The Abrams Main Battle Tank

Using Zumba to whittle down the baby weight has worked phenomenally well. The calorie burn you get for an hour's worth of work....ahem, for an hour's worth of fun is incredible. I personally have never found anything I like half so much. I am fairly short (5' 3") and I have a terrible running gait so the best I can do is a decent power walk. I could spend an hour walking on a treadmill and maybe come close to burning half as many calories if I put the incline way up. A treadmill is boring! Sorry to anyone out there that loves these but that's just what I think. I can't ever read a magazine because of the motion, and they are loud so I have to turn the volume on my music or TV way up.

We actually own one. Bry and I bought it when I was pregnant with our older son. I used it extremely sporadically during pregnancy and by that I mean three times. Right after our older son was born, I was so busy learning how to be a mom that I didn't really give the treadmill a whole lot of thought. When he was six months old, I thought maybe I should start some kind of diet and exercise plan but after one week, my milk supply dropped drastically. I stopped right away and devoted that energy instead to getting my milk supply back. I weaned my older son at 14 months and that's when I decided to try that whole diet/exercise thing once more. So for all of October, November, and December (in 2009) I worked on that treadmill and to show for it I had a 12 lb loss. Okay, not too bad, not too bad... Many of you are probably doing a little counting here and are realizing that those were the months leading up to January of 2010. That first week of January, our son turn 18 months and that first Saturday Zumba class became a huge turning point in my life.

Bye bye treadmill! We still have it, but that's only because Goodwill won't accept used exercise equipment. The layer of dust on it after 3.5 years of disuse is pretty thick. We never even unwrapped it from the plastic after the movers got it ready to put on the truck when we moved from our old house. It's stored in the utility room next to the furnace - oh how the mighty have fallen. By the start of April 2010, I weighed less than I had pre-pregnancy and that felt pretty good, especially heading into summer. Sticking with Zumba helped me to maintain this weight and I went into my second pregnancy 10 lbs lighter than with my first.

Do you know what the term "rearguard action" means? Before Zumba, every workout and every weight loss effort I've done has felt like a rearguard action. As if no matter what I did or didn't do, or ate or didn't eat, that weight was still there haunting me, constantly exploiting any weakness in the defenses. Here's a definition if you've never heard the term:
1. a defensive or delaying fight engaged in by a rear guard (as in covering the retreat of an army or the evacuation of a besieged garrison)

2. an effort put forth by means of preventive or delaying measures or tactics and used against great odds in defense of a threatened existing order or situation or in opposition to a proposed new departure.  *Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/

If I've reached a goal already, then "in defense of a threatened existing order or situation" is what I feel like I'm dealing with. That last part is what I feel best describes it when I'm working towards a goal, "in opposition to a proposed new departure". Who else out there feels or has felt this way? I know I can't possibly be the only one waging my own private little war. I know I'm not alone and hey, neither are you! Finding Zumba, for me, was like suddenly having my very own Abrams tank dropped into the middle of the battle. Here's a picture of one. Beautiful isn't it? Time to turn the tables and go on the offensive. Weight problem, meet Zumba; Zumba, weight problem. Boom.

Best advice: Find your own Abrams because that "boom" feels really really good.