CHOCOLATE-FUELLED THOUGHTS
Fighting The Mommy Jiggle – A Barre3 Review (Plus a Giveaway!)
It makes me cringe a little to talk about losing weight and exercise here. I’d rather just confess my constant chocolate consumption and move on. But my people need me to be healthy and I’ve found something I like that works. So I must share it with you. Even if it makes me squirmy.
First, I have PCOS. Which means that besides having 7 kids in 7 years (and yes, I totally count my paper pregnancy as a hardship on my body as well), I had the extra challenge of the PCOS inhibiting my ability to lose weight. But since I had Finn, with my fabulous husband to support me, I managed to lose 25 pounds.
I went to the endocrinologist after losing the first 10 pounds and was pretty bummed to hear my bloodwork was not looking good and I was slipping closer and closer to pre-diabetes stage. He encouraged exercise and I tried not to snort/cry in his face.
After we settled in from the move, I gritted my teeth and gave it a try. I determined that my introverted self could give up my afternoon “room time” while the babies slept if I could just be allowed to exercise in peace. So I went to the basement with my laptop and bounced and sweated my way through cardio aerobics online while the kids played with knives upstairs. (Not really. They did their math. Mostly.)
Working out is stupid.
It was ok. But I was always miserable before, during, and after. Not something I was excited to do again. I stuck it out but kept searching for some other alternative. And then I found Barre3.
It’s a blend of yoga, pilates, and ballet. I love yoga and ballet, so that sounded promising. I tried a free class and discovered that even though I wasn’t jumping around like a mad woman, I was sweating profusely.
Huh.
I tried it another day. Ow. My legs shook and wobbled and I fussed and cussed at the computer screen. But when I was done, I felt surprisingly… calm. Not stressed and miserable like before.
For 15 bucks a month, I could work out in my own bedroom (which we all know is my happy place) and feel very zen and happy afterward. SCORE.
Barre3 online makes it pretty easy to fit in a work-out, which is perfect for a busy mama like me. I have access to a wide variety of videos of different lengths. On a good day, I’ll knock out a 60 minute workout. If I know I don’t have a lot of time, I can opt for a 30 minute work-out and then later that night, I can tack on a 10 minute ab workout.
Every now and then, when my afternoons are so full I can’t exercise, I’ll squeeze in three or four 10 minute work-outs at random times during my day. A lot of the videos can be done in whatever clothes I’m wearing while standing at the kitchen counter, I just choose one of the “Standing Slim” videos.
The videos are beautifully shot, the instructors are fully dressed, and nobody is mean or yelling at me (no matter how much I yell at the instructors on my iPad.) Exercise is soothing (once I’m finished.) I get all Zen-Mama.
Working out is fun!
I don’t know if it’s the yoga or the nice instructors, but if my kids interrupt me to ask a math question, I don’t growl in frustration like I used to. I can pause my video, add 8 + 4, and go back to cussing in my head about the number of carousel lifts I’m doing. If my kids wander in to watch, I let them join me as long as they’re quiet. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a 3 year old try to do the diamond lifts.
The results? I’ve only been using Barre3 for a few months but after 2 c-sections and countless babies, I am beginning to discover my abs again. Transverse abdominals? I might have found them. My waist is trimmer, my posture is better, the whole package is more pulled together like I want it to be.
My sisters have tried it as well and agree that they feel lovely after a work-out, rather than ragey. The goal is to give you strong, lean muscles, not bulky hulk muscles.
I like feeling ladylike after a work-out.
But this isn’t just girly stuff. I convinced Andrew to try a 10-minute ab work-out and he turned red and grunted a lot during it. On nights when he doesn’t do his weight work, he’ll let me pick a ten-minute ab work-out for him because it improves his posture and weight-lifting form so much.
About a month ago, I went back to the endocrinologist. He was blown away by my lab results. The PCOS was all but invisible and he said I had reversed the onset of diabetes by several years.
Yay, God! Yay, exercise! Yay for Barre3!
Tips & Hints for Barre3:
- I have a theory that the 30 or 40 minute work-outs seem more intense than the 60 because they’re squeezing so much work into a shorter amount of time. Both are equally effective and will leave you nice and sore. But not so sore that you want to weep.
- Listen closely to the instructors when they talk about “neutral posture” and how to hold your core. Doing that properly made all the difference in the difficulty and effectiveness of the workouts. And they aren’t kidding: the better you get, the harder it gets. But I haven’t quit. Matter of fact, I work out four times a week and the whole household knows when I haven’t done my workout.
- Warning: C-section mamas – My scar hurt pretty bad after a work-out at first while I broke down the scar tissue and strengthened those poor muscles, but you’ll love the results.
- The ball. You don’t HAVE to have it. I used one of the kids’ deflated soccer balls for awhile. But when I realized I liked the work-outs, I spent the 12 bucks to get a lovely squishy ball. And, oh, it makes the core work heavenly. I love the support it gives my low back and how much it adds to the overall experience.
- Barre3 loves and understands mamas. They even have an entire work-out dedicated to “bouncing back.” It’s taught by a mom who has twins, so she understands the whole twin belly thing. That work-out happens to be free through the end of the month, so now’s your chance to try it out.
My sister wants to keep this for herself. I love you all more than she does.
When I told the nice people at Barre3 I was writing this review, they offered to send me a ball for one of you. (And my sister is very bitter I didn’t just give it straight to her, so you should all feel blessed I decided to offer a giveaway.)
Leave a comment telling me how you squeeze in your exercise or what your biggest challenge is. I’ll pick a winner on Friday night.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
p.s. Nobody paid me or sponsored this giveaway. All opinions are entirely my own.
A Berkey Water Filter Review – For Water Purists Like Me
I’m a heavy drinker.
Of water.
I am legen… wait for it… dary for requiring copious amounts of water and spilling it frequently. Especially when I’m pregnant. I remember being in the hospital pregnant with the twins in pre-term labor. I was all hopped up on morphine and magnesium but still insisted that I have a full cup of water with a straw on hand at all times.
Then I would fall asleep with it in the crook of my arm until it spilled all over me and my bed. The nurses just adored coming every few hours to change the sheets of a woman incapable of standing on her own two feet or holding her water.
Heh. Pun not intended but definitely true.
About a year ago, Andrew made a purchase that revolutionized the water drinking in our home. He bought a Berkey. He actually made his decision out of a sudden realization that if we were ever to lose power or water for a few days, the odds were very small that someone would take in our family of nine and share their resources with us.
The Berkey is known for being able to filter anything and everything out of water. It is a good choice if you want great value air and water filters in stock. So if we needed to, we could filter pond or creek water. I shrugged my shoulders and encouraged him to buy what he thought we needed. When he got it all set up, we decided to put it to the test. We put some red food coloring in the top water and waited for it to filter through.
Sure enough, when it reached the bottom of the Berkey, the water was completely clear and tasty.
And that’s the other thing, the Berkey water is DE-LISH. I know it’s hard to imagine water having much taste, but you can actually smell the difference before you even drink it. Hold some tap water up to your nose, inhale the chlorine and fluoride. Hold some Berkey water up to your nose, smell… nothing.
Now take a sip of the tap water. Fine. It’s water. But once you sip the Berkey water, you realize the tap water actually burned your throat a little as it went down while the Berkey water is almost sweet and slips smoothly down your throat.
I know it sounds like I’m being dramatic but I’ve watched Andrew make himself drink water for years. He doesn’t really like it. He’ll sip it slowly and then forget it on the counter. But since we bought the Berkey, he can guzzle an entire glassful in minutes. Often.
The whole family can taste the difference. The kids declared it “yummy” and also enjoy being able to fill their own water bottles. I’ve become a bit of a princess about my water and no longer drink it bottled or from the tap at all. When we go on a trip, the first thing Andrew and I do when we get home is guzzle a tall glass of water from the Berkey and sigh in relief.
And since I’m displaying how spoiled we are, I’ll also tell you that we use Berkey filtered water for our espresso maker and can definitely tell a difference. We don’t need to descale the machine as often if we use good filtered water. This is a plus, since we can’t go three hours without Sweet Precious in operation.
A Berkey was a bit of an investment, but the filters last at least a really long time (think YEARS), and when you add up how much you spend changing out other water filters every three months, it doesn’t seem quite so bad. Plus, it’s nice to know we’ve got a back-up plan for clean water that will work no matter what happens.
For a “heavy drinker” like myself, that’s some good peace of mind.
Do you filter your water? Anybody got a fancy reverse osmosis system? A Brita? An old-fashioned strainer?