One of my teammates in the Holiday Hoedown Challenge posted this pic and a huge "Yay!!!"on one of my comments in the forums over at "The Hood". I thought it was really sweet of her so I posted it here. What did I do to deserve it?
I completed my FIRST Bikram Yoga class!!!!! Yay me! I am pretty excited about it and it made entire rest of my day because like the 5K, I tried to talk myself out of this one too. Every excuse in the book-- "It snowed and the roads are messy." "I have to dig my car out." "I can do it next week...." Not to mention the "What ifs" ---> "What if I am not ready?" "What if I get dizzy or even worse PASS OUT?" I kindly reminded myself of how I felt after the 5K and when the opportunity presented itself this morning (I got out of class early), I seized it. I went to the noon class because I figured there would be less people to embarrass myself in front of it wouldn't be as crowed and sure enough there were only five of us there. The people at the studio were really nice and a very friendly lady showed me the ropes after I told her it was my first time. I appreciated that a lot since it made a whole lot more comfortable. She also practiced beside me and checked on me throughout.
When it was all over, I couldn't believe I made it. I never got dizzy and was able to get through the poses. I was starving at the end though and my tummy made that known to the entire class during the last savasana. I am so happy that I talked myself into it and look forward to my next session.
P.S. Remember to be nice to the new person in class. It helps :-)
The holiday season is officially upon us. Last week I took the party on the road :-) to visit my family for Thanksgiving. I was a little unsure about how it would go in terms of keeping up with my workout schedule and limiting excessive food consumption. On Thanksgiving day I ate a little bit of everything and I made most of the sides so I was able to control fat and sugar content. What I didn't do so well with was that I ate out much, much more than I expected to. I bought groceries so I could have food in the house but didn't even touch most of it. On the workout front, after rearranging my workout schedule a bit, I managed to get all the TurboFire and Chalean Extreme workouts in. I took resistance bands with me to do the strength training (you have that option in Chalean Extreme). My little cousins (ages 6 and 8) had a lot of fun working out with me at home. We shared lots of hi-fives. I also did an hour of Zumba with my two older cousins and a family friend on Saturday morning. The class was led by Sistah Anyango of FLYY Fitness in the Hartford area and I must say it was hands down the best Zumba class I've been to so far. It even had reggae mixed in. Here's the workout breakdown for the week:
Wednesday- rest
Thursday- 0-
Friday- 90- strength, intervals, abs, stretch
Saturday- 60 mins- Zumba (with the family- loads of fun)
Sunday- 45- strength and stretch <---- after 6 hr drive!
Monday- 100- strength, abs, cardio <----- Damage control!!
Tuesday- 73 mins- cardio and abs
Total- 368
As I mentioned in my last post, I brought my water jug with me because this week's non-fitness challenge was to drink water. I will be doing this for Christmas as well. I am sure I look weird traveling around with a water pitcher but oh well, it gets the job done. I actually feel like I made improvements in the water drinking department this week. I refilled my pitcher at least one each day. It holds 7 cups and I think this was my average/ day this week. Saturday was probably the only day that I came close to drinking one half my weight in ounces.
Last week I picked up Marianne Williamson's book A Course in Weight Loss after seeing it on Oprah. I am on Lesson 11. I have only been reading the lessons, not doing the things that require physical action (rituals- hmm, working on that). So far I love it. It has helped me to identify the roots of my overeating and give more thought to the reasons behind why I gained the weight that I am working on losing in the first place. Great read.
Week 1 of the challenge is a wrap. This week I logged 372 minutes of exercise. This was the breakdown:
Wednesday- Rest
Thursday- 80 mins
Friday- 56 mins
Saturday- 80 mins
Sunday- 55 mins
Monday- 45 mins
Tuesday- 56 mins
I basically stuck to the TurboFire/Chalean Extreme hybrid plan and I added in two extra cardio workouts. One was a makeup Turbo Fire workout from the previous week and the other was a 30 min. run. Overall it was a good week. I felt like I was making up for the damage from the previous week where I ate out like three or four times and had A LOT of baked goods (Hello Brownies!). I lost about a pound this week which is also good.
Week 2 will continue with logging exercise minutes as the Fitness Challenge and the Non-Fitness Challenge is to drink half your weight in water daily. I really need to work on my water intake so I am loving this challenge. One of my fellow Winter Warriors shared that she puts out the total amount of water she wants to consume for the day in a pitcher and then makes sure that it is empty by the end of the day. I like that idea and might try that. I even brought my own PUR pitcher along while visiting family for Thanksgiving! It's THAT serious! Also, I think this challenge is well timed because if you're filled up with water, it will make it much harder to overeat during the holidays. Bring it on Week 2!
I am not really good at getting out of the house to workout in the winter time and that usually puts a damper on my workout plans. Last year I bought a treadmill in January to encourage working out at home (and it worked!). This year I will be doing DVDs. A little over a month ago I started doing the Chalean Extreme/TurboFire hybrid schedule. The entire program is five months long so it will take me through the winter. Chalean Extreme is a program for strength training while TurboFire is cardio conditioning with High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). I got these programs back in the summer while the P90X/ Insanity craze was going on. They are all sold by Beachbody. I took pics while I opened them and saved them just for you :-). So here goes:
Both programs come with a workout schedule/guide and a meal plan book. The TurboFire kit has a bunch of DVDs so I didn't take a picture of all of them. A few other items that came in the kits are two lower body bands, a resistance band, a tape measure and body fat calipers.
The first month of the program was a recovery month for people who completed another program right before starting this one so I supplemented the workouts with walking or running on my treadmill. That worked out pretty well and I lost about 4 lbs. I feel like I lost a lot of inches but I haven't taken my progress measurements as yet. I started the second month this week and it's a little more hectic. My body is definitely feeling it so far. I will keep you all updated on how it's going.
Share: What are your workout plans to get you through the winter?
The Holiday Hoedown at the Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans starts today!! I am on the Winter Warriors Team. For this challenge we will have both fitness and non-fitness challenges. The fitness challenge for this week is to log as many exercise minutes as possible. The non- fitness challenge is to write down our goals. Here are mine:
Fitness challenge: Currently doing TurboFire/ Chalean Extreme Hybrid so I will be following that workout plan. I am in my second month of it. It's between 30-70 minutes per day 6 days a week.
Non-fitness challenge: For calories I do a diary of everything I eat and also add portion sizes if I overate. I may add in actually counting the calories if time permits. For now I just estimate and add a 200 calorie catch all for anything I may miss or underestimate. I would also like to get up to drinking 64 ounces of water per day. I currently do about 48 on average.
Fitness goal for the entire challenge: Lose 10lbs. Wear size 12 jeans. (I wore a size 12 dress this past weekend though!)
The challenge ends on December 22. You can find more info about it here.
I am determined to get my sugar addiction under control. Cookies, cake and pies were made for me. In an effort reduce my consumption and give this weight loss process a little boost, I decided to substitute milk chocolate for dark chocolate. I have never been a dark chocolate lover before this but thanks to my mini relationship with Trader Joe this summer, I discovered that dark chocolate and I could really become friends. Well, my exploration continued since then and I have found a few other brands that I like. Dove is currently my favorite. I love the fact that one bar is 190 calories and after eating it I feel like I've had enough. I even had days where I split one bar into two to save for the next day . In addition, since switching to dark chocolate I consume waaay less of the other stuff (cookies etc.) and I don't even have chocolate everyday. Let's hope the trend continues.
