by Rebecca Mikulin

Created on: May 26, 2009

If there's one thing I love it's a physical challenge. For most of my life I've been a very athletic person (with a break of a couple of years after injuring my knee), enjoying such invigorating pastimes as jogging, soccer, sword fighting (not to be confused with fencing), hiking, figure skating and horseback riding. It was a rare day that I didn't at least take the old bicycle out for a couple of hours, I love exercise and couldn't have a good day without plenty of it.

Well then came the kid and the grueling hours spent working freight to make sure that kid had plenty of food and diapers which just took all the enjoyment out of physical challenges and pretty soon I was doing exactly what my other half did every night...collapsing on the couch, often with something to eat, and watching TV all evening until bed time. This is not my normal thing and not something I really enjoy, but my energy was thoroughly sapped. Pretty soon I started to gain weight, and of course the first response of so many is to cut back food which was my first big mistake...the more my metabolism slowed down the harder it was to get my exercise in and the more drug-out I got at work.

Last year I quit that job and found a way to replace the income with handcrafts and housecleaning and, finally, had enough energy to realize how disgusted I was with the way my body had ballooned. I suddenly found myself weighing over 220 pounds at 5'6" with very little muscle tone left, and suddenly not working freight had thrown some more pounds onto my frame. Now I'm not a small person, broad-shouldered and muscular enough to receive some nasty jabs from classmates in high school who found me less-than-feminine, but even though people told me they'd never guess me at 220 I knew I had to take some drastic measures to re-achieve the body I'd always enjoyed and somehow find a way back to my much-loved physical pastimes.

I'd previously tried Billy Blanks' Tae Bo workouts and really enjoyed them so I ordered a set of the original workouts and worked out with a friend three times a week. It helped a bit, my muscles started showing shape again and my flexibility improved a bit, but it was missing something...after three months of religiously working out three days a week and walking at least a mile on off days I'd only lost ten pounds and had no noticeable change in my measurements except a half an inch off my thigh. Besides that, I wanted something more vigorous than walking on the off days that might just

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