Reminding Myself of Myself

I have been taking it at a really good pregnancy level for my workouts - low key, but I've been feeling pretty good about them. Lots of Yoga lately, my favorite has been Prenatal Flow. It's SUCH a good workout, I'm usually a tiny bit sore the next day, but leave the class feeling worked and energized. :) Then, on Tuesday I decided to step it up a notch and rocked my own modified 'bodyrock.tv' workout:

Gymboss set for 10 seconds rest: 1 minute work x 24

1) side to side squats

2) side walks and kicks

3) side lunges, alt.

4) down dog to Plank flow

5) girl pushups

6) lunge pulses, Right Leg

7) lunge pulses, Left Leg

8) bicep curls

9) bent over Rows, Right Arm

10) bent over Rows, Left Arm

11) low squats

12) tricep dips

Unlike typical bodyrock workouts, I didn't push full out, rested when I needed to, and didn't count reps, so no scores!

End result, though, is that I'm going on 2 days of being SORE!!! My legs have been on fire! This would rock your world, pregnant or not!

Goal now is to find moderation - somewhere between Tuesday's workout and daily yoga!

P.S. We had our 20 week ultrasound yesterday and ITS A BOY!!! Dinosaur (my hubby) is understandably excited!

~Katie

Working past the winter 'blahs'

Now that Winter has finally hit northern California (hooray!) I thought this would be a good time to talk about making a change in your fitness for the new year and how to keep it going past the first 2 months!

So - first things first- Come up with realistic answers to these questions:

1) What am I hoping to achieve?

2) what are my goals for this week? this month? this year?

3) What am I willing to change?

4) HOW am I willing to change?

5) what is going to keep me motivated?

6) WHY and WHAT am I trying to change?

Answering these questions (and maybe you have more, that I didn't mention?) allows you to get an idea of what your serious goals are (what recurs?) and start your journey!

1) What you're hoping to achieve - I could get on my high horse here and tell you it should be something like "a strong and healthy heart" or "a better sense of health" or "be fit enough to have energy for the day", but we all know No.1 on most of our goals is to look better and feel better about how we look. Eventually, this may segue to the others, but for now... for a start - it'll do.

2) what are your goals for this week, month, year - this will give you practice making goals (hopefully realistic) that will help guide your progress. It also will help you connect to the rest of the questions in a realistic, achievable way.

3) What are you willing to change - This is important! What you are willing to change will determine (in a big way) what your progress will be and how you will progress. Are you willing to change your eating habits? Sleeping habits? Time use habits (c'mon people, I'm as addicted to facebook as you are!) Only you know the REALISTIC answer to this question. For example, I keep telling myself I'm going to stop eating sugar and that I won't eat artificial sweeteners (which I don't anyway - gross!), but I know that realistically, I'm not going to be able to cut sugar out of my diet completely. I'm not fully willing to change that part of my diet!

4) HOW are you willing to change - are you willing to change how you think about yourself? how you think/feel about exercise? about food? How can you make changes that will help your journey - only you can answer this!

5) what is going to keep you motivated - do you need someone else to keep you accountable? can you do it yourself? Maybe you need a picture to remind you of goals (or where you were that you don't want to go back to). Motivation - a serious, long term motivation - is what will keep you going when you most want to stop.

6) WHY and WHAT are you trying to change - Hah! this sounds familiar (see question 1). "I want to have slimmer thighs because I want to feel sexy in my jeans." sound familiar? :-D But seriously, think about why you want to change what you want to change. It will bring everything around.

Next up - workout options to keep you going in the new year!

- Katie

What I love about being Pregnant

This post isn't strictly fitness, but it's related enough to post here! :)

Things I've found I love about being pregnant:

1) I have a newly found and totally awesome love for my body.
2) I'm excited to put on weight (though, I've always had a little trouble putting on weight, I was never particularly excited when I did - now I am!)
3) I feel WAY more connected with my body in some ways because every feeling seems exaggerated.
4) I appreciate food more. In a very real sense I feel like food is now an amazing fuel, not just something that I eat and gorge on because I love the flavors. I'm super conscious now of what i'm putting in my body and how it will affect the baby!
5) I appreciate yoga so much more. I've always loved yoga, but since I've gotten pregnant, it's pretty much all I want to do! LOVE the way yoga-especially prenatal - makes me feel!

I'm sure there will be more as things get really awesome around here (Can't wait to feel the baby getting it's exercise on), but for now, this kind of does it!

My new AMAZING treat

I recently realized that I was probably not getting enough protein (and some other nutrients) for baby building, so I came up with this super yummy smoothie in which I steal some of the hubby's chocolate protein powder (whey source). It tastes like a banana split to me!

1 cup frozen mixed berries
1/2 frozen banana
1/3 cup non-fat plain yogurt
1 scoop (came in the package) of chocolate Whey protein powder
1/4 cup fruit juice (I've been using gran-grape, but any would work)
3/4 cup vanilla almond milk (I mix TJ's unsweetened and sweetened)

Blend and enjoy! it makes about 2 8 oz smoothies. :)

Welcome to the 2nd Trimester!

Wow! I've made it to 14 weeks! :)

The amazing thing is that about 2 days ago I started to have energy again. I still poop-out around 8 or 9 o'clock, but my days are much more palatable, because i want to do something OTHER than lay on the couch all day!

Here is how my fatigue progressed (and the effect it had on my 'workouts')

At 4 weeks, when I found out I was expecting, I was excited and still had some energy going for me. At that point, I tired out more easily than before, but I could still happily and easily go on a 2 mile brisk walk, no problem.

At 6 weeks, all sorts of 'ugh' started happening. I was hit like a brick with nausea and fatigue and then I started experiencing some scary spotting. The effect of all of this was that the couch was my new best friend. For the next 2 weeks, I was a couch surfer. My exercise consisted of walking around the house and walking at rehearsals (aka, work).

Around 8 weeks I started noticing that I would get up, have 20 minutes of energy, and then I was done for the day. The nausea was still present, as was some occasional spotting, so I continued to take it EASY.

11 weeks and sun started to shine - my appetite came back some. Still some nausea and still only 20 minutes of energy a day, but I could face food again. Hooray! This happened to coincide with Thanksgiving, and nothing sounded better to me than turkey with cranberry relish and mashed potatoes with gravy. At this point I also saw a doctor (again, make this appt number 3, 'emergency' appointment, no. 2). This time I was put on antibiotics that made me dizzy, so... The couch surfer was back. Since said appointment with said antibiotics, no spotting (touch wood).

13 weeks, 5 days - I suddenly had energy again. It is mind blowing! I've been SO busy that the pregnancy fatigue has been KILLER. It is at this point (aka, last tuesday) that I welcomed yoga back into my routine. The most amazing part is that on that day I had a dentist appointment, did prenatal yoga, taught as a guest lecturer in a High school Choir Class, then went to work for an almost normal full length day and didn't start to slide on energy until 6:30. Not bad!

13 weeks, 6 days - Work then a gig. I work Tues/Thurs nights until 10 (and I am ready to fall asleep around 9), so I was exhausted from my long day the day before, but I survived work, a gig, some grocery shopping, and cooking dinner before I passed out at 8:30.

14 weeks (today!!!) - I woke up after having fallen asleep at 8:30 last night, got my breakfast, made the hubby coffee (then cleaned the coffeepot), and gave the house a cleaning once over before doing some yoga and couchtime. all before heading to work.

Hooray!

Katie

A new twist

So, Its been a while (again!), but this time for a very very good reason! Hubby and I are expecting! It's been a little bit of a rough ride so far, so my workouts have gone by the wayside for the moment, but things are getting better and I'm working my way back to working out. The biggest thing with pregnancy is changing your workout to adjust to body changes. I'm only 12 weeks and I already have a belly going, but have only gained 1lb, so the my body shape and balance has changed. Our little munchkin is about 2-3 inches now and boy does he wear me out! The Fatigue (it's extreme, you never realize how much until you're there) has also slowed my interested in working out. Lately, my workout has mostly been walking, lots of walking!

I've also felt sore like I've been working out regularly, particularly my abs - go go muscle stretching!

here is me in July/August - before

here I am at 11 weeks and 5 days! Teeny-tiny bump replacing my flat tummy!

So, now my family knows, and I've made my blogging announcement this blog will (hopefully) share my workout adventures as a cute, roly-poly pregnant woman!

Keeping up with the bloggers...

I am not, but here goes another little post. I have recently come to the realization that blogging can be crazy difficult to do sometimes! I've been exploring lower impact, 'easier' but effective ways to get a workout in that's not as hardcore. Considering that I work and teach (I'm a private music teacher) and often get home exhausted, my only real chance to get my workout in is early in the morning, so gentler workouts that take more time are basically out of the question!

What I've found in doing my 'light cardio' workouts is that I miss my weight training, so its time to fit that back in!

Have you ever gone and tried something new exercise-wise? Did you miss your old routine? Did changing things up motivate you more, or make you less likely to do your workouts?