30 Day Shred: Does This Jillian Michael's DVD Really Pack a Punch?

I am generally a healthy person. I tend to eat healthy most of the time, I go to the gym regularly, participate in yoga (not so regularly), have been running (although not very well) but all in all am not overweight and consider myself in pretty good shape....or at least I did until I started this DVD.

I was looking for something I could do fast that would actually have an impact for those days when my demanding job makes it difficult to go to the gym for an hour. My friend convinced me to give this workout a try. I have to admit that I truly believe that to get results you must work hard so am always skeptical about a workout that takes all of 27 minutes from start to finish. There is a warm-up first followed by three levels and each level has 3 circuits. They include 3 minutes of strength, 2 minutes of cardio and finally 1 minute of abs. The DVD then goes into a much needed cool down.

I arrogantly ordered this DVD and could not wait to pop it in when I received it. I laughed about starting at Level 1 but decided to go with the instructions (10 days Level 1, 10 days Level 2 and 10 days Level 3). After 5 minutes of Level 1 I was out of breath, dying of thirst and counting the minutes until this DVD was over. In fact, I do not think I ever have looked at the DVD counter as often as I was in the first five minutes that is of course when I could see straight.

I could not believe that after getting back into working out and starting to feel like my old self again this DVD could cause me so much grief. The worse part I could not even keep up to the point of saying that I did the whole thing start to finish!

Now after completing the 30 days (and yes I skipped a few days in between) I am more toned than I was before and my clothes are definitely looser. In addition, this is a great DVD to do first thing in the morning and then whether or not I have time to work out in the afternoon I at least got a workout in. Now I will say that I also eat generally healthy but I was doing that before I started the video. I do allow for splurges and I was also still on occasion doing my other workouts (I like variety). But this DVD makes excuses a thing of the past!