It happens to everyone, that week off that is simply inevitable.
Week 5 was all about no workout. It had many reasons. Last week’s hike was the reason for Monday not happening as I always need a rest day to not strain my knees more. Then Tuesday, my lady problems started so cramps hit me all the way into Wednesday. Yoga would have been an option bu then Thursday came the reality of the house having absolutely no groceries left so I was already making a choice between eating one better meal and one not so good one which doesn’t work so great in the big picture so I had to do that. Then, Friday was a pre-scheduled fun day to check out the Grand Prix festivities in town and came home to my husband catching an odd bug so it was scampering to go get him meds and make sure he was okay with everything. The weekend hit and it was all about E3 and chiro and other errands that I don’t have to take care of during the week to the various reasons above.
There are no excuses to not working out. Trust me when I say that things sometimes just don’t happen. I did however, get in a lot of extra walking time to kind of make up for the lack of workout. I took walks during lunch and then took walks to run errands downtown before going home. Grand Prix Friday also had a lot of walking around which was great. There are some wins in these situations and to make the best of what I have to do and what just can’t be done.
I debated to not put up the post but I want to stay accountable and honest about this workout journey because I am serious about getting back on track. Plus, I’ve been getting a lot of motivation to do the 5K run in Montreal in September which I have been thinking about lately.
With that said, today was when I put my foot down and decided to make some time between everything and waiting for the E3 Xbox press conference to start to make up my own cardio stuff by putting together by doing some Zumba from Youtube. Here are the vids below!
Here’s the Sunday workout, everyone! Give it a go if you want! Its like exercising and partying all at the same time! The exact boost I needed!
For now, Xbox E3 has now started so back to Game Warp duty! Have a fantastic Sunday!
Its been forever since I’ve shared some fantastic Pinterest stuff! Mostly because while pinning is super fun and therapeutical, putting together the posts can be tiring. Just deciding what to do takes so much time that it becomes less therapeutical than it actually is even if I love putting those posts up. However, maybe this is what Pinterest is going to be: Therapy or Inspirations! Spring is pretty much almost over and hints of Summer is landing in Montreal. The last few days have been hot and humid and I love it! 🙂
This also means spring cleaning and garden/outdoors stuff needs to be taken care of! I have some rhubarb to harvest and maybe make some nice drinks. The heat also means that I kick in a much healthier lifestyle. Lots of things that I seek out Pinterest for! Lets look at some of my faves and ones I hope to pursue if not now, eventually!
The Anatomy of Sangria
Hot summer days calls out to me in the form of Sangria. I don’t drink a lot in general but a great sangria is so hard to resist. This infographic breaks it down in an interesting way and peaks some new ways to use different ingredients next time. For the record, I’ve recently realized that I’m intolerant or maybe allergic to red wine so any sangria’s now have to be with white or rose wine. I have also done a autumn sangria with brandy and that turned out pretty good.
Popsicles
I’ve tried out a few popsicle recipes before and I’m not really good at it but its something I’m trying to learn to do better. This one looks delicious. They are called Fruit Salad Ice Pops. I love fruits and especially fruit salads and wrapped up in a popsicle. Yummy! I’m already thinking of what fruits to get to make it and wondering where those popsicle molds are.
Infused Water Combinations
Last year I started getting into infused water. I like cold drinks and water is super healthy so I’ve tried something with blueberry and basil before if I remember correctly. This summer, I want to keep with the healthy stuff and try some other ones. These ones are pretty neat especially detox and weight/sugar control and metabolism booster. I guess everything but the lower blood pressure one looks like choices I want to try out.
Watermelon Strawberry Sorbet
For those of you who are new here, I’m lactose intolerant or at least it seems to be in an extreme phase again. Its really built a love and appreciation for Sorbets in my life. I’ve been wanting to try to make sorbet for a while and if these recipes say its easy, I’ll believe it! Its one of my goals this summer to give it a try. This combination particularly looks great. I love strawberries and watermelons and yet, no one really pairs these two together. I wonder what it’ll taste like.
Liquid Sunshine
I know, its a lot of alcoholic beverages here! In general, there’s a lot of drinks. Thing is, I was going to do a cruise dedicated post after my cruise recap last year and I forgot about it. I flat out forgot. That’s just how I am. A year after, I remembered and was thinking maybe this year, I’ll start a little drinks segment to experiment different recipes. I don’t mean alcoholic cocktails, even if they are resistible, I don’t usually drink that much but even for like lemonades or infused waters and other healthy stuff. I think its well worth a shot! 🙂
That’s it for this Pinterest Inspirations! Originally, it had a ton of other stuff for the garden and whatnot, but I just wanted to keep this fun and short! 🙂
After some intensely busy holidays, life feels like its tapering off into quiet. Slowly but surely it is. The one thing I do notice in January is the immense amount of birthdays. Not a complaint, of course. I like being invited to parties, even the hermit in me likes to go out and have fun. The first half of January is a little slower than usual. You will see that this might be a rather short Weekly Adventures that isn’t really that adventurous but I still have a few things to talk about.
Cat Naps
Wait a minute! That’s not an adventure! I already told it isn’t but the first half of January was all about my cat napping and recuperating her nerves from all the unexpected visitors that invaded her safe home and once her purring starts, she makes me want to doze off. It was an endless cycle.
Family Dinner at the In-Laws
Last weekend, we had a proper feast at my in-laws with everyone in my husband’s family. I drank a little too much of my father in-law’s heavily spiked punch and totally channelled all the French speaking me and tucked away all the self-conscious part of me. It was a ton of fun. I think this picture is just missing the chicken wings that were still in the oven at this point. Those were fantastically delicious!
Lifestyle Changes: Eating Habits and Working Out
Two years ago, I was great at this, maybe it was 3 years now. Then, I got that eye infection that wouldn’t go away and it just kicked that perfect sleeping, eating and exercising routine out of the equation. I get it back in the summer and if anything, I proved that in some pretty extreme conditions, I can still push myself to work out when I need to. Then winter rolls around and things get out of whack again. I didn’t mention it for the New Year’s post but its kind of a the past week decision to slowly make the transformation.
Consider this a new goal this year and I’m going to give you updates so I stay accountable!
I’m going back to a mostly gluten-free diet, working out (weights and cardio) 2-3 times a week and getting back a good sleeping routine, which means no more procrastinating and being much more efficient at organizing everything.
Revamping and Updating
I’ve posted during the holidays that I was updating the site and getting linked up and making sure the indexes were all good. I did a bit of editing and actually finished all that up that day. But it also occurred to me that we’re approaching 5 years and I’ve been wanting to make a banner and reposition where I am. I have some funky connected Google+ accounts and I really just use social media for the blog except for Facebook but I don’t have a Facebook page. Which reminds me? Should I set one up?
Either way, story is…if you happen to drop by any videos on any pages like vlogs or whatnot, they won’t work because while I was trying to work out some magic to transfer my Youtube accounts and change the connected Google accounted, I deleted my own Youtube by accident and there we go…all the subscriptions and likes and lists and videos are ALL GONE! It was my mistake in the beginning while setting up the Google + account and realizing it wasn’t done right and now, it was hard to fix it up. I’m not particularly skilled at technology so that didn’t help either.
Well, I do firmly believe that to revamp something completely, you need to break it down and rebuild it in some ways. Just like when you want to clean something thoroughly, you first create a bigger mess and then clean it all back up. Maybe its a weird method. It works for me though.
With that said, its just an open invitation to clean up a ton of stuff on the site and fix the menu and widgets and all that stuff. Expect to see some changes gradually show up over the next week or so. If anything doesn’t work, its because I’m messing around with it so just drop by again and things should be all good again. It shouldn’t affect anything recent since I’m just relocating and evaluating posts from 2011-2012 mostly.
Blogathon Announcement
In case you missed it, I’ve teamed up with Drew at Drew’s Movie Reviews for an upcoming Blogathon called the Ultimate 80s Blogathon to be held on February 15th. For more details, you can check out the announcement post HERE! Its actually my first time to run a blogathon so its very much thanks to Drew who helped push me to do this one. Even if you don’t normally write reviews, you are still welcome to do a little write up of your favorite movie. Even if you aren’t a blogger, we really looking forward to see everyone’s choices!
Mini Tribute to Alan Rickman
I don’t normally do much for the death of actors. I did only once before for Paul Walker. This past 15 days marked two influential stars passing away but just yesterday, we lost Alan Rickman, someone who my husband and I really love as an actor. He is so talented and will definitely be missed. I feel it right to take a little moment here to look at some of his memorable roles to us.
Hans Gruber (Die Hard)
David Weinburg (Dark Harbor)
Colonel Brandon (Sense and Sensitibility)
Harry (Love Actually)
Severus Snape (Harry Potter series)
Event updates + Upcoming…
Events are kind of picking up again. I’m just trying to find time to get to them. I did go to one restaurant in Janvier a la Carte at Quartier Dix30, which is a little shopping/entertainment/dining complex in the suburbs of Montreal. I’ve probably mentioned it somewhere else. Regardless, I will have a post for that going up. I do want to check out another one if I have the time and company, but no promises on that one. As I do need to make time to catch up on some movies at the theatres like The Revenant. I personally want to go to see 13 Hours and later on, The 5th Wave. There are a myriad of winter festivals starting to pop up so I want to try and get to one of those as well, maybe see some ice sculptures. I’ll fill you all in with an upcoming Events post very soon. I have some plans in the making for February and March weekend getaways if things work out well.
I’m going to keep this short since I’ll have something special go up in just a few days.
To wrap it up, upcoming posts…
Special post with some announcements
Netflix A-Z: D-G (at least) and catching up with more 2015 movies
Its actually feeling like summer in here as the rain has pushed out of the picture this weekend and we were in the low 30s Celsius. I finally wore my shorts, tank top and flip flops and did a ton of garden work and started working on harvesting stuff. I’ll give a garden update very soon with My Weekly Adventures. However, my basil has grown a lot while being indoors and it was time to do a harvest for it. Then our little visit to Costco reaped a big package of strawberries. Then I found my pitcher for infused water so everything worked out perfectly great to make another infused water to help with a little refreshing detox.
STRAWBERRY-BASIL INFUSED WATER
Ingredients:
1/4 cup fresh basil leaves
1 cup sliced fresh strawberries
Water
Depending on how your pitcher is or whether you use it in those infusion bottles, the quantity will vary. It’ll also depend whether your ingredients will float all together. My pitcher here is pretty cool because it has a tube to put ice, another netted layer where I put my herbs and then directly in the pitcher (as you see) are the sliced strawberries.
I kept it in the fridge to infuse for more than 4 hours before I tasted it at night. The strawberry and basil both came out very well. And the mix was rather delicious. What I worried about initially was that the basil was such a strong herb that it would mask the taste of the strawberries but I was wrong. While you could taste the basil, it balanced really well with the strawberries. What’s nice is that you can adjust the amount of each ingredient to your liking. If you like basil more, then go for it. You can add more to make it taste more of basil than strawberries.
I’m pretty happy that this time’s infused water was a lot more successful than last year’s try at blueberry and lemon mix. I think a huge part is in choosing the right combo and also slicing the fruits so that it infuses better. Now, onwards to try out a few more blends over the summer. I’ve been thinking of putting more drinks (cocktails included) section. It sounds like a fun idea, don’t you think?
Here you go! A nice simple summer drink to help refresh and stay healthy! 🙂
I usually only post once a week to track my weekly progress. I will still do that with selfies but I have just decided to take the 30 Day Fitness Challenges by Tribesports. There is currently 11 different 30 day challenges targeting different areas of the body. I might try to post updates but with that 30 Day Challenge in progress, maybe I’ll just do some Twitter updates. I will definitely check back at the end of 30 days to tell you if I succeeded or failed. Well, if I come back sooner, probably means I lost track and need to restart…
NO! NO! Positive energy has to stick around!!
Here’s what I’m starting with:
30 Day Squat Challenge!
I’d feel ridiculous if I just did 50 squats on one day so I decided to pair it up with 30 Day Arm Challenge!
30 Day Arm Challenge
I can tell you after the first two days. Those 250 squats end goal looks quite far. BUT those pushups look even farther, even unattainable. My boyfriend told me that I have to work the muscles that I dread because they are weaker and the aftermath just hurts more. Here’s my chance, right?
I’m already saying this, if it gets too crazy, I will stop one challenge mid month. My bet is the arms because I probably need some extra training first. I’m just giving this two challenges at once a shot. I will definitely finish one! If I do quit one before, I probably will try to start another challenge on a stronger part of my body while I strengthen my upper body more 🙂 Sounds like a good plan? I think so…
I can tell you this also. With this, I will definitely try to get in more cardio since it’ll leave me more time to do that with shorter workouts 🙂
NO EXCUSES! I CAN DO THIS!
All of you are my witness now! I’m dedicating to do this challenges which means at least 11 months, whether consecutive or not, I’m not sure, but I will do it 🙂 I’ll be back with an update post on October 1st!
Another short work week is upon me. Once summer starts, there is so many more options to staying active and its all about balancing everything out. Somehow this year, group activities with friends have decreased leaving me time to insert individual activities or say, going out with my boyfriend and/or mom. Plus, this week, we start preparing for our summer hiking season as we usually do for vacation time! Let’s start! 🙂 Tone it Up is doing two a days, which means two workouts a day, usually cardio with body weights/strength training of some sort. I’m going to try to follow along but no guarantees 😉
Monday
Our first hike of 2013! We did it at Mont St-Hilaire. I’ve never done it before but the hiking paths there are not bad in difficulty but the viewpoints we saw were quite blah. Nothing really worth the hike in my opinion. Maybe if we did the longer hiking trails it would’ve reaped better end results. I don’t know! It was a very suitable one to start the year and this time, even my mom joined us! 🙂 Definitely was fun! Our legs are just a little bit more ready for more hiking, although I need to be careful because I almost had an accident and sprained/twisted my ankle. Thank goodness its fine 🙂
Tuesday
After the hike from Monday, my right leg was screaming in pain. I think it had more to do with the fact that I almost twisted it rather than the walk but I soldiered on and did the Stars & Stripes Cardio Workout once.
Its actually pretty tough, especially 25 burpees. My max I can do continuously is about 15, then after that I need to do them in fives and pause before finishing the next five. This one felt good at the end of just one routine.
Wednesday
My ankle started hurting today more than before. I think it has to do with the hiking mishaps that happened. Seeing as I had a somewhat busy evening getting rid of the rhubarb, I managed to get in the Beach Yoga workout at around 11pm. Very close to bedtime but its yoga so it tends to relax. Plus, its been helping with my back pains so I’m happy to do it whenever 🙂 Any yoga online routines you would like to recommend?
Thursday
I spontaneously decided that I’m going to take a day off! Especially since I plan on going to dragonboat practice tomorrow since I might need to race in the Montreal Challenge next weekend…its would come in handy to get myself back into the rhythm and connect with the team 🙂
Friday
DRAGONBOAT! I managed to pull through everything at work and make it to practice! It was raining on and off and crazy humid. I took a 1km walk before practice. The actual practice was an hour long and drained me. We did 6x100m sprints consecutively. It got me back into having a better feeling on how to do the starts, then we did a relaxed 2km. Since I can only paddle on Sunday (if I do), I would be part of the 2km so it was an awesome practice. Drained me completely!
Saturday
Due to yesterday’s practice, today had to be a day off. With prep for vacation such as packing and printing and drafting and editing, I really didn’t have time to do anything else.
Sunday
VACATION TIME! Today’s plan is driving and hiking:) We did a view scenic stops and went to hike on the Bald Mountain Trail. It was a fantastic hike 🙂
OVERALL…this week was great. I did two outdoor activities that I love: hiking and dragonboat. I would definitely recommend trying it out if you get a chance. Other than that, the Stars and Stripes Cardio workout was really fun and effective. Not too bad, right? I managed to do 5 days.
Next week is vacation. I haven’t decided whether to do a roundup or not. I’ll be staying active and relaxing. 🙂
Switching in more cardio is the goal this week! Changes are what matters and without cardio, I won’t slim down and tone up at the same time. It’ll be nice to get rid of that disgusting belly fat. My problem area in all these years which barely ever leaves me. It makes me self-conscious all the time. Although, in general, I am self-conscious but thats just how I am…Anyways, lets start off this week! I’m motivated and ready to go!
Monday
Today’s plan is the Surfer’s Paradise..AGAIN! I know I know…but Tone It Up girls seem to think its worth it. I’m starting to believe them actually. Its really helped because each time I do it, I get just a bit quicker and each move is more solid and smooth. Its pretty nice. Two rounds of those make up one full workout. After that, my boyfriend and I went out for a 1 mile walk around the neighborhood.
Tuesday
New Workout day! I always look forward to the new workouts because it switches things up. This week’s is all about the abs and arms. I love doing those parts. This workout is called Pura Vida Workout!
This workout kicked me seriously in the ass! I wanted to cry while I was doing the Spider Monkey Pushups. I was already suffering in the first round…imagine at the 3rd one. I always knew I had weak triceps but doing this was just ridiculous. My boyfriend suggested to do two days of triceps. Thats a decent idea. Although that means veering away from TIU workouts..which could be refreshing, but then to me, I’m doing triceps every single day. Either way, a very decent exercise for arms and abs! I may have cried in pain but its short and efficient burst!
Wednesday
Thailand Tush day! One full workout a day? These girls are taking it easy for us! Despite that, its starting to feel a bit tiring. I did 2 rounds of this and went for an extra long walk with my boyfriend. Double the usual that we’ve been doing and it felt good.
Thursday
I had intended on making Friday my day off but my motivation was getting low and frankly, a bit bored. Maybe its the non-stop rainy weather that will continue on till next week apparently, or just needing some change in life. I don’t know, but that low was a sign that grumpy me needed a day off so we went to do grocery shopping and actual shopping for dress pants for work. Fun stuff, right?
Friday
The rain can keep falling but I have to find that energy to keep going. Especially since the weekend workouts seemed distant with the big house party at my place to welcome “summer” and see everyone after our winter hibernation (at least for me). Saving means sacrifices. I did the Sunseeker Workout.
I love this workout. Although my mind wasn’t totally there because of work-related issues. Still, it was nice to workout and just move around.
Saturday
I spent Saturday running around doing groceries and getting the Father’s Day gift then cleaning the house and followed by cooking for my potluck reunion house party at my place. Unless you counted my sudden desire to go out and destress by trimming trees (which I already talked about), there really wasn’t much exercise. Oh wait, does running around before dinner making sure everything was done and heated correctly plus making sure NO ONE burns down my house exercising, I’d say I did a good hour of that 😉 No worries! Everything is intact at my place!
Sunday
I’m serious…I feel bad that I didn’t do much on Sunday. I spent it cleaning up the remainder of the house and returning it to pre-party setup. I trimmed the tree which is exercise. At night we went for a good evening walk.
This week I really took it easy. One of the reasons is that it has been a bit tough. As of something that happened on Friday, I’ve been reflecting on life a lot and I’m probably going to post about it. Its been hard getting myself out of this mental rut. Working out usually helps but I haven’t had time to schedule it in, however drinking also helped me get my mind off it but thats just a short-term escape. Either way, I’ll talk about it more in another post. This week there was only one new workout and that Pura Vida workout on Tuesday kicked my ass and I loved it! I’m going to get it down one day and it won’t own me. However, if you haven’t been following my previous workouts, Sunseeker Workout is one of my faves! So check that out if you want a good full body workout 😉
Oh right, I probably won’t get in 100 miles by summer but as of this week, I am tallied at 56.5 miles out of 100. Past the 50% mark but this week, hopefully weather will get better and I’ll get even more cardio in. Its been tough getting cardio into my life but this week, I managed to up it for 3 days until the rain hit and so on so forth 😉
Tone it Up not only launched their Bikini Series which I’m pretty much participating in except that they don’t take 2 days off but I do and I’m doing less cardio than them. However, this week launches their 100 miles by summer which means each day there averages to about 2.5 miles for the next 6 weeks. There will be days that I won’t be get it in but since it can be walking, jogging or biking (whatever distance accounts for 1/3 only though), its going to be motivating to get myself outside. I’m doing all this most of the time by myself so its hard enough to keep myself going without having to physically move myself off my own land and go out and let people see me dying from a little jogging. Since biking counts, I’m in and I’m getting those tires pumped up! We’re bringing in the cardio challenges now 🙂
Monday
Bad start for the week! I woke up feeling like absolute crap with a sore throat and a small cough and a bit of a runny nose. Took some meds and went off to work to figure that everything got better except my body fought it with a fever. All I could do when I came home from work at the end of the day was eat then sit in bed. Suffice to say, there was no workout today…
Only walking I did was to and from the bus station to work which is about 1 km each way, equalling to about 1.25 miles or so.
Tuesday
I can already see this week turning out to be pretty bad in the workout area. However, as much as I was feeling sick, I still managed to get in a light workout. Maybe sweating it out will work, right? So I went ahead and did the new workout that Tone it Up posted up called Your Bridal Babe Workout. 2 rounds of 20 reps for the majority of them. The only one I did 10 reps of was the Walking Down the Aisle. That was pretty intense.
It will be a constant that I have 1.25 miles to and from work. Today I did have to take a walk to drop off a document so that was an additional 0.70 miles.
Wednesday
Lets say energy level dropped big time today. It started feeling like the sickness was coming back already. However, I rested it up. Avoided going out in the windy night and stayed in but managed to get in the Thigh Workout designated from Tone it Up.
It actually got pretty tough by the third round. My thighs were completely screaming in pain! This is definitely a good one.
Walking to and from work 1.25 miles. From parking to chiro office 0.5 miles (I’m getting desperate)
Thursday
It seems that Thursdays are the day to murder ourselves. I’m starting to notice the slow build up every week to get more and more intense. This week’s Tone it Up set to do 3 rounds Surfer’s Paradise. I did that! At the 3rd round, I almost wanted to collapse while doing those Pacific Paradise. I’ve somehow acquired better balance for those Kiwi Kicks and not always preventing myself from face planting onto the hardwood floor (which is always a good thing). Maybe those ab workouts are paying off ;). Next up are supposed to be 3 rounds of Cowabunga Workout. Thats crazy! I ended up doing two and at the end I realized that I did the Far Out wrong and forgot to do the TIU Tummy Tucks. On my 2nd round, instead of Surf’s Up (which I did 4 rounds of altogether already), I did 20 TIU Tummy Tucks to make up for it. Very efficient and it felt super great! I was sweating waterfalls…but it was time to wrap up the wedding video for my friend! Looks like it’ll be a late night already…
Walk: 1.25 miles for work bus terminus, went out for shopping for an hour and that was at least a mile of walking 😉
Friday
Day off today! I finish work at 5:30pm and meeting up with the bride to be and the other bridesmaids for the bachelorette party at 6pm. WOOHOO! Party Time! Suffice to say, I wouldn’t fit it in anyways…
One thing about this night is that there was a lot of walking. 1.25 miles to and from work to terminus. All the walking we did in downtown between each location summed up to 2.3 km which is 1.40 miles roughly 🙂
Saturday
Friday night juiced me out real good. Shows that I’m aging. So I got in DDR 30minutes which is for the cardio part. Tone It Up girls said dancing an hour counts for 3 miles. I did 30 mins so I’m taking the 1.5 miles 🙂
Sunday
Today was my good friend’s wedding day! The day started off at 6am to get myself ready. It was extremely fun and everything went pretty much on schedule. As with everything, there’s always a few bumps here and there that we had to fix up along the way but we all stayed calm and carried on ;). I’ll have a post about that in a bit. Other than running back and forth and getting here and there for the wedding, there really wasn’t any exercising…although if it was for me, walking with artificial height is exercise in itself 😉
This week was decent, I’d say. My cold fought me but I fought back and managed to get in 4 days of workout as I had wanted. Although only one day qualified in the intense area, the point was that I stayed moving. Adding that 100 miles by summer goal was really fun and I’d say that this week, I clocked in 11.35 miles in a week. Not really at par most days BUT…this coming week, I’ll do better…or I hope because my cold is battling me with full force as I type this.
Luckily today is Victoria Day and its a day off. 🙂 Happy Monday everyone!
I have this issue. Part of it has to do with weekdays when I`m at work and the washrooms being on the 4th floor. Its drinking water. I can`t really take so many bathroom breaks so I lower my water consumption. From morning till evening on the weekdays, I probably get about 3 cups of water in. Most of the times, its even less. When I get home, I get maybe another 2-3 cups. Working out has made me drink more but its never at par with 8 glasses of waters. So this week`s goal is to keep liquids flowing into my body. Soft drinks and alcoholic beverages not included, of course!
Monday
Hydration: 6.5-7 cups of tea, water, juice, protein shake with vanilla almond milk!
Not a bad start for a new goal, right? If I can even keep this up for the rest of the week to get into the habit of it. I’ll be pretty happy about it. Today, my boyfriend decided to join me for a part of my workout. Mondays are always the crazy long workout day, so I chose to do the Workout Mashup (that I love so very much). I also figured out how to do the Jump Lunge Mountain Climbers properly 🙂 Plus, I realized my endurance to do burpees are higher!
Tuesday
Hydration: 6 cups of tea, water, apple juice, mango juice and protein shake with almond milk 🙂
Due to the playoff game, the workout eventually had to start in middle of the 3rd period. I chose to work out my glutes and my abs! I did two rounds of glutes exercise with Tone it Up’s Spankin’ Booty Workout.
I wanted to die at the end of the 2nd round. It doesn’t look particularly hard but when you add everything together, its so painful. Whats really good is that it has a very smooth movement from standing exercises to kneeling then onto the back. I followed this through with the Slender Abs Workout. I did one round of this and it was already too much for me. The worst are doing Cinch Ups. Apparently my body doesn’t not move like that.
Wednesday
Hydration: 5 cups of assorted drinks like tea, water, milk with protein powder, juices.
Day OFF! Date night with my boyfriend to see Ironman 3! (Check out my review HERE if you missed it!) This month’s movies are going to be very time sensitive in order to catch everything we want to see 🙂
Thursday
Hydration : 5 cups of water, tea and almond milk
Playoffs night yet again! I ended up losing most of my hope halfway through so I wandered off to do chores and then went to do this Love Your Arms Workout! I did the full 3 rounds. It wasn’t particularly hard but by the 2nd round those Swaying Angels started getting a bit tougher and by the 3rd round, even the Bow and Arrow was feeling hard to complete.
After that and the game pretty much ended, when my boyfriend also didn’t want to see how the game would ends, we went off for a 30 minutes “after dinner” walk. Dinner had passed for a good 2 hours before we actually go out but we probably walked for longer than 30 minutes so I guess its not too bad 🙂 It felt good! The air was a tad heavy because it didn’t rain when it was forecasted to but at least it had a nice breeze.
Friday
Hydration: 5 cups of tea, water, almond milk Perfect Fit smoothie, juice
Tone it Up has scheduled in these workouts below!
2 rounds Sunseeker Workout
2 rounds Surfer’s Paradise Workout
I deliberately avoided this exercise on Tuesday because I LOATHE the Pacific Paradise…and I never understand the point of using surfboards as your platform because I don’t have one here. I have a very normal floor. Plus, I don’t live down south so I don’t know how to surf either. However, I decided to give it a go finally. Actually it was pretty fun once I figured out how to do it. The most fun and slightly challenging had to be the Kiwi Kicks 🙂 It feels like a long time that I pushed through and completed the same exercise as Tone it Up puts out. I even followed their advice and had a Perfect Fit Protein Smoothie made with almond milk and peanut butter. It was SUPER delicious!
Saturday
Hydration: 5 cups of water, juice, almond milk
Somehow the day became more hectic than I expected and I ended up getting in less hydration than my normal weekend day. I also had to celebrate Mother’s Day and get flowers and bake and all that so no workout today. Postponed to Sunday 🙂 Plus, my muscles were still in some crazy pain from Fridays workouts so it’ll be good!
Sunday
Hydration: 6 cups of tea, water, juice, almond milk with Perfect Fit
My boyfriend decided to join me for a cardio/body weights workout together. Since he was being so nice, I gave him a few choices to choose from and he picked this one…
…which he soon regretted by the time we hit the squat jumps. Squats-Squat jumps-lunges juiced us out real good. By the time I had to do the burpees, every single one felt like my legs were burning and it took every ounce of energy to jump. However, I did keep it up and did 2 full rounds. I was going to give up on the 3rd but I ended up doing it but had to cut out the alternating lunges because my knees would probably not take it well and did 10 burpees and 15 pushups. Everything else I did in full to end the 3rd round. I know that I’m out of shape for some of these when I did this in 32 minutes. I will try to aim for completing this in 25 minutes eventually!
Week 10 means that the weekly workout roundups are worthy of their own tab on the top along with their own category, which means that if you ever are interested in trying out any of the workouts, you can find them there easier 🙂 This week was tough and although hydrating myself didn’t hit the 8 glasses of water any of the days, the effort I put in showed and I felt better just from aiming to keep that up. It’ll be a constant focus! Its important to my health to really drink more fluids a day. Before we move on, my two fave workouts for this week that I’d recommend is No Nonsense Circuit and the Tuesday combo with Spankin’ Booty and Slender Abs Workout! They are both challenging and efficient. I’d give honorable mention to doing Friday’s Surfer’s Paradise because there were some workouts that really great to do.
NOW, ONTO NEXT WEEK! I might end up doing only 3-4 workouts though…with my friend’s wedding coming up on Sunday and Friday being her bachelorette party, its going to be tough to get in a lot more than that. However, I will try very hard! After all, I do need to fit into that dress and take some beautiful pictures to show everyone! 🙂
I’ve been hesitating a bit over whether to start using protein powder. I asked my boyfriend for some advice and he checked out the Tone It Up one that I realized was perfect for me because it was allergen free. That is incredibly hard to find and usually costs ridiculously expensive. I finally decided that I’d start off with the 20 packs of single serving to see whether I liked it. If I did, then I’d get the more cost-effective choice 🙂 Do you take protein powder?
Monday
I worked overtime yet again and it was a tough day at work. I came back a bit later so I ended having to skip the bike routine but rather, I made up with a Tough Deck of Cards Workout from Pumps and Iron.
It was a mega kickass workout. My deck of cards ended up having in the beginning so many hearts, my abs and obliques were in serious pain from doing so many windshield wipers. After nearing the end it was continuous amounts of clubs, my legs almost couldn’t do anymore side to side jump squats. This took every ounce of energy to do but it left me feeling refreshed at the end 🙂
Tuesday
New Workout today on Tone it Up! Exciting, right? I always like to check out new workouts although that seems to be all I’m doing whenever I switch things out from the normal routine they propose. This one is called Sunseeker Workout.
Follow this through with Sunkissed Abs! I’m starting to really like this one a lot. Its very challenging and its nice to see that for certain ones, my endurance and strength has increased. However, pairing it up with other workouts really gives it an extra intensity. I did one set of each exercise. My back has been giving me trouble from the stress and starting having cracking sounds so before I get my chiro appointment, I need to go a bit easier on them.
Wednesday
Today’s Tone it Up workout is a Wildcard choice between 3. One of them is on their workout DVD but I don’t own it so I decided to do the Cocktail Dress Workout. It seemed fitting seeing as now I`m working extra hard to make sure I fit into one in a bit more than 2 weeks. I almost quite on the 2nd set but I pushed through and that makes me proud 🙂 The killer in this one is definitely that Chaturanga with a Kick. I’ve done this complete workout before and its still pretty challenge the second time around.
Thursday
Day off finally! I was going to do my day off on Friday but then my boyfriend agreed to do a bike workout together after work so I’m all pumped up for it. Seeing as I haven’t actually biked in a long time. Its my day to rest up for it 🙂
Friday
I was going to go biking with my boyfriend in the evening but plans change. Another day off!
Saturday
Two days off in a row! *GASP* Despite having an early start and going out and about as I had talked about HERE on Saturday! I ended up coming home to do my workout right under the very hot sun and eventually shifting to the deck which was a bit more shade. I need to take in sun slowly or else I’d either dehydrate or get a sunburn…I ended up doing a combination of two workouts since I wanted to get a bit of cardio in the mix without going for a jog. I did this workout from Pumps and Iron called Multiples of Ten Ab Workout!
What I did add was between each one, I added in some jump rope. It turned out to be 2 minutes jump rope, 10 Windmills, 1 minute rapid skipping, 20 windshield wipers, 1:30 min rapid skipping, 30 second side plank with knee tucks, 1:30 min rapid skipping, 40 push through pulse crunches, 1 min rapid skipping, 50 bicycle crunches, 1 mins rapid, 60 second elbow plank, 2 mins relaxed. I did that for 2 rounds instead of 3. It felt pretty good. Working out outside definitely feels different.
Sunday
This was another gorgeous day! It was a tad more breezy and fresh than Saturday which made it a bit easier to work out. Still, the workout I chose was a bit more intense also. Another Pumps and Iron Workout called 500-rep Kettle Bell Workout!
I feel like a wimp when I read through her weights because she uses 15lbs and 25 lbs. I have trouble with just 5lbs and 7 lbs. Sad but true….just means I need to train more and build more muscular endurance and intensity, right?
This week was pretty good! I worked myself very hard for a week that was overwhelmingly tiring. It did help me relieve a lot of stress and it managed to keep myself motivated because of the feel good level it brought. Sometimes, these are the challenging times, to push through not having time and energy and just not give excuses and just do it! I’m sounding like I’m promoting for Nike, but its the truth 🙂 Protein shakes are quite delicious and I’ll start exploring recipes and smoothies or sorts for it!
Almost forgot! My fave this week was Power of Tens Ab Workout! It was a lot of fun and you could always add some cardio to it. I found skipping to be the best one to put in between. Other alternatives could be jumping jacks or burpees. Whatever you want to keep that heart rate going 🙂 I really liked the Tough Deck of Card workout on Monday but I’d do anything to trade out those windshield wipers because they were close to torturous. It did feel great though. I’d like to honorable mention to the combination of Sunseeker Workout and Sunkissed Abs combined together!
Tranquil Dreams 