I'm weak...

...and my entire body aches!!

How's that for an intro to a blog? I had my second session with my personal trainer today, and the last part of the workout was a full-body push-up. Or at least that's what it was supposed to be. Starting with my entire body on the ground, she wanted me to push myself up. I couldn't. Not even close... not even an inch off the ground.

I told her I was weak, and she said "No no, that's good. You're going to look back on this day and say to yourself "Remember when I couldn't even do one full-body push-up? I've come such a long way from that."

So I decided that I should keep track of my progress in a blog, just so I can look back and be even more proud of what I've accomplished.

I'm training with Amanda Kenyon. She is a certified personal trainer, as well as a figure competitor. She is incredible. I learned about her through my friend Leslie, who trained with her last year before she took a trip to Mexico with her boyfriend. I saw Leslie's results in photos from her vacation, and that's all it took to convince me that Amanda would be able to whip me into shape too.

I first met with her about two weeks ago to discuss goals and our training plan. I'm going to be training with her for 30 minute sessions 4 times per week for the next 8 weeks. So that's 16 hours of hard-core workouts over the next two months. Yikes!

Before I actually started my training sessions, she wanted to work on improving my diet. I told her my biggest weakness was sweets, and particularly chocolate. She asked me to cut out sweets completely for two weeks, just to prove to myself that I really don't need them and to help stop my cravings. It's only been a week, and I'm doing fine without them. I get to drink chocolate protein shakes, and they seem to do the trick (not to mention, they actually taste really good). She also noticed that my carb intake was really high, so she asked me to cut my carbs to less than 140 grams per day. Add in some extra protein and a lot more veggies, and I'm already feeling lighter :)

My first workout session with Amanda was on Thursday. It was an intense 30 minutes of dead-lifts, lunges, ab work, arms and shoulders. It didn't feel too bad at the time, and there were only a couple times when I really couldn't move my body the way I needed to for the exercise. What I like about Amanda is that she recognizes when I've exhausted a particular muscle and then moves onto another one instead. She's encouraging, but not pushy, and definitely not the drill-sergeant type. I don't think I could handle that.

Friday I was incredibly sore in my shoulders, butt and the back of my legs. I just kinda felt like Jell-O. I woke up today feeling quite a bit better. Then I met with Amanda for another session at 9 a.m. We did a lot of arm work, more abs and some other leg exercises. There was one ab exercise that involved hanging from some arm rings and trying to pull my legs up and out in front of me, and I couldn't even move my legs up an inch. My abs are already that burnt out from the last couple of days. She also had me do "death drops" on one of the arm machines, and as she promised at the time, my arms are pretty much dead now.

Even though I'm incredibly sore (and probably will be for the next couple of days), I'm so glad that I'm pushing myself to do this. I'm eventually going to be in great shape, and will be proud to be able to call myself a Strong Blonde.