Cardio Fix.
It includes burpees and lunges. It’s designed to burn our your legs and leave you flat on the ground gasping for more, and it did.
I worked out after work and before watching the Capitals play (and win!) tonight against the Panthers. I knew it was going to be a rough workout tonight. Cardio Fix is no relaxing stretchfest. It’s an all-out assault on your heart rate.
Today was a dark, rainy day. It was the perfect setting to lay in bed, curled up with a good book. It started our dark and didn’t change as the sun went down. And there’ something harder about working out once the sun goes down.
I had some errands to run after work so it wasn’t until nearly 7pm that I started the 30 minute workout. Though all I really wanted to do as crawl under a blanket, and sleep away the evening.
I wanted to skip working out tonight. It was dark and I had a headache. I wasn’t feeling well and it’s only one day. But I stuck it out and made it through. Truthfully, I’m afraid to skip a day. If I do, I might skip the next and the next. Then I’m looking at starting 2020 not having done anything since now.
I need to keep the streak going. I need to keep going every single day. I need to do something that burns calories and gets me moving. There are many days I never leave the house, so I need to make a point to workout and get my heart rate up.
This is the year I’m tackling health issues and this is going to contribute to my success. Weight is a problem. It’s going to only cause more of them as I age. So I need to do something about it now. And break my bad habits before I get to a point where I can’t anymore. Where my decades of bad decisions catches up with me and I pay a high price.
If there was a theme for yesterday, it would be Hunger. I was hungry all day. I couldn’t get enough to eat. I kept having a small meal, then eating a bit more, then waiting, and having a bit more. I never felt full yesterday.
Today, I ate very little most of the day and had enough calories for a nice dish of ice cream after dinner tonight.
The theme for today would have been Tired. I felt it all day. Even though I slept fairly well last night, I was draggin today. Focus was a problem and after work, all I could think about doing was having dinner and going to sleep.
At 5:30pm.
In an effort to stay awake, I made the first fire of the season. It was nice to be able to enjoy our fireplace again. It’s really nice to have and the wood I kept under a tarp since last winter remained dry and burned well.
The fire felt nice and after watching some TV and eating dinner a bit later, we decided it was time to workout. It was not a hard day, with another round of Yoga. And while I didn’t preview this month’s Yoga with Adriene calendar, it’s worked very nicely with the 21 Day Fix on alternate days.
Today was Yoga for Chronic Pain.
It was slow and peaceful. More meditation than workout. It targeted some of the muscles we really worked yesterday and stretched them out which felt marvelous.
This is where things get harder. This is where slipping is easier to justify. I’ve worked out for 5 days in a row. I deserve a treat. The bread start to flaunt their loafy wiles at me. Ice Cream screams my name. All of the post-Halloween chocolates are hard to resist.
Pilates Fix is no joke. After Total Body Cardio it’s the hardest workout in 21 Day Fix. It’s so much leg work. My hips and glutes are killing me. I couldn’t life my legs anymore after the end of the grueling 30 minutes. Even after the workout tonight, I felt… off the rest of the night.
I felt weak. And wobbly when I stood up and tried to walk. And I don’t want to talk about going upstairs. It was an adventure. I’m only five days into this month of workouts and we’re not even doing the hardest work everyday. But it’s still a struggle and it feels good to get it done everyday.
This month is as much about building the workout habit as it is working out. Though that does help to burn some quality calories. The lesson I keep in mind is to just keep going. Just. Keep. Going.
This is not a short journey. This is not an easy journey. This is the single step to get things started.
It’s four days in and we’re still going strong. Sore, but strong. I am really feeling my arms and legs today. It’s funny how some workouts I feel immediately, while others take a day or two to really feel the soreness from. Every single day of 21 Day Fix makes me very sore.
When I did Total Body Cardio, I was sore for the entire week afterwards. I am glad we skipped that first day starting this month. I want to work but I don’t want to be so sore it sacrifices the work we’re doing the rest of the week. We will do it later in the month and I’m already dreading it.
It was 19 minutes of slow breathing and stretching. It felt good, even on my sore arms. I am enjoying how Yoga with Adriene November calendar so far. It’s been slow and a nice balance to the intensity of 21 Day Fix.
Tomorrow is Pilates Fix. I can feel the soreness in my legs and core already.
Lunges. Squats. Different Lunges. Leg Lifts. More Lunges. Did I mention Squats? Oh, and some more Lunges. My legs were toast about a third of the way into the 30 minute program. I got through it, but only just barely and not in any of the forms shown on video.
I had forgotten just how intense Lower Fix is compared to Upper Fix. That felt hard but it was doable. I was able to make it through every exercise except push-ups (because I can’t do any real ones). But Lower Fix had me gasping for air and straining against the 6 pound weights in each hand as I lunged and squatted my way through the 60 second intervals.
The all-too-short 60 second rests is enough time for me to catch my breath, watch the instructor demonstrate the next move and slowly get into position for it before it’s time to work again. I made it through this workout before. But I’m more out of shape now. Starting back with Yoga was a good move to get the body loose and ready to work but it doesn’t prepare me for the weight work against gravity that 21 Day Fix throws at me.
Exhausted but happy after workout.
My wife and I worked out early in the afternoon because we knew it would be hard and didn’t want to wait until after dinner. Even with the best of intentions, it always turned into 10pm when we don’t workout in the afternoon. After cursing my existence for saying it was time to work out, we got through it and spent the next half hour collapsed on the couch and recovering.
Then we made a quick meal and headed out for some shopping and figured out what to do about food for the week. We’ve gone through a lot of stages in our food journeys and are currently trying out Clean Eatz Kitchen. It’s a prepared meal service delivered in bulk. They have restaurant locations as well but as the closest ones are a state away in either direction, I have no experience with those.
We tried an initial batch of 10 meals. We picked five that sounded good and got two of each so we could each try them and decide if it was worth pursuing.
We were both skeptical at first, frozen food is not usually what I think about when I think about flavor and healthy eating, but Clean Eatz Kitchen delivers. The first meal I had was a chicken and broccoli dish over rice and the broccoli was crunchy after microwaving it. After eating the first five meals, we decided to order a month’s worth.
Chicken Bowl from Clean Eatz
Overall, the food has all been paired well and the portions are filling. They’re about double the size of a Lean Cuisine and weigh in about 300-400 calories per meal. The meats have been delicious, if lacking some seasoning. I would recommend adding pepper as some meals need it and some are already a bit too salty. A little extra Teriyaki sauce or extra spice really adds to the meals.
With dinner already taken care of (tonight was Clean Eatz Fajitas!) we focused on lunches for the week. We like to make lunches for the week on Sundays because it takes the guess work out of the week and helps us make better choices when the laze choice instead of McDonalds or Taco Bell is reaching into the refrigerator and grabbing a meal.
Last week was sandwiches and bags of grapes, this week we repeated bags of grapes, added apples to it and instead of sandwiches, we went upscale with two different dishes.
The first is Chicken Tamale Casserole from Buns In My Oven. It’s a cornbread-based chicken tamale casserole and is one of my favorite meals we’ve ever found online and made. The second rates just as highly. Chicken Broccoli Braid with Pillsbury Crescent Rolls is an absolute stellar meal. If you could take a broccoli cheddar soup and wrap it in a warm bready hug, that would be this meal. The only problem with this is trying to resist eating the entire braid in one meal.
