Review of Daily Burn Kettlebells Days 5 and 6

I did Day 5 and 6 of Daily Burn Kettlebells the same day. I was also the same day as Day 49 of A person called Piyo. It was a busy day. The coming week is going to be rough. I've got the last week of PiYo, plus Daily Burn Kettlebells. There are too many long workouts in the coming week to double up, so I tripled up today and will probably have to do the same next Saturday and Sunday. I need to get Kettlebells onto a Monday through Sunday instead of this Wednesday through Tuesday thing that I've got going right now. It's going to be a very long week!

Day 5: Recover Yin Yoga

I actualy did Yin Yoga after DBK1 today. It just made more sense to end my triple workout day with Yoga. This was my first real Yoga workout. I did a Biggest Loser Yoga workout before, but that wasn't the same as this. This was more traditional calm music, slow deep breathing and very slow movements for stretching. This was not a weight loss yoga workout. I'm not going to go over all of the moves that were done because they all had Japanese names except for Pigeon, Down Dog and Up Dog. This was HARD! I was a bit disappointed to have the Down Dog Split thing like in PiYo. I didn't do so well with it either. I was pretty much fried by the time I got to this workout. 

The set up was just like Kettlebells. There was a timer that counted down the whole workout and there was a bar that filled as the move progressed. Once the bar was all the way across the screen, we were done with that move. However, this was a bit different because the person doing the routine wasn't speaking. She flowed through the movements and then she did a voice over on it. I found that to be a bit weird. It sort of kept me disconnected from the workout. It makes sense why they would do it, but it was just weird. I had a hard time following the moves with just her voice cues and I had to keep looking at the screen which made it a bit awkward in some of the moves.

I wasn't sure how this was going to go, but I really liked it. I found that I was a lot more flexible than I thought I was. I also feel really really stretched out right now. It felt pretty good! It wasn't a big calorie burn according to the BodyMedia, but that's okay. I wasn't going for calorie burn with this. I just wanted to feel like I had been stretched out, and this definitely did that. 

BodyMedia Screen Shot

There's not much to say about the screen shot other than, I don't think I did 100 steps. Most of this was on my butt. I did find it funny that she actually used the word butt several times. You don't hear people in workout videos use that term very much. 

Day 6: DBK1

I did Day 6 on Day 5 since it was going to be a rough week trying to work in all of the workouts. This sounded like a good plan at the time, but sitting here now a few hours later, I'm not so sure! I'm getting ahead of myself though. First I should talk bout the workout. 

The first time I did DBK1, I started out with the smallest bell that I had and I worked my way up. This time, I started off with the 15 pound bell. It made a HUGE difference. The fact that I had already done another workout today could have also made a difference, but I'm pretty sure the weight had a lot to do with it. This time around, this workout felt like a workout. The first time, it seemed pretty slow paced, but not this time! I was huffing and puffing for the bulk of the workout. I used those 1 minute rest periods to catch my breath! By the fourth set, that weight was getting heavy! I was grunting and groaning pretty good. The last four reps of the row were HARD! I didn't quite make it to failure on anything, but I came pretty close! 

My body took a beating today. I'm seriously wondering if I'm going to be able to walk tomorrow. My glutes are all tingly. I really felt it in my hamstrings today too. I think that I had better form today. I really worked on the hip extension thing that they talk about. I'm really excited to move on to DBK3 and DBK4! I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to wait until week 5 for that, but I'm not sure when to make the jump up. 

BodyMedia Screen Shot

I got two minutes of vigorous activity! Yahoo! I thought with all of that huffing and puffing that I would have had more than 13 minutes of total activity, but I'll take it! Three workouts in one day! OMG!

PiYo Get Lean Eating Plan Day 5

PiYo Get Lean Eating Plan Day 5

Well, today was Day 5 of my PiYo eating plan. My mixed veggies for the primary vegetables is probably a bit of a stretch. Hubby made dinner and it wasn't what we had talked about. I was going to make stuffed peppers with the left over meat/rice mix from last night. However, he made soup instead to help me out so I didn't have to deal with it when I got home because I needed to get some editing done. I appreciate his efforts, but it didn't exactly fit into my plan for the day. I have days where I'm strong enough to stand up and say that it's not going to work for me, and I have days where I let the stresses of life impact my decision. He was right; I did have editing that needed to be done. I also didn't want to waste the food he had prepared. I'm really nervous about hopping on the scale tomorrow too. I've tried really hard to not eat anything salty this week. I still put a little salt on my eggs in the morning and there's some salt in my sliced turkey, but I've tried to avoid most salt. I retain water like there's no tomorrow if I eat salt. I'm overly at 39 pounds lost and I need to hit 40 pounds this weekend or I might go postal. I know it's not about the scale, blah blah blah......I want to hit 40 pounds! 

Okay, so the day started out with Shakeology again. I mixed it with Almond milk today. I used the shaker cup method. The potatoes in my secondary vegetables were part of the soup. He also added french fries to the soup. It's super yummy, but probably not the type of potatoes Chalene had in mind. The nuts in my fats section all came from graze.com snack box. Those things are portion controlled snacks, but by my count of the number of nuts that were in there, I had all of my fats in that one snack. I'm not so sure how I feel about that. I still had my homemade salad dressing, but I'm at the end of the bottle, so there wasn't much oil left. 

My midmorning snack was an apple once again. I do need to branch out and work on getting other fruits into my life. Why mess with a good thing though. For lunch, I had my trusty salad with cucumbers, grapes and chicken breast. My afternoon snack was two helpings of sliced turkey and my green slime. That was a very filling snack. I almost couldn't finish it, but I needed to get the extra serving of protein and I needed to finish the package of turkey. Dinner was my husband's creation. It included canned soup, chicken meatballs and french fries. It was yummy, but it wasn't exactly on the healthy eating plan for the day. I finished off my blueberry frozen yogurt drops. Oh I love them! I bought 8 pounds of blueberries at Safeway too. I'll be working on freezing them and vacuum sealing them in my Foodsaver. I've never used it! We're going to this weekend though! 

We'll see how the weekend goes! It will start out with a nice big glass of Shakeology, so at least I'll have one healthy thing this weekend. 

PiYo Get Lean Eating Plan Day 4

PiYo Get Lean Eating Plan Day 4

Today was Day 4 of my PiYo Get Lean Eating Plan. I'm still doing Les Mills Combat for exercise, but I wanted to try out the PiYo eating plan before I started PiYo. I had a few rough days with it, but I feel pretty good about it today. I still take issue with the fact that I shouldn't be eating any of my Graze.com snacks. I love them and I'm not giving them up! I'm so addicted to them, I couldn't even give them up for the week of this plan. Oopsy.

My morning went quite the same as usual. I had my Shakeology while I was packing my bag. I had my hard boiled eggs when I got to work. At 8:00 AM, I had my graze.com snack. Today it was Triple Berry Smoothie. It's made up of dried bananas, strawberries and I think cranberries. I can't remember. It's yummy. The dried bananas are growing on me. At 9:30, I had my apple. I know that I need to work on pairing up my carbs with my proteins, but I'm still working out the kinks in this whole plan. By the time I get it figured out, I'll probably stop doing the plan. LOL. 

Okay so lunch was the salad with the cucumber, chicken, grapes and homemade olive oil and lemon juice dressing. My 2:00 PM snack was the Green Slime and the turkey breast. Dinner was awesome! I made taco meat first. Then I mixed in the left over rice that hubby made. He might not be happy that I took the rest of his rice, but he can have my left over dinner. Okay, so I put the taco meat and rice into a red bell pepper. I'm too lazy to do the work of cutting out the guts while it's whole, so I cut the pepper in half and lay it on it's side to bake it. I put it in a meat loaf pan since I only did the one pepper. I put some chicken broth in the bottom of the pan and covered it with aluminum foil. I baked it at 350 for 30 minutes and had yummy taco stuffed peppers. If I do this again, which I'm sure I will, I'll add some beans into the mix. I didn't have any that I could find.

Dinner was pretty spicy since hubby made the rice and he likes spicy. He cuts it back for me, but the rice was all for him. I devoured two Dixie cups full of my blueberry frozen yogurt drops. Those things are to die for! I'm starting to wonder if the blueberries had sugar in them. They were whole frozen blueberries and didn't look like they had any syrup on them, but these things are just that good that they have to have added sugar! I didn't add any though.I can't even taste the yogurt at all! I'm so making these again. Tomorrow, Safeway has blueberries on sale 2 pounds for $5.00. WOOT WOOT! 

After dessert, I sat down to fill out my food list for the day. I discovered that I still had one secondary vegetable or grain and two fats. Last night, I wasn't smart enough to figure this out before I ate my peanut butter, but tonight I was! I made myself a peanut butter sandwich. I only used 1 slice of bread and folded it in half. I felt like I was cheating because peanut butter is just so awesome and it was after dessert. Usually, dessert is my cut off. I don't eat after dessert. I'll have to get back into that habit at some point. 

Okay, so this eating plan is having me eat more food than I normally would eat and it's making me feel guilty about some of my healthy options. I have some really big mixed feelings on that. Maybe I'll have some amazing weight loss this week and I'll be inspired to continue with this plan. We'll see! 

PiYo Get Lean Eating Plan Day 3

PiYo Get Lean Eating Plan Day 3

I stuck with my Shakeology for "breakfast" mixed with some coconut milk. I drank it while I was packing my food for the day. I still had my eggs when I got to work. Today, I had another graze.com snack at 8:00AM. This one was pretty yummy. It had dried raisins and cherries. It also had little fudge pieces that didn't fit into any of the categories about and I'm okay with that. The almonds in my Healthy Fat section came from my graze.com snack. 

At 9:30, I had an apple again. I really love my apples! For lunch, I had a salad again. That was the spring mix, cucumber, grapes, 3 ounces of chicken and the EVOO. For my afternoon break, I had the green slime, one slice of the bread and three slices of the turkey breast. 

Dinner was an issue! I got home and realized that I had no vegetables left from the left overs from the weekend and I wasn't in the mood to cook. I've got some lean ground beef that I can make some stuffed peppers with, but I just didn't want to deal with it. I knew that I needed to eat at least one of the chicken breasts because I had more left over than would be eaten in my salad. I rummaged around in the fridge and found some left over rice. I consulted my nutrition guide and saw that I could eat that rice, but I would only get 1/2 a cup. My other option was to eat a can of green beans. I'm not thrilled with the sodium content and I'm sure I'll gain five pounds over night, but I'll pee a lot for two days and it will all go away. That left me with still needing another secondary vegetable or grain though. I wish I had realized that before I ate my peanut butter. I would have tossed some peanut butter on a slice of bread. Now, I get to eat the bread with nothing on it. It's still good bread, but a peanut butter sandwich would have felt like I was cheating even though I'm not! 

For dessert, I had some frozen blueberry yogurt drops. I'll write about these later, but I will say that they are delicious! This is from a person who doesn't like blueberries and doesn't like yogurt. I filled my little Dixie cup up twice! Woot Woot! I think I figured out how to get yogurt into my life for sure! However, there's really not a ton of yogurt in there. It's way more blueberry than it is yogurt. 

So after three days, I'm feeling like I will be giving up on this eating plan after my week is over. I'm feeling like I'm supposed to say no to healthy things because I've run out of servings on my list. Even if I'm well below my caloric needs for the day according to the math. I am liking the fact that I'm realizing that I probably wasn't eating enough before, but I'm feeling restricted by the categories. I thought he categories were so awesome in the beginning. I wasn't restricted to specific meals that they suggested. I could eat anything I wanted as long as it fit into the categories. The honeymoon is over. I want to just go back to eating food that's healthy and not worry about how it fits into a list. 

PiYo Get Lean Eating Plan Day 2

Day 2 of the PiYo Get Lean Eating Plan

If this is your first time here, you should probably read my PiYo Get Lean Eating Plan Day 1. Otherwise, you might be confused. 

I changed things up a smidge today, but it wasn't by much. I added spinach to my salad for lunch. I knew I didn't have many carrots left for dinner. I probably didn't have a full cup of spinach, but I did have a few carrots so they balanced out. I dropped the bread and had extra potatoes for dinner since I knew I needed to use them up. I didn't do a full cup of grapes for the salad, but I had some blueberries with some greek yogurt for dessert after dinner. I brought extra turkey slices to work today. I actually didn't have the full 6 oz of turkey, but the yogurt for dessert made up the difference. I had almonds today instead of pecans. I love my graze snacks! Since I had the blueberry frozen yogurt for dessert, I didn't get the peanut butter from the peanut butter frozen yogurt drops, so I just grabbed 1-1/2 tsps of homemade almond butter to fill up my fats. Part of my graze.com snack didn't fit into any of these categories. It had some breadsticks in it. I'm pretty sure I shouldn't be eating these snacks while doing this program, but I don't care! I'm going under on my calories every day, so I have decided that I get a small discretionary fund of calories and that goes towards my graze.com snacks! With this plan, I will be weeding out the graze.com snacks that have processed foods in them like the breadsticks and the pretzels. It will make me sad, but I will do it! 

I think I did pretty well with Day 2. I'm really not sure if I'll go beyond the week with this plan though. I'm bothered by the fact that I wasn't sure if I would be able to have Frozen Blueberry Yogurt for dessert. The stuff is healthy, so I shouldn't have to feel like I need to give up something else that's equally healthy in order to have it. 

PiYo Get Lean Eating Plan Day 1

Day 1 of the PiYo Get Lean Eating Plan

I've been doing Les Mills Combat for 50 days now, but I never tried the eating plan. I'm a fairly picky eater and I have a hard time following "diets." I just don't like a lot of things. I'm not adventurous and don't want to spend money on food that I'm not going to like. I skimmed the Les Mills Combat eating plan, but wasn't impressed. It had a seven day kick start plan where you picked meals from their list and you ate only those meals for a week. After that, it gave more info on what to do, but I don't even remember it because it just didn't seem like something I would be able to stick with. I decided to just do the exercise program and try to eat well. 

When I bought PiYo, I bought it for the exercise program, but I had to read through the nutrition plan. If I'm going to get something and blog about it, I feel obligated to read it. I really liked the nutrition plan. One of the major deciding factors with me on whether I will follow someone's nutrition plan or not is if it has a sliding scale for calories. I read Dolvett Quince's book The 3-1-2-1 Diet which sounded like a great concept. Eat and Cheat your Way to Weight Loss. However, women of all shapes and sizes get a whopping 1200 calories and on cheat days we get 1500. I'm 278 pounds. At the time I read his book, I think I was still around 310. It takes more calories to move me around than it does someone who is 160 pounds. I've tried to eat 1200 calories before and I get light headed and miserable. it's not pretty. The PiYo eating plan allows more calories to people who weight more. If you plan to stay on this eating plan long tern, you should be sure to redo your math every month or so to make sure you haven't lost so much weight that you're calories should drop too. This plan had one point in it's favor right away.

The next thing I look for in an eating plan is flexibility. Like I said, I'm pretty picky. I don't want an eating plan that is loaded with a bunch of different recipes that I need to cook for the next two months. I want to know what food I can eat. I will then pick from the foods I can eat and I'll find ways to make those foods edible for me. This thing has two points in it's favor.

As long as you're sticking with the number of servings per group, you really don't need to worry about counting calories or macros on this. I've got a BodyMedia device which has a food tracker, but I'll be honest...I hate using it. I find it time consuming and annoying. I don't want to take time to plug in numbers. If the food I want isn't in the database, I have to go search around Google or find a product label and plus all the stuff in. It's rather annoying. I did track religiously for a week once and then I tried tracking my food when I started Les Mills Combat, but tracking my calories just makes m fixate on food and I'm more hungry. With this, I can just come up with a plan on the weekend of what I'm going to eat for all of my meals for the week. If I stick with the plan and don't add in any extras, I'll be within my calorie count for the plan. 

Okay, so according to the math........I'm supposed to eat 2858 calories each day. However, the chart of how many servings you get for your calorie bracket has 1800 or More as the highest bracket. This puts me in the calorie range that I had been aiming for. Less than 1800 calories tends to make me a little cranky. 

I made a little Excel Spreadsheet so I can just plug in the names and quantities of the food I ate. If I this plan isn't working for me, I can go back and calculate the calories to see if it's a caloric issue for me. For now, I'm going to just keep this spread sheet. There is one error for today though. I only had 1 tbsp of olive oil. 

I will admit that there is a downside to this plan for me and my picky ways. While there are foods from each list that I will eat, there aren't that many from the Primary Vegetable section. I could easily get bored with the list. I will have to broaden my horizons at some point and find a way to eat more of this stuff. I'm not sure how long I will stay on this plan. I mainly did it just to change things up a little bit. There's no talk in here about cheat meals or cheat days. I'm sure I'll be cheating on the weekend, but I'll still be in my caloric bracket since according to the math, I get an extra 1,000 calories to eat.:)