Dear Jessica
Hope you and your family are well.
I only discovered you in January 2019 and since then you have been an important part of my life. I was trying to lose a stone in weight (again) and came across your Walk Off the Weight DVD plan. Six DVDs later and after learning how to get YouTube on to the TV, I am hooked. You are like having a personal trainer: one day I’m doing Hiit cardio and next day I’m doing a fusion walk. There are so many different routines to try that I can never be fed up plus you never shout at me. Now I know that some people feel that having someone who forces you to work hard works for them. It’s not for me – I would just go and eat cake!
Cake is one of the reasons I do have to exercise and as we are all going through a difficult time at the moment, I’m baking and eating a lot more. Even more this week as it’s been my birthday!
Normally my day will start early and I will do some exercise before work. It might just be one of your 15 minute walks but I would always try to do something. I would come home and if I wasn’t running (during the winter months I run after work but actually prefer to run in the morning), then I would pop on another routine and exercise again. Silly me thought life would be easier when we made plans to start working from home. Whilst everyone else was scanning the local Sainsbury’s for toilet rolls, I picked up my order of my heavier weights; after all, I was going to have all that time I wasn’t travelling to work (or so I thought). I was ready to start on a Jessica Smith plan.
On my first day of working from home, our prime minister announced strict lockdown measures including only going out for one day of exercise. I was going to have to choose wisely but I could work out to lots of your different workouts. My normal lunchtime walk could be replaced by a 15 minute fast fat blast walk.
Did that happen? Well some days it did but not as often as I would like. Well it turns out you do actually have to work very hard from home. You forget to stop for lunch and your 4pm finish stretches to 5.30. My monthly email would come from you and was so full of encouragement. You understood, as you were also experiencing these uncertain times too, that it sometimes was too hard to do any exercise. I was finding that the beginning of each week even going outside for a walk was an effort. Most weeks I was able to turn it round by Thursday so I did have 4 days of good exercise.
12 weeks after our lockdown started, life is slowly starting again to what is being called a ‘new normal’ and I’m able to exercise outdoors as much as I want. I have managed to complete your core week (persuaded my daughter to take part in that) and am running regularly. This week I set myself a target of reaching 20,000 steps a day by enjoying the fresh air by walking and running. Finally finished my 5k runkeeper plan. Not as fast as it wanted me to be but there is always next time. I also opened your yoga stretch for beginners & beyond DVD to try to encourage me to start enjoying the benefits of yoga. It’s early days but I think it could soon become a regular part of my exercise.
I’ve also decided that I will exercise Monday to Fridays and use my weekends to ride my bike, take long walks or dance and sing badly in the kitchen whilst making dinner. I’m also going to start your Summer of Strength program on Monday. I’m still taking one day at a time though so hopefully I finish week 1.
Once again, Jessica, thank you for all your wonderful workouts.
Stay safe
Tina x
P.S. Whilst walking back through the store with my weights, one of the wonderful workers came out with a trolley full of toilet rolls so there was a lot of happy shoppers!
Next time I will be sharing my birthday whilst on relaxed lockdown
