Currently Browsing: dieting
Jun 24, 2011
Posted by Jennifer on Jun 24, 2011 in a day in the life of me!, dieting, The 100 Day workout challenge | 3 comments
1/5th of the way there towards my goal of working out 100 days straight!! Wahoo! Only 80 more days to go!
I know a bunch of you work at a desk all day staring at a computer, that’s what I do 8 hours a day. I was thinking of incorporating some kind of exercise during the day while I’m at my desk. I googled it, read some articles (one was get a desk that was high and put a treadmill under it, and do that 3 hours a day!). That’s not feasible in my space, so I kept reading. I came upon an article from The Online Nursing Degree Directory that had simple things you can do at your desk.
I’ll highlight the ones I thought were good and that I tried yesterday while working.
Seated Crunches:
Put your feet flat on the floor, and make sure that you are sitting up straight. Then, rest your hands in your lap. Breathe in deep through your nose, “crunching” your upper and lower abs, pushing your lower back against the chair.
Side Stretch:
Here’s an easy stretch you can do to work out your obliques; with your arms raised over your head, lean gently over to each side as far as you can safely go.
Squeeze your glutes:
Throughout the day, while seated on your chair, squeeze your butt muscles as hard as you can for 10-20 seconds.
Inner thighs:
Take a water bottle and put it in between your legs, squeeze your knees together using the water bottle as resistance. Hold for 20 seconds and repeat throughout the day.
Hover squats:
Stand above your chair, pretend you are about to sit down but stop right above your chair, hold that for 10 seconds and then stand up again. Try to do that 10x.
Push-ups:
You can’t really do this at your desk, but if you can find a wall, stand about a foot away from it, feet shoulder width apart. Rest your palms on the wall at about shoulder height. Bend your elbows and lean toward the wall as far as possible. Keep your legs and back straight. Then push yourself back to starting position.
Check out the link above, and see the rest of the exercises. If you did some of those every day it’s a great way to burn some calories and tone.
I left for work yesterday, got my bike out of the garage and started riding and something was majorly wrong. I got off and felt the back tire and it was completely flat!! I didn’t have time to see if there was a nail in it, or glass. The old me would have happily gotten a ride to work, but my old bike was still in the garage (although the brakes aren’t perfect) and the tires were full, so I rode that to work. My son actually rode it for a few months last year and pretty much beat it to hell in the short time he had it. The speed was set so the resistance was really hard, but I was afraid to try to change the speed because I thought the chain would fall off or something, so it was a TOUGH ride to work! That was my exercise biking to work and back as well as the exercises at my desk during the day.
Today is my weigh in day, I was hoping for a Biggest Loser type number, but when I stared down, it was EXACTLY the same weight I was last week, except for one very important number…my percentage of body fat. I have a Tanita scale and not only will it weigh you, but will tell you the percentage of fat. It went DOWN by 2%. That hasn’t happened in the longest time so even though my weight didn’t change, I’ll take a reduction in body fat percentage and day!
Hope everyone has great weekend plans. What’s on your list of fun things to do this weekend? We have a softball party picnic on Sunday which should be really great!
Jun 22, 2011
Posted by Jennifer on Jun 22, 2011 in a day in the life of me!, dieting, The 100 Day workout challenge | 2 comments
It was a nail biter of a game for my 9 year daughter’s softball game last night. It was the 2nd playoff game, if we lost then the season was over… We started out kind of slow, the other team scored 6 runs to our zero runs. The 4th inning, we rally back, making 5 runs, so the score is 6-5. They 5th stays the same, the top of the 6th and last inning the other team gets three outs which leaves us one more inning to win the game. We tie the game up 6-6 and we have a runner on base and a great batter up to bat when all of a sudden…tornado sirens go off!! Everyone has to exit the field and go home immediately! At first we thought we would be able to make up the game tonight, but the next playoff game is tonight, so they have to call it where the score was the last full inning which was them on top! So close!
So since the tornado sirens were still going and it was getting super windy out, the whole family went in the basement and I bravely stayed in my kitchen to make dinner (at 8:45 last night!). I just made a simple marinara sauce and regular spaghetti, so when it was done everyone came up and dished up and headed back down to the basement to eat dinner! I took a smaller portion because I still had to do a workout!
I rode my bike to work, but left it because I got picked up for Claire’s game after work. That was only a 15 minute bike ride, so I wanted to do more than that. After it was safe to come upstairs, I cleaned the kitchen, Claire went to bed and I did an upper body workout with 8 pound weights, push ups and squats! I didn’t get finished until 10:00 p.m. But I was glad I did something else because honestly I just wanted to put my jammies on a sit on the couch and watch TV.
Day 18 out of 100 days of exercise is complete!
Come back tomorrow, you won’t believe what I am planning to do today for exercise! 
Have a super day everyone!!!
Jun 21, 2011
Posted by Jennifer on Jun 21, 2011 in a day in the life of me!, dieting, The 100 Day workout challenge | 10 comments
So in a quest to mix things up workout wise, I did a workout called The Hundred Workout – and this is what it entails:
My sister e-mailed me this workout last week and so I thought I would give it a try. It seemed like it would be easy enough – ummm.. it was hard!!! It took me 40 minutes to finish this workout. The hardest part was the 100 jumping jacks – and then the squats. I made sure I was tightening my muscles for each one – I couldn’t believe how hard it was!
For the leg lifts, I really wasn’t sure what they meant by that, so I just stood straight up and then lifting each leg in front of me, tightening my thigh muscles each time.
For the 10 minutes I was just going to jog in place but after 2 minutes of that it seemed like it was going to take forever so I decided to finish it by jogging around my block. I haven’t run in forever and it seems impossible that I ever ran 26.2 miles when trying to run around my block without stopping seemed like a long way to go! Isn’t that funny? But I made it 3/4 of the way without stopping and walked the rest of the way.
All in all it was an excellent workout, it works out pretty much your whole body. Have you ever tried this workout before or even heard of it? I think this would be a great workout if you are travelling and don’t have access to a gym – you could do this without any special equipment.
My plan today is to ride my bike to work and do some sort of video tonight – I have exercise TV on demand so I have tons to choose from. Have a great day everyone, I’m off to chop veggies for salad club at work today
Jun 20, 2011
Posted by Jennifer on Jun 20, 2011 in a day in the life of me!, dieting | 10 comments
I have to give a shout out to my niece Jessie – her very successful gelato shop was featured in “Unique Sweets” episode on the Cooking Channel last night!
This is my niece Jessie
They showed her shop, she talked about how she makes gelato, they showed the different unique flavors she makes – it was very exciting!
She also shared one of her most popular flavors – salted peanut gelato – recipe on the Cooking Channel’s website – click HERE to see the recipe.
The Cooking Channel went there a few months ago, and I taped the show as a series and every week we would wait to see if it was on and it finally aired! Great job Jessie! If you get a chance to check her place out, it’s on Damen in Chicago – here is her website: www.blackdogchicago.com.
On the exercise front, I was trying to think of something I could do that I would enjoy. My daughter Claire and I batted around some ideas. She wanted to roller blade, but I haven’t done that in about 10 years, so I thought that may not be a great idea. Then I asked her if she wanted to play tennis. There are tennis courts a block from my house at the local park, but I just wanted to hit it against a wall. So we walked over to her school where there is a ton of wall space. It was so much fun. I did that for 45 minutes! When I was little I spent a lot of time hitting tennis balls against our house, or at the park, so it came right back to me. Claire however got a little frustrated because she wanted to do it perfect right off the bat. I kept telling her it takes practice, and I had many hours logged as a kid doing it, so she couldn’t expect to be awesome at it right away. I did have to wipe some tears from her eyes.. poor baby. However I thought it was funny that later I overheard her say to her brother “Mom is really great at tennis!” I thought that was cute.
So, day 16 of 100 days exercising straight and I feel great! I hope I can keep it going!!
How was everyone’s weekend? We’ve got storms in Chicagoland the beginning of the week, so hopefully it won’t affect me being able to ride my bike to work.
Jun 19, 2011
Posted by Jennifer on Jun 19, 2011 in a day in the life of me!, dieting | 2 comments
Well today was a great and busy day. My daughter Claire had her first playoff game for softball, sadly they didn’t win, but we have one more chance to move ahead – it was a super hot and muggy day which didn’t help running around a lot.
So I am updating 2 days of workouts. Yesterday was great out so I rode my bike to work. During lunch I walked for 35 minutes. When I got back and logged my walk on www.mapmyrun.com it said it was 2.2 miles, so I was happy with that.
At the end of the day I had to drop off some plans from my office at Village Hall, which is about 1.5 miles from my office, so I rode my bike there and then home so it was probably at least 4 miles – so I was excited about that.
On Saturday I set my alarm so I wouldn’t sleep late but I ended up waking up before it went off – which is very unusual for me. It was 8:45 a.m. I knew my husband was already up and out the door. He ran 13 miles today! And even though I debated about putting off exercising to maybe after the game, I quickly changed my mind and decided to get it over with. What did I do?
I did the whole thing! It was with a step and part of it was with weights and even though I used 3 lb. weights it was SUPER hard. I was glad it was over and I seriously wanted to quit several times into it. Yeah for me!
I think I like Taebo so much because it reminds me of when my twin sister and I used to own a 2 flat together. She lived upstairs with Hannah and my family lived downstairs. We would make a plan to get up early and workout before work. I would go up to her house and we would do Billy – which usually led to lots and lots of laughing – good times!
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Have a Happy Father’s Day to all the Dad’s in your life. My dad is no longer with us, but I still miss him tons. Enjoy your Dad if you see him today and consider yourself lucky if he’s still a big part of your life!
