Onward and Upward

I've been feeling quite motivated the last few weeks to bounce back from the excessive holiday feasting/laziness. Maybe it was all the January 1st hooplah. Whatever it was, I'm embracing it.

I want to feel more comfortable in my body this year. I don't have super aggressive goals and I'm not assigning any numbers or strict time frame. So far this year I've been a meal prep warrior, tracking my food again, and working out 4-5 times/week. I restarted the BBG program and started with the four pre-training weeks (listed as PT below) to ease into it. I'm currently in the middle of week 4.

I've been planning my workouts each week on Sunday and doing my best to stick to it. Each week I do some combination of:

- 2-3 sessions of BBG (arms and abs, legs and cardio, and total body)

- a zumba class (because I love it)

- a yoga class (because I love it and need to stretch)

- 1-2 30-60 minutes LISS (low intensity steady state) cardio sessions, this can be power/incline walking/spinning/elliptical/hiking and eventually jogging when I feel like it
- 1-2 PLANNED rest days

Here's what my workouts the last few weeks have looked like:

1/4/2015	1/5/2015	1/6/2015	1/7/2015	1/8/2015	1/9/2015	1/10/2015
Yoga class	BBG PT wk 1 - arms & abs	Rest	Zumba class + LISS (walking)	BBG PT wk 1 - legs & cardio	Rest	BBG PT wk 1 - total body
1/11/2015	1/12/2015	1/13/2015	1/14/2015	1/15/2015	1/16/2015	1/17/2015
Yoga class	Rest	BBG PT wk 2 - arms & abs	Zumba class + LISS (walking)	BBG PT wk 2 - legs & cardio + LISS (incline walking)	Short hike (on vaca)	Rest (on vaca)
1/18/2016	1/19/2016	1/20/2016	1/21/2016	1/22/2016	1/23/2016	1/24/2016
Rest (on vaca)	BBG PT wk 3 - arms & abs	Skipped workout, moved to Fri	Zumba class + LISS (walking)	BBG PT wk 3 - legs & cardio + LISS (spinning)	Volleyball	BBG PT wk 3 - total body
1/25/2016	1/26/2016	1/27/2016	1/28/2016	1/29/2016	1/30/2016	1/31/2016
Yoga class	BBG PT wk 4 - arms & abs + 30 mins LISS (elliptical)	Zumba class + LISS (walking)	Rest	BBG PT wk 4 - legs & cardio	Volleyball	BBG PT wk 4 - total body

BBG has a great, motivating community on Instagram and facebook. The women who stick to the program see some incredible results and are really wonderful to each other (a nice change from the usual cattiness/jealousy you see all over the place). I've tried to find a few blogs that track progress from week 1 - week 12 and haven't found many that have actually finished the program. Hopefully I can be one of those!

Here are my observations/progress so far:

- I like leg/cardio and total body days WAY more than arms and abs. Squats continue to be my favorite exercise.

- The only modification I've had to make so far is push ups, but I am now up to completing half of push up sets the full way (on my toes) and half modified (on my knees). When I started I had to do them all on my knees. That's so exciting after just 3.5 weeks! I guess that's what you get doing nearly 120 push ups on arms day...

- My joints (most noticeably wrists and knees) are pretty tender after workouts because of all the jumping/push ups. I hope this doesn't become an obstacle in completing the program. I ain't 15 anymore.

- I love that each workout only takes about 30 minutes, but I leave each session sweaty and spent. Thanks to my Fit Bit I know my heart rate is raised throughout the workouts too. 

- I've been diligent about keeping my rests between sets to 60-90 seconds. It's tough, but it's important to the plan.

As far as eating goes, I'm not following the BBG nutrition guide exactly. I've been focusing on eating semi low-carb, limiting alcohol, and eating as much organic, locally-sourced, non-processed food as possible. I'm far from perfect here, but I'm trying. Here's some yummy food pics:

New favorite side: baked sweet potato with coconut oil and cinnamon

Homemade hummus!

Pistachio crusted salmon. So good.

New favorite recipe.

Train snacks

So I'm feeling really good overall and [knock on wood], this doesn't feel that terribly hard at this point. Scheduling my workouts and planning my food are KEY. Saying no to drinks has been my biggest challenge so far. My fridge is filled with so many delicious beers!

Today my body was feeling tired and I was very happy for the rest day. I just returned from a fun blogger event that I'll write about in another post! It's couch and TV time for the rest of the night.