My blog is almost current!
Oh, by the way, I am not getting paid for this experience. (A few people have asked.) Nor, am I paying for it. It's a TEST GROUP. We're lab rats. Only we probably won't die during the experiment. I hope...
Moving on!
2.22.2011 - Orientation Day!
Today we gather at the gym, clad in workout gear with notebooks in hand, to get the low-down from The Butt Master. I barely slept the night before. I'm so anxious, excited, terrified, hopeful, scared out of my mind. This is the first time I see all the ladies in my test group. Time to size up the competition.
I meet a nice lady in the locker room who has been in a BBL test group before and loves Leandro's workouts. She tells me how my body will "transform" and how fun this experience will be. I like her. She's got sort-of a protective older sister appeal and I like that she immediately engaged me. She'll be my locker room buddy. (That's my inner voice. Did you get that?) There's another girl in our locker bank that stares at us, then smiles halfheartedly. She's thin and looks fit, but lacks a butt. I decide I don't like her. She probably would have been mean to me in junior high.
Before orientation begins, we get weighed to make sure we didn't pig out like prisoners on death-row since the photoshoot day. I hop up on the scale and hope to God that all the eating and boozing I did over the three-day weekend, doesn't come back to bite me in my dimply ass. Jessica sweetly sets the the big weight on 100 and then quickly realizes she has to scoot the little weight all the way to end. I just went ahead and bumped up the big weight to 150, as I'm pretty familiar with my girth. Jessica calls out my weight to the gal that's writing everything down. "158," she says. "REALLY?" replies Jenny the note-taker. I had lost SIX pounds since rotating turntable day, seven days ago. "What did you do?" asks Jessica. My reply, "I'm in it to win it Jessica!" Seriously, the day of the photoshoot, I weighed-in at 164, which surprised me since I'm usually hovering in the 157-160 range. But I was really bloaty and PMSy so that likely spiked my weight. So while I think this miracle weightloss is a bit skewed, I'll take it...
 |
| Leandro: Master of my Bum Bum |
We gather in the exercise studio that will be our training camp for the next eight weeks. I scurry right to the front and look around to check out my fellow test subjects. I see fat butts, flat butts, black girl butts, wide butts, big thighs, little thighs - all the problem areas are covered. I'd say there are about 20 of us in the group. We huddle near the Butt Master. He's so tan, so toned, so...Brazillian. I stare longingly into his piercing green eyes, as he reintroduces himself to us and congratulates us for making the final cut. Thank you Leandro. You won't regret this decision. In his thick Portuguese accent, he begins to tell us what we can expect from this experience, and what he expects in return. Lay it on me Butt Master!
He talks about the food we'll be getting. Fresh, healthy food from 5 squares™, a delivery service that specializes in this sort of thing. Check them out here: http://www.5squares.com/index.asp
(The cool thing is the food we're getting, mirrors the recipes and foods in Leandro's program, so that when we're released into the wild, we can continue to eat this way. It's not processed crap. It's real food, from real grocery stores, and it's pretty simple. And since I really hate cooking or thinking about cooking, I need simple. So what I'm getting at is, YOU can do this too. You don't need to be a lab rat in Leandro's test group. Just stop buying shitty food and instead, buy fresh food. You don't have to shop in a farmer's market or a specialty organic food store. You don't need a fancy, expensive food-delivery service. You just need to go to your own damn grocery store and shop smarter. Okay, I'll step down from my soap box.)
Leandro tells us not to cheat or skip the meals. He asks us to push ourselves and not give up. "You gonna feeeel yo bodee changink," he tells us. He says he "...sometime gonna yell, but ees not because I'm mad. I wan you work haard to get reesults!" (Like my Brazilian accent?) Yell at me Leandro! I can take it! He also suggest that "some of the bigger girls, that need to lose more weight, and not just lift the butt" come at least 30 minutes before class for some "hard cardio." We know who we are...
We also learn that there will be prizes each week at weigh-in. Woo hoo! It's like The Biggest Loser © for not-so-fat people! I want prizes. Thankfully, it'll be percentage-based so already-skinny people don't have to compete directly against big-bootied-mommas (like me) who will lose a lot of weight in the first few weeks. (I hope.) The prize could be a massage, a private session with Leandro, new workout clothes. I WANT IT ALL!
We also learn that there will be prizes each week at weigh-in. Woo hoo! It's like The Biggest Loser © for not-so-fat people! I want prizes. Thankfully, it'll be percentage-based so already-skinny people don't have to compete directly against big-bootied-mommas (like me) who will lose a lot of weight in the first few weeks. (I hope.) The prize could be a massage, a private session with Leandro, new workout clothes. I WANT IT ALL!
Okay, so we kind of know what to expect from Leandro and the food, now it's time to learn the basic steps we'll be doing in class. Let's do this!
We stand in our lines, facing the mirror - something I never do when exercising at home, so this should help to either motivate me or make want to puke. Or both.
Here's some pictures of stuff I'll be doing:
 |
| Squatting |
 |
| Leg-lifting |
 | |
| Lunging |
