40 Minute Workout of the Week

Here's a new workout for the week.  Do as many rounds as possible of the below in 40 minutes.  Make note of how many rounds you get in and make it your goal to beat it next time!

10 burpees with box jump
10 chest flys
10 squat with side kick
10 tricep overhead extension
10 squat with back kick
10 chest press

Dumbells can replace the barbell on the squats.

 

 

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Wednesday HIIT

Try this 10 minute workout this hump day.  Do each exercise 50 seconds and rest for 10 between each.

1. pushup/plank jack
2. inchworm
3. pendulum
4. side plank leg lift right
5. side plank leg lift left (not shown)
6. side lunge leg lift right
7. side lunge leg lift left (not shown)
8. frog hops
9. Plank needle through right
10. plank needle through left (not shown)

 

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Move of the Week: Shoulder Pushups

Try this pushup variation which will target your shoulders.  Add this to any shoulder/arms workout.  Body weight exercises are great to mix into your weight training.

 

 

 

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Partner Ab Workout!

Try this fun workout with a partner!  Do each exercise for 1 minute.  I dare you to not have fun. ;-)

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40 Minute Total Body Workout

It's almost Friday, friends! :-)  Here's a 40 minute pyramid workout for you.  Here's how it works:

Set a timer for 40 minutes...that's right....40 minutes!  You can do it!  For this one, grab your heavy and light weights.  We'll use both.  I use a barbell for some exercises, but you can use dumbbells where I use a barbell.  Do as many rounds of the following as you can do in 40 minutes:

1 minute high knees
5 curls (using your heavy dumbbells)
10 lunges jumps
15 squats (Use your light dumbbells or challenge yourself with 15 reps of the heavy)
20 knee-ins
15 deadlifts
10 upright row to press
5 plyo pushups

 

 

For more info on me or my services, see my website.

10 Minute Workout

Try this fun 10-minute stair workout!  In between each exercise, run the stairs holding weights (which is the first clip shown).  Beginners: do each exercise for 30 seconds and rest 30 seconds between each.  Advanced: do each exercise 50 seconds and rest 10 between.  You can find free interval timers to track this in your phone's app store.  Let me know if you try it!

For more info about me or my services, visit my website.

Move of the Week

Try these butt flutters this week to add to your leg workout.  Grab a bench (or you can do this on the floor), hang off the end and raise your legs.  Try them together and alternate legs.  Do sets of 15-20.

 

Please excuse the monkey showing off!  That's what he does best. :-)

 

 

 

To learn more about me or for personal, online or group training inquiries, please see my website Beauties and Beasts Fitness.

3 Day Refresh and Goal Setting

I wrote a few days ago about giving up sugar and to help jump start that plan, I am starting a 3 day cleanse tomorrow morning.  It consists of 3 nutritional shakes a day with specific vegetables and fruits eaten throughout the day.  I am NOT going to weigh or measure myself before doing this cleanse because I do NOT believe in numbers in my personal fitness journey.  Coming from my background of serious eating disorder and body image issues, I cannot weigh or measure myself. I went to the doctor in November and was weighed, of course.  I usually ask the nurse not to say the number when I get on and I don't look either.  But the doctor blurted it out at one point in our conversation and I almost burst into tears right there!  I know from that number that I've gained about 20 pounds in the last year and having my weight gain actually quantified makes me sick.  I have to push that to the back of my head and try to ignore it.  A number is a dangerous thing for an obsessive person like me.  So instead, I judge progress by pictures I take of myself (yes, lots of selfies!) and by how my clothes fit.  And I can tell you right now, I do not like how my pictures look or how my clothes fit!  That's why I'm jump starting getting back on the clean-eating-wagon with this cleanse. 

My main goal this year is first to shed the holiday weight gain, but also increase my maintenance calories.  Everybody has a resting metabolic rate, which is how many calories you burn at rest.  For many people this number is very high.  For others, it is very low.  I am one of the others.  Right now my maintenance is around 1000 calories.  For the last many years I've eaten less than 1,000 calories a day on average and when I turned 30 this past year I decided to stop doing that to myself.  I slowly added calories back to my diet and that's why I started gaining weight.  But you cannot live on 1,000 calories a day!  It's not healthy and I can't do it anymore.

Last year for my 30th birthday I made the goal of getting super lean and competing in a bikini competition in 2015, but there is no way I could do that this year because I can't eat enough to maintain the amount of muscle I'd need to put on or enough to cut and still be healthy during the cutting phase.  A coach I talked to said I need to get my maintenance calories up to at least 1500, if not more.  So instead of setting an unattainable goal like competing this year, I have to step back and make smaller, more attainable goals.  So for this year, I'm not looking to shed all my fat and get super ripped and lean.  My plan is to stay as lean as I can while working with a health coach on calculating my macros  (carbs, fats, proteins) week to week to try and get my calories up.  I might gain more weight :-(  But the goal is to increase very slowly and maintain a clean diet so that weight gain is a minimum and all the while, I will be revving up my metabolism to get it back on track after the years of abuse I have put it through and then later I will be able to healthily shed the weight I have gained.

When it comes to goal setting, especially with our bodies, you have to set reasonable and attainable goals.  Setting an unattainable goal that you won't reach will set you up for failure.  If you need to lose 100 pounds this year, set your goal for 50.  Weight loss can be a slow process for many people whose bodies aren't primed for it.  Weight loss can take time.  If 6 months have gone by and you've only lost 25 pounds of your goal, how likely will you be to get upset and throw in the towel?  But if your goal was to lose 50 pounds, then you're halfway there!  How good does that feel?

Set yourself LONG term goals and then break them up into short term, attainable goals.  That will be the key to your success.

5 Minute Abs

Here is this week's 5 Minute Abs. You can add this routine to the end of any workout.  If you don't have a medicine ball, you can use a basketball or soccer ball or even a light dumbbell for more weighted resistance.  Advanced: Do each exercise for 50 seconds and rest for 10 seconds between each.  Beginner: Do 10-12 reps of each exercise.  Have fun!

 

(Yes, that is a weird purple stripe through my hair. LOL.  When I pull my hair back in a ponytail to work out, I get that silly stripe.  It looks much better when my hair is down or parted to the side.) :-)  I was a little hasty in the decision to bleach my whole head and dye the underside purple...but it's kind of growing on me.  I'm considering going back and having the blonde corrected so it's the right shade for me instead of the yellowy color it turned after being bleached and toned.  Blonde: yay or nay? :-)

 

 

 

 

To learn more about me or for personal, online or group training inquiries, please see my website Beauties and Beasts Fitness.

Home Essentials

Are you planning to start working out at home in 2015? Here are what I consider to be affordable essentials for working out at home. Whether you only plan to work out at home or you plan to regularly go to a gym it is still a good idea to have these things available to you at home.

 1. Dumbbells. If you are just starting out, 5 or 8 lb dumbbells are affordable. If you can, get... two sets of dumbbells for your home workouts: a lighter set and a heavier set. A light set is one you can lift for 12-20 reps without losing form. A heavy set is one you can lift for 6-12 reps without losing form. If you have no idea where to start, go to a store and play with the weights!

2.Resistance bands. The sets I have is Black Mountain from Amazon. I have ended up with 3 sets (one I bought, one was a gift and my SIL gave me her set she never used!) so I can always find bands even when my son runs off with a handful. Get a good set that comes with an ankle attachment and door anchor so you can do a lot with it.

3. Stability ball. Average $20-30. Good for core and stability exercises. A beginner needs one of these but it's good for all levels!

4. A stool, chair or bench that is sturdy for standing on, stepping up on, propping one foot on, etc. Anything sturdy will do.

5.Jump rope. Great cardio for home. Cheap and easy to add between sets.

Let's workout together in 2015! 

To learn more about me or for personal, online or group training inquiries, please see my website Beauties and Beasts Fitness.

Ab Exercise of the Day



 

Try this ab move during your next workout: 3 point leg lift.  Keep your core tight and try and push your belly button towards the floor.  Try to not arch your back.  Start out with 3 sets of 10 and work up to doing sets of 15-20.

 

 

Are You Addicted to Sugar?

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to officially break up with sugar.  Any time in my life that I've been nice and lean was during a time when I was eating 100% clean and skipping on sugar.  But I always get off the bandwagon and find myself sneaking treats between meals.  Having a husband with a huge sweet tooth doesn't help either!  There are always cakes or cookies or ice cream in our house.  It is SO HARD!  Over the last month I have bloated up and I cannot deny that it is because I stopped paying attention to clean eating and my sugar intake.

Sugar is a very addictive and poisonous substance and it hides in places you don't think about.  Maybe you think you aren't addicted to sugar because you don't like cakes or cookies, but what about...oatmeal?  Do you eat from the plain ol' box of quick oats or do you eat one of those yummy apple-cinnamon or maple flavored packets?  What about soda?  Do you drink a soda every day?  A bagel in the morning from Panera?  Fruit yogurt or plain?  Fruit yogurts are high in sugar.  Granola bars, almost any cereal, and many common sauces, like BBQ are all loaded with sugar.  See, you don't have to eat a cookie a day to have too much sugar in your diet.  Go to your pantry and pick up a few of your regular go-to items and see how many grams of sugar there are.  Pay extra close attention to that pesky high fructose corn syrup, which is NOT okay, regardless of the commercials trying to convince you it is.  Pay attention and you will find that poison in almost every processed food item in your pantry.  In general, you should try and stick to foods that have less than 5 grams of sugar in a serving (excluding real fruit- not fruit products like yogurt or fruit snacks, but real fruit.)

Do you know the dangers of sugar?  The obvious is weight gain.  The body cannot metabolize sugar properly, which causes it to be stored as fat.  Sugar also blocks the hormone that makes you feel full and satisfied, which is why you can eat and eat sugar and not feel satisfied and crave more.  Eating more equals more calories you are not burning which equals weight gain.

Did you know sugar aids in cancer growth?  Cancer cells require a lot of energy to grow and they use sugar as their source of energy.  Some of the cancers that you are at higher risk for if you overeat sugar: breast, pancreatic, colon, stomach and endometrial.  I already have a very high risk of breast cancer (I have an 80-90% chance of getting breast cancer someday) due to a genetic mutation I have.  I really don't want to feed any mutating cells!!  Do you? 

We all know that specific diets do not work.  When you deprive yourself you only will cave and overeat or overindulge in what you are being deprived of.  You have to make your diet a lifestyle and eat everything in moderation.  My plan is to avoid sugar 6 days of the week (and eat clean) and on the 7th day, I can have a cheat meal.  A cheat meal is an appetizer, entrée, and dessert.  This way I will not be totally deprived of my favorite BAD foods and can still eat them after I've had a good week (and killed all my workouts :-) )  I'm going to keep on track and NOT derail this time.  My health and body are too important!

Are you with me on giving up sugar for good?

Happy New Year

Check back here for all my workout routines, videos, tips and all things healthy living!  Happy 2015!