Healthy(er) Living

I am going to start today's post with some additional reading. You need to check out this post by Tony Gentilcore. He is quite easily becoming my favorite blog writer to follow, besides Athena over at Fitness & Feta. Not only does his post relate to the striving fitness professional, but it also applies to every career out there and anyone attempting to better themselves, whether it is physically or mentally. There is a certain beauty in the gift from God that humans are never perfect. Rather, we can always, always, always improve in our daily lives, not only personally, but professionally, and through our interactions with everyone!

Now on to my update...
For some time now, I've been saying that Judah and I need to eat healthier. Well reality hit a little harder yesterday when Judah weighed himself at the gym... Needless to say, we need to start eating better now! We definitely need to eat more vegetables and more fresh fruits - for the most part our fruit intake has been through smoothies, which while occasionally aren't bad, that's not what you should be eating every single day! Also, I went on a heavy baking spree last week and Judah is fortunately/unfortunately my eater! I made a dozen peanut butter cups, which I didn't care for (something about the peanut butter I didn't like) and so he ate all of them... Plus I made two batches of cookies, two loaves of banana bread, a cinnamon bread, and chocolate covered coffee beans. Whoops! I never realized my husband had such a sweet tooth til I stayed with him last summer and he nearly ate an entire bag of oreos in one day. Literally every time he walked by the bag he would grab four or five. So yes, healthy eating underway!

Judah is graciously allowing me ten days to plan healthier meals for him and myself, so I can prove to him that I don't make him "fat" :P

I'm making this recipe for dinner tonight: Crockpot Chicken and Broccoli with some corn on the cob. It should give us leftovers for lunch tomorrow. I'll try to remember to take pictures and will share how well it comes out :D  I have spinach lasagna planned for later this week, as well as shrimp tacos.

Personally, I am getting back into my own workout routine. I started my first workout of Cathe Friedrich's STS Hypertrophy Phase Workout Series today. For anyone looking for an amazing workout program, this is it! It is scientifically based and I can tell you from personal experience you will see results!

Her leg workouts are so intense when I very first started doing this program (about 3-4 years ago) I only used my body weight and still had trouble walking three days later. Now, I don't say that to scare you, but to let you know that Cathe means business! I can safely say I own nearly 75 of her workouts because I think she is that great! I also own her XTrain Program and Low Impact Series and she is releasing a new workout this fall (which reminds me I need to pre-order it!). Her website, www.cathe.com, provides a ton of information about each workout so you can make an informed decision before purchasing. Almost all her workouts are available for an ipod/iphone/laptop download so I just use my iPhone when I am at the gym to complete the workouts! I can't rave about her enough :D Almost all of her new workouts (last 2-3 years) usually come with premixes, so while the regular workout may be 50 minutes long, you can do a 25 minute premix if you are crunched for time. Her DVDs may seem a bit on the expensive side, but she has sales frequently and almost always has discounts (up to 30% when you purchase a certain number of DVDs). Right now the entire STS series (40 DVDs) is on sale for $120 - so only $4/workout. Think about what it would cos to hire a personal trainer for 40 sessions and you can use her DVDs as many times as you want! She has truly revolutionized the fitness industry if you ask me :)

This current workout program I'm doing has twelve workouts: 3 per week for four weeks. Day one is chest/shoulders/triceps, day two is legs and day three is back/biceps. This hypertrophy phase focuses on heavier weights at moderate reps (a typical set include 70% of your one rep max for 12, 10, and 8 reps with one minute rest between each). I personally have found that I LOVE to lift heavy! I'll never be able to compete with Judah for weight, but to be able to bicep curl 15 pounds for 10 reps makes me pretty proud :D The thing I love most about using her programs is I never have to plan a workout, other than which one do I want to do. Yes, I need to preplan what weights to use, but the workout itself is already made and as I mentioned, Cathe integrates the science behind exercise to make sure that this is the most effective workout you can be doing, so really, I couldn't design a better one even if I wanted to! Alright, enough of that since I can rave about her for days...!

My goal is to walk to the gym the three days a week I need to workout (4 miles roundtrip) and then on the other three days, either accompany Judah to the gym and do some cardio, or at the very least get in a yoga session or two (I'll write about that on my next post!)

I get the feeling I will be feeling very sleepy by the time 9:30 comes tonight ;)