honestly, once I used them for a few days, it was easy to just eyeball proper food amounts.  Once you train your brain to know what’s a proper serving, it clicks and it’s so much easier than I thought it would be.  So, YAY for that!

Here are some examples of my meals from the past 3 weeks.

Shakeology every day (sometimes twice a day), lots of scrambled eggs with green salad (made me feel like I was having brunch in a French Bistro), chicken, pork, or turkey with veggies, salad, and cottage cheese, tuna with cucumbers and tomato, yogurt with apples and cinnamon, and good quality deli ham on crispbreads with arugula are just a few of the meals I had.  In our Facebook Accountability group, we post photos of the food we eat each day.  This helps keep our own accountability, but also is great for getting ideas and recipes!  I love seeing everyone’s food posts for the day!

The second most important component, in my opinion, for getting the great result was Shakeology.  I feel like it deserves it’s own post, but that stuff is just as good as you hear.  Good for so many reasons, but first and foremost, it actually works as a great meal replacement and it’s FAST.  I look forward to it every day!  I stay full a good 3 hours which was pleasantly surprising.  I remember after day 2 thinking, “this stuff must have magic fairy dust in it or something”.  I have the vanilla and while it’s pretty ok plain with water and/or almond milk or hemp milk, I created a little recipe for myself that has me addicted.  I’ve had it for 21 days straight and haven’t tired of it yet!  I call it PB&J 🙂

PB&J Shakeology

1 scoop of vanilla Shakeology, 1/2 a frozen banana, 4-5 frozen strawberries, 4oz vanilla unsweetened almond or hemp milk, 4oz water, 1tsp (or TBSP) of organic, natural peanut butter (or other nut/seed butter).  Blend well.

So, yeah, I’m a big, BIG fan of the portion control containers and Shakeology.  It’s making this whole thing really easy.

Now about the workout itself…

After the first day I was pretty excited.  It was challenging (hard) but not complicated.  As the days went on that first week, I ended up having to modify or completely avoid so many moves because of my diastasis recti.  Diastasis recti is when your rectus abdominis separates.  This happens frequently to women who are pregnant.  It also can happen to anyone who gains weight in their belly, especially very quickly (like I did).  I had heard the term a few times and googled it.  There are tons of videos on YouTube that show you how to test to see if you have it.  Well, turns out, I have one alright.  My abdominal split is 3 fingertips wide.  AND, as a bonus, my organs are pushing through the weakness of that separation and herniating my belly button!  FUN!  I thought it was just fat, but nope!  It’s likely my intestines.  Lovely.

SOOOOOO, when you have this affliction, you are absolutely not supposed to do any crunches or planks.  Both of these moves are frequent in 21 Day Fix.  Any time you do a crunch or twisty sit up or lift your legs and head off the ground, it puts strain on the separation and can make it worse.  The thing you need to do is work the transverse abdominis which are the muscles waaaaaaay deep inside your core.  It’s tedious and takes a very long time if you can indeed improve this separation.

I tried for a week to just do different exercises whenever a “no-no” move came up, but I got really frustrated.  Frustrated because it ruined my flow and frustrated because now I’m FINALLY motivated to workout, I’ve got this stupid thing in my way.

So….I stopped doing 21 Day Fix.  Instead, I started browsing all the options on Beachbody OnDemand.  I did the sample workout from 22 Minute Hard Corps (Cardio 1) which was all cardio moves.  I absolutely loved that it was only 22 minutes of high intensity cardio.  Gave me so much energy!  Plus, it’s Tony Horton and he’s my guy.  There were burpees (which technically are a no-no), so I’d jog in place for those.

I also did the sample workout from Cize (hip hop dance).  I LOVE IT.  For an ex-musical theatre person, this was like a revelation!  Dancing to lose weight!  Of COURSE!  Yay!  I thought that the moves were very well “taught” in a way that didn’t make me feel too awkward or lost.  It was 30 minutes of joy for me.  Super fun and really felt I had gotten a great workout.

The other routine I did was the sample workout from T25 (Cardio).  This was similar in style to 22 min Hard Corps in that it was high intensity cardio for a short time (25 minutes).  Again, gave me tons of energy.  Moves very easy to follow.  And no real need to modify any moves for the ab split.

So I ended up just switching between those three workouts and I then also some old Slim in 6.

I think that if I didn’t have this ab separation disaster, I would have really liked 21 Day Fix.  It was challenging BIG TIME and I get why so many people love it and get amazing results.  I plan on coming back to it at a later time.

 

So now what?  I’ve decided to go back to my favorite.  The first Beachbody program I ever completed.  P90X with my main man, Tony Horton.  Dan and I did P90X to prep for our wedding and we loved it.  I have so many fun memories of us waking up early to work out and how we’d quote all the silly stuff Tony would say throughout.  It’s more of a time commitment (most of the workouts are about an hour or a bit more) and I can’t do the ab workout or most of the Yoga, but I can do nearly everything else with no modifications.  Plus it’s like an old friend…familiar.  There’s something fun about revisiting this after 6 years.  I still remember all the silly things he says. 🙂  I started yesterday.  Chest and Back.  I was amazed how much stronger I was than I thought.  That made me really happy.  Today was Plyometrics (high impact with lots of jumping).  It was just as hard as I remember, but I was happy that my endurance was pretty darn good.

 

So there it is.  My progress report. 🙂  Excited to share another next month!

If you’d like to be a part of our June Accountability group on Facebook, it starts on June 13th!  Click the Contact button and let me know if you’re interested!

PS:  I might be brave enough to finally post a before and after photo of myself when I post my next update 😉