Mid Week Motivation 6 (fitness series): To get back on track, get back to basics

Hello my lovely readers,

Happy first day of April! Make sure to watch out for any April fools jokes today. You all know how that goes! Someone already tried to get me with some "pregancy news" those seem to be popular on days like today :).

Before I continue on, just want to share my yummy dinner from last night:

Mushrooms, peppers, onions, steamed mixed vegetables, grilled chicken

So, anyways, I am here with another edition of Mid Week Motivation. I am continuing the fitness series by sharing with you all how I personally get back on my "fitness track" whenever I need that extra boost of motivation.

I dont know about you but whenever I start feeling like things are out of control, bringing myself "back to basics" always helps tremendously. I am not only talking fitness-wise but life in general. Sometimes we need to mentally, emotionally, and physically start from 'scratch' in order to reach new highs and accomplish new breakthroughs.

Today, I'll share the top five "basic" lifestyle adjustments that can help get you back on the "healthy wagon". These are tips I personally incorporate in to my fitness life. Hope they can help you as much as they've helped me through the years:

1. Write out your end goal, and some steps to achieve them: I personally take a piece of paper/journal/notebook and write out my health and fitness goals. I like to focus on the idea that in addition to "looking good" I want to feel better inside and out. I don't necessarily weight myself nor do I set any strict regimes. I simply write out a personal commitment to eat healthier, incorporate at least 30 mins of daily exercise in to my life, drink more water, and snack smarter. As time and days go by I measure my progress by how I feel, how my clothes feel, how my skin improves, how much more energy I have, and the list goes on.

2. Don't go crazy with exercise: One thing I have noticed some people like to do when they are "determined to get fitter or healthier" is that they go from not setting foot inside a gym in 6 months to wanting to work out for 2 hours straight or incorporate ridiculously exhausting exercise routines from one day to the next. In my personal opinion, this is a horrible idea. The only thing that will get accomplished is getting burnt out by the 3rd day and loosing all hopes of motivation. I personally recommend people start walking at least 30-45 minutes per day (speed walks would be best) either on the treadmill or outside. I also recommend breaking out those DVDs from your closet and finding those you feel the most motivated by. I personally gravitate towards my Gilad DVDs. 

3. Keep visual track of your daily activities: As you all know from my previous MWM post, I am a huge fan of food diaries/journals and Ive also been keeping track of my daily exercise accomplishments by using a calendar which sits in front of my desk and I see on a daily basis. I place a star each time I go to the Gym or complete a full workout. For the days I dont get to the gym I simply write out what I did-- either miles walked/jogged or whether I completed a workout DVD for the day. As you can see, March was a huge success :)

4. Be careful when grocery shopping, focus on staples: If you have been off the healthy wagon for a while, dont go crazy at the supermarket stacking up on every single healthy item you find. The reason I say this is because is important to start slow and steady in order not to get overwhelmed and end up giving up. So, for instance, do not purchase tons of vegetables, fruits, items that go bad quickly. This may not make sense but what I mean is that you should focus on maybe buying enough healthy items for the first week ahead, rather than the entire month. Buying too much "healthy stuff" at once could 'psychologically' put too much "pressure" on ourselves. You don't want to just throw in the towel and your hard earned money going down the toilet because half the items you bought went bad. 

5. Take it one day at the time, one meal at the time if necessary: Don't overwhelm yourself. Remember that fitness and a healthy lifestyle is a journey not a single destination and there will be ups and downs along the way. However, if you keep your eyes on your end goal, you'll be able to overcome any obstacle that presents itself. 

And there you have it! 

What are some changes YOU personally incorporate in to your life that help get you back on track? Doesnt have to be fitness related.

Thank you for reading.

Love,

Mabelle

Hanging out with Jillian in the Morning

Hello Everyone!

So, in honor’s of my “wake up earlier” goal and yesterday’s accomplishment, I decided to take another stab at it today and managed to get out of my very comfy bed at around 6:30 am. I was shooting for 6:10 but I’ll take it! In order to complement yesterday’s run, I decided to do some strength training this morning and what better person to do this with than with my beloved Jillian:

I completed the entire 30 day shred workout sometime last summer and I absolutely loved it! I may have mentioned this before, but I actually started seeing results on my entire body! About a month or so ago I re-started the program but things got busy (read: school) and I was just able to complete week 1. Well, today I picked up from where I left of!

I remember week 2 for some reason being more difficult than week 3 so I was scared and wondered whether I should start off with the basics again. However, I pushed through and didn’t find it as hard as I thought. I was sweating bullets (which felt awesome) and once it was over I was super happy to be able to finish another morning workout. Just makes my day that much better!

After the workout I rushed to get ready for work and couldn’t eat anything. By the time I got to downtown Manhattan (over an hour later!) I was starving! I began craving bananas for some reason (random) so I passed by my local Duane Reade  and picked up a couple (50 cents each if you are wondering). They were all super green. I usually like my bananas in the “middle” not green but not too ripe either but I got them anyways and inhaled one as soon as I got to my desk.

While checking through work email I then proceeded to have my breakfast which consisted of almond butter and jelly on a 100% whole wheat English muffin brought from home, prepared the evening before (not pictured) paired up with my fruit and café (w/ almond milk, no sugar) also courtesy of my casa. Failure to plan is planning to fail!                  

Hope everyone is having a fabulous hump-day. Break is over. Back to work but I leave you with today’s wonderful quote from the runner’s world calendar:

 

Q: Do you enjoy working out first thing in the morning?   

Fortunate Fridays!

Hello! As write this I am relaxing on my couch seeing the snow fall down through my window. Candles on and everything! I am watching an episode of What Not to Wear from my DVR collection (my fave show!). Needless to say I am feeling pretty relaxed right now after such a long week! Thankfully, the 'crazy' snow-storm they had warned us about hasnt been so bad. After the whole Sandy fiasco we now have a tendency to freak out (which doesnt hurt because is better to be safe than sorry) but I am happy to announce that so far so good. Lets see what happens during the night and tomorrow.

So, here I am like every Friday. And these are the things I am feeling fortunate for this week (in no particular order).

1. A job that embraces and celebrates different cultures. One of the days this past week my company celebrated "Chinese New Year" and brought in several traditional Chinese goodies for us to have. Most of it was pastries and sweet stuff. Sounds like I need to take a trip to china ;). I opted for this item. I have no idea what is called. I asked my chinese co-worker and he didnt even know! But It was good!!:

It tasted like chocolate angel cake and I was able to split it up in two and eat it as a snack during the day. Anyone know the name of it or seen it before?


2. The freedom of choice and to pursue my dreams! We had a guest speaker in my entrepreneurship course this past week and she was sooooooooooo inspiring. As she told us her story of how she came about her business and how she made the jump from an engineering career in to soap-making I almost started to cry. My favorite phrases from what she told us were: "what do I have to loose? If things didnt work out I could always go back to my carrer" "what If I loose some of my saving? I could make it back!". She was literally glowing and you could see that she was pursuing her dreams and somehow that shined right through her. Nedless to say, she made me realized that I have the freedom to get up one day and just decide to "go for it" whatever it may be. How amazing is that?! Freedom of choice! We only have one life to live!!! You can check out her business here. the name of her business is Kalliste Organics. I plan to make a post on her products soon :)

3. The fact that I SOMEHOW ended up with the perfect combination of courses this semester. After spending a week going crazy and stressed out; I ended up choosing the entrepreneurship course to compliment finance. I couldn't be happier with this combination. Praise the lord! Lesson learned: probably not a good idea to wait until the last minute to register. I feel really lucky everything worked out as it did.

4.  Learning 4 new things I didnt know before (These facts are pretty random and you probably wont care about any of this but I am sharing anyways. Sharing knowledge cant hurt, right?): 
-Someone made me aware of the wonderful world of S.E.O (search engine optimization)
-That you are allowed to claim the student loans that you take out on your taxes (I was under the impression you could only claim student loan interest).
-That anyone can invest on preferred stocks (not only for high wealth individuals)
-That January has always been a good month for the stock market, historically speaking (the recent rallies are apparently nothing new).

5. Being able to enjoy my mom's bread pudding today as a after-lunch snack. Ate it with some green tea. Sooo good. Everything in moderation of course! 
New goal: will learn her recipe and make a "healthier" version of this substituting certain ingredients.

 

By the way, below is what I had for dinner this evening (RIGHT AFTER FINISHING JILLIAN'S Ripped In 30: Day 6, week 2! Looking forward to a delicious dinner is always a great motivation to work out!)

Shrimp quesadilla made w/ a whole wheat tortilla, shrimp and 1/4 cup melted part skim mozzarella. So good! Plus, had a left over piece of sweet potato and baked it it in to chips: 

 

And last but not least---In honor of Fortunate Fridays, this was my YOGI Green tea message today:

 

Couldn't agree more!!! Have an amazing weekend everyone and stay safe!

Share with me something new you learned this week!

Blog Milestones and Last Night’s events

So last night I had an amazing time involving great company and Mexican food. I went to a Mexican spot that I’ve only been to once before and this second time was just as fun as I had remembered. I had fish tacos which came with a side of rice and black beans. The food was nothing less than amazing. I excused myself to snap a quick photo of the food despite my embarrassingly bright iphone flash:

Going to dinner after work also meant I forgot about yesterdays elf4health challenge and couldn’t try a new exercise which was the goal for yesterday. Ugh! But today I am killing two birds with one stone because this morning I actually woke up 15 minutes earlier to do some meditation and I loved every second.

Although initially it felt nearly impossible to wake up and I really didn’t want to leave my bed; once I got up and washed my face I sat down on the floor of my room and the peacefulness of the morning made a great atmosphere for meditation. I should consider doing this more often. Sometime tonight I plan to make up for last nights challenge by trying a new workout. Any recommendations? I have class so it may be a little difficult so we shall see.

So today I just want to announce my blog reached a milestone in terms of the number of visitors per month so far. I was BLOWN AWAY by the number and I got super excited that my blog is being visited by so many people now not only in the US but all around the world!! This is something to be mentioned and I just want to thank my readers/followers that have been around for the beginning as well as new ones. Thanks so much for your support. I appreciate every one of you and it means a lot to me. If you havent done so yet please subscribe to my RSS feed. If you have any questions about how to do it or any questions at all please email me @ dolcemabelle@gmail.com.

Happy Thursday!

Question for you: what are your thoughts on meditation? do you practice it? ever tried it? any recommendations?