Shake that booty

Remember that generalised new years resolution list that I made in January?  No?  I’m not surprised.  I have just about forgotten it myself.  Anyway, I have finally decided to start doing something about that list.  Okay, I have been doing a fair amount of writing and cooking and baking but not much else.  Not that I haven’t been doing nothing, I have actually been very busy 🙂

Anyway I decided that I need to start doing the exercise thing.  It’s not that I don’t exercise.  I walk my daughter to school every day and walk home, then go back to fetch her and walk home again (well almost everyday:  not when its raining really hard and not on weekends when I’m usually collapsed from the exertion of walking so much during the week!) but I have decided that it’s not nearly enough.  There are two main reasons why I figured that I need to do more.

The first being that my daughter will soon be in juniors and from juniors they start expecting the children to become more independent (ridiculous I know) until by the time they reach year 6 and are the street wise (haha) age of ten or eleven, they can walk themselves to and from school – it’s called high school readiness or some such nonsense.  Anyway what that means for me is that one day, in the very distant future, I am no longer going to have my daily school walks and will need something else to fill that space.  Now as appealing as sitting on the sofa eating an entire box of chocolates every day is to me, I don’t think that would be an appropriate way to occupy myself.  I need something else, something more energetic.

The second reason I need to do more (and this one most probably makes a lot more sense to most) is summer, which will be happening sometime this year (maybe, hopefully) and with summer comes – the swimming costume!  If you’re not so brave it’s a full costume, sometimes accompanied by a skirt or wrap or a tankini if you’re a little braver but not really that brave and just want to BS yourself into thinking you’re brave or the bikini if you are very brave or know that you have a killer body.  And actually I think this goes for men too – which makes for interesting beach times (ie. men wearing teeny tiny Speedo’s which could be good but might not always be :))  At the moment I am in the tankini category and most probably wouldn’t change over to bikini’s anyway but would like to know I have the option available!

Now, I have seen so much advertising regarding Zumba fitness that I thought it would be a great way to get into shape.  After all, it’s dancing and I love dancing.  So my options were to join a Zumba fitness class or get the DVD and do it myself.  I opted for the latter as I figured that if I am going to look like a blithering idiot I may as well do it in the comfort of my own home.  It’s a great DVD.  It starts with the basics so you can learn the steps before you start actually doing the dance routine.  Now it really would help if you were Latin American – then this would be dead easy for you, and the two woman who do the routine have elastic bodies such as I have NEVER seen before, but I do have to say that if you are not, don’t fret, as long as you have some sense of rhythm or can at least keep to a beat you will probably look funny but be fine.  I do think I have rhythm.  I don‘t think I have a rubber body which certainly makes for some awkward movements but there is plenty of hip action and a load of booty shaking which makes it enjoyable nevertheless.

So at the end of the day, even though my calf muscles now feel like they are made of stone and walking is somewhat laborious, I know that I will have shaken my booty enough, especially seeing as my best routine was the belly dancing one, to be comfortable in a bikini come summer (even if I only do so in my own back yard, or inside the back door at least 🙂  And hopefully I will carry on with it as I rather enjoyed it – must be all those endorphins, wonder if they’ll wear off before my next exercise time…

Copyright © 210313 by Karen Payze

• Posted in: me ♦ Women are complicated
• Tagged: Bikini, Dance, DVD, Exercise, Fitness, Physical exercise, shake that booty, tankini, video, walking, Zumba