Remember this post about feeling out of shape?

To be perfectly honest my progress has not gone that well.  It’s hard to make a lifestyle change or change habits.  We have a small gym for our apartment community, but I really don’t use it.  Other than doing cardio on the elliptical machine, I tend to wander aimlessly between the other machines.  There is a tempting lap pool, but my Southern California temperature gauge hasn’t gotten up the courage to swim outside in San Francisco fog and cold.  I would probably do better in an organized class, but really don’t want to pay the money for a gym membership.

The other day we were watching TV and came across the Pilates Power Gym on Home Shopping Network.  Long story short, after some thought and reasoning we bought the machine.  Some of our thoughts…

• We could work out at home anytime we wanted
• The machine has the potential to do so many types of exercises that work out the entire body and hopefully I won’t get bored with all the variety
• Somewhat compact for a 1 bedroom apartment where space is priceless
• It came with instructional videos to get me motivated and into a routine
• Obviously the gym near us wasn’t helping motivation, we needed to change it up
• Like the idea of pilates and it’s strength building without being overly strenuous
• Simply buying the machine was going to motivate me to work out

Our machine arrived this week and I’ve already used it several times.  It was easy to set up, quiet and I could get started right away.  I didn’t feel that I had to master everything before I was effective.  Now there are a few exercises that I need to improve on where the motion is more advanced, but overall I could jump right into a workout.  I’ll give a more in depth review once I’m able to use it with more regularity.

Source

I’m also trying to adjust diet.  Right now my main focus is smaller portions, more vegetables, less meat and resisting the temptation of things that are just straight up not good for me.  It’s hard though.  I need to be more disciplined.  Extra motivation come from recently watching Food Inc. I am trying to be conscious about food not only for diet, but also being aware of what is going in my body and what process that food went through to get on my plate.

So that is where I’m at with the whole getting in shape and losing some extra weight.  I’ll keep you updated on my progress with Pilates Power Gym and give a more detailed review once I am able to get used to it and pure excitement from a new machine has worn off.

Do you workout at home?  What is your routine?  What kind of diet have you found works best for you?