New Reading Material & A Walk/Run

Hallelujah!!! It's Friday :-)

The thing I'm most excited about today is my new reading material...

YYEEEESSSSS!!! I love getting new issues of Runner's World! It's my favorite magazine. If you couldn't already tell. Hehehe....

It inspired me so much, I decided I needed to go for a run today. And I haven't even opened the magazine yet! Lol!!

I hit the road with a new mommy friend who is trying to get back into jogging. We had a great time getting some exercise, girl time, and chatting! We did a walk/run for 2 miles, then she headed home and I did another mile of running.

Average speed for all 3 miles together was 12:54. Which is not bad for 2 miles that included lots of walking, and considering the heat that we had today (what happened to the nice fall weather we've had the last week or two?!?!).

Mile 1: 13:28 - maybe about half to three-quarters of this mile was running.

Mile 2: 15:08 - I think only about a quarter to half of the time running in this mile.

Mile 3: 10:04 - I only took a very short walk break during this mile, so almost all running.

It felt so great to get some outside activity, even if it wasn't much. At least I still burned close to 300 calories!

So how does that balance with my eating today? Well....
Breakfast: Cinnamon Life cereal, Coca-Cola (don't judge me :-)...needed caffeine)
Morning snack: cheese cubes (forgot to pack my grapes today...)
Lunch: about 3/4 of a Chick-fil-a sandwich (with extra pickles!), about 3/4 of an order of fries, and a sweet tea
Afternoon snack: small piece of cookie cake (a friends birthday celebration at work today, and it was totally worth it-so good!)
Dinner: Taco salad - a few chips, ground beef with taco seasoning, and cheese

I'm not sure yet what I plan to do this weekend. I should probably work up a training plan sometime soon so I have something to follow. I've been thinking about doing that for a while but I just haven't done it yet. I think it would be good so that I have a goal and something concrete to do instead of just going to do some exercise each day. In fact, I think I'll work on that tomorrow :-)

What are you planning to do this weekend? If you're celebrating the Labor Day holiday, are you planning on having a splurge day or having a healthy celebration? I'm hoping to do a little of both!

My Little Helper

I had a little helper today to workout with. Little man decided it would be fun to workout with mommy! It was so funny :-)

Not sure why he's doing a headstand, because I definitely wasn't doing any of those!

When I was doing jumping jacks, he was standing beside me jumping up and down just as fast as he could go. And when I was doing push ups he came over and stood on my hands! Silly boy!!

My workout consisted of 30 minutes on the elliptical:

Then 3 sets of my strength circuit. I'm fixing to do a 35 minute set of yoga to relax the day away.

For food today, I was pretty good. Except for all the caffeine....
Breakfast: Cinnamon Life cereal, cup of cappuccino
Morning snack: cheese cubes, cup of cappuccino (I forgot to eat my snack on time so didn't have my full snack so that I wouldn't be too full for lunch)
Lunch: hamburger, cheese, pickles, bun (leftover from our yummy dinner last night)
Afternoon snack: skipped.....I brought Greek yogurt but when I went to get it, it was expired so I definitely threw that away
Dinner: small piece of lasagna, 2 pieces of bread....I mostly wanted the bread, lol!

I was so tired today that I couldn't make it without gallons of some caffeine. Luckily my little man made my workout easy to get through once I got home from work!

Now I'm off to do my yoga and put little man (who is now grumpy little man) to bed!

Is anyone else as excited for Friday as me? :-)

Happy Hump Day

Yay for being halfway to Friday!

I didn't have a whole lot of time for exercise today. Little man decided that he didn't want to take a nap today, so he was a pill this afternoon. But still the cutest little pill :-)

As little time as I had, I was able to squeeze in 20 minutes on the elliptical. I had planned to do 30, but sometimes life just happens, ya know?

I was going to do a set of yoga after dinner, but I think I'm going to settle for BED! Lol!! I'm sure I could use the exercise, especially considering the lunch I had, but I'm more tired so I'm choosing that. :-)

My food choices today were mostly good, except for lunch.
Breakfast: Cinnamon Life cereal
Morning Snack: grapes and cheese (obviously this is one of my fave snacks in the whole world...if you couldn't already tell)
Lunch: Calabash shrimp with cocktail sauce and french fries (Showmars!), oh and sweet tea ;-)
Dinner: hamburger, cheese, pickles and bun

I'll admit that I had a super craving for some shrimp, so I may not have eaten the healthiest lunch. Shrimp is very healthy, but the fact that it was fried probably negated the health-factor a bit haha! I did have a side of fries, but I only ate about a quarter of what they gave me. And I had actually ended up eating lunch pretty late in the afternoon, so it lasted me till dinner and I didn't have to eat an afternoon snack.

I'm working on a post for later this week about healthy snacks, so make sure to pass on any ideas you think should be included!

What are your fitness plans for the remainder of the week?

Crazy Day

Today has been a crazy kind of day for me. For some reason, I kept thinking all day that it was Wednesday......but it's only Tuesday. :-/

The day was a great day on the health and fitness front though :-) And I successfully stayed off Pinterest, lol! Well, I didn't Pin anything....so that still counts! (I just needed a little motivation to kick my butt in gear when I got home)

I did 20 minutes on the elliptical:

(Side note: not totally sure why the picture always turns out super dark)

Then after cardio, I did 3 sets of my current strength training circuit. It's a whole body workout that I partially got from a pre-made routine and partially made up on my own. It's currently hand written, so I'll try to get it into some sort of table format to be able to post.

Tonight was bath night for the little man so I got him all cleaned up and ready for bed, then did a short yoga sequence. I use an app on my iPad that has music and vocal instructions that makes it really nice. The routine I used today was about 14 minutes long.

I think I did pretty good eating healthy today too.
Breakfast: Cinnamon Life cereal
Morning snack: grapes and cheese
Lunch: leftover smoked pork and quinoa, and edamame
Afternoon snack: black cherry Greek yogurt with 2 packets of Splenda and a handful of Cheerios. Oh, and um...2 Hershey Kisses. :-) A girl's gotta have a chocolate fix okay?! Don't judge me..... :-)
Dinner: Lasagna (leftover from dinner Saturday!)

My hip flexor is doing better, it doesn't hurt hardly at all now except when I'm doing something that puts a strain on it. For example, in my strength circuit I'm supposed to do side lunges but those hurt the muscle so I go easy on those....gotta make sure I heal and don't injure myself worse than I already have!

How are your workouts going this week? Any new or exciting exercises you've tried?

Motivation Monday

I love Monday's.......(or not)!

But regardless of how I feel about Monday's in general, I do love one thing about Monday. It's a chance to start over and get motivated for a whole new week!

I frequently turn to Pinterest for fitness motivation and healthy ideas. I may or may not have gone Pinterest-crazy today trying to find as much motivation as I could for this week. (Hi my name is Erin and I'm a Pinterest-holic.....)

:-)

Feel free to pop over to my Erin's Fit Life board and follow me!!

I don't know about anyone else, but I was not feeling the whole working out thing today. In fact, I seriously considered skipping. I had all the standard arguments in my head....

• I ate really mostly healthy today so I could stand to skip and just be lazy.....
• I'll work out extra hard tomorrow.....
• I am SO tired.....
• It's only Monday so I'll have plenty of time to make up for it later in the week.....

.....and so on. After my Pinterest-perusing, I decided to get over it and just DO IT! So I went upstairs and got on the elliptical for 20 minutes (because by the time I got done arguing with myself, that's all the time I had....).

Since I wasted my time down to only 20 minutes, I pushed myself extra hard and burned 330 calories (or so)! I'm also going to do some yoga in a bit after little man goes to bed to loosen up and get some low key stretching.

Back to an earlier point (that I made while arguing with myself, :-) ), I did eat pretty well today.
Breakfast: Fiber One Nutty Clusters & Almonds - which is one of my favorite cereals right now.
Midmorning snack: Grapes and cheese.
Lunch: A Healthy Choice frozen meal and some Edamame - super yum!
Afternoon snack: 2 cookies (oops....).
Dinner: Pork that the hubby smoked yesterday for us, and Quinoa. It was my first time having Quinoa, so I was a little nervous. But it was really good! I'll be taking the leftovers for lunch tomorrow!

I think that my week has gotten off to a good start and I'm glad I gave in and exercised :-)

How has your week started? How do you find motivation to get going on another healthy week?

A Day of Rest

Is it really the end of the weekend again?!?!?! Every week I wonder how this day arrives so fast. Oh well, such is life...

Today has been a very low key day. I haven't done any planned exercise (so far), but I did go outside and walk around with the little man while he played and ran around like the wild thing he is :-). My hip flexor muscle was SO TIGHT after my run yesterday, so I soaked it last night in epsom salts and then used the heating pad. I also ended up taking some anti-inflammatories to help lessen the pain enough to get to sleep. Fortunately I woke up this morning and it feels decent. Still tight and hurting a little, but decent enough to be able to hang out around the house and get some stuff done.

I probably should get out and exercise in a bit since we'll be having birthday cake with the fam tonight.....maybe I'll do those 2 miles that I skipped yesterday.

 



I'm looking forward to a healthy week of eating well and exercising my butt off (Literally? Maybe.....hehehe). Leave me a comment here or on Facebook, and tell me what you plan on doing this week to be healthy!

4 miler

My goal for today's run was to go 6 miles. Turns out, I was shooting a bit too high :-). To explain, let me go back a little while.

About a month or two ago, I pulled my hip flexor muscle. I have had a lot of trouble recuperating it. I went almost 2 weeks with no running and then as soon as I ran again, it hurt again. I researched some ways to help and found lots of suggestions. I first bought some KT Tape, which worked pretty well for the short-term. This is what all the Olympic athletes were wearing, so I felt all professional. Plus it was bright pink and pretty :-P. I have also been using a heating pad on it that helps to loosen it up. I also started doing yoga to help stretch it out, which seems to have helped the most.

Once I felt like I was good and recovered, I started running again. I seemed to be able to do about 3 miles and then it felt like I was hitting a brick wall because the muscle would just tighten up so bad I could hardly move my leg forward!

So I've been taking it light, only running about once or twice a week since then. Before being sidelined, I had gotten up to 5.5 miles at a time. Since the injury, the most I've done at one time was 3.2 miles, and right around 2.75-3.0 miles is when my muscle starts getting really tight.

Considering the injury and the fact that since getting hurt I have gone no farther than 3.2 miles at once, I should have known that 6 miles was too much to shoot for.

Back to the present, once I got out and starting running today, I began to realize that 6 was going to be too much. I decided to just go and see how much farther than 3.2 miles I could get. At about 3.5 miles I knew I couldn't get much farther before I couldn't move my leg at all. So I headed back to the house, and made it home right at 4.0 miles.

Here's the stats from the run:

I feel like that is pretty good considering I had to stop a couple of times to stretch out my hip flexor, plus my warm up and cool down.

I'll probably get in some yoga time later to stretch out and help recuperate my muscles.

How are your weekend plans going? Are you dealing with any injuries?

Snack Day

Hi and Happy Friday! I don't know about you, but I am GLAD it is finally the weekend.

Today was a rough day in the fitness department. I did start out the day in a great way by doing some yoga first thing this morning. However, it was a Snack Day at work and folks brought in everything from donuts to chips to pizza! It was yummy.....and super duper bad for me!! I felt terrible after eating snacks all day and pizza for lunch. Luckily, I also was able to go for a walk on my lunch break with a friend so that helped me feel less like a cow :-)

Once I got home and got little man settled down, I did 30 minutes on the elliptical and then did a strength training circuit 3 times. I think I made up for some of the bad eating I did, but definitely not all of it.

I have learned my lesson though: next time indulge in just a little and maybe contribute something healthy like crackers and hummus so that there is something better for me, and others, to snack on. And only 1 piece of pizza....

Tomorrow should be a big day for me. I plan on trying to go for a mileage record run.....I'm shooting for 6 miles! The longest I have run before is 5.5 miles as one time so I know it'll be hard!! I recently got a Garmin running watch that has significantly helped to keep track of how I'm running, while I'm running. It is much more accurate than the run tracker app I was using on my phone. I'll post after my run so we can see how I did!!

What are your fitness plans for the weekend?

Hi Friends!!!!

I have been taking a break from blogging lately, but I'm back :-)

My computer was actually broken and I was procrastinating getting a new one. My new laptop arrived yesterday so here I am!!

Hope you guys have been well and healthy; I'm excited to be back to share my fitness journey with you.

My most recent posts stated that my main goal was to lose 30 lbs. So far this year I have lost 15!!

I'll post more details soon, just wanted to do a brief check in today and a quick update....so more to come really soon, I promise! :-)

Have a great night everyone!