2014: A Year of Learning

 In 2014 I learned so much.

I learned that I really can do anything I want. I set a goal to run a marathon and I fricken did it in under my goal time of 5 hours. Some days I cannot seem to run 2 miles but I fricken ran 26.2! AMAZING.

I learned who my friends are and who will be there when times get tough. When you need the support or the ear to complain into. To me it is not about having 100 pennies but rather it is about having 4 quarters.

I learned yet again my family is soo supportive, cheering me on at so many of my races this year. Amazing. It is not easy to track down a runner. My parents have given me the opportunity to live a healthy life and go to college at the same time. I am so grateful for this.

I learned that having a plan is great, but plans do change and that is ok. Sometimes just going with the flow is what is best.

I learned what does and does not work for my health. I learned tracking MACROS works for ME vs. tracking CALROIES.

I learned that working out earlier in the day works for me, because if I wait it does not get done.

I learned that it is ME vs. ME. It does me zero good to compete against others. In fact competing against someone is so exhausting mentally and physically. Everyone can handle this crazy world in a different way.

I learned that helping others achieve a healthy lifestyle is something I love. I am so blessed to have been training kids for the past 6+ months.

Man I learned so much about ME and I cannot wait to see what 2015 will bring

I am ending 2014 with my health in check and a roof over my head… Life is good.

Christmas Love

Christmas was wonderful. I got to spend lots of time with my beautiful family and share many giggles. Two days straight of full tummies, many laughs and lots of love. 

Christmas is absolutely my favorite. 

This year I got some fun fitness gifts that will keep me on track in 2015: an outdoor Lulu coat, socks, GC, a stability ball, new shoes, headbands and best of all a lifetime gym membership!

I am so excited and cannot wait to explore this week. The classes they have excite me SO much. Part of me wants to just go to the gym for four hours, but the other part of me wants to sit home and eat peanut butter chocolate truffles. 

I hope you a had a fabulous Christmas with your loved ones. I have more fun blogs to come this week! :)

Tooth Paste Magic

Why in the hell am I going to bed looking like this?

Let me tell you about the toothpaste trick I learned about recently.

MAGIC people. I will be honest, I was pretty lucky (and maybe unhygienic ;)) throughout HS about washing my face. I NEVER washed my face. Then I went to college and was like all right I will start washing my face but only when I shower.

Let me add that every. Single. Night. No matter what the circumstance is I wash my makeup off with a face wipe from Target – the off brand cheap stuff. Does magic.

Anyway, I had some zits last week because it was my TOM and my cousin told me about the toothpaste trick (put toothpaste on zit and let it sit over night – wake up and wash face with hot water). I woke up with dried out zits and they were gone by the afternoon. HOLLLA.

I thought I would share this trick and my attractive selfies that I took right when I woke up. 

Legs + Protein

Today I was going to post about getting rid of zits – because lets be honest we all have that annoying zit always pop up at the most inconvenient times.

However, I had a kickass workout (literally kicked my own ass) and I thought a selfie, protein powder and sharing my workout was more important.

This workout took me over an hour and a half – if you do not have that long to workout you could switch it up or only do the set once.

LEGS FOR DAYZ:

Squat – basic

Lateral lunge (each leg)

Step ups (each leg)

Squats – sumo

Dead lifts

Curtsey lunge (each leg)

Squats – goblet

T- stance (each leg)

Lunge – tilted (each leg)

Squats – plié

Wall sit

2 minutes each – 2 times total

+ spinning intervals of hill climbing for 20 minutes on and off. I was sweating from my ass, boobs and front end within the first 15 minutes and I never sweat that bad.

Also if you are looking for new protein powder this peanut butter Quest protein powder is fricken amazing. It is literally comparable to a peanut butter milkshake. I ordered straight from questnutrition.com

Fitness Journal

 I have been doing my own workouts lately vs. driving 35 minutes to do boot camp. Although I miss boot camp a lot, I am finally at a point where I am in a routine with my workouts.

Something that has helped my workouts is starting a fitness journal. Now, I am super new to this workout journaling stuff. I journal my personal life on my blog!

But in my fitness journal is the workout I will be doing that day then details about that workout. I write how long it took me, I write exciting things that happened, I write if I stopped to go to the bathroom, I write if I gave up mid workout because I just was not flipping feeling it (this happens too many times).

This journal has been super fun for me because I get to write in marker and plan workouts which I LOVE doing. It has been fun to look back at progress I have made, for example how many sit-ups I did in two minutes a few weeks ago vs. this week.

And lets be honest, this journal is pretty classy looking.

How do you keep track of your workouts? Do you journal? Blog? Post-it note?

The Thing Is...

We are all going to have good days and bad days. Days where we eat perfectly (whatever ‘perfect’ means to you) and there are going to be days where we eat like shit.

These past three days I do not know what it was but I ate like shit. All fricken day. I guess I ate healthy stuff too but I was just constantly eating. I slept like a rock because I was in a food comma <<< yes I went there.

I believe it was due to stress with the semester ending (thank goodness tomorrow it is DONE). Monday and Tuesday I worked out but yesterday I took the day off to focus on eating… But still ate bad.

Today I got my ass out of bed, put on my workout clothes and worked out for a solid hour. I lifted some heavy shit and I did some spinning on my bike. I am ready to finally have a good eating day.

On a happier note I put these size 28 (!!!!!!!!) Miss Me SKINNY bling jeans on yesterday and they fit nicely. In April of this year I was buying size 30/31’s non-skinny. The thing about Miss Me Jeans is they run small (I think) and the skinny ones are always so fricken tight in all the wrong areas. So this made me feel good.