Happy Thanksgiving!

What a glorious holiday Thanksgiving is! 

It's always been my favorite among holidays - I love the idea of carving out mandatory time for everyone to spend time with their loved ones, eating great (and HOMECOOKED!) elaborate meals, giving back to others, and the general lack of corporate takeover (to some extent, the anti-XmEastoloween). Granted, Black Friday is trying to ruin this gentle mood, but I'm confident the people will fight that one. 

My favorite Thanksgiving dish has always been mashed potatoes. I'm famous for it. Literally. My family basically makes an entire bag of potatoes because they know I can (and probably will) down at least half of it within 24 hours. I love mashed potatoes in a meal, as a snack, and particularly as a breakfast - they're amazing.

Everyone needs their indulgences, and Thanksgiving is the perfect time to have them. My body's already changed a lot in the last month and I anticipate that I'll be taking it a little easier than usual this year, but that's okay. Do you have any Thanksgiving favorites? 

I hope all readers have a fabulous holiday - I know I'm looking forward to it!

Endurance

As I mentioned in my first post, I'm a pretty busy lady.

Between a full time job, a supplemental second job, and running two blogs, there often seems to be little time for eating and sleeping, let alone exercise.

I'm proud of the fact that I've been pretty consistent with the exercise (generally going at least five days a week, sometimes with more than one class a day), but I have to admit: I'm feeling a little run down.

I'm sure there are many factors involved in this: the darkening of the days as winter whirls in, not going to bed quiiiiite as early as I know I should, and likely not enough of the right foods.

I have a tendency to overshop at the grocery store as odd groceries and unfamiliar foods are one of life's greatest pleasures for me. Also, since I'm cash-strapped, it seems more fair to allow myself a splurgy food treat here and there to experiment with multiple times in a kitchen rather than going out and blowing a bunch of cash on one night. So, I love cooking and I mess around with a lot of awesome healthy and unconventional ingredients.

That being said, I'm having a hard time knowing what is the right amount and kind of food. I eat mostly cooked whole foods, especially in soups, and I feel really full when I eat - but I seem to have a crash after a couple of hours, particularly in the afternoon. 3 p.m. rolls around and I'm ready for a mad nap at my desk.

So, there must be some way (other than exploding from copious amounts of coffee) to try to keep my energy levels up all day. Do you have any suggestions?  How do you keep yourself going in between early mornings, late nights, and general busy-ness?

Hitting Your Stride and the Power of Habits

I'm a voracious reader. In the last year or so, I've gotten very interested/invested in some great non-fiction and self-help books, from finance to personality differences to cooking and beyond. 

A wonderful book I read is The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, which details the process of creating, maintinaing, and breaking habits, both good and bad. Its one downside is that it doesn't offer a step-by-step program (if you're looking for one), but there is still a lot of great insight into ways to improve your habits to benefit your lifestyle. 

A key component of Duhigg's theory is the Keystone Habit, which is essentially a small part of one's day/lifestyle that, once changed, has an immense domino effect on other habits. It's different for everyone, but everyone has them. Should one wish to change their habits, identifying and appropriately modifying one's keystone habit is perhaps THE step towards a successful life change. 

I've long debated which of my daily habits is a keystone, but I'm realizing through my Modo challenge that it is probably the time I wake up every day. Starting my work day with a *very* early morning workout not only changes my perspective on the day, but the way I live throughout it. I notice, if I'm up earlier, that I tend to want to be more active, to need more nutritious food (starting with a filling, protein heavy breakfast), to smoke/drink/eat fatty foods less, have a cleaner house, and most importantly, to be tired enough to go bed early enough to wake up the next day for another early workout. In fact, I ENJOY waking up early for this workout. I can now attest that, since I'm used to doing it (at least on weekdays), I feel so bad about not waking up in the morning if I miss a class that I am highly compelled to do so the next day. 

I have never been this person. I have never wanted to "sacrifice" sleep, or especially late night enjoyment time for myself, in order to exercise. Exercise has ALWAYS been at the very bottom of my priority list. 

But it turns out that the rumors about habits and movement are actually true. When you realize how good you can feel by sweating out your toxins in the morning, learning you are capable of immense discipline, and how awesome GREAT sleep is (which is very much aided by moving at some point in your desk-ridden day), you can't help but crave it every moment you get. In fact, I've started almost resenting my workplace for limiting the amount of physicality I can have in any given weekday. 

Please keep in mind that I am not on a pedestal here. I still have multiple glasses of wine, the enjoyable daily cigarettes, and etc. However, I find I want and need less of these things if I'm satisfied with my activity level. There seems to be a very direct correlation between the amount I move and my general happiness and work ethic. And that is entirely dictated by the time I wake up each morning. 

This post began due to this morning's workout, which was by far the best I have ever felt after waking at the ass-crack of dawn to sweat my balls off. It is very possible that tomorrow I will feel terrible (since of course I wanted to celebrate tonight after a long work day and feeling hopeful about every morning workout in the future.....we'll see.). But I realized as I was formulating my thoughts that this entire process has boiled down to the simple fact that I will wake up in the morning in time to work out, and that I WANT to do so. It's a great feeling to acknowledge. 

What is your keystone habit? What wakes you up in the morning? I still struggle with this, so I would love your thoughts!

Accountability

Weekends are so hard. 

I work a lot, as I'm sure many of you do. I wake up early (even earlier since I started this working out thing), and I get tired after long hours and two jobs. Saturday and Sunday seem like the only time I get a chance to stay up late, sleep in, and live that "fantasy relaxation life" that I think seems so appealing. 

The fact is though, that the up-late-on-the-weekends-and-less-sleep-on-weekdays makes me feel like shit. It's extra hard to bounce back from that kind of living during the week, and I'm exhausted by Friday, and by the time I hit my stride on Sundays I'm totally unprepared for the work week and the cycle starts all over. 

I let a Friday night argument get in my way of working out Saturday morning for a class I waitlisted for. I was super excited to do back to back days  of barre this weekend, and I'm really disappointed with that result. I still worked out Saturday afternoon, which was nice, but it wasn't what I really wanted and it didn't display the willpower I need to go all the way. This morning's Sunday barre was wonderful, and just reinforced how much I wish I had gone yesterday.

On another note, I truly believe that to be really accountable about achieving goals, one must have some measureable resultas and, overall, accountability for their actions. 

So, in that vein, I'm taking measurements. I'm about three weeks in to my Modo/everyday workout challenge, and I meant to do this earlier and of course let myself get busy. Here's my current body measurements as things stand. I'm going to do everything I can to stay on top of my class schedule, no excuses, and in 5 more weeks we'll see if anything changes.

Arms:      13"
Thighs:    26"
Ass:         47"
Waist:      41.5"

Good luck on the next week!

Unplanned Interruptions: Staying on the Wagon

Sometimes, as always, life really doesn't go as planned. 

I woke up this morning as I've tried to do every day since I've activated my Modo Groupon at 5.30. A. FREAKING. M. And like all of the other (successful) mornings, I went through my quick routine, grabbed my pre-packed bags, and headed to the car. 

Two things: 1) Weather changes are the worst when traveling. 2) Stoplights are the bane of my existence. 

Minneapolis had its second hard frost, which led me to an unanticipated window scraping delay. And aside from killing my mileage, I have learned the hard way in the last few years that stoplights are the one difference between being early and being exactly on time. 

So what happened?

Two too many red lights later, I arrived at Modo JUST after they locked the doors for the session. Morning workout cancelled. 

I was mad, I was sad, I was ready to sleep in my car and drive to work in my smelly workout clothes. 

But then I thought: why not make the best of this? 

Normally, I would poop out, say "fuck it," and go straight back to bed. But my motivation to really DO this project, to stay honest to the blog and accountable to my readers, made me pause. 

Instead, I went back and hit a Fitness Blender workout. 

I'll say more about Fitness Blender in later posts (I've been experimenting with it for a bit now), but it's been a godsend in a pinch, and particularly this morning. I was pissed off after missing class, and instead of pouting or sleeping came home and put my every frustration and stressor into a badass kickboxing routine. I released my frustration, still kept up with my movement goals, and didn't spend any extra money or wasted time either way. SCORE. 

Also, I had just enough time to make a quick (small) batch of pancakes. DOUBLE SCORE. 

The point is, as I'm learning, setbacks are always going to happen, and it's highly unlikely that they'll be in your control. There are easy (but hard to electively choose) ways to make them less painful, and it turns out that what you hear about the rewards of exercise afterwards versus the rewards of doing nothing really are true. 

I'm super proud of myself, and although I know I can easily forget this, I am going to make a point of trying to remember that just getting up and making an effort is half the battle. Once that's done, it is silly to throw it away simply because of a locked door. 

What kind of interruptions get in the way of your workout routines? I'd love to know your solutions!

Groupons for Fitness

I am a perennial student. 

If I could, I would always be in classes of any kind - literature, language, chemistry, cooking, you name it - but this is particularly true when it comes to fitness. 

Arthritis, flat feet, acid reflux, and more run in in my family's medical history, so it goes without saying that running has never been a particular fitness favorite of mine. In fact, any high impact workout for me tends to be not only painful but soul crushing, to the point that I become discouraged to be active at all.

Enter the trendy exercise class. 

I ADORE trendy exercise classes. Yoga, pilates, piyo, zumba, barre, you name it - let me wear a stretchy yoga pant and lay on a sticky mat and I'm set to go. 

The big problem with this kind of class, though, is that they tend to be expensive. VERY expensive. Especially if you want to go more than once a month. 

So what's a person to do? 

That's where Groupon comes in. Part of the reason I even began this fitness challenge, in fact, is that I began to pay attention to the fitness deals on Groupon. I found one for a studio (Align Pilates - more on them later!) that I had been dying to try for a while and could never afford, so I took a leap. And I got hooked. 

I'm currently two weeks into what must be the best Groupon deal of all time - two months of unlimited classes at Modo Yoga for $59 (one month unlimited through Modo is $125). I've been taking full advantage of it, experimenting with hot yoga, battling the world for a spot in the uber-popular barre classes, and generally getting my ass kicked. 

I'll be reviewing Modo, Align and some of the classes they offer in later posts, but for now all I can say is that the Groupon for fitness is one of the best deals out there for the financially challenged health fan. It's an awesome way to try something new without immediately emptying your pocketbook, and fail-safe if you are a commitment-phobe.