Tag: workout

30 Day Glow Up Challenge: Day 1

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I’m not as prepared as I had planned.

In all fairness to me, it’s been a crazy week. But we’re going to start anyway. First, my weigh in. As a reminder, this isn’t anything where I have a weightloss goal in mind, it’s just a drive to do better. That said, I’m starting at 170lbs. I’ve fluctuated a bit in the past months.

Ultimately, this was just a hard day at work and it left me wanting to binge like crazy. I did snack but they were low cal options like popcorn. I’d grade myself a C+ for the days’ accomplishments.

30 Day Glow Up Challenge

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This challenge isn’t dissimilar to how this blog got started or where I came up with the name, but I still think it would be fun.

I’ve seen a few variations of the challenge but in essence, it comes down to this:

  1. At least a little exercise everyday.
  2. 5 bottles of water per day.
  3. Follow a skin care routine.
  4. Have a get-ready/hygiene routine in general.
  5. Eat better.
  6. Put down your phone for an hour.
  7. Be nicer to people around you.
  8. Be confident in yourself.

Essentially it seems like a “Commit to being your best self for 30 days” challenge.

We’re going to start this for August so we have a few days now to get ready. Here’s my plan:

I want to create a solid meal plan and grocery lists for the month. I do all my grocery shopping using City Market pickup and if I don’t have a plan, I end up eating out. If I get everything organized now, I have no reason to not follow through.

I also want to have a gym workout routine with rewards and fall backs for when I can’t manage it that day so I still do something.

I may invest in a different water bottle or several so there’s a rotation but we’ll see about that.

If I feel too overwhelmed, I think I’ll allow myself a total of 3 cheat days so I can have an off day and get back to it.

I’m going to look into a new skin care routine since mine now is really just… Wash your face ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Essentially, I’m going to take the next few days and plan and we’ll soon be on our way! Wish me luck!

Day 26 Update

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It’s been a while since I gave a personal update. I’ve been keeping up with working out, either going to the gym or doing at home workouts. I’ve also gotten much better at restricting my calories and keeping count. All that said, I still haven’t lost more than my initial few pounds. The optimistic side of me hopes that’s because I’ve been building some muscle, which I believe a bit because I actually have gone down a dress size and there’s a bit less around my stomach to grab onto.

I know I still have a way to go but I do feel better and I’m excited to keep working out and blogging.

Motivational Mondays! #2

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You know when you’re a kid learning to ride your bike? And you just. Keep. Falling. And every time you fall, it really, really sucks. Like, it hurts and it’s humiliating and awful. And you’re a kid so your whole world is pretty much riding this bike so it’s pretty much literally the worst thing to ever happen to you each time you fall down.

BUT. Here’s the thing. You (probably) know how to ride a bike now. Which means one thing. Every single time you fell, you got back up and kept riding. And you learned. You grew. You are better at riding a bike now.

That’s the kind of long-term thought you need. Because you’re not going to have lost all your weight by tomorrow. You’re not going to wake up tomorrow and suddenly be able to run a marathon. Setting expectations like that for yourself is just going to make you disappointed and guilty.

When you’re thinking about your goals, give yourself enough time to accomplish them. And when you’re working on them, make sure that you keep picking yourself off the ground. You will stumble. We are imperfect humans. But remember that in a few months, you’ll really know how to ride a bike.

How to Workout When You Just Can’t

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Sometimes, I find Alexander and his Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day to be extremely relatable. Today I had planned to till the back yard. When I woke up, it was raining and even after it started drying up, the tiller wouldn’t start. Now I’m moody and I skipped my workout anticipating the yard work. So, what are we going to do about it?

Well, not working out is not really an option. Not for me anyway. Rest days are definitely good and you should have them. I just don’t really define rest days as days where I don’t do anything at all. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t sometimes skip your workout. We all have really bad days, get sick, are too busy, or have other reasons to just… skip it. But on days when I want something light or if I just don’t want to work out because I’m in a bad mood, this is a better option.

10 Minutes of Yoga

We’re going to start this lazy workout with some really good yoga. Now, don’t get me wrong, Yoga can get super intense and there are moves that have me on my booty after a few seconds of trying to hold the position. But it’s also easy to do the easy stuff! Yoga is great because anyone can do it and most of the basic stuff, you don’t even need any extra equipment. Here’s my lazy day yoga routine:


Minimum Effort Cardio

This is a bit harder but honestly, you should still get your heart rate up even if you’re not going for your usual run. You can go through this routine pretty quickly though:

  • 10 Mountain Climber
  • 30 Seconds Run in Place
  • 20 Jumping Jacks
  • 10 High Knees
  • 30 Seconds of butt-kicks
  • 30 Seconds of Jump Rope (optional)

Repeat this another two times to get a decent cardio workout on an off day!

No Equipment Strength Workout

I think a lot of these are good for at-home workouts anyway, even on normal days. Just increase or decrease your intensity or reps. I won’t give exact numbers on this, it’s just good ideas for what you want to include in your rest-day workout.

Arms:

  • YTW’s
  • Push-ups
  • Planks
  • Arm Circles
  • Cross Punches
  • Walkouts

Core:

  • Sit-ups
  • Glute Bridge
  • Dead Bugs
  • Bird Dogs
  • Elbow Planks with Reach

Legs:

  • Squats
  • Lunges
  • Side Lunges
  • Wall Sit
  • Bicycle Kicks
  • Donkey Kicks

Day 6 Quick Update: I lost weight!

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I’m not sure what amount of weightloss is really reasonable to celebrate but I’ve officially lost two pounds as of this morning. I did a pretty light workout today because the last few days have been so hard. Tomorrow is the last day to meet my updated weekly goal of running one full mile in one go. Maybe the rest will help and I can do it all in one go. Either way, progress is progress.

I feel like I’ve kind of been skimping on blog content and I don’t have anything ready for today. Lots of ideas and partially completed projects, but none worthy to put up quite yet. Among my plans include: more healthy recipes, healthy meal plans, workout schedules, and motivational pieces. If you guys want to see anything specific, please let me know in the comments below. Otherwise, I promise to have some new content for you soon.

Day 5 Update: Wins and Losses

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It’s post workout and I’m EXHAUSTED. The good news is, I was able to run a whole mile today, even thought it was broken up a bit. I did .75 miles in one push and then the last .25 broken up with walking in between. It doesn’t seem like much but for me, it’s HUGE. Once I get a mile to be my norm, I can start working on improving my mile time and increase the distance a bit more for a higher intensity day. The ideal I’d like to build up to is running a mile 6 days a week, building heavy and light workouts around it.

Once I got home from the gym, I moved onto my HIIT workout that I posted this morning. I’m curious if any of you tried it and if so, how it went? I won’t lie, even though I made that workout to be lower intensity, I still had to modify the burpees. For one, jumping like that is just super hard on my knees. Additionally, I still am a little weak on my pushups so I still do the modified ones. Even so, I did all three reps and I feel super tired but awesome.

I think in the next few days I may make a post on how to modify some exercises for beginners. I see a lot of them for stretches but it’s less so for at-home exercises.

I’m super happy with this blog. It’s motivated me a lot to keep pushing myself and I enjoy being able to talk about what’s working for me. I hope that it’s helping someone else, even just to see that they’re not alone in struggling.

I do think I’m pushing myself a bit hard so tomorrow I’m going to have a really light day. I’m not sure what I’ve decided for that yet.

I also intend to put together a more formal plan so that A. I have a solid outline to follow and B. anyone else can follow along with me.

My legs and arms feel like jell-o and I still have a lot to do today! Wish me luck.