Spoiled Rotten

Look Austin, TX is repping some fitspo!

It’s true. I am a bit spoiled,  but hey look it is the capital and look that chick ain’t me doing that. I slept for probably 16 hours yesterday. Awesome job. I had written a bunch of stuff regarding living in a cooler zip code, but it was as if Firefox new better than me to not save the draft and when I had the brilliant idea of trying to put a paypal donate widget. By the way, WordPress is lame like that and won’t let you add forms or other HTML that isn’t just straight up text or images. WordPress dot org might be a bit better, but I am broke again after paying my bills (at least I pay them) which leads me to my new page, it kinda freaks me out that I am using my personal email, but whatevs, you have my email now, stalkers welcome. Every time I log into my accounts for the Student loans I feel like watching this video – 1:05 cracks me up — student loans are a biiitch! :

This morning at 6, the Insanity from Beachbody infomercial came on and it reminded me that I had actually obtained them. I would like to do them, but my dvd player is limited to the office and there is not much space, plus I feel kinda bad jumping around in the morning because I have downstairs neighbors and it probably sounds like a heard of buffalo stampeding. It is certainly an effective workout, if your goal is to be drenched in sweat afterwards, but I am wondering if it is HIIT in the sense that you don’t really take a lot of breaks while doing it. You basically have a  series of calisthenics/plyometrics that go from medium, fast to fastest.. found a breakdown here and it shows you how many rests you get… and it ain’t many, and HIIT according to the wikipedia article is intended to have about a 2:1 ratio of work to recovery. Just doing the workout for a few days, I have to also wonder how hard these are on your knees. High impact cardio is great for you aerobically, I am sure, but I have to wonder if your body is meant to take more than about 10 minutes of heavy impact for day. It is a very confusing task to try to discern what is good and what is bad in terms of exercise. I walk each hour at work, and that really hasn’t steered me wrong. Anyway, I may try to do some working out this evening.

Need to take some sexy food pictures, too! How about some metal for this Monday \m/:

Just for good measure, probably one of my favorite albums of all time, the mid to late 1990’s was pretty awesome for underground music even if the mainstream was shit:

Whole 30 – Day 24

Drunken yoga, well not really, but this is the third time in a row that I have had lightheadedness and diziness in my practice. One likely culprit is that I like to drink coffee before I go and I believe the heat combined with the activity combined with the dehydration from coffee and having not had any water for 9 hours made me feel pretty crappy. So, next week, even though it will be difficult, I will hold off on the coffee pre-yoga, and just  wait until work for my caffeine jolt. Unfortunately, I even think Yerba (yucky) Matte has this same effect on me. So, it is time to switch out the coffee for water. To my cred, been pretty diligent with my workouts from Jackie Warner.  To the best of my memory, Weekly Wrap-up:

Sunday:  Chest, biceps, Abs – cardio intervals
Monday: legs, shoulders, abs – cardio intervals
Tuesday:  Back, triceps,  abs – cardio intervals
Wednesday: High Intensity Interval training
Thursday: Full body circuit training (all muscle groups)

Everyday this week except for yesterday, I have gone to practice, and mostly I have been walking at an incline on the treadmill to get the rest of the 10k steps. First world problem alert, first world problem alert: it bums me out that the WiFi at the gym isn’t working properly on my tablet anymore. I would much rather read an article or e-book than watch TV. Towards autumn, I will more likely be out at dusk getting my walks, and hopefully I will be able to take them with a Jack Russel terrier!

It is a good thing that I am doing so much activity, too, because last night I had an monster hunger attack eating probably more but we will only post it as half a cup of walnuts (350 calories, yikes!!) and an extra banana right before bed, just so I can store all that sugar as fat, yee-haw. It was definitely a binge, a healthy binge, but a binge, nonetheless. I suspect that it could be some feminine hormones afoot.  But, back to coffee, because no one wants to read about my cycle, I have finally found a beverage that I can drink without any creamer which would help me save some calories. If you are not one for the taste of coffee sans creamer, try the Medium Roast Starbucks Keurig cups. Moving on to the lunches, I have been staying pretty sugar-free during the day by sticking to pre-cooked food, enter chicken and asparagus four ways:

Yesterday, no picture but it was the chicken and asparagus with no side. All of the meals are pretty satisfying, good mixture of carbohydrate, protein, and fat and towards the end of the day I don’t feel as if I am about to die of starvatio, so that is a plus. Tomorrow marks another milestone  for me, so stay tuned!

Whole 30 – Day 20

Today’s Fire 90, despite a setback of  not getting up at 6:00 am for Jackie Warner’s Day 2, workout was fun.  Yesterday was so busy but I managed to get all of my to-do items checked out and felt very accomplished because I planned and executed everything I wanted to do. Maybe it was the coffee, but the morning felt a bit frenzied in getting all the vacuuming, dusting, and surface cleaning finished while simultaneously doing laundry and then cooking lunch. Dinner was too spicy, because I accidentally poured a bit too much cayenne and chilli powder into the turkey mix. Hey, my metabolism can use a bit of a thermogenic kick to burn those calories. I try to get a little bit of HIIT in my television watching. Always moving, getting those steps in. I feel like a total slacker if I am watching Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition while sitting on my rump.

A bit of a motivational musing for Monday. I came, I planned, and I conquered my meals for this week in that the grocery list that I posted yesterday was derived from a meal plan that was created beforehand. You have to do this for the Whole 30 to be completely successful in this program. So, I have the next six days mapped out here:

Friday is on the back, but yes I went old school and just wrote everything down. It may be a bit sloppy with all the scratches and edits, but writing things down just seems more committal than typing things out. Before digitizing my Sunday To-Do’s I wrote it out on paper, and I think that helped me get things done better, though I may use that same template for next week. The comfort in routine is really helping me become more certain and is helping me accomplish my goals.

More musing on the idea of keeping with a habit and committing to your goals, my coworker is also on his own 31 day challenge with yoga, and we were talking about how staying consistent with practice. He brought up the idea of how in nature that erosion happens with constant water flowing against the elements. This meshes with the fact that my yoga classes are based on the five “elements” of nature. Admittedly I would be super stoked to do a class called “Uranium” (industrial yoga!!), but I will settle for Metal \m/, and noticing my how my phsyique is changing is super rewarding. For example, I am noticing a little bit of indentation in my core which looks like a mini-six pack is appearing! I still have some of the body fat, but erosion baby, erosion!

This past Saturday was the last kickboxing sesh I had with my Living Social deal, and due to some financial constraints, I am not continuing the membership, because I have already paid for the membership with yoga. I liked working out there, but really I can accomplish activity through a combination of hooping, walking, yoga, dancing and circuit training through the DVD’s and there is a channel on my Roku that has some workouts! Fitness does not have to be expensive, but the trick is using your own creativity and perhaps a bit of self-discipline to schedule your workouts. As you can see by my posts, that is my own struggle is just getting up early or forcing myself to do it, but I leave, dear reader, on this bit of inspiration: