Tag Archives: youtube

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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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Mini Twists

It has been way too long since I have done a post about my natural hair. I mainly share my natural hair journey on YouTube and I want the blog to about more than just my hair because there is more to me than that. Up until January, I was closely documenting my hair journey through video and pictures. However, my camera broke and I did not have anyway to take pictures until today. I did take pictures of my hair with my iPhone but trying to get pictures of the back of my head did not work well with that. But anyways here are pics of my 5 day old mini twists which are starting to shrink. I did the mini twists on Saturday on blow dried hair.

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Why I Don’t Like to Cook

I am sitting here at work on my lunch break eating leftovers and decided to blog about my thoughts on cooking. This morning while cooking my breakfast to bring to work I looked in the ‘fridge and noticed the leftovers. Leftover spaghetti from Monday evening, left over yellow rice from last week, and left over meatballs from…a few weeks ago (yes…a few weeks ago). The first thought that popped into my head was “This is why I do not like to cook!”.

Ok, for those of you who do not follow me on YouTube I have a little background information for you. My 18-year-old daughter moved back in with me in July of 2010. From May 2009 to July 2010 she lived with her father’s family in South Carolina and realized that the grass was not greener on that side.

While she was away I learned to cook for two people: myself and my boyfriend. He is not picky at all and will eat grilled chicken breast, grilled tilapia, sautéed shrimp, scallops, tortelloni, and some other foods with a side of fresh veggies or some canned veggies. We would always have just enough food for dinner and one serving that I could take to work for lunch. It worked out perfect and I did not have to deal with “pickyness”. We would maybe eat something out once every two weeks and that is it. So when my daughter returned things changed.

When she returned she was not happy with our menu so we tried to add more variety.  I had to learn to cook for 3 people and now it has gotten to a point where we order out more (such as: Jimmy Johns Subs, Dominos Pizza, Chinese, Chili’s, Applebees) because no one besides me will cook or no one will eat the left overs! The spaghetti in my fridge…I have been bringing a serving to work daily and I am tired of it.

I am not sure of what to do about this. Should I just cook for myself and let my boyfriend and daughter fend for themselves? Surely this is one of the reason’s that my “health” and fitness journey is pretty hindered now. Who knows….anyway I just really wanted to vent about the situation. I am sure this is not an interesting post but I love that I have a blog and I can just write about what I want. No offense :-)

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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.