posted by Jennifer on a day in the life of me!, dieting, The 100 Day workout challenge

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!