I started this week by using the following video on Youtube by Keaira Lashae to help me get off my butt. I feel like a whale and it has been cold and wet outside. This seemed like the perfect video to help me.

Additionally, I wanted to begin doing push-ups again. I have flabby, flappy lady-wings. I only wish my lady-wings looked like Nike’s! When my nephew was little, he came up to his mother, who happened to be wearing a tank top and completely flapped her lady wings and thought it was funny. She laughed too, but she too has always been a pretty fit lady, so I am sure that really affected her. It did me!

When I had first given birth and was trying to get back into shape, I could only do a modified push-up (on my knees or against the wall). Since then I’m pretty confident that I can at least do ten full push-ups. Proper form is essential!

Push-up modifications:

Wall push-up:

Knees push-up

Full push-up with proper form:

I completed this video exercise four times this week.

1. Day One: three mile indoor walk
2. Day Two: Rest
3. Day Three: three mile indoor walk, with two sets of ten push-ups (with proper form!
4. Day Four: Rest
5. Day Five: three mile indoor walk
6. Day Six: Rest
7. Day Seven: three mile indoor walk, three sets of ten push-ups

I am happy to have completed a weeks worth of exercises and by day seven I didn’t feel so much like a whale. However, a week of this video and I am ready to move onto something else. I was amazed at just how much Kearia LaShae gets you moving. My arms were burning by the end of that workout! I found this woman and her video my simple searching Youtube for fitness videos and she impressed me enough that I tagged and saved a few of her other videos. I had planned to do this workout more often but found that I was more sore than I thought I would be, so I didn’t exactly maintain the “30 minutes or 3 miles mantra”, but I am happy with this weeks progress overall!

By the end of this week too, my mood has most certainly shifted. Both my husband and I are back at work and our son is going back to his daycare routine. Ah, the holidays are nice and all, but it is nice to get back to it as well. Working mainly from home can be stressful when extra bodies are always around throwing off my standard routine.

I think I have adult ADD/ADHD or something. I get bored with exercising pretty easily, among other activities and things, As I’ve aged and my metabolism has slowed, as it naturally does over time, it has become increasingly difficult for me to just do one or two single programs/ routines over time. Plus, as I’ve aged, my attention has been stretched to managing multiple responsibliities and multiple people. It isn’t always easy. Coffee helps, but then again that too is something I am hoping to tackle this year!

After a week, I don’t think there is much change in my appearance, but I’d like to think that I am smarter than to expect there to be such a difference in such a short amount of time. I’ve got a life outside of this little challenge I’ve decided to undertake and I am not starving myself. I do understand that eating the right food is important thopugh too, and have been trying to incorporate ‘cleaner’ meals into my day.

Oh yes, and more about Nike, or Winged Victory of Samothrace. She commands the space she takes up at the Louvre in Paris, and then some!

I think she is my inspiration for the week. Firstly, birthing out of a child’s joke and my playing with words, but ultimately because this figure needs nothing else but her figure alone to support her awesomeness and as I begin this endevor, I need nothing else but my own will and spirit to get me started on this journey.

I will close here with a little information about the original Nike, from the Louvre’s website:

This exceptional monument was unearthed in 1863 on the small island of Samothrace in the northwest Aegean. It was discovered by Charles Champoiseau, French Vice-Consul to Adrianople (Turkey). The goddess of Victory (Nike, in Greek) is shown in the form of a winged woman standing on the prow of a ship, braced against the strong wind blowing through her garments. With her right hand cupped around her mouth, she announced the event she was dedicated to commemorate. The colossal work was placed in a rock niche that had been dug into a hill; it overlooked the theater of the Sanctuary of the Great Gods. This niche may also have contained a pool filled with water in which the ship appeared to float. Given its placement, the work was meant to be viewed from the front left-hand side; this explains the disparity in sculpting technique, the right side of the body being much less detailed. The highly theatrical presentation-combined with the goddess’s monumentality, wide wingspan, and the vigor of her forward-thrusting body-reinforces the reality of the scene.