21 Day Fix Complete!

Yesterday was day 21 of my first attempt at the 21-day fix. I...LOVED...IT. It was challenging and it pushed me, but that's what I needed. I thought that the daily 30 minute workouts would be the easiest part for me, with the food plan causing me problems, but it was actually the other way around...at least in the beginning.

There are 7 workouts that you do in order each week with an optional 10 minute "Ab fix" to throw in wherever you want. The best part about these workouts is that they're tabata style which is essentially 1 minute of work, 15 seconds of rest. Each round would have 2 exercises.  You would do the first exercise, rest, 2nd exercise rest....then repeat before moving onto the next round.

1) Total Body Cardio Fix - full body cardio with weights (with volleyball at night)

2) Upper Fix - Upper body strength training (always followed by an hour of zumba)

3) Lower Body Fix - Lower body strength training (preceded by teaching zumba and often followed by pilates with my trainer)

4) Pilates Fix (with volleyball at night)

5) Cardio Fix (I HATED THIS ONE! Burpees and mountain climbers suck)

6) Dirty 30 - full body cardio/strength intervals

7) Yoga fix to stretch and re-center...combined occasionally with 10 minute abs

I honestly loved all of these workouts except for the cardio fix on Fridays haha. I would get up in the morning and do them while the girls got ready for school and helped feed Cooper breakfast. He was usually more interested in watching me than in eating though. Some mornings it was hard to force myself to push play on that DVD but I never regretted it. I think the only time I skipped a workout was one Saturday morning when I'd already done a Burn It workout at the gym and just didn't have it in me. The first week I was sore and tired, but the second and third weeks I felt much stronger and found myself able to do more in each workout. It was great! I still had to modify some things, but one day I'll be doing pushups on my toes. One day.

As for the nutrition side of things, it took a little getting used to at first but then I fell in love. There are color coded containers that are perfect portion sizes. Obviously the fruit and veggie ones are the biggest with proteins, carbs and healthy fats getting smaller. Since I'm a bigger girl, I get to eat quite a few of each each day but find myself rarely eating all of them. 6 veggie, 4 fruit, 6 protein, 4 carb, 1 healthy fat and 1 salad dressing container. If it fit in the container, I could eat it. Although there were foods listed in the book, which I stuck to for the most part. I did allow myself one sugary treat/dessert each week so as to avoid feeling so deprived that I'd binge. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I had control over my hunger. Controlling my portions of things made a huge difference as did adding veggies to every meal. I didn't feel hungry or frustrated and I got creative with my meals.  I even bought Autumn Calabrese's Fixate cookbook to try some new things that would work with the container system.

Now that my 21 days are up, I got back on the scale and retook my measurements.  DRUMROLL!

I was hoping for more inches, but honestly...for 21 days of hard work, I'm extremely proud of myself. I plan to take this week off from the daily 30 minute workouts while continuing with the nutrition plan. Then I'll start over with round 2 next Monday. I'm so glad I found this plan. Combining it with my Weight Watchers points (which I now use far less of!) has been a huge help as far as getting myself back on track post pregnancy. Cooper has also now weened himself from breastfeeding, so I'm hoping that will help things along a bit faster as well. I'm dying to get back into my pre-pregnancy clothes!!