Chalean Extreme

Surprisingly I managed to stay eating healthy today in the face of the stressful events.  Mostly just the kids misbehaving due to lack of sleep and not willing to sleep made for an extremely stressful day around the house as anyone with kids knows.  It's a good thing I had some dinner in the freezer that I had prepared yesterday.  I was planning on saving it for later but tonight proved to be the night I needed to pull it out since Matt was gone at the clinic and the kids were so clingy and whiny and fussy that I couldn't get two seconds to go prepare anything.  But at least I did get my package in the mail!

So I have been searching the internet for new exercises to do and also great at home exercise videos.  This started of course because I injured my foot and I am not able to do my usual routine, so I was looking on Amazon for Pilates DVDs and yoga and different things I could do while I was not using my foot so much.  During this search I came across a boot camp dvd and in the reviews some people were mentioning other videos such as The Firm or P90x and I decided to see what those were all about and also to Google what the best at home workout videos were.  It was in my Google search that I found my soul mate: Turbo Fire.  I am a cardio junkie.  I love cardio, and I am not very good with strength training (which is why I have been having such a hard time these past 3 weeks not being able to do cardio).  Turbo Fire is a high intensity cardio workout designed by Chalean Johnson.  She also does Turbo Jam and Turbo Kick, but Turbo Fire is the most intense of all and it is a 90 day program.  It also boasts killer music, which is a trigger for me.  That is one reason why I love Zumba because I love the music.  It is also more choreographed and dancy.   Perfect for me and the things I like!  Like I said, it is my exercise soul mate.  Unfortunately, I think that I have a few more months of rehab before my foot is going to be up to the task of doing a high intensity cardio workout.  It is still very sore to the touch, and still hurts to walk there is no way I will be doing Turbo Fire any time soon *sniff sniff*

So!  I also came across ChaLEAN Extreme.  Also a 90 day program, also by Chalean Johnson.  (I have heard only good things about Chalean so I am excited to give her programs a try).  Chalean Extreme is a weight lifting program that focuses on building lean muscle (not bulkey) to burn fat since muscle burns fat.  The program comes with a resistance band, and a nutrition guide as well as a schedule.  You spend 5 days a week working out, 3 are dedicated to weight lifting and 2 are cardio and stretch.  Stretching is also an area I am not very good at doing.  I have heard only good things about this program.  I have heard that you lose a ton of inches even though you don't lose a whole lot of weight since you are building muscle (and muscle weighs more than fat).  But hey! If you are burning fat and building muscle all the better.  This is going to be a hard challenge for me because I am not a big fan of weight lifting but I have heard that this is a great program for women and for people in all walks of life weather they are just starting (me) or have been lifting for a while.

I want to borrow some weights from my parents since I think that having the actual weights will yield better results than using the band for the whole time, especially in the last two phases.  Speaking of phases, Each month is a phase and each phase gets more intense and adds more weight.  I am thinking about starting on Monday.  That gives me a few days to watch the extra bonus DVDs (Chalean talking about nutrition and the motivational CD) and go through the nutrition book and start to make a meal plan.  I need to focus on eating healthy in the meantime and make sure that I am well and truly out of the food binging I guess you would say, that I have been doing the past few weeks.  So much for my month of no sweets!  Instead of losing 5 pounds I think I gained 5 pounds!  But with the excitement of starting something entirely new and entering into uncharted areas and the possibility of losing dozens of inches in the next few months and building muscle like I never have before and getting lots of energy and just being able to move and lift and making this whole mom thing easier!  That is a lot of motivation and rewards to look forward to.  I still have two months before Emily's wedding, that is two months of results and granted they say you burn the most fat in month three, but you still see results in month one and two, and I am ready to give it all I've got.  I just hope my foot cooperates, which it should since this program is mostly weight lifting.  Which is why I chose to do it now.  When this program is done, Turbo Fire is calling my name and I will be ready at the end of these three months to meet the challenge of Turbo Fire and do better than I would have been able to do it now.

So they actually left out my resistance band in the package which I was pretty upset about, so I called BeachBody and told them that they left it out and long story short, they are sending me one in the mail and it will be here in about a week.  Looking at the picture above it looks like one of the DVDs are missing (the one on the bottom right) but that is actually an additional bonus DVD that doesn't come with the program. I'm sure they put it in there to make you feel like you need to buy it to complete your set which kind of peeved me.  Can't they just be happy you bought a program from them?

Anyway, I watched the basic DVD with the intro and I am going to be taking some before pictures which I am not entirely sure I will be posting since I want to take them in my sports bra and bathing suit bottom which isn't exactly "modest" but it is the best way to see exactly how your body has changed over the course of the program.  We will have to see how I feel at the end.