In Pursuit of a Superior Posterior

Back in March I was in New York City for the weekend. Flipping through the channels in my hotel room before bed, I stumbled on an infomercial for an exercise program called "Brazil Butt Lift" (or BBL for short). For some reason, I stopped hitting the channel-up button and paused to watch it. Like most exercise-related infomercials, it was pretty convincing. Toned, fit, smiling women in tiny shorts and sports bras did squats and leg lifts, shook their booties like Shakira and talked about how BBL had helped them get the perfect "bum-bum" (pronounced "boom boom") they'd always wanted. Man, did I want to lift my butt after watching that!

I mentioned it to my friend the next day and we had a good laugh about infomercials and their corny marketing ploys. Yet I found myself thinking about BBL, and when I got home I found the infomercial on-line and sent the link to my friend, who agreed that it was pretty darn convincing. (I tried to find it in a format that could embed here with no luck. Check out the website to watch it for yourself.)

Fast forward to last week. I came home late after being out with a friend to celebrate my birthday. There was a package waiting outside my door marked "beachbody.com" and in my mailbox was a birthday card from my friend in New York that said, in part, "I hope you get a good laugh from your birthday gift and don't hate me." Completely puzzled, I opened the box and saw with delight that it contained my very own BBL! I laughed out loud there in my kitchen for several minutes.

BBL comes with three DVDs and six different workouts, plus a "basics" segment that describes and shows most of the moves--at least, the more technical ones. It also includes four different month-long workout plans to choose from, depending on your individual "butt type" (flat, pear shaped, too big, or combination). There's a healthy eating guide (12 low-calorie recipes each for breakfast, lunch, and dinner), cards with moves to do when you're on-the-go, a six-day supermodel slimdown guide, and of course, a measuring tape and a pencil so you can do the trademark BBL pencil test. YES, it comes with the pencil! (A major selling point to be sure.)

So now I've committed to doing the BBL workout plan for the next four weeks, starting this past Monday (June 7th), and I'm going to use this blog to chart my progress and hold myself accountable. I took some "before" photos yesterday which I'm not going to post until I have some infomercial-worthy "after" photos to post next to them. I haven't taken my starting measurements yet, but I'll do that this weekend. I've been shaking my booty all week and have the muscles soreness to prove it. Awesome.

Here's to getting my own Brazilian bum-bum!