No one said it was easy

     All right, so I feel like I’m getting into a pretty good routine with posting: Sundays and Thursdays. Sundays are the closing to my week meaning a good time to reflect on the past week and the future week to come. Thursdays are the days that we get to work on our Blogs in class, making a perfect time to check-in and make a nice post.

     The past two weeks I’ve been trying to focus very hard on working out more outside of school, keeping track of what I’ve been eating and really shedding those pounds and toning up!  Taking small steps for exercising outside of school have included jogging to and from my friends house (.4 miles round trip) and dancing to my favorite music in my bedroom. I’ve set a small mid-point goal for myself that I would love to hit but I am not going to set up a check-point schedule or anything, just keep it in mind for myself. That goal is to lose 12 pounds by Christmas. This means losing 2 pounds per week in the next seven weeks, which is very reasonable. This would also put me over half-way to my weight loss mark in March, which I would give me 3-months to lose another 10 pounds…sounds easy, if I can get there! I mostly want to shed these pounds by Christmas as a challenge to myself to keep the pounds off during the holidays and also to ‘wow’ my friends and family when I return home for the holidays.

     No one said it was easy and I am telling you, readers, and myself that it is not. I had a hard day yesterday, but I pulled through and the way I felt going to bed and waking up this morning is a feeling that I really wish I could hold on to and remember every time I am struggling. I stayed out late the night before last and because of that I did not feel very well yesterday, therefore I didn’t work out with my class during our practical session. I stretched and took it easy (at least I did something). I stayed the night at my nanny job last night because the father was away on business and the girl that I nanny was the only other one home. Our night consisted of TV watching all evening--seriously from ~5pm-9. This is just not something that I do, ever. I don’t have TV in my own home and I can’t stand to watch it because of all the stupid commercials! During this time I looked up a lot of fitness things on the Internet--exercises, pictures, etc. Just dinkin’ around on the World Wide Web. I kept thinking to myself that I should just get up, go to the guest bedroom and workout! I was really getting on my ass about not working out that day! I wasn’t doing anything else anyway and I knew the girl would not care at all. I have always said ‘If I worked out as much as I thought about working out, I would be in the best shape of my life!’ Finally I made my way to the guest room and decided to work up a sweat before bed. [The work out is listed below along with a link of where I found it online which further explains the exercises if you aren’t familiar with the names]

     I’ve got to say after thinking to myself all evening about how I should really work out, why I should do it, picturing the results I want to see in my head, etc, I still really didn’t expect myself to do it…this would be the typical me, I know myself too well. If I had not completed this work-out I know the exact feeling I would’ve sunken into too. Slight disappointment in myself and just kind of quiet and not wanting to think about it, giving myself the motivation that I will do it next time and not to stress over it too much. But the fact that I did do it, expecting I wouldn't, made me feel even better! I literally had a smile on my face, my body was sticky with sweat and I pushed myself through the exercises with my goals in mind every second of the way and I got through it and it felt great! It’s hard to explain the actual good feeling that overcame me and compare it to how I would’ve felt if I had just gone to bed or continued surfing the web. It was nice surprising myself, it’s nice pushing myself, and it’s nice knowing that overcoming this puts me just that much closer to accomplishing my goals!! & knowing that I can do it. You can do it too!

“30 Minutes to a Sleek Physique: The No-Equipment Workout You Can Do Anywhere”

1. Warm up for eight minutes. You can do whatever you like to get your heart rate up. Do some jumping jacks, jog in place or dance to your favorite song <-- (That’s what I did!)

2. Do one minute of jungle squats. (Lower body)

3. Do one minute of push ups. (Upper body)

4. Do one minute of reverse V lunges. (Lower body)

5. Do one minute of modified chair dips. (Upper body)

6. Do two minutes of cardio—mountain climber burpees. (Whole body)

7. Do one minute of abs exercises—inch worm. (Whole body)

8. Take a 30 second break.

Repeat steps 2 through 8, three times.

-CLICKING HERE will take you to the website where I found this work out and further explain the exercises.

-CLICKING HERE leads you to a helpful online digital stopwatch/timer/countdown. I used it to time the minute intervals above.

*I hope you enjoy the work-out!*