The 150 day challenge or Fat-bottomed girls - Queen

Yeah... we make the rocking world go round....But that (or I should say huge butt) aside, there is not much else being fat-bottomed is good for in my book....(walking down the street in downtown Punda being above ideal weight, some men [you know the kind, the where-have-you-been-all-my-life-and-why-don't-you-go-back-there-kind] might try to persuade you otherwise).


I used to have a fairly healthy lifestyle. Lots of outdoor activities, many hours in the gym, good food, a whole lot of dancing and I drank mostly fruit juices (of the fermented grape kind and is sugarcane not technically a fruit?).

Since moving to Holland about 1500 days ago (ok, a bit more, but for the sake of the story it sounds good), after putting on the usual move to the other side of the world pounds and the freshman 20, I did some halfhearted attempts to get back into the rhythm of gym every morning, or running in our magnificent back yard Amsterdamse Bos. Somehow I just couldn't keep it up for more than 3 weeks at the time, before long it became a lower priority in my day and a few weeks went by without seeing the gym.


This not only resulted in a new wardrobe of stretchy pants and many awesome muffin-top pictures, but also a gnawing sense of disappointment. I have always had great discipline. Just not think about it, just do it, first thing of the day: get your exercise in! Why can't I find my rhythm?


But(t) anyhoo, to make a long, sad story short, last weekend Joris and I were taking procrastination to a new level (hey, we said we were upping the ante this year) and got stuck unable to tear ourselves away from to back to back episodes of I used to be fat on MTV. A just graduated high school senior, with weight issues, gets ambushed by a personal coach and they have 85 days to lose weight to make it to college in better shape. The stories are inspiring. Some of the kids lose up to 35 kilos, exercising every day for 4 hours and adapting their eating habits. Granted, they are 18 and at that age it is a bit less daunting to lose weight like it is when you are over 30.


In the back of my mind the premise of the show stuck with me. A fixed number of days, a fixed goal and a fixed meal and training program. So I thought up the 150 day challenge for myself.

150 days, 15 kilos, daily exercise and more dancing! 

We have been eating healthy for a while now and I have almost completely cut out the grape juice since the new year started, so I thought no time like the present and decided that today would be day 1. I am at 85 kilos now and will work towards 70 kilos over the period of 150 days. Every day I will exercise for at least 35 minutes (we love you, Jillian) and will be back in running shape for the 5K on March 30, and continue building up towards the 16K in September. I will be dancing at least 1 time a week, whether it is just me and my videoclips (I will nail that Run the world choreography and ALL of the Pussycat Dolls clips. Good thing we have curtains!) or actually going out to salsa or anything else! Every 10 days there will be a weigh-in.

So this morning at 6:30 the alarm went off (HOW DID I DO THIS AT 5:30 FOR YEARS???), I fought through the hail and snow (of all days!) and put my time in at the gym. And tomorrow we are doing it again. Until it doesn't feel like dying and murder all in one when I hear that beep.

I am sharing this with the world, so you can help keep me motivated. So give me a shout out in 3 weeks!