My Kayla Itsines’ BBG Workout Program Before and “After”

I’m baaaack!! I haven’t done much with my blog lately, but here I am with a brief little fitness update. It’s been a couple few years. 😂

So, a little bit of my fitness history… I have gained and lost the same 20 to 30 pounds like, 3 or 4x in the last decade or so. I’ve counted calories. I’ve done Insanity workouts. I’ve briefly counted macros and gone keto. I trained for and ran a half marathon. I’ve done Crossfit as well as my own thing at the gym.

And a wee bit of a mom life update… The last couple years have been a total mindf*ck for me with the transition from working mom of 1 to stay-at-home mom of 2. My physical and mental health, my fitness – oh, hell, even my hygiene – has suffered. This sh*t is hard AF. Like, harder than any f*cks have ever f*cked since the dawn of f*cks. Stress eating and lack of motivation for consistent workouts while SAHM’ing my son got me up to 159 lbs before I got pregnant with #2 – 14 lbs over my “happy” weight, and obviously it only went up from there.

Fast forward a year, around 3 months postpartum… I sorta felt like I didn’t just wanna die every second of every day anymore, and I decided I needed to start doing something to lose some of the squish. Breastfeeding wasn’t causing the pounds to just melt away like I hoped. Maybe it had something to do with eating whatever the hell I wanted out of stress and exhaustion. Might’ve had something to do with it…

I was unhappy with how fluffy I’d gotten and hated that I had a closet full of clothes that no longer fit. Seems dumb to care about that considering the whole IDGAF vagrant vibe I normally rock these days. When it comes to attire I rarely do buttons or zippers. Or clean, for that matter. But I guess it’s the principle of the thing.

I wanted a workout program that told me exactly what to do when. Something to follow and keep me honest when it came to eating right. Something that doesn’t require a gym. Something with short-ish workouts.

Enter: the Bikini Body Guide (BBG) by Kayla Itsines. I’d seen her abs – I mean, ads – on Instagram but mostly just kept scrolling. But one day I checked out the hashtags, the BBG community, and the progress pictures. Wow, talk about women empowering women! And amazing results! The workouts are only 28 minutes of resistance circuits 3x/week, plus simply MOVING most other days for 12 weeks. I figured what the hell, worth a shot.

That was 15 weeks ago. Here I am 15 weeks later, ~14 lbs lighter, and 100x happier.

I haven’t taken a progress pic since starting Round 2, but here’s my Round 1, 12-week before and “after”:

When I started I didn’t anticipate making this shiz public, so excuse my nursing bra and messy room. And by the way, here are a few things I’d rather do than post my gut and love handles on the internets:

1. Soak my panties in Tabasco sauce then run a 10K.

2. Pay $120 to have my hair cut into a mullet.

3. Sit through all extended versions of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

So this is taking some courage. But that’s one of the incredible things about the BBG Community – the real, inspiring women out there posting their journeys for the benefit of others, as well as for their own accountability. I’ll post my “BBG Instagram people to follow” another time. Also, go Bears.

Anyway, I say “after” because I’m not done, so the right picture is really just my other before shot. There’s really no end game with health and fitness. There’s always another goal to work toward, or in my case, at least the constant umbrella goal of being healthy. Okay, who am I kidding. My umbrella goal is to not being fat. #honesty

My physical results so far aren’t earth shattering or anything, and abs are still a pipe dream, but I lost ~13 lbs during Round 1 and I can fit into shorts I haven’t worn in a few years. Mentally, the success story is more impressive.

I’ll get into more specifics on that, the program, and my eating habits in later posts. For now I wanted to simply share my progress and encourage anyone looking for something to kickstart their health journey, or just try some kickass workouts, to check it out. Please comment or message with any questions you’d like me to answer or address in future posts.

FYI, I don’t sell this. Hell, I didn’t even actually buy it (sorry, Kayla, maybe I’ll pony up for the Sweat app because BBG 3.0-7.0, BBG Stronger, and PWR sound amaaaazing!). Here’s Kayla’s website: https://www.kaylaitsines.com/collections/guides

My IG fitness account – @squatto4moscato.

More later! Comment or contact me with any questions. 😊