Monday, December 29, 2014

Part II- Physical Life

Cardio. You heard me. Yuck, yuck and yuck. The most hated form of working out in my book. I think I'd rather swim laps for an hour than even 15 minutes of cardio.

Now, before going into this too deeply, I do have to say that this 2nd installment in this series is not for those who are unable to exert themsleves for medical reasons. Please modify or seek a different way of working out.  I have merely compiled for my readers what has worked for me as far as results, time and ability.

After doing research and trying various things over the years, I have found my nugget of gold called Tabata. It is super quick and super effective! My 2nd find is Trim, Healthy Mama on how to properly "manipulate" food for optimum health and weight loss. I have been athletic most my life in one way or another, and never been severly overweight. I've had two babies in less than 2 years, and both times gained about 30 pounds. I lost all of gain after Cara was born when I got pregnant with Clayton. Currently I am 3 months almost 4 months post partum and have about 5 pounds to lose to pre prego weight! I would still like to lose 10 after I get my first goal but it isn't a huge problem for me if I don't. 

Quite literally, my biggest issue is time. I just can't find time. I hate working out and the idea of dedicating 30 minutes to a workout isn't possible AT ALL for me. I'm just too busy! Second issue, is consistency. I do great for a month and then lose motivation and stop. My husband teases me about it. I've been known to vocalize that I will quite sugar forEVER and workout 5x a week, and completely fail in 3 days! My most recent streak is a month and a half straight of consistent eating and working out. Got results that I LOVED and still stopped. But enough. Let's get into what I have found success in (as long as I continue!)

Have 4 minutes?

Yup. Have 8?

What if I told you that even your longest workout (if you so choose) would be 12 minutes!!!!

The whole concept is to boost your metabolism suddenly for a short period of time in such an intensity that it keeps your body burning calories for 24 hours! Naturally! It is 20 second bursts followed by 10 second rest and right back into the 20 second burst and etc...until the four minutes are done. Now this isn't half hearted juming jacks, its jumping jacks as fast and hard as you can go for 20 seconds without losing good form!

You can make your own work out routine on doable exercises for your 20 second rounds, or check out the many many routines already planned out on pinterest or the web. I have liked mixing my routines up for the sake of boredom. I cannot do the same routine for more than a few weeks. It drains my motivation like crazy.

I also suggest downloading one of the free apps from the Playstore or Apple, which ever your preference. I use a HIIT timer app (High Intensity Interval Training) which is basically the same thing. You can type in your exercises and set your timer for your customized times. It is great so you can focus on just working it hard! You should get quite out of breath, heart pounding, maybe a good sweat even for those 4 minutes. The more you adapt to your Tabata workouts the more minutes you can add, like adding another 4  or another 8! But being a mommy and wife sometimes 4 minutes is all you got! And those 4 minutes are sacrifice enough!

My one year old loves watching me, she tries to do jumping jacks with me or climbs on me while holding a plank (oh.my.goodness.) but as she gets older she can join in! I do my push ups with my baby under me! He giggles as mommy goes up and down and makes faces ha!

For the new year I am wanting to try out a whole bunch of premade tabata routines I found on a site called tabatagirl.com. It is for a 30 day challenge, but I doubt I will be doing one each day like that. I have to look up several of the exercises she uses before hand and enter it in my app, but I'm looking forward to the variety!

My "go-to" routine is like this:

Jumping Jacks
Rest
Push Ups (I have really weak wrists, and girl push ups are what I do unless I feel like ironman)
Rest
Squats (I weighted mine if my toddler was around! She thought it was fun!)
Rest
High Knees
Rest
Crunches
Rest
Plank
Rest
Tricep Dips
Rest
Jumping Jacks
Done!

I workout Mon,Tues, Thurs, Fri. Give myself the weekend and Wed off. If something comes up I can swap a day and catch up on one of my off days. I always try and get my workout done within the first few hours of being awake. Your metabolism slows at night the most so if I boost it in the morning, all my daily activities just increase the burning of the calories. Oh, I should also mention that each morning I  drink two glasses (16oz?) of water. It is a simple thing that also jump starts your metabolism. Drinking water throughout the day, obviously, as well. But I drink the water first. Sometimes the water and 4 mintute workout is all I need to wake and no coffee is needed! Ha!

I did Tabata while pregnant, but didn't jump or do planks after a certain point. Once my bump started to come in, I avoid planks because it can actually cause Diastasis Recti (ab seperation that is a HUGE effort to get to heal). From the gravity pull with the extra frontal weight. I still wanted to workout my abs, however, and so I did vertical ab workouts using a pull up bar. My abs are hard under that padding, I can feel them!

As this post is getting so long, I will conclude with a quick blurp about my diet. I partially follow Trim, Healthy Mama, as far as combining good fats and protein and alternating it with combining good carb and protein. I can't afford some of the good sweeteners with which I could make yummy trimming desserts, and so I try and not eat sugary desserts....often. This holiday season has been a bad one for me, just being honest, and hubby brings home treats for me on occasion. But other than that I try to keep it to the weekends and even on the weekends try and keep it low. Like a Starbucks coffee. And a cookie. Ok, two cookies! I lost weight doing what I do, and toned and slimmed. Worth a shot if you have the 4 minutes!

Starting this new year, I am going to throw myself ruthlessly at keeping at it better than ever before!

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