Tag Archives: Physical exercise

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P.I.N.K. Method Update and a Personal Challenge

On Good Friday, my boyfriend and I went riding. I rode my Quad and he rode his dirt bike. I am just learning and it was my second time riding my quad. He was showing me the things I needed to do while riding on bumpy and hilly terrain. I did a lot of standing up and sitting down on my quad and after I we were done riding, I could barely walk my legs felt like noodles! I mention this because as result of riding, from Saturday to Thursday of this past week I was very sore. I could barely walk and I thought that I had torn my muscles. When I woke up Thursday morning able to walk to the bathroom without cringing I was in an awesome mood. I decided while driving to work to start a 30 day cardio challenge. Before I get into that, let me give you a quick update on the PINK method.

In all honesty, I have not been 100% consistent on the PINK Method and I plan to start over on Wednesday after I buy groceries. Why Wednesday you ask? Well that is my BF’s payday and we usually go 50/50 on groceries. I have not shared this here but on 4/5/12 I tried one of the pink method workouts. It involved a lot of squats and lunges which was very hard on my knees. I am so tired of my knee pain and I almost wanted to give up on this journey altogether.

Getting back to the 30 day Cardio Challenge, I started on Thursday evening. I did the Zumba Fitness 20 minute express and initially I felt good. However about an hour later the knee pain kicked in and I was frustrated until I received a message on YouTube that evening. The individual wanted to know if I have ever thought of using knee braces while working out. Nope, never thought of it and felt a little dumb for not doing so. I went and purchased knee braces yesterday which made me very excited. After being out and about running errands I came home, put on those knee braces and decided to do Day 2 of my cardio challenge. I completed the Zumba Fitness 20 minute express workout and the pressure on my knees were minimal. Today I decided to try the knee braces and work out doing one of the PINK Method workouts. Again, a better experience. I plan to do daily updates on my 30 day Cardio Challenge on my YouTube Channel and to update my blog with short posts about my workout for that day. I hope that I finally make working out and eating right a part of my lifestyle.

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Reflecting On My Journey

While I was driving to work this morning, I was listening to Oprah Radio and just doing some self – reflection about my health, wellness and fitness journey. My thoughts were triggered last night while reading the book about the P.I.N.K Method. The book also serves as a journal in which you write your starting measurements, goals etc. While writing my goals, I realized a number of things that I am doing to hinder my health and fitness journey. Some of the things I am going to mention in this post may be a repeat of a earlier post so I apologize in advance.

1. I am an emotional eater.

2. I  snack out of boredom

3. I sometimes skip breakfast

4. I eat certain things out of weakness (giving in to what my daughter and man want to eat for dinner)

5. I lay in bed most of the weekend in the dark either sleeping or watching TV

6. I spend a lot of time feeling sorry for myself

7. I am allowing my depression to run my life instead of continuously seeking treatment (this is my biggest obstacle).

8. I have not made any short or long-term weight loss goals

My biggest obstacle is depression and I have decided that its time to contact my insurance and seek treatment. I was under treatment before at the Veteran’s Affairs but I stopped going since the main focus was medicating me and not allowing me to face my issues and learn new ways to overcome those issues.

I have also realized that I do not need to have everyone in my house on the same page with me. I find that I want EVERYONE in my house to change their lifestyle because I am trying to change mine. I am unsuccessful with my change because I am not focused on just me. It is okay to be selfish so that I can reduce my risk of heard disease, diabetes, high cholesterol etc. I have to make a change for ME and not anyone else.

I initially planned to start the  P.I.N.K. Method on March 19th but since I have not finished reading through the book I have decided to start on April 1st. The first 90 days of 2012 did not go they way I intended on this journey (only a 3 lb weight loss so far), so let’s see how the 2nd 90 days of this year will go. I have some upcoming events to get jazzy for as well as being healthy overall such as my daughters graduation and my birthday. I will discuss my short-term and long-term weight loss goals in a future post. :-)

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My Confessions

I must confess….I have fallen off when it comes to eating. I mean, really fallen off…I have been pigging out off and on over the past three weeks for dinner!!! I have been too lazy to cook dinner so we have ordered out: dominos pizza, Chipotle, Jimmy johns subs, it’s been crazy! I have even gained one pound and on top of that I have been lazy with working out. I probably worked out three times in the past two weeks which included my post about the Kettlebell workout on March 4. In addition to eating badly and working out sporadically, I have not been counting my calories. As a matter of fact I have not counted calories since I started this journey on January 16th!  I  learned in a nutrition course that I have to make sure that I create a deficit in calories to lose weight, which is where working out comes into play. Of course I am going to gain back a pound,I have not been creating that 3500 calorie deficit per week to burn off 1lb of fat.

In the past I would have given up on my journey. I would have just said, screw it and moved on. However, my mentality this year is different from my attempts at losing weight in the past. Not to worry…I am back on track with my exercising which started for me last Friday. My motivation was rekindled when I went out with a friend and we danced for a few hours. I felt so good afterwards and even though I got to bed at midnight on Saturday morning, at 9 am sharp I was up working out with Kathy Smith doing her kettlebell workout. Sunday I rested because I was a bit sore, Monday I did the Kettlebell workout again, Tuesday I rode my mountain bike and today I walked 3.5 miles with my dog. Hmm…what to do tomorrow….? I am having so much fun.

As far as eating goes, I will be starting a new health and fitness program. I may have mentioned this before but I am going to do the P.I.N.K. Method, which is a program designed by a woman for women. I received this program on the 6th and it starts with the P.I.N.K. reset. So, since I align my grocery shopping with my paydays, I will be purchasing food items this weekend so that I can start the reset. I will attempt to blog about each day to let you all know what I am doing, how I am feeling, and things of that nature. As we all know, “if at first you do not succeed, try, try again” so I will keep trying until I get this health and fitness journey right! :-)

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Kettlebell Workout Day 1

This morning I decided to open up my Kathy Smith Kettlebell solution package and try it out. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, the package came with a 3 lb and 5 lb kettlebell and the workout DVD. The DVD was sealed in a packet that also had two other items. There was a 10 page booklet called Kathy Smith’s Nutrition Solution and a large poster with all the kettlebell workouts along with the description and instructions of each workout. I thought that was nice because I can hang that up on the wall and create my own workouts on days that I cannot pop in the DVD (like those days that my daughter commandeer the television!).

I decided to take it easy this morning because in all honesty, I did not walk or workout last week. In addition, it has been a while since I even did an upper body workout so I decided to do the warm up and the Kettlebell Upper Body Solution. I wanted to record my work out session because I am a YouTube Vlogger documenting my natural hair journey (luvndanaturalme channel) as well as my health and fitness journey (Journey2Jazzness channel) but I honestly did not feel like setting things up. Any who, I got a very good work out in 25 minutes, burned 400 calories, and I am really looking forward to doing again. The workout was a little difficult because the muscles in my arms were like “hey, what are you doing? You don’t normally use us this way” so I am sure to be sore tomorrow even though I stretched before and after the work out but that is okay. Later on today I will do a 30 minute walk with one of my three dogs as I cannot handle all three of them and tomorrow I look forward to doing the Kettlebell Core Solution.