August Workout Challenge

After successfully completing the beginner's calender from Blogilates.com, I decided to dive in and try the August calendar. Just by looking at this calendar I can already tell it's going to be much more physically challenging than the beginner's but that makes sense. For starters, each of the workouts this month are about an hour long compared to the previous calendar with 30-40 minute workouts. That means exercising for at least an hour a day 6 days a week. Good stuff.

                                              

One thing I really like about the August workout calendar are the meal/recipe suggestions each week. Let me break it down because I know you care....

Sunday - Cook a new recipe from the blogilates.com recipe index (all healthy, cheap eats)
Monday - Meatless Monday
Tuesday - Eat fruit anytime you want to snack
Wednesday - Drink 8 oz of water before each meal or snack
Thursday - Give up one "bad" food or condiment for the day
Friday - YOLO meal aka splurge on whatever you want
Saturday - Veggies with EVERY meal today

I have to admit, I've already failed my first meatless Monday. I just couldn't shake the craving so I'm gonna try to go meatless another day during the week to make up for it and start fresh next week. I also haven't bothered to cook a new recipe from the website but I'm sure I'll get around to it eventually. Other than that I've been good about following the diet suggestions so far.

The monthly calendars on the website are password protected so I wouldn't feel right posting it on my blog. If you're interested just sign up for the newsletter. It's definitely worth it. That's all for now!

Beginner's Pilates Challenge: DONE!

So, a while back I decided to try the beginner's workout calendar over on Blogilates.com as a way to help me start working out on a regular basis and as an intro to Pilates which I've been wanting to try for a while now. I'm happy to say that I have officially completed the entire calendar. Yay me! This is a huge accomplishment for me because in the past I've never actually stuck with a workout routine. I'll usually start and stick with something for about a week or so before I get lazy and just say forget it. I'm really proud of myself for sticking with it and completing the entire four weeks.

There were a couple of days that I didn't get up early to do the workout videos before starting my day but I made sure to do them later in the day when I had time. There was also one day that I didn't workout at all so I had to double up and do two day's worth the next day to stay caught up. Also, on rest days there's healthy meal suggestions but I only tried the very first one; the banana pancakes recipe. Now that I'm done with that calender I'm not sure what to do next. I'm not going to jump into the July workout calendar at the end of the month so I decided to make my own schedule for the last couple weeks of the month. I just went back through the calendar and picked out some of my favorite videos to do.

To be honest I haven't seen much, if any physical results but it's largely my fault. I really haven't changed my diet too much and I know I should. Just working out isn't enough to see real results, you have to change your diet too which I've learned. That's a lot harder for me and it's gonna take a while. It's actually really easy for me to ADD healthy foods to my diet but getting rid of unhealthy ones is my real challenge. What can I say, I'm a work in progress.

That's all for now.

Banana Pancakes Recipe

This is a simple, 2 ingredient recipe once again from blogilates.com. I tried it for the first time this morning and it was really good and also super easy to make. Give it a try for yourself!

Here's how mine turned out (I promise they taste better than they look lol)....