Pain

Procrastination wasn’t necessarily my goal with this blog, but I seem to have achieved it quite nicely. I’m now down to 29 days before I leave for London, and according to the scale Sunday morning I am actually two pounds heavier than when I started posting on this blog.

Neat.

HOWEVER – lest you despair, gentle readers – there has been significant progress made in the last three days on Ivy’s quest to get less fat or die trying. First, on the psychological front of this war against fat, I think I’ve finally figured something out.

Many of you who are reading this (I think there are about four of you now – hurrah!) know that I’ve been a follower of Jesus for a dozen years, and I’ve been rather half-heartedly asking for His assistance in this quest. But I never really believed that it would make a difference, or that He’d even want to be a part of this seemingly hopeless undertaking wherein I attempt to get less fat or die trying. :)

Then, last week, I began participating in a group discussion of what is turning out to be a fantastic book – The Good and Beautiful God, by James Bryan Smith.

The focus of the book (as far as I can tell, but we’re only on chapter two) is on finding the false things we’ve been told or that we’ve told ourselves about God, and replacing them with the truths as represented by Jesus in the New Testament. Now, regardless of what you believe about Jesus/God/The Bible, I’m telling you that reading this book and letting the things Jesus says about God and about Himself sink in have profoundly changed something inside of me in the past three days. That's a true a statement as ever I've made. After reading the chapter we were assigned for this week, I spent about an hour on Sunday crying and venting and really digging deep to figure out why I feel the way I feel about myself and my body. What I emerged with was this – I don’t feel compelled to take care of my body, or even care about it at all, because I was convinced no one would ever want it. Being single for 32 years, and not having an end to that situation in sight, will do a number on a girl’s self-image sometimes, and I had let it happen to me. But thanks to the words I read Sunday, and the way God spoke through them, I believe I am done with that way of thinking. Hallelujah. :)

So, after I got through that emotional minefield, I popped in my new copy of Jillian Michaels’ “30 Day Shred” DVD on Sunday afternoon.

Sweet bleedin’ gingerbread.

I cannot walk up the stairs.

I cannot walk down the stairs.

I cannot get up from my chair.

I cannot sit down in my chair.

And let’s not even talk about sitting down to go to the bathroom.

It’s WORKING.

I remember this feeling – it’s like the first week of the Farrell’s eXtreme Bodyshaping experience, only distilled into two screaming quadriceps. When I watched the first circuit of the workout, I didn’t think it looked so bad. They were all moves I had done before, and I was sure I could handle it. Well, I could handle it –during the workout. It’s the morning after that is killing me. And I can’t wait to do it again tonight!

The moves are all combination moves, designed to work the most muscles in the least amount of time. So, while on resistance training days at Farrell’s we would do sets of squats with bands, in Jillian’s World of Pain we do squats with dumbbell raises to work both arms and legs. Then there are side lunges with raises. And more squats. Then some jumping jacks. Then more squats. Then some pushups. Then more squats. Then punches done while (you guessed it) doing squats. I’m typing the word “squats” so often that the word is beginning to stop making sense.

It’s AWESOME.

I’ve made it through two workouts so far, and am on track to pound it out again tonight. The whole set is only about 25 minutes, the pace is quick enough that I don’t get bored, and just about the time I’m ready to die from those stinkin’ squats, Jillian Mistress of Sadism is on to the next move. I've never seen her on "The Biggest Loser" and I've heard conflicting opinions on her style, but in this video I really like her. She's encouraging but still tough, and things like, "You want changes? They don't come for free..." are exactly what I need to hear right now.

So, between the Holy Spirit and Jillian Michaels, I finally feel like I’m on my way. And that may just be the strangest sentence I’ve ever written.

Neat. :)