Getting Started

Starting an exercise program is a huge step in reaching your goal and should not be overlooked (as daunting it may be) in favour of relying on food to get you to where you want to be. Yes, your diet is the most important factor in losing weight, but in order for your body to change, you need to be combining healthy eating with at least some form of regular exercise. I found that the best place to start was on Amazon and various blogs and forums to see what had worked for others. I wasn't confident enough in joining a gym so I wanted something that would work at home. One person's name kept cropping up everywhere and that was Jillian Michaels. Her workout DVDs are huge sellers and she has a great range of exercise plans available. For a newbie to the world of home fitness, the best place to start is with a Jillian DVD because aside from being challenging enough to keep you from getting bored, they are relatively short and because she often has multiple levels, you feel a sense of accomplishment after completing each one, hence you keep pushing yourself to reach the next. I started with perhaps her most popular workout - The 30 Day Shred. The internet is flooded with reviews about the program, so I won't go into much detail here, but if there is one home workout that I would recommend to a beginner it would be this one. Based around a system of 3 minutes of strength, 2 minutes of cardio and 1 minute of abs, the shred has three levels, each of which you do for 10 days before moving onto the next. Each level is roughly 30 minutes long and that includes the warm up and cool down, so fitting it into your day is a breeze. 

By the end of the 30 days, I felt amazing and I truly believe that it helped me in preparing my body and my mind to progress onto much tougher workouts. There's a lot of advanced moves in this workout, for example the second level relies heavily on various plank exercises, so it does push you hard. That said, looking back a few months later, I'm surprised (and proud) of how much more I can push my body. I have a few other Jillian DVDs and I used these from time to time to compliment other exercises I'm doing. She always offers more advanced moves if you are in a position where you want to push yourself to achieve greater results. The three above are all amazing and target specific areas and have worked as a great set of follow on exercises after I completed the shred. I can honestly say, six months into my weight loss, that if it wasn't for Jillian's workouts, I would not be in the position that I am today. I have learned so much about fitness from her and I now know how to challenge myself and achieve results. If you are a beginner reading this, I cannot recommend her DVDs high enough. Don't get me wrong, they will kill you to start with but if you keep going and keep pushing yourself, the results will come.