A Life Of Gymspiration

Hi Everyone! Sooooo I know I said I'd blog every day and I haven't for a few days. Still feeling slightly under the weather and haven't made it to the gym due to that. My plan is to make my return tomorrow night for hip hop. I'm sorry but hopefully I'll be back soon! Just a side note I would like to point out. I am not perfect. I have never claimed to be perfect. I am quite the opposite. My main goal is to educate others on how to lead a healthy life and change bad habits. I realize that old habits die hard and I really want to stress the importance of moderation. Cutting things out completely is never the answer because it will only cause you to crave it more. The key is to finding a healthy balance. Is it okay to sometimes splurge? Yes. Do I splurge?? YES!!! Do I sometimes eat things that are not healthy? Yes. Is that okay? Yes- as long as it isn't all the time, and as long as you complete exercise to go along with that. Did I eat some foods in the last few d...

I classified Tuesday as a day of rest but still got some cardio in. Last night my throat started hurting. When I woke up it was worse. My energy is at an all time low today. I debated all day long what I wanted to do and when it came down to it, I decided a day off (completely) is probably what i needed. As much as I hate to say that. When you get sick there is a fine line if working out is okay or not. Sometimes sweating out the germs helps, sometimes it makes things exponentially worse. So I decided to just go home and relax. So here's how the eating went today.  Breakfast: Protein Shake. 294 calories I'm thinking I may need to add a snack before lunch. Today I was super starving  before it was lunch time. A little shaky as well. I'll have to figure that out.  Lunch: Ham and Swiss sandwich, Yoplait very vanilla fat free yogurt, mandarin oranges pack and a banana. 515 Calories.  From there, I had plans to go to the store and pick up ingredients for Chicken N...

Today was a pretty rough day. I've been averaging 6-7 hours of sleep a night all week and I'm pretty sure it's catching up to me because that is clearly NOT enough! When I finished work and it was time to go to the gym, I really didn't want to. I wanted to just go home and sleep, but I knew that wasn't an option. One thing you must know about me is that I am the world's best excuse maker. That is a large reason my previous stints with the gym never lasted long. When I hired my personal trainer I had someone else who was counting on me getting work done, so I didn't have a choice and it ended up being a habit. But I still have days where I just don't want to. I intentionally picked a gym on my way home from work so I couldn't not go. So I dragged my butt in there.  I wasn't looking forward to doing my 30 minutes of a hill on the treadmill. I really don't enjoy walking uphill, but today was the last day for that (it's just for week 1), so ...

Generally you should let your muscles rest if they're sore. I realize this contradicts with what I said yesterday about alleviating soreness by moving, but sometimes they need a break. I had planned on doing a workout today, but things came up and I ran out of time. With that being said, I still went to the gym. Every Tuesday night, you can find me there in the Hip Hop class. I know it sounds weird and honestly I can't tell you what originally got me to the class. But my first time in there I told myself I'd never go back. I never realized just how uncoordinated and white I am and it was really hard. Something had me keep going back though. Maybe it was my love of dance. I danced for 8 years when I was a kid and I really miss it. So Hip Hop on Tuesdays allows me to feed that craving. I've recruited some friends to join me so that always makes it more fun. On nights that I do really well and push myself, I usually burn about 500 calories within the hour. I haven't be...

You would think after doing this for the last 2 years I would have learned my lesson. Unfortunately not. I'm actually going to intertwine the workout and food portions of the blog tonight. I think it will make more sense that way with how things went today. I woke up and got ready for work and took my multivitamin and fat burner. For breakfast I made my shake. Here is what I have. I generally have these every morning during the week. I know what you're thinking! I came across this one day when my gym was giving out free samples and I was skeptical but it's really good! It has a decent amount of protein in one serving and usually keeps me pretty full until lunch time. Right now I only have chocolate, but I've tried the strawberry as well and it's pretty good. I mix one scoop with 1.25 cups of skim milk and my breakfast has a total of 294 calories! Perfect. Now, I had planned my menu very carefully and even spent a good chunk of my morning not only put...

DAY 1 I've been so excited to get this started! I weighed in this morning at 146.2 My goal is 140. I'll start with my workout for the day. Each day I focus on a specific muscle group in addition to doing some cardio. Today's muscle group was LEGS. I have a love/hate relationship with leg day. Especially the workout I picked for today. It is a really hard workout. Most of the time I don't even get through it. It also generally results in sore legs and butt for like 3 days. But for some reason I love it. I'm not sure I've figured out what that reason is yet. :) Here is what I did! CARDIO I got on the treadmill and picked the hill program (it just looks like a mountain) and did that for 20 minutes. My speed was at 3.5 mph. My average heart rate was 172, 138.4 calories burned and 1.18 miles completed.  STRENGTH I take 2-3 exercises generally and alternate them to spice things up.  1. I started with Walking Lunges. There are aisles in my gym and one set consis...

Hello Everyone!  Here's a little bit about me and my fitness history. Growing up I was always a pretty skinny kid, so I never worried about what I ate. I also never worked out. In my college years, my weight went way up and I struggled with it but didn't really know how to change it. I tried fad diets and weight loss programs and failed. Whenever I failed, I would just throw in the towel completely and revert to my old ways. When I was a child my dad did triathlons. It wasn't until I heard that a co-worker was doing one that I thought "oh, I'd like to do that one day" but there was a problem: I hated (and couldn't) run, I wasn't real fond of biking and swimming wasn't super easy. Great idea huh??? The more I researched how to train for a triathlon, the more I realized I couldn't do it all outside. Being that it was winter in Colorado, pools generally are closed. I did my homework and researched the local gyms.  November 29, 2010 I walked in...