This article is going to be different than my usual fare. It’s dedicated to anyone who wants to improve himself or herself in some way. I love brave people. It takes a fearless mind to make a video like this:

I enjoy a lot of Barbara4u2c’s videos, but this one hit me particularly hard when I first saw it about two months ago. Back in high school, I was a long-distance runner on the Track & Field and Cross Country teams. I’ve always been big on running and biking, so for most of my life I haven’t had trouble staying trim and toned. But in the past few years I had noticed myself starting to get a little out of shape. I was developing love handles and bit of a protruding belly. Nothing terribly noticeable, but definitely not where I like to be.

After watching the video above, I didn’t really take away anything specific. I didn’t follow her advice on eating habits, exercises, or taking pictures of myself to monitor my progress over time. But I just got an impression of health that I wanted to recapture. I knew what I had to do.

Unfortunately, the moment I got the itch to start exercising came right after I had hurt one of my elbows, so I wasn’t able to use my trusty ab roller or 20-pound medicine ball. It just caused too much pain when I tried to use them. Luckily, I remembered four simple workouts I used to do often:

• Regular ab crunches.
• Side sit-ups where I cross one of my legs while in the crunch position, put my hands behind my head, and turn toward the crossed leg while doing a sit-up.
• Lying leg raises where I lie on my back and put my feet in the air. I pretend someone is pushing my legs down and I have to stop them from hitting the ground and then lift them back up into a vertical position.

I didn’t look for expert advice on what workouts are best or anything like that. I just went with my gut.

I didn’t want to push myself too hard at the outset, so I started with 50 reps each for a total of just 200. The first day was easy. The day after I was pretty sore, but I did the same 200 reps again. By Day 3 I was really sore. I did the same thing again. For more than a week I was in a lot of pain, but it was a good kind of pain because I knew I was doing something right. My body had no choice but to change because I refused to bend. To push myself to get stronger, I increased the number of reps for each exercise by 10 every few days. I’m now at 200 reps of each for a total of 800. I take off one day a week to let my body recover a bit and gear up for another rigorous week. Again, I’m not sure if that’s the “right” thing to do, but it works well for me.

The results were visible within a few days. My love handles have pretty much disappeared while my belly flattened and the muscles all tightened back into their proper form. Being in shape is a big confidence boost, and I highly recommend it. You don’t have to follow my exact exercise routine any more than I followed Barbara4u2c’s. I didn’t even change my diet because I already eat quite healthy. For me, it was just a matter of giving the food I eat a mission and reminding my muscles what they’re meant for.

I’m grateful to Barbara4u2c for her video, and I hope it can inspire even more people to enjoy the benefits of healthy living.

This is the Deja Reviewer bidding you farewell until we meet again.