Monday Meeting: Healthy Living

Here we are at the start of a new week.  Firstly, lets review last week and then plan for the upcoming week.

Last weeks workouts:

Hot power yoga x 4
Yin yoga x 1
Couch to 5k x 1

Last weeks calorie intake:

Total calories consumed = 14396

What worked well:

• Using Myfitnesspal to track my food intake
• Making and freezing sandwiches in bulk
• Using the special Sport load setting on my washing machine!
• Freezing bite size mars bars

What didn't work so well:

• Having guests staying - too many meals out.
• Buffet meals - I'm not good at exercising control!
• Having a Tank for lunch - it was almost 800 calories!

On to this week!

Planned workouts:

Hot power yoga x 3
Couch to 5k x 2

Planned meals:

Breakfast - toast or cereal
Lunch - sandwiches *make these in bulk today*
Dinner - *draft a meal plan today and go shopping*, restrict eating out to Fri, Sat, Sun

Things to try:

• Keep using Myfitnesspal
• Portion out snacks
• Try to restrict eating out to weekends
• Make a list of quick recipes

 

Barre Class

Being keen to get value out of my studio membership I went to a Barre class yesterday.  I've been to this class once before during my trial membership and I found it enjoyable and challenging and yesterdays class was no different.

Image from Abundance

The instructor was fun, energetic and helpful and the class totally kicked my ass!

In case you don't know what a Barre class is, its a workout based around a ballet barre with other props like small hand weights, pilates magic circle, small pilates ball and resistance bands.  It's a mix of ballet moves, aerobics, pilates and a bit of yoga done in a high energy kind of way to music but its low impact.

I'm quite overweight (ok, technically obese urgh) and not terribly fit so I find the movements to be enough cardio to get a sweat on.  I also have tight leg muscles and the outsides of my lower legs start to burn when we are doing work on our tip toes so I can't always manage a full set.  The arms and shoulders work done with the pilates magic circle are challenging and I really feel it there and also in my glutes today!  I'm surprised I don't feel it more in my abs because we did planks and then core work on the mats.  I did love the stretching we did on the barre and on the mats and I wish we could have stayed in the stretches longer.

I really enjoy this class and I'm looking forward to the next one but it's clear that I need more yoga (and the evil foam roller) in my life too so I can really get these tight muscles sorted.