Basic Kick Butt Workout

Hello Friends;

Life in Florida is starting to take shape. I have a pretty regular workout schedule and am venturing into some classes. I have started CrossFIT classes and am pretty sure that I will be getting my butt kicked at least once a week!! Check out crossfit.com if you are interested in learning more. CrossFIT programs are very popular across the country and popping up in alot of communities.

I have a big trip planned for myself next week! I will spend three days in Chicago visiting my stepdaughter then off to San Diego to visit my uncle and his wife. I will be out of my regular workout routine but will do my best to get a few workouts in while I am away.

When I return, I have decided my family is going Paleo. As many of you know, I have been playing outside the edges of Paleo nutrition for awhile now but I feel like it is time to embrace it. Fortunately, David is on board as he lost 40 pounds last year eating primally. Evan will be a harder sell but he is not in control of the food that comes into the house :)

Here is the workout that has me cringing every time I have to move or go to the bathroom!

Squat jumps - 15x3
Front/back lunge - 12x3 (per leg)
Single leg dead lift - 12x3 (per leg - use dumbell for extra challenge)
Pushups - 20x3
Burpee - 15x3
Prone plank with arm reach - 10x3 (one arm lift equal one rep)
Sit up - 15x3 (lying flat on back, put soles of feet together, reach arms overhead then sit up and curl down)
Side plank - 30 secondsx3

Try to do this circuit three times. Good luck!!!!

Stay Well :)

Low Carb Quiche

Hello Friends;

Well, I weighed myself yesterday morning and am happy to report that I am done about a pound give or take an ounce or two :) The way I look at it, it's not much but it's better than going up!!

I made this quiche last night and served it with a green salad. David and Evan really liked it. There were no leftovers.

Broccoli Quiche

4 cups broccoli florets
6 eggs
1 1/2 cups coconut milk or cream
1 tbsp melted butter
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp salt
1/4-1/2 grated cheese (optional)

Preheat oven to 425

Butter 10 inch round or 13x9 square baking dish.

Cook broccoli in microwave or boiling water for 4 minutes.

Whisk together eggs, coconut milk/cream, butter, nutmeg, salt, and pepper. Stir in broccoli and cheese if using.

Pour into baking dish and bake 20 minutes until middle is set.

Enjoy!

One Week In

Hello Friends;

Ugghhhhhh!!! Forgot to weigh myself this morning so I have no idea if I am up or down. Don't feel like I am down by much if at all. I will check tomorrow morning. Of course I will have to write a note to myself to remind as my mind is like a sieve.

As for Week One, my goal was to do something good (exercise-wise) for my body everyday. I managed to get to the gym three days and had a few walks with the puppy, but if you have ever walked a puppy you know that this was not a strenuous walk!

Not a great first week but,not being one to beat myself up too much, I will just move forward and plan on having a better week two :)

I am thinking about joining the local running club here but am a little reluctant, hmmmmm, wonder what that's about?

I hope that you are all working toward achieving your goals, whatever they may be.

I let you know how my weigh-in goes tomorrow....if I remember :)

Back At It!

Hello Friends;

Wow! What a crazy few months I have had.

JourneyFIT BOOT CAMP was a great success and as usual I am always the inspired one. I had a group of very comitted recruits that made getting up at 4:30 am more than worth it!

During JFBC, I was also busy in my studio, teaching five fitness classes,packing up for our move to Florida and spending eight days in Nova Scotia with my family. Honestly, during that time, I simply lost focus and let those distractions be my excuse for not eating clean and exercising as much as I needed to to achieve the results I am looking for.

I have been in Florida for two weeks now and am struggling to adjust. I miss Maine and all the wonderful people with whom I spent time. I've been feeding my sadness with Starbucks Cinnamon Dolce Latte (without whipped cream), ice cream, chocolate and lots of carbs!

Today, we joined the gym. I took it easy on myself as I was getting my bearings in this new space http://www.club14fitness.com. I did a simple chest and shoulders workout with Evan as my partner. It felt good to pump some iron :) My nutrition is going to be a work in progress. I plan on consuming more calories on heavy workout days. My workout plan is weightlifting three days per week, some running and walking on the beach two days a week and yoga two to three days per week. That should keep me busy!

I intend to blog this journey as much as I possibly can. Now that I am living a life of leisure I should be able to do that!

I would love to hear what you are doing to stay fit and healthy. Your comments are welcomed.

P.S. Saw my first snake today. Almost ran it over with my car. I think it was a Black Racer, which is harmless (well, not to my mental state!)

Find Your Strong

Hello Friends;

I have been very uninspired lately in regards to blog writing. My six-pack abs goal is still just that, a goal. It is a goal that seems to be getting further away from my grasp yet, it remains with me. I am confident that I will reach that goal, someday and you will all know about it when I do!

What I have realized in the past few months is that I am suffering from "body burnout". I'm tired, my body hurts, I don't feel like exercising (Thank Heavens for the four classes I teach a week that forces me to do so). I want to eat and do Yoga. The former I do much of, the latter not as much as I would like.

Fortunately, I have some changes coming up for me that I believe will help me turn the corner, recover from this burnout and become the healthy, fit person I dream of becoming. Now that the nicer weather is here, I feel a slight surge in energy and a massive desire to get outside. I am looking forward to my new boot camp adventure - http://www.journeyfitbootcamp.com/ . I'm not necessarily looking forward to getting up at 4:30 am four mornings a week but it's part of the process so I will embrace it.

I'm including this post from http://www.zentofitness.com/ as it resonated with me when I read it this morning. I hope it resonates with you as well.

I am off to sunny Florida for a week where I plan on resting, beaching, sunning, smiling, yogaing, and sharing some wonderful moments with my soon to be 50-year-old husband!

Peace Out!

http://zentofitness.com/what-is-strong/

Simplify

Here's a post from one of my favorite blogs, Zen Habits. Food for thought :) Have a great weekend Simplify Your Life with Balance Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Anastasiya Goers of Balance In Me. What is the most difficult part about simplifying your life? It is fairly easy to clean your closets and organize your belongings. It is possible to eliminate activities that are not really important to us (watching TV, web surfing.) Even simplifying your finances is not too complicated if you have a general plan. The most difficult part about simplifying life is dealing with emotional attachments. Let’s say that you have an old picture frame (vase, shirt, shoes etc.) in your house. If it’s just a thing that you picked up on sale or bought ten years ago you will probably be able to change its permanent residence to “trash.” But how would you deal with this thing if you got it from your late grandmother? Maybe your parents gave it to you as a graduation present? Parting with this thing (even if you do not like it too much) gets much more difficult. Another difficult part about simplifying life is going against social approval. We are so used to a certain order of things and certain cultural rules that we do not even doubt them. We assume that we need to have cable with 200+ channels only because everybody else has it in their homes. We break our backs to sell things for the fundraisers at our kids’ schools just because everybody else does. This list goes on and on. I had trouble simplifying my life for all the reasons mentioned above and this is when I found a balanced approach to simplicity. Balance helped me find the simplicity that I was personally comfortable with. I didn’t have to limit my belongings to just 100 things and I didn’t get rid of all social commitments. However, I realized what is really important in my life and what is just clutter. Here is the balanced approach to simplicity that I use in my life. Can you use it in yours? Don’t try to win social approval Our life is full of tasks and responsibilities that we assume important only because they are traditional in our culture. Most of these social norms do nothing but clutter our life and waste our valuable resources. TV and cable. Most people believe that it is a must to have a TV and cable in your house. Why? You can save hundreds of dollars a year if you just cancel your cable. You can free up several hours every day if you quit watching TV shows and news. You can spend this time pursuing your passion, enjoying your time with the family, working out or fixing a deliciously healthy meal for your family. If you are in the mood for a good movie – pop in a DVD and enjoy your movie without annoying commercial interruptions. Cell phones can be quite useful in emergency situations but there is definitely a limit to how much they should be used. I personally have the bottom-line model which I got for free when I signed up for the cheapest cell phone plan. You can save your time if you stop reading and writing emails on your cell phone, checking social media updates and sending text messages. Actually staying connected and plugged-in all the time causes enormous amounts of stress and clutters your mind. Do yourself a favor, simplify your cell phone. Car is another necessity that most people cannot imagine their lives without. Granted, it is difficult or even impossible to survive without a car in certain areas (I live in an area like that.) However, you can always limit the number of cars in your household (currently we have only one car in our family of four and this is enough for us.) Actually having only one car helps my family spend more time together.You can simplify your life even more if you don’t buy a new car. Considering how fast cars depreciate over time (a new car automatically loses at least $2000 of its value when you drive off the dealer’s parking lot) it is always a better idea to buy a good used car. By choosing a used car you will be able to avoid a car payment that sucks a lot of money from your budget over time. Kids’ activities. Some parents believe that their kids must be involved in every possible activity out there. I believe that some moms actually have an unofficial race of how many activities they can take their kids to. Let your children pick activities that they truly like and focus on those. If you teach your kids to find their focus from their early years then they will be able to maintain this focus in their adult life too. Don’t you wish your parents did that to you? Don’t always be part of the team. Social commitments can be a good thing sometimes but they can also be a huge waste of time. Fundraisers at your kids’ school, social events at your work or at school, even family reunions can be a huge waste. There is no point in supporting causes that you do not feel strongly about or visiting events that are not interesting to you. We are often afraid of what others would think if we do not participate. Be brave enough to break away from the crowd and make room for what really matters in your life. There are plenty more examples of social standards that we try to follow in life. How many social norms are you ready to break away from today? Find the strength to let go We feel uncomfortable letting go of things and memories that we are emotionally connected to. This connection makes simplifying life very difficult. We feel responsible for keeping certain things (gifts from our relatives of friends) and holding on to memories. Over time it leads to enormous amounts of clutter and huge emotional baggage that does not let you move on in life. Gifts. Pick only the most important mementos that mean a lot to you. If your late grandmother gave you a present as a child – by all means, keep it to preserve her memory. However, it does not mean that you have to keep every single thing that she gave you. We do not need things to remember our loved ones, we just need true and pure memories of them.If you are afraid to offend somebody by throwing away a gift (like a hideous vase that you got from your mother-in-law) – talk to them honestly. Stuffing your house with things that you do not like and do not need won’t make anybody happy. You can even create a list of things that you do not want people giving you (I am personally pretty particular about interior decorations and kitchen utensils.) Let your family and friends know about them and ask them to create similar lists for you. Memories. Some memories (especially negative ones) can suffocate you. You need to find strength to forgive the person or even yourself for what happened. There is no way to change your past but there is a way to change your future. Grasp the moment and focus on living in the present. Stuff. Don’t let your house turn into a junkyard by preserving every drawing that your child made or keeping every single thing that your family members gave you. Thankfully today we can document most memories with pictures or videos that take no physical space (if you keep them on your computer of course.) Keep only mementos that are truly important (your child’s first drawing or a vase that have been passed through generations in your family) and preserve the other ones digitally. Simplicity becomes very easy and enjoyable if you approach it with balance. Keep decluttering your life until you feel completely comfortable with the results and until you feel simply in balance inside and out. Read more from Anastasiya at her blog, Balance In Me, and check out her upcoming virtual retreat Simplify Your Life with Balance: 30 days to declutter your lifestyle.

Meet Carrie Hedstrom!

Hello My Friends;

I'm pleased to share with you this guest post from someone many of you may already know, Carrie Hedstrom. For those of you who don't know Carrie, she is a wife, mother of five (she gave birth to all of them), ironwoman competitor, triathlete, Zumba groover, Sacred Sweater, and an inspiration to me.

Carrie has every reason to say that she is just too busy to exercise but she refuses to make excuses. Instead, she has decided to work on her six-pack abs goal and is doing an amazing job.

This post is a little longer than usual but worth the read. Prepare to be inspired! Thanks for taking the time to share some of your secrets with us Carrie.

In 7 weeks I lost 5 lbs of fat and gained 5 lbs of muscle (130lbs to 125lbs) and dropped from 18% bodyfat to 15%. Not just any 7 weeks of the year: the 7 weeks starting with Thanksgiving and ending right after the New Year! I consider these weeks be the toughest “eating” weeks of the year! Here are some of my secrets.

· Setting goals and Priorities is the first step. Your goals must be specific, have a timeframe and must be positive in nature. For example, “It is April 18th 2011 and I weight 122 lbs and have 14% bodyfat.” Second, your priorities must be in line with your goals. I am in a place in my life right now when I can make fat loss my priority. In a few months, however, I will start to ramp up my Ironman Triathlon training. When that happens, it will not be realistic, safe, or even possible to maintain a significant calorie deficit for fat loss while putting in long hours and crazy mileage of tri training.
· 4 key factors to success
1. Set you goals. Write them down. Pick out some trusted and supportive friends to share them with. Surround yourself with positive and supportive people with similar goals or at least similar attitudes about success and fitness.
2. Nutrition. My eating plan consists of 5 meals a day that include a protein, carb and healthy fat. I eat them about every 3 hours. (no less than 2, no more than 4 hours apart). I cycle my days so that I eat 3 days at 15-20% below my baseline caloric intake and then I have 1 day of baseline caloric intake. This technique accomplishes a few things:
1. It keeps my metabolism at a steady rate of burn and revs it up again after 3 days of deficit so that I do not go into “starvation mode” and adapt to the low calories.
2. It keeps my energy levels, blood sugar, and hormones balanced
3. Provides a psychological relief from the “dieting” of the low days.
4. I can plan my high days when I know I have something I want to enjoy that involves food like going out to eat or a party.
* I also plan in one “Free Meal” a week. This is not a feeding frenzy. But a scheduled meal in which I simply do not think at all about the nutritional value of the meal. This is a huge help especially if you plan it. That way if you are tempted during the week, you can ask yourself, “Is this better than my treat I know is coming up?” If the answer is yes, then go ahead and make that your treat and adjust your plan accordingly and if the answer is no, then it will be easier to resist knowing you have something better planned.

Within my 5 meal a day plan I also organize the meals so that is I am training in the morning, I eat more calories and carbs in the morning. If I train in the evening I eat less in the morning and have more carbs and cals around my work out. So I never cut out carbs, I just taper off the starchy carbs throughout the day so I am eating mostly protein and fibrous carbs in the evening.

For Example: Meal 1: Oatmeal, skim milk, whey protein shake
(pre workout)
Meal 2: 3 egg whites, 1 whole egg, milk, oatmeal, whey protein (post workout)
Meal 3: tuna, rice or baked potato, salad with olive oil dress
Meal 4: greek yogurt, fruit
Meal 5: grilled chicken and broccoli
(note: on the baseline days my extra calories come from more carbs. So basically I add a starchy carb to the last 2 meals on those days) For those who attend HIT on Tues&Thurs, your day would be in reverse of this—bracketing your HIT class with meals 1&2.

3. Training: For the most fat loss I make sure I have a good balance of weightlifting AND cardiovascular training.

Weightlifting: I lift weights 6 days a week. My routine is a 3 day split: Push/Abs, Pull, Legs/Abs with one day off. For beginners, I would recommend 3-4 days a week with 1-2 days of rest in between Total Body Workout or Upper/Lower Split.
Total Body: start with your largest muscles and alternate between push and pull motions. Ex. Back/Chest
Quads/Hams
Shoulder/Abs
Biceps/Triceps
Upper/Lower split: Do upper on one day and lower/abs the next with a day off in between. Ex. Day 1: Chest, Back, Shoulders, Biceps, Triceps
Day 2: Quads, Hamstrings, lower back, abs
Day 3: Rest

Cardio: HIIT (High intensity Interval Training) is the optimal form of cardio for fat burning. This means raising your heart rate within its aerobic zone for 2-5 minute intervals over the course of 45-60 minutes. You can get a heart rate monitor to make sure you are actually working within your target zones. Ally’s HIT class is a fun and dynamic way to achieve this. Some other good forms of HIIT are Group Kick, Zumba, Sacred Sweat at High Mountain Hall, swimming in sprint intervals, running hills or speedwork on the track, spinning class, or intervals on the elliptical machine. I prefer classes because I can set my own intensity and allow the instructor to motivate me out of my comfort zones. I do cardio 6-7 days a week. (sometimes I do a double session cardio day and take one day off)

My routine is advanced. For those of you attending HIT, adding 3-4 days of weightlifting and one more cardio session would boost your fat loss. Group Power at the Y is a good class for beginners to get a total body workout with rest days in between. Because of its timing it would be a good compliment to HIT.


4. Tracking and Accountability. Keep records of your stats and track them weekly. Record your weight and measurements. Don’t rely just on scale weight. It is quite possible to gain muscle and burn fat at the same time and the results of that may not show up on the scale which can be frustrating. Find some way of tracking your body fat that works for you (it doesn’t have to be accurate—just the same method every time so you can have a baseline to compare). Take before and after photos. It is unnerving to take these pictures, but you really can see changes over time that you may not notice by looking in the mirror every day. Having a friend or group that you must check in with and be accountable may deter you from making a poor choice.

I have 5 children (2 are at home with me during the day). My priorities in life are:
1. Taking care of my home and family
2. My personal fitness goals (to include triathlon training and off-season training)
3. My quilting.

Here are some key personal decisions that help me achieve my goals

· I don’t drink alcohol. Alcohol has not been a part of my life for about 13 years. I know if I did drink, it would undermine even my best fat loss and fitness efforts.
· I get plenty of sleep.
· I try to drink a “ton” of water.
· I don’t have TV.
· I have lots of good sex (I don’t know if that helps—just throwing it out there!)
· I always carry around a jar of dry whey protein powder and piece of fruit so I am never caught without a protein and carb and therefore never miss a meal.
· I try to always give 100% effort at every workout. Otherwise, I don’t bother. Every week I try to make one little change to increase the effort or intensity of my workouts. For example, at HIT, you could this week, try to go lower on your pushups, squat deeper, wear wrist or ankle weights, do one more rep, increase your dumbbell weight, lift your knees higher, crunch harder than last week. Pick one thing and commit to it.

I have reset my goals for the next 12 weeks. Starting January 24th and ending April 18th. I will practice what I am preaching here. My goal is to achieve 122 lbs with 14% bodyfat with the idea of getting closer to my ultimate goal: I want to see my abs. I am always willing to answer questions or clarify anything, and I am always open to advice. What works for you? I’d love to be able to add some “secrets” to my repertoire. I appreciate your time and will keep you posted on my progress over the next 12 weeks. Thanks! -~Carrie~