Mission: Ambition

Is there anything better than the weekend? Yes! The weekend of the first Green Bay Packers game!! Even if it is preseason, if it means my beloved Green Bay Packers are on the TV then I’m a happy girl!

Breakfast

This morning’s breakfast was actually enjoyed at almost noon. I love sleepy Saturday mornings. We went out to the movies last night and ended up staying out and up until after 2am…hence the glorious sleeping until 11

holy humidity

Breakfast was a Trader Joe’s whole wheat waffle, scrambled eggs with Frank’s Red Hot and a small bowl of grapes. The picture is all foggy because of the ridiculous humidity outside. I didn’t realize that all my breakfast pictures had turned out like this until I loaded the pictures a little bit ago. This breakfast was delicious – totally hit the spot!

We went lounged around for a bit and watched TV. I love Netflix Instant, makes it easier to watch so many shows that I hadn’t before. I recently read Lauren Conrad’s book L.A. Candy and it made me want to actually watch The Hills. I never watched it when it was really on. I watched the first season this weekend on Netflix Instant. It’s so bad, but so addictive at the same time.

We did some grocery shopping this afternoon, then made some lunch.

Lunch

sammich and apple

I love apple  sandwiches. One of my favorites for sure. Usually, I pair apples with brie…but my brie was old and I forgot to buy some. So today’s sandwich, I used colby jack cheese with some ranch dressing and spinach.

yum!

Workout

Turbo Fire: Fire 60 + Abs 10
Time: 70 minutes
Calories Burned: 590

I got my workout in before dinner. I tried a new workout this time, from the Advanced discs of Turbo Fire. Fire 60 was so much fun! And it had one of my favorite Turbo Kick sections…seriously love the song for it. Check it out:

I also did the Abs 10 workout – loved the ab moves and while it was only 10 minutes it definitely worked my abs!

Dinner

Clearly, I eat a lot of Mexican food. It shows up on the blog a lot – I actually worry that it will get boring seeing this all the time, lol.

However, tonight I HAD to have some form of tacos. Because tonight was the first preseason football game for my Green Bay Packers. You see, I grew up watching Packer football. It was something my family always did together…and we had tacos on football days more often than not.

taco salad

Football was something that my family bonded over and that bond is still strong. Anytime a game starts, I know that I’ll be texting with my family. It always makes me smile. This year, we are actually going to Green Bay in October for the Packers vs. Vikings game. This is a big game, even if Brett Favre doesn’t come back (but I hope he does just so I get a chance to boo him when he runs out on that field…I may be a little bitter). I cannot wait for this trip.

Preseason football is, of course, not as exciting as regular season. But, it’s still better than the offseason! Only a few more weeks until regular season. I have some new Packers clothes (including an Aaron Rodgers jersey!) thanks to my awesome mom, so I am ready for some football!

So, as you can see, it’s almost a necessity for me to make some sort of Mexican food for football days I have a pretty strong emotional connection to football and the traditions my family established around it.

Do you like sports? Any sport/team in particular?

Wow, it’s almost 11 already and I’m just getting on here! I’ve been watching So You Think You Can Dance all night – SO happy with the results! It went exactly as I had hoped!

Lunch today was the salad bar that we do at my office twice a month – I forgot to bring my camera with me though But it was a delicious salad with fresh veggies from coworkers’ gardens. Yummy!

Dinner

We’re in that weird period before needing to go grocery shopping where we have stuff but it’s going to result in weird combinations. We also had some produce on it’s last legs that needed used up. Grocery shopping this weekend for sure…perhaps tomorrow since I get off work at noon (woohoo!).

Tonight’s dinner featured a salad that I’d seen in the blogosphere: Watermelon Feta Salad

so summery

The salad featured cubed watermelon mixed with fresh mint and feta. I didn’t have any red onion on hand, so I omitted it but I would love to try this with it – I think it would really add a good flavor to this. The salad was okay, but not amazing. An enjoyable mix of some yummy foods, but it felt like something was missing (probably that onion! haha).

lovin the summer corn

We had some corn in the fridge that needed used ASAP so we had corn on the cob. This was a wonderfully light and refreshing dinner. I wanted something light because there was quite a bit of unnecessary snacking at work today I’ve gotten into some bad snacking habits at work. Hopefully, grocery shopping will help so I make sure to have healthy snack options on hand.

This problem is frustrating to me, because it makes me feel like I’m moving backward. I absolutely hate feeling like I’m losing progress once I’ve made it. Today I was buying snacks for my office (chips and cookies unfortunately) and was so close to buying a Dr. Pepper. Soda is the ONE thing that I have NOT compromised on. When I had that in my hand, I stopped and had a “what the hell are you doing?” moment. I put it back. I’m SO glad that I did not buy that.

But, I still did buy the cookies and chips I’m sliding backward when I need to buy continuing forward. I started this blog for accountability because I noticed my nutrition slipping up…well part of the reason I hadn’t been blogging is because I was eating so horribly it didn’t seem like I should. So there’s my confession…and now you will hopefully be back to seeing healthy, nutritionally-sound meals! I may try to also keep track of my snacks better on here, since that’s been the biggest problem.

Workout

Turbo Kick: Round 40
Time: 60 minutes
Calories: 600 calories burned

Class tonight was pretty good I missed it since I hadn’t gone on Tuesday! I caught up with the stuff I missed pretty quick. I don’t like round 40 as much as I liked 39 (although, I think 39 was my favorite in a really long time!) but it’s okay. The Turbo actually seems slower…I’m not sure if that’s the music or choreography or me getting used to things at Turbo Fire level. But, in the end, still got a great workout with some awesome people

Now I’ve got to get to sleep and hopefully I can defeat the snack monster at work tomorrow.

What are your favorite healthy snack options? Do you keep snacks in your office/workplace?

Wow, that was a long blogging break. Completely unintentional! My schedule was a bit crazy there and blogging fell to the wayside. Missed it though! So let’s get back to it  

Breakfast

favorite breakfast

I have been obsessed with this breakfast lately. It kind of reminds me of a fast-food breakfast sandwich, but better! 

I use an Everything Bagel Thin (LOVE these!) and cook a 1/4 cup of egg whites in the microwave (in a bowl so they are about the right size for the bagel thin) and top it wil some colby jack cheese and, the best part, Frank’s Red Hot. 

You know those commercials for Frank’s that say “I put that sh*t on everything!” Yeah, that’s me. Food is just better when spicy  

glorious hot sauce

I love that my bowls are square so I have a square egg “patty” on a round bagel thin. It’s the little things in life that make you smile!  

Hopefully I’ll actually get my butt to the gym after work today…I haven’t worked out in quite awhile. My sister-in-law got married this past weekend and I haven’t gotten myself back on a regular schedule since our trip for that. Seriously, we havent’ really unpacked yet either. Life was kind of scattered, but we’re getting back on a schedule of some sort and getting organized again. I don’t think there’s anything I hate more than feeling disorganized! 

Here’s a pic of us at the wedding this weekend: 

me and the husband at the reception

Do you like our coordinated look? We were both in the wedding so we were all done up in the wedding color – purple! I loved it because it’s on of my favorite colors to wear (I swear half my wardrobe is purple). We had a great time, and my bridesmaid dress was not only comfortable but I really will wear it again! I love it  

Have you been in many weddings? Do you enjoy them? 

Today is my husband’s birthday! Happy birthday William!

The rest of the day was pretty inconsequential…I was also not on a normal eating pattern at all because of a work event. I was quite tired all day because we had such epic thunderstorms last night that they actually kept me awake! It was crazy!

Let’s talk about the husband’s birthday dinner

We went to Schmidt’s Sausage Haus in German Village. Will’s been wanting to go there for awhile, so we figured this would be the perfect opportunity. Schmidt’s is a German restaurant famous for their spicy sausage, the Bahama Mama. They’ve been on the Food Network as well as the Travel Channel’s Man vs. Food!

Schmidt’s is always busy. It doesn’t matter what day of the week it is, there will be a wait. We had about a 45 minute wait. So, of course, we took pictures while waiting.

the birthday boy!

I tried to avoid it, but Will got me on the other side of the camera

together <3

While waiting we were enticed by their case of desserts…seriously, check out those amazingly giant cream puffs!

holy cream puffs!

We were seated and decided that you can’t go to a German restaurant and not get pretzel bites for an appetizer.

I love pretzels

The husband enjoyed a birthday beer. I actually do not like beer, so I did not partake.

birthday beer

We were watched over during our meal by a little gnome in the stained glass of our booth. It actually creeped me out a little…so I took a picture (duh!).

creepy gnome is creepy

I was happy to see that, despite being a sausage haus, Schmidt’s does have vegetarian options and they mark on their menu that these options are available and to ask your server This made me smile.

I went with the Alpine Spaetzle, described as German spaetzle noodles with onions, peppers and mushrooms, topped with creamy garlic-basil sauce. I got mashed potatoes and applesauce on the side.

so much brown

I generally try to avoid meals that are this brown…but I’m not sure there was much of an option at a German restaurant, LOL!

Will got the famous Bahama Mama sausage platter with sauerkraut and applesauce.

Bahama Mama

The food was very good. Quite rich, of course. I ate what looked like a very small portion of mine (but it was a lot!) and took the rest home.

I loved the atmosphere of the restaurant – there was a two-man band dressed in lederhosen playing awesome polkas on the accordion. The waitresses were dressed in traditional barmaid dresses and everything was uber-German. As someone with a pretty much completely German heritage, it was kind of fun!

For birthdays, Schmidt’s has a special cutout that you take your picture with!

smile!

And we HAD to order one of those awesome cream puffs! (Bonus – it was free because it was Will’s birthday).

birthday cream puff

They put a candle in it and we sang Happy Birthday (which embarrassed Will and made me smile, haha).

blow out the candle!

Holy crap, that cream puff was AMAZING!!! We demolished it.

Now it’s thunderstorming like crazy. Hopefully I can sleep through them this time! Goodnight!

Today is the official release of the Operation Beautiful book! Congratulations to Caitlin on this awesome accomplishment. Watch The Today Show tomorrow morning to see her talking about the book!

In honor of this monumental event, Caitlin has encouraged bloggers to participate in “change the way you see, not the way you look” week by posting about a self-image issue. This is my contribution to this week-long celebration of positive self-image!

In June 2009, I weighed 220 pounds. I was officially obese. I hated the way I looked. But there was something that just clicked on June 11 that got me started on a healthier path.

To be honest, I started my healthy lifestyle journey for the wrong reasons…I made it about how I looked. My disliking the way I looked was permeating other aspects of my life and negatively impacting my outlook. I was overall unhappy and I could trace much of it back to being overweight.

before picture – 220lbs

 One of my biggest problems was that when I would attempt to lose weight, I would talk to myself extremely negatively. Instead of thinking about how awesome I was for making a better nutritional choice or finishing a workout, I would think to myself that I was still too fat to do things that I used to be able to do. I would think that I wasn’t ever going to reach my goals.

I continued to change my  nutrition habits and increase my time in the gym. I was losing weight, but I wasn’t feeling better yet. I was still down on myself and struggling. But I pushed through. And at some point, I realized that there was more to this journey than just losing weight. It was more than just looking better. I had to change my mindset. I had to be positive about myself and about my new lifestlye.

Once I was able to do this, it was like a switch went off and I was good to go. I would also say that finding my soulmate workout (Turbo Kick…or Jam or Fire!) was a big factor. Especially discovering the amazing woman behind Turbo, Chalene Johnson. I followed her on Facebook and Twitter and soaked in all the positive messages she provided and the great tips. And, of course, I started reading healthy lifestyle blogs which only furthered my desire to lead a healthy lifestyle for ME  not for my looks.

30lbs lost

From August 2009 to January 2010, I not only shed a significant percentage of my excess weight but, more importantly, I gained a more positive outlook. I gained a self-confidence that I had lost over the years. I felt strong and in control of my life. It was exhilarating to feel that way again.

I am a strong believer in setting goals and have set many throughout the past year to guide me through this journey of weight loss. One of the goals I set was to meet my goal weight before our big beach vacation in June 2010.

I did NOT reach that goal. But that’s okay…because I learned something more important. I didn’t need to reach that goal by that particular date to feel good about me. I ALREADY felt great about myself. I loved the way I looked and the way I felt, even if I wasn’t at my goal weight. So, I went to the beach and I wore a bikini. I wore shorts and skirts and I loved every minute of it.

rockin' the bikini

I didn’t feel self-conscience because somewhere along the way…I fell in love with me again. 

Have you struggled with self-acceptance or self-image issues? What helped you to overcome/deal with them?

Hello!! I hope everyone had  a great Monday! I’m still playing a bit of catch-up here…so we’re going to talk about Sunday. Sometime this week I’ll get us up-to-date, I promise.

Breakfast

I woke up before Will on Sunday and snuck downstairs to get breakfast ready while he slept. I love making a nice breakfast on Sunday mornings. We did this often in my house growing up (my dad is a major breakfast enthusiast…it’s his favorite meal of the day).

I made us some pancakes, but used Greek yogurt this time. I’d seen this around the Internet and had been wanting to try it. It made a big difference – so delicious! It not only made the pancakes yummier but it increased their protein content (woohoo!)

the table all setup for breakfast

We enjoyed our pancakes with some real maple syrup and fruit on the side. It was a perfect way to start our Sunday. Will had hazelnut coffee (I don’t drink coffee). I actually made that coffee…which is kind of a big deal because I have absolutely zero reference for coffee (have never liked it) and usually don’t make it because I don’t know if it will be drinkable, lol. He drank it though so it’s all good!

Greek yogurt pancakes

Lunch

Lunch was an an afterthought and was just quick leftovers. We just reheated my Nortstar Cafe flatbread from the night before and split it.

mmmmm, leftovers

The reason lunch was so quick was we were trying to get out the door to do our grocery shopping. First, we went to GameStop and attempted to sell all our PlayStation2  stuff. This was sad for me, we sold some of my favorite games! That’s okay though, we were able to buy the new Super Mario Bros for Wii with some of our earnings…and I love me some Mario Can’t wait to play it!

We headed to Giant Eagle for our grocery shopping and had a pretty successful trip. But we were most excited about finding these….

oh hai there new Larabar

soooooooo yummy

These were, for sure, the highlight of the trip. We split them in the car so we could each try these awesome new flavors. And they were, indeed, quite awesome.

We headed home and I proceeded to spend hours in the kitchen putting things away and prepping fruits and veggies for the week. I try to do as much cleaning and chopping of produce as I can on Sunday so everything ready to go during the week. Makes life just a little easier.

Dinner

I was super excited about dinner. I had picked up a Vegetarian Times special Farmer’s Market magazine and it had a recipe for Zucchini-Tomato Gratin that looked quite scrumptious. I took to the task of preparing it and realized that it was the first time I’ve really cooked in awhile. It was fun!

layering the sauteed zucchini with the tomatoes

adding on the fresh parmesan, basil, garlic and pepper

I used a fresh block of parmesan and grated it myself…this made a huge difference in taste and was worth the money! Although, we got a small block of parmesan for about the price of one of the tubs of the grated stuff.

fresh out of the oven

I can’t even BEGIN to tell you how good this was! Seriously. You should make this for your next meal. Absolutely delicious.

so cheesy

This was the best thing I’ve made for dinner in a long time. It was one of those things that I was sad when it was almost gone from my plate. Speaking of my plate…

this was hard to "plate" in any decent fashion

We had salads as well…just basic with romaine, yellow pepper, carrot, cheese and nonfat Ranch.

colorful salad

all together now

My recommendation is that you make this gratin ASAP while zucchini and tomatoes are still somewhat in season.

Recipe from Vegetarian Times: Zucchini-Tomato Gratin

Do you have a favorite summer produce recipe?

Sorry for the lack of posts…I had a bit of an incident with my camera memory card deciding to delete a bunch of my photos randomly! I do have stuff from yesterday’s date night though…so let’s go with that!

Before our date night, I did get in a workout on Saturday…here’s the details:

Workout

Turbo Fire: HIIT 25
Time: 25 minutes
Calories Burned: 235

I love these HIIT workouts for days when I have a lot to do and want to get a great workout in a short amount of time. This seriously kicked my butt…it was awesome!

Saturday Date Night

This was a welcome addition to our weekend as our past weekends have been super busy lately! The husband is currently working on his candidacy exam for his PhD program, so he hasn’t had a whole lot of free time…but managed a bit of free time to go out to dinner and a movie with me

We headed out to Easton and went to the newly opened Northstar Cafe for dinner. I love the atmosphere there, it’s casual but still nice. It’s the type of place where you order your food at the register and then it’s brought to you at your table. The menu is awesome and we can’t wait to go back and try more. Much of it is fresh and local and there are a lot of veggie and even vegan options, which is rare out here in the heart of meat and potatoes country

I ordered the High Street Veggie Flatbread.

so many veggies!

This flatbread was fully loaded! Here’s the description from their menu:

The husband ordered a burger and fries. He said it was quite delicious. It’s interesting, we’ve settled into not really eating meat at home at all and he just gets his “meat-fix” when we go out. I offer to cook him meat regularly, but he enjoys my vegetarian meals for dinner He also eats meat at lunch during the week I’m sure, since he’s on his own then.

Burger and fries for the husband

We attempted a picture of the two of us…at the time, it looked like it was good. But then, I loaded the pics onto the computer and noticed it’s all blurry Oh well, here you go – a blurry picture of me and my husband!

fro-yo float!

After our delicious dessert, we headed to the movie. Dinner for Schmucks was actually much better than I expected! It was hilarious and just overall pretty fun. I love Paul Rudd <3 I loved him in Clueless and am happy to see him in so many movies now

Workout

The one good thing about today was my awesome workout. Well, really workouts…I just kept going! I started with running with my husband when we got home.

1.5 Mile Run
Time: 18:23 (12:11 pace)
Calories Burned: 191

This run was great! I took fewer walking breaks and pushed myself a little harder. I’m really happy with it

When we got back, I was feeling energized so I kept it up with some Turbo Fire!

Turbo Fire: Fire 30 + Stretch 40
Time: 75 minutes
Calories Burned: 520

I was loving the fiyah tonight! After I pushed myself hard through Fire 30 (and noticed the finale was quite similar the Turbo Kick Round 38 finale I did in class yesterday ) I noticed that my legs were feeling pretty tight. I think all the kicks plus adding in running was doing a number on them. So I did Stretch 40 and it was glorious.

Now let’s talk about the rest of the day….

Nutrition

I ate horribly today. I’m not even going to post anything about what I ate…I didn’t take pictures and I didn’t hold myself accountable. I have been on a bit of downward spiral nutritionally but today was the worst day in awhile. But it’s only strengthened my rediscovered resolve to do better. The following is a blog I wrote on my SparkPeople blog awhile back when I slipped up. I decided to copy it over to here because it’s relevant to how I’m feeling right now.

Forgiveness

I could blog all about why I think that happened and make excuses for myself, but I’m not going to the do that. It’s not productive and it is not going to help me refocus myself. Instead here’s what I’m going to do: forgive myself.

Being too hard on myself about slacking off a bit is not going to change what happened, but I can guarantee that it will hinder my progress going forward. I am going to forgive myself for the poor choices I made, forget about it and move forward with renewed focus.

This time of the year is often tough for people – you may have given yourself more freedom than you normally would during the holidays and are struggling to get your control back. Also, it can be a very busy time in many workplaces leading to work stress that affects the rest of your life. The important thing to remember is to put yourself and your health first.

Make yourself your number one priority. This is my plan. I am going to focus on me and the things that I want to accomplish for my health and my fitness. Focusing on these things will often have a spillover effect into other areas of your life! When I was exercising more and eating right I found that I slept better, worked harder and was generally more productive. I have noticed these things waning. My house is messy, I’m not as focused at work, I haven’t been meal planning/shopping regularly, my goals lists are few and far between and the one that exists is not being addressed. Time to change all of that! But, it has to start with forgiveness. Forgive yourself for your missteps – and then learn from them.

Thanks for reading…this was really a mini-lecture to myself to get myself back on track. I hope that anyone out there who is hitting a bit of a wall in their own 2010 goals and reading this feel just a bit more motivated. We can all do this, we just need to allow ourselves to be imperfect and focus on how to move forward!

How do you recover from poor eating?  Do you have a trigger that makes you slip into bad habits again?

Breakfast

Breakfast was quick and at the desk this morning  

Activ Lifesyle Maple & Brown Sugar Oatmeal with Pecans, enjoyed with a clementine.

Lunch

For lunch I had a salad concoction…

In the bowl:

• romaine
• onion
• salsa
• guacamole
• cut up Morningstar Spicy Black Bean burger

Close up of the best part – guacamole!

Dinner

When I got home from the gym tonight, nothing was sounding good and I just wasn’t that hungry. I think I stared at the fridge for quite awhile before making this salad. Good thing I decided on this, cause it was delicious!  

Spinach salad with grapes, feta, slivered almonds and raspberry vinaigrette.   

With a side of cottage cheese….because I love cottage cheese Not exactly what you think of to pair with such a salad, but it was exactly what I wanted.

Food photography lesson – cottage cheese does NOT photograph well, lol. 

Workout

Turbo Kick: Round 39/38 (we mix them)
Time: 60 minutes
Calories Burned: 525 calories

I love Tuesdays and Thursdays. Knowing that I get to go to Turbo Kick at the end of the day gives me something to look forward to and be excited about!

While planning our running training, I realized that I would have to scale back on the Turbo for awhile. Mainly on Turbo Fire. I’m going to restart Turbo Fire at a later date when I feel that I can fully commit to the program. Running multiple days a week would make doing Turbo everyday a bit difficult!

This made me sad because of my attachment to the Turbo workout. When I first started my weight loss journey back in June 2009 (weighing 218 lbs), I struggled to find cardio that I ENJOYED doing. That is, until a day in July when I tried my first Turbo Jam video. I was hooked. I continued to do Turbo Jam at home and then found out my gym offered Turbo Kick at one of their locations. I started going to that class in August and have been going faithfully ever since. Those ladies are a great group and we have fun!

Turbo gave me something that I believe to be key to making fitness an integral part of your life: a workout that you LOVE. I would be stoked to go to class and learn a new routine every single time. The music pumps me up and push myself harder. It’s so amazing. Eventually, the Turbo Jam DVDs became a little easy for me but luckily Chalene came up with the next step – Turbo Fire! I ordered it the day it was released and started right away in June 2010. It is awesome and definitely challenging, but I’ve found that after a year of Turbo being pretty much my only cardio, I really need to introduce something new into my routine.

I’ve been on a plateau for a long time with my weight loss and I’m hoping that switching up my cardio and focusing on running will help me break it. I will still be doing Turbo Kick on Tuesdays and Thursdays (not giving up my class quite yet!) but will be focusing on running. It’s going to be an adjustment doing less Turbo, and I will definitely miss it but I look forward to doing Turbo Fire in its entirety in a few months!

Do you have a workout that you absolutely love?

I am exhausted right now – I screwed around on the computer for a long time after I sat down with the intention to blog and now it’s definitely bedtime, so let’s make this somewhat quick!

Breakfast

I grabbed breakfast from Tim Horton’s on the way to work this morning. I got an everything bagel with light cream cheese, an apple and some orange juice.

Everything bagels really are the best!

Lunch

I also purchased lunch out (man, I need to get this buying food thing under control and get back to making my own!). Today I went to an old favorite – Chipotle. I adore Chipotle and could eat it everyday. In fact, back in college, I used to eat it WAY to often (which was definitely a factor in my weight gain). Now I enjoy it occasionally and I’ve adjusted my order as well.

In the Chipotle Salad:

• Romaine
• Fajita vegetables (sauteed peppers and onions)
• tomato salsa
• corn salsa
• cheese
• guacamole

All of the above with hot salsa on the side. I like ordering the hot salsa on the side so I can put it on in layers or dip my fork in it as I eat because I love to have lots of spicy in every bite!

Chipotle does very well in being conscientious about where their food products come from as well as the type of food products they sell. However, do not let that lead you to falsely categorize anything from Chipotle as healthy! Their portion sizes are mammoth and the food is higher in calories than you make think. Use the calculator at Chipotle Fan to see the nutritional breakdown of your Chipotle order.

Dinner

We needed to use up our romaine, so it was salads for dinner. We have hardly and dressings left (we tend to not grocery shop as often as we should, lol) so we used salsa instead. We topped the salads with Morningstar Farms Buffalo Wings.

In the bowl:

• Romaine
• Tomato
• Onion
• Carrots
• Cheese
• Amy’s Spicy Chipotle Salsa
• Morningstar Farms Buffalo Wings

Yummy!

Dessert  

After dinner, we were watching Arrested Development (we never watched it when it was first on) and wanted something for dessert. I made us a quick dessert snack platter.

Dessert platter:

• Colby jack cheese
• Red grapes
• Fuji apple
• Nutella

  This was a delicious way to end the night We are loving Arrested Development, but are already on Season 3 and don’t want it to end

Workout  

1.5 Mile Run
Time: 25 minutes (including walking warm-up and cool-down in excess of the 1.5 miles)
Calories Burned: 217

Tonight I began a new adventure – running! I have been relying on Turbo almost exclusively for my cardio and it’s definitely showing by the plateau that I can’t seem to get off of.

It’s interesting – I can do an intense kickboxing workout at full energy for 60 minutes but running 1.5 miles was TOUGH. I had to take walking breaks (which I fully intended to do and will continue to do) a few times. I definitely believe the best way to train is a run/walk combination.

The great thing about running is that my husband will do it with me! I love having a workout we can do together.

This is the first workout in our new training plan (a slightly modified version of Hal Higdon’s Novice 5K plan) and we have a race we’re eyeing for it to culminate with (I’ll update on that when I sign up!).

I’m really excited to get involved in races. I’m a pretty competitive person by nature and I think training for a race will make running fun for me!

Do you run? Have you trained for and competed in a race?