So close to 50 ell-bees I can taste it!

48 pounds, people! Woo hoo! Two more to go before Monday, so I'm putting in extra workouts this weekend. Nothing crazy, but maybe a long walk both days with the family, who are coming into town for Easter weekend. I also worked out with Jackie this morning, but as friends! I lost a trainer, but gained a friend. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing.

She and I wrapped up our 20 sessions this week. Very bittersweet. I was so happy for how far she'd taken me, but sad that our partnership is over for now. However, then she suggested we meet and work out this morning as buddies. And that was fun! Of course, she put on a ton of weight to the Smith and other weight-lifting instruments, all the while developing nothing but a healthy glow about her. Meanwhile, I'm working with my 10- and 15-pound dumbbels and sweating like a fat New Yorker. But hey, whatever works, right?

Anyway, it sounds like we'll be working out together more frequently, so for all of you who gasped and e-mailed and said, "Oh Amanda, it's too soon to lose your trainer! I'm worried!" Lol. Fret not! It seems Jackie will still be a part of my life.

Now onto this weekend's biggest challenge: avoiding Easter candy. Dun, dun, dunnnnn. (Why does it taste so much better on Easter and Halloween?)

I'm sort of strong, but not that invincible

I had a blog post all planned out in my head yesterday after meeting with Jackie (my trainer, in case you are a new reader. If you are, hello. Welcome.) As you may recall, it had been a month since I had seen her, so I was super nervous going to the gym. I thought for sure my muscles had weakened because I was mostly doing cardio during our four weeks apart.

After chatting about her awesome spring break in Arizona and Las Vegas -- where she spent almost no money, by the way, because she's so pretty (oh the joys of the young, thin girl) -- we got right into it. Jumping jacks, jumping lunges, pulsing lunges, upright rows, hammer curls, skull crushers, Roman Something-I-Can't-Remember, power skates, sit-ups on the body ball, another kind of sit-ups on the body ball, overhead press, chest fly, two kinds of tricep thingies, the list goes on.

And you know what? I tore through it all like a champ. Like not a single day had gone by since I had seen Jackie! Like I was the strongest woman in the world!

My headline to my blog post was going to be: I am strong. I am invincible! Get it? The lyrics to I Am Woman? ...OK, not that clever. ... It's a good thing I was too busy Monday to sit down and write one of these because waking up this morning, I had certain lingering doubts about my strength and invincibility.

Remember my second or third post with the picture of the screaming woman? Hair flying around? Clearly in pain? Well, it's not quite that bad. I was able to descend stairs today, unlike after my first session with Jackie. But yowza, my abs are on fire and my arms are like noodles.

Muscles sure like to know what's coming, don't they? I think I shocked mine a little bit yesterday.

In other shocking news, and at the risk of oversharing (but that's generally what people do on blogs, isn't it?), I have a booty update. I mentioned in the past that my booty is the last to get with the program and start shrinking along with the rest of my body. Well, folks, the booty has started to take shape. Instead of an overstuffed couch shape, or maybe a large ship of some kind, or a giant, fluffy Cumulonimbus, I now have an honest-to-goodness booty shape (albeit much larger than is optimal). Wahoo!!