Yesterday’s workout kicked my butt—and I liked it! Tanja Djelevic, the same fitness instructor from my crosstrain disc DVD, also teaches this one. Broken down by lower body, upper body, and back and abs, each 20-minute session challenges your entire body and core. I’m hoping on repeat runthroughs of the program, I’ll get better. I had some trouble on some of the movements, plus I’m working with a limited portion of my living room.

A promising sign was that going into the workout, I had started getting a headache. But having almost two weeks off since the last workout, I wanted to challenge myself to get back into it. Plus this was a Netflix movie that I wanted to return. By the time I finished the workout, my headache has somewhat subsided. It still lingered in the background, but I didn’t need to take anything and it didn’t slow me down. How cool.

The true test will be how I feel 24 hours after the workout.

As far as the remaining workout tapes, I decided to pitch the VHS. I just won’t use them, and I know it. So instead I’m exploring Netflix’s workout collection to find other DVDs. I’ve also heard about online subscriptions that I may try out. Ideally, I would hook my laptop to my TV so the screen was bigger, so maybe when I figure that all out, I can try those out too.

Later this week, I have another Kathy Kaelher workout and a couple of Jillian Michaels DVDs to try.

Something to think about:

Excerpt from The Myth of Self-Esteem.

Once you unperfectionistically, some of the time, strive to do what you can do, you have laid the groundwork for unconditional acceptance of yourself, others, and the difficult world. To summarize some of the main things I have been saying:

Try, try, and try again for the success, the love, the artistic and material things you want and to minimize what you don’t want. But—

• Accept the frustrations, hassles, pain, disgust, and depression you no longer want but can’t reduce.
• Accept the disapproval, neglect, scorn, resentment, jealousy, and hostility of others. Don’t hurt yourself by their names and gestures.
• Accept without liking your failing and incompetence. But try, try again!
• Accept unfair treatment from others. Forgiveness, not revenge, may change it in the future. But nothing has to work!
• Accept your self, your being, your aliveness but do your best to change some of the inept and moral behaviors.
• Accept control of your own sabotaging ways. Accept help but not dependency on others. Be autonomous but not narcissistic.
• Accept meaning and purpose in life and make long-range, ongoing vital absorbing interests that you choose.
• Accept your mortality and don’t forgo the one life you definitely have for a promised afterlife.
• Accept that magic won’t solve your problems but hard work and effort may alleviate them.
• Accept the fact that you are a social creature and can live without the goodwill and cooperation of others—but pretty badly. Unconditional other-acceptance (UOA) will help you preserve and enjoy others and ward off human extinction.
• Accept your (and others’) human fallibility. Damning yourself for your inadequacies will hardly make you (or anyone) less fallible!
• Accept your proneness to good and bad feelings. You can, with hard work and reflection, improve your self- and other-destructive feelings. But achieving minimal feelings will achieve minimal aliveness. Reflect and change your destructive feelings—but don’t make yourself into a zombie!
• Accept the fact that you are a person who thinks, feels, and behaves. Interactionally! You feel the way you think and behave, behave the way you think and feel, and think the way you feel and behave. All three! You can change all three—with the help of the other two.
• Accept persistent thinking, feeling, and acting. You can start right now; but time and persistent practice are the great healers!
• Accept the fact that self-control is the most effective control that you have.
• Accept that acceptance is largely compassion—for you and your self, for others and their self, and for the troubled world and its self. Once again, all three.

Today’s workout was pretty simple. I haven’t been feeling well; a cold has been stirring up in my lungs. I wanted something low key so I did a balance ball pilates tape. Unfortunately, Exercise Ball Workout Video: Pilates with Denise Druce is way too simplistic. It is about 16 minutes long between review of each exercise and actually doing the workout. It only covers six total exercises. I had to repeat the circuit from memory to actually make it worth my while.

The tape features basic and good core exercises, but I’d never use a tape; I couldn’t even skip over the introductory part to get to the workout (well, I could fast forward, but I missed my DVD player). This is the first tape to be pitched.

I came across a version of Kathy Kaelher Fitness: Total Body Workout and Get Fit Class at Target in the dollar bin. It includes two 60-minute workout DVDs.

Last week, I did the Total Body Workout that uses free weights, a chair and a mat. It has six 10-minute segments covering cardio, arms, legs and ab exercises. The cardio was kind of hard since you have to move and jump around, and my apartment floor makes a variety of lovely creaking noises. I was worried I’d bother my neighbor so I wasn’t as into it as I should’ve been.

The muscle group exercise were cool though, employing free weights. I have 1-, 2- and 5-pound weights, so I’d like to challenge myself to increase my strength there.

I also need to do the Get Fit Class.

(This isn’t the cover of my disc but must be the same DVDs.)

Today’s workout included Total Body Crosstrain and Simply Yoga. I really wanted to feel the burn, and last time’s run through of the crosstraining DVD, I was hurting for a few days. But I also wanted to run through one of the DVDs I hadn’t tried yet. So I put in the Simply Yoga DVD I got years ago. This is a simpler, more relaxed routine then the MTV Yoga or Power Yoga DVDs. Yolanda Pettinato runs through a variety of stretching and relaxation poses that takes 30 minutes. After a hard workout, this DVD was ideal and could potentially become part of my rotation after rigorous activity. I have the book somewhere but I didn’t refer to it today.

I have three more yoga tapes, a pilates tape and a get fit class to still run through. I’ll probably try to the pilates tape tomorrow.

After taking a few days off from crosstraining and yoga because of soreness, today I pulled out MTV’s Power Yoga. This is an accelerated edition to the original MTV Yoga, which faster transitions and harder sequences. I liked it, but as I haven’t gone through this one much, I had a hard time keeping up. It was also more difficult and aerobically challenging, so I was sweating more during this workout. I like both this DVD and the original, so I think I would space them out throughout the week for variation and more of a challenge.

Tonight’s exercise plan included the Gaiam Total Body Crosstrain DVD, which I got back in August. It involves an inflatable disc and a bungee cord that you integrate together to work your upper and lower body, as well as your abs. I’ve actually only gone through the disc once so I was excited to see what I could.

The lower and upper body segments were fairly good. I definitely felt it in my glutes and legs, but I had some problems with the pushup segment. I’ve never been really great at pushups so hopefully this disc will help me improve them. Let’s sculpt some arms, eh?

The abs was difficult, which I remembered from the first time. But the disc is nice because you support your lower back with it as you do the crunches.

Having done yoga yesterday, I was already sort of sore. Tomorrow’s soreness should be fairly interesting. Tomorrow I plan to do MTV’s Power Yoga. (I just realized I have a total of 10 DVDs/tapes to test out, excluding the Tae Bo tapes.)