I made it! 40 days on an exercise routine (with 30 days on both a diet AND exercise routine)! Many people I have spoken with about my experiment express amazement for my discipline and self-motivation. Honestly, I do too! I am not sure why I was able to do it but it just seemed like the right time. I was ready for this change.

The last week of my diet and exercise program was to try to maintain my weight loss. I continued to eat oatmeal and salads primarily but tossed in a few additional snacks of nuts and dried fruit. I also was trying to clean out my freezer a bit so I substituted frozen broccoli and spinach for fresh as a base for my meals. It was just as effective and costs a bit less too.

I have decided that I absolutely love yoga! Yoga is the exercise that feels best for my body. It also works well given the limited time I have to devote to exercise due to my child care responsibilities. Yoga is a great multi-tasking exercise because you are doing several different kinds of exercises all at once.

The DDPYoga program is great because it is a unique twist on yoga. There are a lot of the traditional yoga poses and exercises but Diamond Dallas Page doesn’t get too heavy into the meditative aspects of yoga and instead pushes it more like a workout routine. There is no soft music (no music at all really) and no relaxing scenery (it is all shot on a workout stage in a studio). The people in the videos are real people who used the system to get results. Diamond Dallas Page is dressed in a relaxed fix shirt and shorts. You can tell he is very fit but he doesn’t throw that in your face. He basically steps back and is communicating that this workout is to help you the user and not to enhance his own image. He gently suggests how to modify each exercise either to make it harder or easier depending on your fitness level and encourages you to modify the routine however you need to to make it work for you.

What I think will be surprising to most people is that even though this workout does not require any running or jumping around, you are going to work your body really hard, define muscles and burn fat. The DDPYoga system is described as “zero impact,” which is wonderful because you don’t have to worry about injury and anyone of any age can use it.

Now that the weight loss portion of my routine has concluded, I have found that I really need to keep up the yoga daily to just maintain my weight. I actually look forward to the workouts (well, most of them) and enjoy how my body works and feels afterward. I am glad to have found a system that is sustainable for me and so grateful that DDPYoga sent this system to me to evaluate. What a tremendous gift in so many ways.

In the end I lost one more pound in my final week along with another 2.5 inches! (It seems once you start building your muscle base, your body naturally starts reshaping to burn fat). In total, my results were:

My body feels a lot better after my diet and exercise routine but, of course we all want to know whether I look any different! I dug in my closet and found the same outfits (yes I still have them!) that I wore about a year and a half ago after 30 days on my previous exercise regimen. I tried to duplicate the poses so you can judge for yourself.

I think you can see a difference! You can tell that I was carrying most of my excess weight on my belly and hips. Getting that weight off not only looks better but is supposed to be much better for health too.

But when I look at these pictures I also am glad that I didn’t beat myself up for 18 months worrying all the time about those extra 15-20 pounds and hiding from the camera. I don’t look horrible in the before pictures and in the top picture I even think I look better and less gaunt. (I also think it is time to update my makeup routine!)

Just as with all organizing projects, my diet and exercise work is not “done” but hopefully can be less intense this month. My goal is to stick with the DDPYoga system and make sure I maintain my weight loss by end of month.

Thanks a million to DDPYoga for allowing me to be a reviewer for their system! It was the email that changed my life!

**Disclosure: I received a free copy of the DDPYoga DVDs but my opinions and experience are my own.