"Just because it's low impact doesn't mean you won't get...high results"

I've been thinking a lot lately that I'm pretty tired of being lazy. I hate to exercise. And I love to eat. Bad combination. I have a gym membership, but I haven't been to the gym in about 6 months (maybe more). That's crazy, but honestly the only time I can go to the gym is right after work, and my gym is kinda far away, so it takes about 20 min to get there in the rush hour traffic. Then when I finally get there, I feel like since I've driven all the way out there I need to get a REALLY good workout in. So I work out for an hour - 1.5 hours, then drive 20 more minutes home. But I'm really sweaty and I HATE to feel gross, so I gotta take another shower. By the time all of that is done its 8pm and most of my night is totally wasted. Plus most days, work drains me so much that I just can't get the motivation to go. SO, there is my problem. I would love to have a treadmill or an elliptical machine in my house but a) there isn't enough room and b) i don't have that kind of money. But it would be nice because I could eliminate all that time spent driving to and from the gym, I can do it whenever the mood strikes me, and I can do it for a bit before I get my shower in the morning, thus eliminating the two showers per day thing.

So what did I do, you ask? I did a little research online about collapsible gym equipment (ya know the stuff they advertise can fold down and "fit under your bed"). Well all of the larger machines like that are pretty expensive, plus there isn't much selection. I guess anything that can fold down isn't, perhaps, the sturdiest of machines. But I did stumble upon one little contraption on the Sears website that looked promising.


It's called the Nordic Track Mini-Stepper. It got super great user reviews online, so I decided to give it a whirl. So I dragged Brooke out to the mall with me and purchased one. It was only about $60. I was super excited about my new purchase, so I busted it out of the box, slipped on my new balances and hopped on. All it is is the pedals off a stair master with resistance bands attached for your arms. It has a timer and it counts your calories and strides, so that's pretty cool. It looks like you would have problems falling off because of no handles, but it's actually very easy to keep your balance. And to make it more challenging, I vary my pace, and I constantly use the resistance bands to work different parts of my arms, and I twist from side to side to work my obliques. The day after my first try on it, I felt like I had had a run-in with Chris Brown (ha ha that was bad). But that's good because I knew it worked a lot of muscles and stuff.

I would definitely recommend it if you don't have the space (or money) to purchase a large piece of equipment. I've had it for about a week and a half and I've tried using it most days, so I'll let you guys know if I start to see any weight loss. I do need to get my diet in check, which I am going to start doing this week, so I probably won't start seeing results til after that. But I'll keep ya posted!

And so in the spirit of exercise, I will leave you with one of my favoritist videos EVER. It's an SNL digital short featuring Drew Barrymore, and it's where the title of my blog comes from. Enjoy!