My Sister and weights

Having my sister here for two weeks has been so nice!! We have relaxed, we have worked out and we have just had fun being with each other.

My sister has had her ups and downs with her weight (as has myself) but for the most part has been great with all her workouts and having a healthy lifestyle.   Her go to workouts are running, elliptical, or P90X type dvds.  All those workouts are great but I told her she needed to add weight lifting to her routine and explained some of the benefits to lifting.  

This week she got to do a lot of my weightlifting workouts with me and I am hoping that she sees and feels just how great these workouts are too.  Don't get me wrong I also do cardio but not to the extent of leaving out my weightlifting routines.  

On Wednesday we did chest, shoulders and biceps with Scott my trainer.  The next day she was so sore but a good sore she said.  

On Thursday we did a 2.26 mile run and finished it up with a super hard leg day!  It was one of those leg workouts that you felt very shaky afterwards! 

Here I am doing squats with a 45lb weight and my sister doing dead lifts.

We are both cheesing afterwards though!

And then we found a little time to head out Friday evening with some friends and family. 

I'm not sure what I am going to do when she leaves Wednesday.  I have really enjoyed every minute with her.  I guess I will have to plan a trip soon out her way.

On Saturday morning we did another run outside and then finished it up with four rounds of Tabata!  I was completely exhausted after our workout but it felt wonderful too!  

This week I plan on getting my runs in and getting this girl back on her plane home.  Tomorrow will be weigh in day and my thoughts on counting calories and how that is working.

Run and Wine

My baby sister has been in from Nevada and will be here until next week.  I love the time we have together especially when we get the chance to workout together.  

This morning we did coffee an chit chatted then got dressed and headed out for a short run.  

It was so cold and windy but the run itself was nice with a nice slow pace and a total of 2.26miles.

Last night after dinner we went to the mall to just get out of the house and we did a little bit of shopping, grabbed a diet drink and sat in the massage chairs and just chit chatted for a bit.  Just how we roll.

This afternoon we did a massage and lunch and then tonight we are going to do a wine night with a few of my friends.  I'm truly going to hate when she has to leave.

Monday and goals

Man I thought I would never be happy to see Monday get here!! Have you ever had one of those weekends?  Really seen it going a lot different then it did.  Oh well, such is life I guess!

So today I did a heavy leg workout!! Supersets with leg extensions just to put the icing on the cake...or well you know what I mean!! Today is really going to be crazy and I had planned on running afterwards but the time wasn't there.  So, will definitely get my run in tomorrow.

This Advocare 24 day challenge has been exactly what I needed to jump start my holiday weight loss!  So far I have lost 6 pounds and I feel super great!  Not as sluggish and my jeans are fitting so much better!  Today is my last day but I'm super encouraged to keep going and get to my goal of 145!  

So this weeks goals is to get my workouts in with taking Sunday as a rest day and to keep focused on my goal weight. 

A family that works out together stays together!

Yesterday was so cold here in Ohio!  I could not believe how cold until I seen the weather on my phone and it said 5 degrees feeling like -8! What??  Well, it was a good day to stay in and get some things done here in the house!  Once I took all my Christmas stuff down I wanted to change out a few things instead of putting back the same old same old.

Here on the our island I decided to take down my big three cyclone center piece and just add this.  A cutting board with a little plant, apples, and napkins.  Useful but pretty!  And we can see each other!

In our family room we decided to get rid of our HUGE sectional and open our family room up more by getting a normal size couch, recliner, and a double seated chair (not shown) with matching ottoman.  Our family room is enormous but taking out the sectional really made it that much bigger and I love it!

Okay, so onto a little bit of family fitness!  John and the girls went out to the movies and I decided that I would work on my cpr/aed stuff and workout later in the evening.  

We decided that we would do 4 rounds of Tabata!  I love this because you work up a sweat and can burn a ton of calories!  We had ten different stations and each station was 30sec with a 15sec break to get to your next station!  I wanted to do lots of cardio with a little upper body and abs! 

This is what we did:

Mt. Climbers

Shoulder Press

Burpees

Pushups

Russian twist with med ball

Walk outs/in with a jump

bicep curls

Jump squats

chair dips

jumping jacks

We did a total of four complete rounds and I truly thought I wanted to get sick!  I didn't of course but still ;)  I loved this especially because there was five of us.  Me, my son-in-law, and three of my daughters!  Was a great way to end the day and it too 44min and we burnt over 400 calories!! Here is a pic of us all after we were done.

Today will be a rest day since I have our granddaughters for the day.  Wednesday will look like cardio in the morning with weight lifting in the evening.

Getting back at it

So for whatever reason I have let almost a year slip by and have only posted maybe two times!  What??  Well, I'm gonna try to be better at this blogging thing because I love reading old posts and the things that I had accomplished.  

So, where to begin?  Lets start with going back to mid Summer when I was training for my half marathon.  It was a really hot and humid rainy Summer and it just made it hard for me to run.  I did stick to my plan most of the time but was just hard.  One day it has to get better right?

My compression socks I wore on my long runs and made it a lot better for me.

All in all, training again even when I swore I wasn't going to do another half marathon, it really was nice training with my Aunt Shawnda and then having my daughter Emily run it with us to 5 miles then she did the rest on her own as we pulled ahead of her.  So proud of her because she really didn't train for this half marathon.  I asked her what she thought and she said she was proud she did it but would definetley train better next time!

This was us right before the race!

And a few before, during and after!  I loved it of course but swore that I would not train for another half marathon in 2016!  I mean it too!

Here are a few pictures during my runs in December!  Never thought I would be able to run outside in the middle of December!  These pics were taken on December 17th and it was about 40 degrees when I ran that day!  

Still took a lot of my workouts inside at Love Your Body Personal Training!  This pic was after a hard HIIT workout!  I felt completely worn out too!! 

Just a pic to show that I do wear and love normal clothes!  I think I was heading out to have lunch with my daughter!

This was the Great Pumpkin Run 5k at the end of October.  It was SO cold that day too but so much fun!  Lots of hills and we had to do lots of walking which was okay because I was nursing a torn glute! 

Then right around the peak of the holidays I stepped on the scale and this is what it said =(  To be honest, I truly was not being good with my diet at all!  I was getting my workouts in but I was eating pretty much just whatever I wanted and whenever I wanted.  I'm not sure how or why I let myself get so comfortable with doing this.   

So, once the holidays were over and 2016 came in, I wanted to make some changes.  My daughter Ashley had asked me right before Christmas if I wanted to do the Advocare 24 day challenge with  her.  I knew I had to do something but told her I would think about it.  I'm not a big follower of Advocare or Shakeology type diets.  But, I thought I needed to do something for sure though, so I decided yes we would do it together and that I would go all in.  So I ordered our Advocare and we started January 2.  

I also wanted to start logging my food again so I could actually see what I was putting into my mouth.  I try to keep my calories between 1300 and 1600 a day and for the most part it has been all good calories.  My problem was the sweets.  I have a strong sweet tooth and at first I thought it would be very difficult for me to cut that out, but it really hasn't.  Yes, I do have my moments where I have caved and had a bite here or there but that right there is the difference itself.  I kept it at a bite or two not the whole thing.  And this has only happened a couple times.  

We are on day 17 and so far I have lost a solid 6 pounds!  I also just feel so much better too!!  Definitely keeping count of my calories and putting them into myfitnesspal has been a great tool just to see what I am actually putting in my mouth.  

It also helps when I wake up and plan my day already having my meals and snacks planned out!  

I'm hoping at least by the end of the challenge that I have lost at least another 2 pounds making it a total of 8 pounds lost on the challenge.  But of course I won't stop there because I want to meet my goal of 145.  So we shall see.  So just so I can put it out there I started at 167.2 and as of now I am at 161.6!  

For my running goals for 2016 I have decided to keep it to 5ks and 10ks.  I just want to have fun with the runs and build on my runs.  So we will see!  Right now I am not on a running  plan I'm just running what I feel like for that day.  I have thrown in a few tempo runs of about 2-3 miles but I'm okay with that right now due to taking it easy on this glute!  

My plan for the blog is to use this as my record keeping for my weight loss and running goals!  Of course, there will be other things to document with family and outings and happenings.