It's been one month since I joined Cathy Zielske's Move More Eat Well Workshop at Big Picture Classes and while there have been several days during January where I may have strayed from the path to a healthy lifestyle, all is good!
I've done really well sticking to my exercise routine. I go to the embassy gym on Monday mornings around 730 and I'm done by 830/845. Tuesdays and Thursdays I work out with Lisa and the girls. Wednesday and Fridays I'm in a traditional yoga class and on Sundays Chris and I take a 90 minute hot yoga class. My energy is up and that is good! While my activity level has increased, I have realized that my back is bothering me a little more and has even prevented me from doing certain exercises. So in addition to my time at the gym I feel as though I need to add more ab work into my routine as well as the exercises a physical therapist gave me a few years ago. I want to be able to do a reverse crunch again and get into a shoulder stand in yoga without pain!!!
"Meatless Mondays" have gone pretty well, too! I've really enjoyed searching the internet and recipe websites for vegetarian meals. So far my favorite has been the "Black Beans and Rice" recipe I found and slightly adapted from Real Simple. I made a recipe card for it which you can download from this post. I realized I don't have any vegetarian cookbooks! I need to get a few of those! What I've really like about "Meatless Mondays" is that I haven't used any processed foods. Everything is so fresh. I love flavoring dishes with fresh herbs and spices rather than relying on the ingredients you would find in bottled, canned or jarred products!
January wasn't without its challenges, however. I attempted a 9-day cleanse using Isagenix products and got thorough six or seven days (you can read more about this cleanse in this post). I've done the cleanse before with no problem, but I honestly believe that this time around it was more difficult because of the shakes I had to drink! Don't get me wrong, they are really, really good, but the issue I had was drinking shakes in the middle of a Baltic winter! It's too damn cold!!! One other issue I was having this time was my appetite on cleanse days. I didn't have some of the Isagenix products the company recommends to curb your appetite and I found that I was snacking a bit too much on those cleanse days. I was reaching for fruit and veggies, but still, I felt like I was cheating. When I did this cleanse last fall, I don't remember exercising as much as I did this time around, so I'm sure that could have lead to my extra snacking as well! At the end of the cleanse I was down 1.5 pounds, which was just fine with me. As I mentioned in that link above, I wasn't doing the cleanse to lose weight, it was to rid the toxins in my body. January was also unexpectedly busy from a social standpoint. There were several embassy receptions, dinners and other parties we had to attend. It is so difficult not to get caught up in the wine and appetizers! So I feel like I did stray a bit more than I intended to this month. BUT after I revisiting a written exercise that my trainer, Lisa, had us do during a weightloss meeting, and including it in my MMEW album (you can see it here), I feel like I am back on track.
So that is my Move More Eat Well update. Below are a few photos of the pages I added into my MMEW album. Have a healthy month!
