Yikes! Dancing with the Stars: 32 days

Did I really agree to Dancing with the Stars in December? 

Yes, I did. I figured that although I was overweight, out of shape and uncoordinated, this was the year I was already way out of my comfort zone, what with my “departure” from my newspaper career.

Besides, Dancing with the Stars was about bringing the community together for a fun time to benefit some worthy causes: YMCA youth and the Women’s Refuge. 

That’s what I reminded myself as I shared the news with you almost five months ago. Then, Dancing With the Stars seemed far in the future, entire seasons away.

Time may have been on my side, but fat was on my butt.

With that in mind, in February I joined Molly Redmon’s Jazzercise classes at the Old City Hall Gallery. What a killer that first class was. I huffed and puffed. I mopped my brow. I paused to catch my breath and drink water.

Finally, I reached the top of the stairs. 

I stood in the back row, a chunky, 51-year-old woman in a circus-tent of a T-shirt. When everyone else went left, I went right. When everyone else’s hands went up, mine went down. Thank God, Jazzercise gives low impact options. That’s the only way I survived the first month; weeks so full of insecurity and sore muscles that I took to calling it Torturecize.

I clenched my weights so tightly that I developed a thumb version of carpel tunnel syndrom that required cortisone shots. I pulled a groin muscle. I developed rashes in areas I didn’t know could rash.     

I once read that if you do anything for 21 consecutive days it’ll become a habit. It took about that long before I didn’t overtly dread Jazzercise. Another few weeks more and I was hooked on Jazzercise, much as I was after Josh was born, when I got down to 114 pounds, which, for  me, was (is) skeletal.

So far I’ve lost 15 pounds, not just through Jazzercise, but by also adopting Fit Food Dude’s suggestion of eating smaller, more frequent meals. I don’t call it a diet, or my body will surely rise up and sabotage me.

Not that I’m goodie dance shoes. I’ve had my Sugar Babies moments and my Dibs ice cream moments and a Thrifty’s rocky road ice cream cone or three eaten in my car on the 30-minute drive to Igo – plenty of time to justify how one scoop – with nuts – could count as a dairy-and-protein snack.

I’m a deadline-driven gal. Dancing with the Stars will happen in 32 days. Practice with the other dancers, and my partner, Jake Carver (a Club Cougar dance extraordinaire), begins in two weeks.

Holy crap!

Am I ready?

Hell no!

Will I do it anyway? You bet.

Click here to learn more about Dancing with the Stars.