Insanity, a Workout... Success?

So, I did it.

I climbed the Everest of dvd workout bootcamps.

I completed the nine-week Insanity workout, missing only two workouts (one each month on days my little toddler refused to nap).

And I feel great. Suddenly, I can do pushups without completely dying. And pushup jacks, and all sorts of crazy moves in plank position. My results from the Fit Test (8 exercises at 1 minute each) improved dramatically, some even doubled from my original score on day 1.

I look great, too, not that you can tell in my winter clothes. My abs are strong enough to hold in that little mom pooch (yup, still got it) with little to no effort, I actually have a butt now, and I'm a bit more streamlined. At a gathering in the midst of Month Two, some friends (who couldn't see my tummy since I was sitting) asked if I was pregnant; I had a glow about me. Nope, not pregnancy (sorry, Mom). Just health. Or maybe confidence.

Wondering about pounds and inches? Here are my results:

Weight Lost: -3.5 pounds
Inches Lost (combination of all the places you'd measure): -6.5 inches

Wondering if you read that right?

Yes, there are negative symbols in front of those numbers. I gained weight and gained inches all over my body (see note on having a butt, above).

Now, I did Insanity as a challenge to myself and in order to get in shape, and honestly, I wasn't all that unhappy with my weight to begin with (about 30th percentile, according to this body mass index calculator). But I mean, what average woman doesn't want to lose 10 pounds? So yes, I was a little bit disappointed.

I can only assume I didn't shed pounds and inches for some combination of these reasons:

1. I lost fat while simultaneously gaining muscle, which is denser and weighs more. 
Maybe? Maybe? Please?

2. I overate... it was Christmastime, after all.
Mmm, fudge! Holiday roast! Pie!

3. I didn't eat enough. 
I didn't follow the 5-meal-per-day manual that comes with Insanity since planning meals for one food-allergic toddler is enough food stress for me, thank you. I did feel constantly hungry, tired and craving steak... but I suspect my post-workout protein shake gave me the extra calories I needed.

4. My body never adapted to the workout and kept releasing cortisol.
According to BeachBody, the people who sell Insanity, these intense bootcamp workouts put my body in a state of emergency and cause me to release cortisol, a stress hormone that enhances my performance but makes me store extra fat.

In any case, I wouldn't mind if a move to more sustainable workouts pushed the scale numbers south over the next few months. And, well, maybe I should share more of those Christmas goodies with friends.

In any case, I really am proud of myself for completing such a difficult workout program. And I did get in shape.

Insanity is designed to bring participants basically to muscle failure; even the people in the video have to take breaks during the crazy sets! Shaun T, the trainer, keeps reminding viewers, "Do what YOU can do; don't try to do what we're doing."

Shaun T calls the workout style in most of the videos "max interval training." He takes regular interval training (working out at a moderate level with short bursts of high-intensity) and turns it on its head: About 3 solid minutes of high-intensity exercise punctuated by 30-second breaks. Basically, he makes you do a few incredibly difficult moves, then once you think your body can't do anything else, asks you to do something even more difficult. And then you repeat all of that after 30 seconds of breath-catching. And then you do it all one more time.

It. Is. Hard. The warmups are more intense than the peak of most regular workout videos. I even had to modify some of the jumping moves (like high knees) after injuring my knee a little bit in Month One. But something about Shaun T is motivating. It sounds cheesy, but at critical moments, when he looks right into the camera and points straight at me, and says: "You. Can do it!" I keep going. Sometimes I felt like a machine following orders; it is amazing what the human body can do, even fighting through extreme muscle fatigue. Oh, man, do you SWEAT! I haven't sweat so much since junior high summer basketball camp.

During week one, I thought I actually might die... or become an Olympian. By the beginning of the second week, my abs were already showing more definition than they'd had since high school swim team. At the end of Month One, I got to where I could almost do the workouts without extra breaks. Almost.

Recovery Week was a breeze, though even the "recovery" workout video was harder than any other exercise dvd I've done.

During the first week of the longer, harder workouts of Month Two, again, I thought I might die... or maybe climb the actual Everest. Seriously, month two of Insanity was the first time in a workout program where I had to take breaks during the warmup. But the moves kept chiseling out more and more muscles, and I got better and better.

And then I finished and breathed a huge sigh of relief. But I'm a little tiny bit sad it's over.

It's only been a couple days off, but already I miss that daily adrenaline rush of attempting something nearly impossible. For the first time in my life, I look to working out as a way to reset a bad morning or to get out of a bad mood.

I'm taking it slow this week to let my body recover, but I can't wait to dive back into to regular workouts, alternating between a couple dvds I used to use, to help me keep these awesome abs.

...Maybe I'll even throw an Insanity dvd into my rotation. Maybe. I still have to decide if I'm crazy enough.

A Happier Holiday with the Kims

This holiday season is tucked away into memory now, and I feel as if I’ve let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. A sigh of relief I didn’t expect.

Because this year was not like last year.

On the surface, last year should have been the better holiday season. This year, we stayed in Seoul and missed seeing our families. Last year, we spent Christmas with my family on Kauai and a second week in Honolulu. The beach! The sun! Shave ice! Fun relatives!

Sounds awesome, right?

Notice Luca's face. Typical of the trip...

The kicker, though, is that the holiday season a year ago was the peak of the hardest time in our lives so far, when Luca was sick. Hawaii kicked off a run of ER visits and hospitalizations.

This holiday season, I tried not to pressure myself, but I felt like it was truly Luca’s first Christmas: he’s healthy, he’s thriving, he’s aware of his surroundings. He gets excited.

I couldn’t wait to see the magic of the season come alive for him, and that sense gave me a burst of creative motivation.

I prepared... and started to understand Clark Griswold’s obsession with making his family Christmas absolutely perfect.

I made some Pinterest-worthy Christmas crafts, the best being Luca’s felt tree, which he liked to decorate at first, but soon decided was more fun to undecorate and pull from the wall. Hey, at least it distracted him from the big tree.

And, in addition to our Advent wreath and candles, I introduced a new tradition for our family: the Jesse Tree, which tells the story of the Old Testament, leading up to Christ's birth.

I had high expectations.

But Advent came, and we all got sick. Luca was sick for half the Christmas season. Two out of three colds since August had landed him in the ER for breathing problems, so I stressed and vigilantly puffed his inhaler to keep his lungs from freaking out.

I kept up with the Jesse Tree for the most part—hanging one ornament to represent someone in Jesus’ genealogy each day (or, you know, two every other day), and reading applicable Bible verses—but we never once got to our Advent wreath candles on a Sunday. Hey, it still counts on Monday, right?

Even the final candle—we lit it the day after Christmas instead of Christmas Eve.

It was hard to really bask in the Advent season in preparation for Christmas, as I’d hoped.

One saving grace, though, came in the form of three people Joe and I love very much: visitors! More on them in another post, but suffice it to say that there is something so wonderfully precious about watching people I care about meet and care for my son.

Reindeer sweater!!

A few days before Christmas, everything was coming together. Our colds were over. We had a Saturday night carol service at our church (Luca danced to the music and didn’t cause too much of a scene when he got bored, and he even cooperated to let us stay for the dinner afterward). We planned to attend a neighbor's small party on Christmas Eve and a food-allergy-friendly dinner with close friends on Christmas Day.

Christmas was shaping up to be wonderful.

But then, late the night before, toward the end of our friends’ party, Luca started coughing. A lot. Some barking coughs. Some Gollum coughs.

He slept horribly and coughed often. His skin felt warm. I just knew he’d get a fever and feel terrible on Christmas Day. I was already scheming to move our gift-giving to the weekend and arrange for to-go plates for dinner. I was disappointed at the thought of missing the shared Christmas meal we had planned.

But, no, Christmas was magical. Yes, Luca felt sick, but he didn’t get a fever, and he didn’t struggle to breathe. We still got to give him presents; we still got to spend time with our friends.

It was just fun:

The night-before preparations.

The discovery.

The wonderfully slow process of opening each gift and playing with it a while before taking interest in the next.

The crash.

After Luca’s nap, he came out of his room with a curious, almost worried look on his face.

Was all that real? His expression seemed to say.

Focused, he walked right past me into the living room and around the couches. There, after seeing his new toys hadn't vanished, he grinned, relieved and excited. He made the rounds to each one, saying its name and playing with it a little bit.

His favorites? The dump truck (“dump uht”) and excavator (“eh wawa”) Joe and I picked out. He wouldn’t let them go when we left for our food-allergy-safe Christmas dinner with close friends a few minutes later.

There’s a joy to knowing we gave our child something he delights in. I’m proud, watching him stack blocks in his dump truck, move it around with a “Vvvvvv” and lift the back, shouting, “Dump!” as blocks tumble out.

Side note: I can't imagine giving Santa credit for the best gift of Christmas. Maybe that's selfish, but I'm still figuring out my position on the subject...

Anyway, I can’t help but remember that Christmas gift-giving is a small reflection of the greatest gift in history: God giving up Heaven for a time to become one of us—a human, a baby, Jesus—so that we can be close to him despite our imperfections. But it's also a reflection of the gifts God gives in the day-to-day, like health, a better Christmas and a better New Year than the last.

When I rang in 2013, dinner found me sitting on a hotel couch in one of Joe's t-shirts eating Round Table Pizza and sipping wine from a plastic cup while a suffering Luca laid on my lap. I woke up several hours after going to sleep and heard fireworks from the direction of the beach, and prayed they wouldn't wake my son.

This year, we still didn't make it until midnight, but our moods were light, carefree, happy.

On New Year's Day, Joe and I took time before bed to look at photos of last Christmas and New Year's, and some from the rest of the year. It was amazing to see how much has changed, improved.

I couldn't get through it without grabbing a tissue.

Seeing Luca delight in the gifts I've given him or the crafts I made for him gives me so much joy, but the photos reminded me that the gifts God has given me are so much grander than a toy construction set or a felt tree.

It's emotional for me to bring to mind all we faced last winter, but at the same time, I'd never before felt God's hand so firmly at my back, supporting me. His comfort was never so real to me as that time when I truly needed him. And he provided friends and family to surround us as well, propping us up when we felt so close to falling.

So this year, I am taking a cue from Luca and basking in a gift from God: His presence. He was there last year when I needed him so badly, and therefore I am confident he is here this year, hiding in the glories of a happy holiday.


* * * *

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” Luke 11:11-13