December 10 2012

Don’t make your workouts a choice

After a few days away from fitness, I had to motivate myself to squeeze in a workout yesterday evening. I often find myself complaining about having to workout and can be easily convinced to skip intense cardio or an extra set of weights. Since I knew my body was well rested, I should have been ready to rock my workout yesterday but that wasn’t the case. I walked over to my small apartment gym, hopped on the elliptical, and started to settle for a low intensity workout. After a few minutes of this, I remembered back to when I was living at home with my parents and going to the YMCA everyday and how working out was just a part of my schedule, not a choice. I would train my brain to think this way so why not start thinking this way again?

Don’t make my workouts and exercises a choice. Instead, I will build them into my schedule as my routine so that I don’t opt out of anything. I was inspired to get a good workout in after this realization and so I pumped out the sweat for the remainder of my gym time. I also did small challenges, like going as hard as I can for a certain amount of time. After a sweaty cardio session, I did some weight workouts, followed by an ab workout. Success!

It was especially important to get my butt back into gear after an awesome weekend. On Friday, my roommates and I had a Christmas party and on Saturday, I went home to Richmond with my boyfriend Lee to visit with family.

the "young-ins" (my cousin Joey, me, and Lee) — the “young-ins” (my cousin Joey, me, and Lee)

For the holidays, my cousin Joey gave Lee and I 2 tickets to come stay with him and his lovely fiance in Hawaii!! Talk about an awesome gift! 🙂

Home is where my stomach heart will always be — Home is where my ~~stomach~~ heart will always be

I had a fabulous weekend celebrating with friends and family, which made coming back home to Charlottesville even harder. I took a cue out of my mom’s book and decided to get busy so I wouldn’t miss my family and Lee. I went to the Mistletoe Toe Market for Junior League, then TJ Maxx to get lots of Christmas gifts, and finally to Trader Joe’s. I LOVE Trader Joe’s. I stocked up on lots of produce like veggies, fruit, turkey, cheese, and yogurt. I also got a little treat for dessert. 😉

When I got back to my appartment, I jumped into my workout clothes, put my Mariah Carey Pandora playlist on my iHome dock, and cleaned our place. I vaccummed and mopped the floors and cleaned the counters. It took a lot of elbow grease to mop those floors clean! I’d say cleaning house is definitely a workout. After my place was cleaned, it was gym time, then shower time, and finally, relaxation and cooking dinner hour- aka my favorite part of Sunday. I made a big bowl of Thai inspired vegetable soup.

Into the pot went 1 can of chicken broth, carrots, mushrooms, an onion, 1 can of coconut milk, sriracha, curry powder, a clove of garlic, and a LOT of red pepper flakes and pepper.

After dinner, I put away my leftover soup for the week and made my sandwich for lunch the next day.

This morning, I woke up rather slowly and headed over to the gym for some light cardio on the treadmill and the stationary bike. (I think it may be time to join a real gym because I’m getting a little bored with my small gym and its lack of equipment.) I finished up with some ab work and then headed home to shower and prepare for my day.