At Home Workout

Life as a mom can be pretty busy and sometimes there are days where I don't have energy to go to the gym, so I made a workout that I could do in my living room while Asher was taking his nap. All I have to say is I couldn't walk for a few days afterwards. Typically I would do this workout with a deck of normal playing cards, however, I couldn't find ours so I went for five crowns (which jokes on me, has 5 suits and has 2 of each card. About twice as many cards as a normal deck of cards) Luckily I didn't really think of that until I was laying out the second half of the cards half way through the workout. The nice thing about this workout is the only thing you really need is a jump rope, and if you don't have one of those you can still do it, and a deck of cards. I used my coffee table to do triceps dips.

Here is how it works, for each color (or suit) you have a different workout.

Suited Card: 100 jump ropes
Blue: Squat
Black: Push Up
Yellow: Lunge
Green: Triceps Dips
Red: Sit ups
Joker: Rest

Like I said I used 5 crowns cards, if you use a normal deck of cards you can do a workout according to suit. The number on the card is how many reps you do for that workout. All of the suited cards I did jump roping, I laid the cards out on a table in a random order and began. The workout takes about 50 minutes. The nice thing with this type of workout is that it adds variety and it can be tailored to fit anyone!

Diet?

What do you think of when you hear the word diet? Growing up when I heard the word diet I thought of a crazy eating habit where you only eat meat, or you only only eat vegetables or something outrageous like that. Let me go back a few years to when I started college...

Before

I began my first semester of college fall of 2009 and I was going into Exercise Physiology. I had heard from many people about the dreaded "Freshman Fifteen", that is one thing I didn't want. At that point I had been doing pretty well on exercising and I knew that being on my own it would be easy to just eat ramen and macaroni and fast easy food, however, I decided to try a different route. I didn't want to go on a diet because I knew I wouldn't stick to it, so instead I just substituted foods. For example, instead of eating white bread, rice, pasta etc. I changed it to all whole grains. I started drinking skim milk, I wouldn't drink soda. I ate more fruits and vegetables. I made a goal not to eat ramen noodles (which seems small but that is what I ate almost everyday for lunch in high school). I decided I was going to be more aware of what I was putting in my body. It was amazing the results I saw. I ate a well balanced diet, I didn't just focus on one food group, I ate all of the food groups but kept to the right servings in each one. Instead of gaining the "Freshman Fifteen" I lost about 15 lbs that first semester. It was amazing to see the results by just substituting for healthier foods.

After

The other day I found myself caught up in a documentary called "Hungry for Change", it was so interesting and it brought back a lot of what I had been studying in college. A lot of people will get on these diets and lose a bunch of weight, but chances are very very high that they will gain the weight back plus some. Why is that? It is because when you decide to go cold turkey and shock your body by doing these outrageous diets you binge eat and eventually just can't handle it any more. That is when you gain the weight back. Something very interesting that I saw in the documentary was that your body needs nutrients and if it doesn't get the nutrients it will starve until it is fed those nutrients. Have you ever eaten a huge breakfast of waffles and you feel so full that you tell yourself you don't want to eat the rest of the day, but you find yourself in the kitchen an hour later? it is because your body is still starved of the nutrients it needs so it will tell your body it is hungry until it gets those nutrients. Obesity is such a big problem and this is one of the reasons. People are eating these non nutrient foods because they are quick and easy but they don't satisfy your bodies needs so you keep eating and eating. Certain msg's or artificial flavors excite your body leaving you wanting more and craving certain things, especially food high in carbs.

My last year in college I was training a client and I needed to put her on healthy meal plan, but before I was going to have her do that I decided I should try the meal plan so I knew what she would be dealing with. I calculated my RMR (resting metabolic rate) which is basically what keeps your body alive, keeping your heart beating, lungs breathing etc. I then calculated my Activities of Daily living, which is basically walking throughout the day, climbing stairs, normal daily activities. After calculating those numbers I was able to figure out for my body weight and height the amount of calories I should be consuming. I made a meal plan and stuck to it, I wrote everything I ate down with the amount of calories I was consuming. I would write down my workouts with the amount of calories I was burning, that way I could calculate how much weight I should lose by the end of the week. I would eat from every food group. I didn't leave a food group out or focus on one food group. I had a very well balanced diet, that wasn't necessarily a diet, it was just healthy eating and staying away from processed foods. At the end of the week I was down 6 lbs. It was hard at first writing everything down that I was consuming but by writing it down I knew exactly what was going into my body.

I guess what I want to get across in this post is you don't need to starve yourself, or go on a ridiculous diet. I actually don't recommend it, what I recommend is eating a well balanced diet with all food groups, just make sure it is the correct servings from the food groups. I challenge you to write everything down you consume for a day, just one day, I think it will surprise you how many extra calories you are eating without even realizing it.

My Pregnancy Experience... Workout and Diets during and after pregnancy to come!

Well now that it has been about 2 years since my last post I figured I better get back into writing and updating this blog. I will be better at it now that I have more time at home being a stay at home mom. I decided to post a little bit about staying healthy during and after pregnancy since I just recently went through. To start off, in my opinion, being pregnant is one of the most amazing things, yeah there are days/weeks/months that you don't feel good, you're tired, you're body aches, and sleeping is almost impossible towards the end. But the fact that you are able to grow a living human being is unbelievable and makes it all worth it. I had an amazing experience being pregnant and I owe a lot of it to choosing to stay healthy.

Before getting pregnant I had been a healthy person, running, working out, eating right has been a love of mine. I was always nervous to get pregnant because I had heard stories of women who were pregnant who gained a lot of weight and were never able to lose it or women who were able to run miles and miles and then got pregnant and lost that. I had worked so hard to get where I was at with running and it scared me to lose all that hard work. I found out I was pregnant in August and as soon as I found out I made it my goal that I would be as healthy as I could. I continued working out as much as I could, and then the morning sickness hit and hit hard. I felt sick all the time and it was hard for me to even get up and go to work let alone go work out. I decided that I would go workout only if I felt up to it and felt good enough to go. Although I wasn't working out as much as I hoped I still ate healthy. For my birthday and anniversary Kent surprised me with a trip to Houston to run in a quarter marathon with him, my sister and brother in law. I told myself I would go run it and it was ok if I had to walk a little bit, as long as I got out and did it. Race day came and I finished, it was a little slower then I would have liked but I was able to run and finish the race.

 By that point I was about 14 weeks and the morning sickness was starting to go away, I got back into running about 5-7 miles per run and felt great! Not only was I running but I was also doing some resistance training. I had heard that delivering a baby is hard work and that I needed to prepare myself physically for it. I kept this up until about 27 weeks when I started to bleed. Kent and I went into the hospital and it turned out everything was okay but it made me nervous. I asked the doctor if running was a bad idea for me this far along. He explained that as the baby is getting bigger the baby will bounce more and that constant bouncing could potentially be bad for the baby. He said that he knew some women who would run marathons up to delivery and their babies were fine and he knew some who would run and end up having their babies earlier and have more complications. So he told me it was up to me what I wanted to do. I decided that I would play it safe and stop running so much and so hard. If you can run throughout your whole pregnancy then that is great! I just made the decision I would take a break from running for the remainder of my pregnancy. I was a little nervous about making this decision but decided that it was best for me and my baby considering the bleeding. I made some changes to my work outs and turned more towards biking and incline speed walking. I continued this up until the day before I went in to deliver. I would walk anywhere from 3 miles to 6 miles 4-6 days a week depending on how my body was feeling. I continued eating healthy and avoided greasy foods, lots of sweets, and just made sure to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. Throughout my pregnancy I gained 28 lbs and delivered right on my due date. I was able to bounce back and I not only owe that to being lucky to have such a good pregnancy but also to my decision to stay healthy and to eat right and stay active.

 23 weeks

 30 weeks

 35 weeks

39 weeks

Now I understand that I was so lucky to have a healthy pregnancy, I know there are a lot of cases where women aren't as lucky and have complications come up that don't allow them to be active or have to be on bed rest and so on, that is completely different. However, the choice to eat right no matter the circumstance will make the difference. I know some women believe that because they are pregnant they can eat whatever they want whenever they want and however much they want. All I have to say is what you are taking in, your baby is getting as well!! I look at it as pregnancy should be the time you want to eat the most healthy because those are the only nutrients your baby is getting while growing such vital organs and growing his/her body! A healthy weight to gain, depending on your starting weight, is about 25 to 35 lbs. Again this can change depending on whether you are underweight or overweight and the type of pregnancy that you have.

I think an important thing to remember is every body is different, you know your body the best and it is important to listen to it. When I was working out if I was tired or started to ache I would listen to my body and stop. Your body is the best judge, so listen to it! It isn't worth over doing it to avoid gaining weight, a fact that you have to accept during pregnancy is YOU WILL GAIN WEIGHT and that is totally fine! Pregnancy is a sacrifice and a very selfless act, you are allowing your body to go through changes in order to grow a human being. My body isn't perfect, there are flaws that I see, and I am not back to where I want to be post partum but I am healthy and that is what matters. I will always see flaws if I am looking for them, the best thing you can do is look for the good in you!  I am able to go on runs and to workout, I enjoy eating healthy and I feel good! That is what is most important. You may not bounce back as fast as you would like post partum but that is okay, just be positive and stay healthy.

If you are going to workout during pregnancy make sure to get your drs approval. Working out is not the only way to stay healthy during pregnancy. Controlling your eating is the biggest thing you can do to maintain a healthy pregnancy. I will go into more detail in both working out, and a healthy diet while pregnant in other posts.