Week 1 down✔️

Yesterday I completed my first full week of my 8 Week Transformation by Ryan Spiteri. I had 5 lifting sessions to do this week plus three 30 minute low intensity steady state cardio (LISS) sessions to do. The lifting was great! Cardio? Normally I hate it but this week it was fantastic. The best thing is to make it fun! On my first day of the program, I used the treadmill for LISS. I got quite bored of walking, so I did run most of it, which only made it more of a workout. My other two cardio sessions were in the form of hiking, which I love! Saturday I hiked up to the local fire tower which was great, although it was pretty hot out. Yesterday though! Yikes! A group of friends and I decided to the trip to New Hampshire to hike Mount Monadnock. Little did I know it was going to end up being 5 hours of hiking 7 miles (7 treacherous miles at that) in 90+ degree weather. We decided to make it harder by taking the Spellman Trail which was pretty much scaling the side of a mountain at times.

Now, Let's talk about food. The eating plan is actually really good. I feel better. My stomach doesn't hurt after I eat, probably because I'm not eating greasy restaurant food. I love how my body feels when I treat it right, and give it nutritions food rather than all the crap i've been used to eating. Don't get me wrong, although I'm loving the food that I do get to eat on this plan, I do 100% miss alcohol and pizza. That's what cheat days are for! Which now brings me to what "cheat days" are in this plan. It's not really a cheat day, rather than allowing myself to have something, one time per week, that the meal plan doesn't otherwise let me have. This weeks cheat? A margarita. And boy was it delicious.
The meal plan has been consisting of high protein and a decent amount of carbs. I love chicken and broccoli anyway so having that for a huge portion of my meals hasn't been all that bad.
The whole meal prep thing, I could definitely be better about. As i've said previously, I used to really only eat dinner, so having to plan for my food for the day ahead of time has taken some practice.


I'm putting my heart into this. This experience has taught me a lot. It's taught me a lot about portion control, how carbs are actually a good thing, how much of a difference getting enough protein can make and to not be scared of food. Exercise should not be used as a punishment for what you ate, but rather, it should be seen as fuel to help your body do amazing things. Fuel to help you see just how hard you can push yourself. The body is truly amazing when you treat it right.

Below i've added some pictures of our Monadnock hike. I highly recommend it for anyone who may be in the New Hampshire area. It was a blast and definitely quite the workout!

The Spellmen Trail of Mt Monadnock

Getting closer to the summit

The fantastic group of friends I hiked with. Love you all so much!
<3

**Picture credit to the fantastic Beth Adams**

Day 1: How well did it really go?

How was my first day doing my customized meal and workout plan from Ryan Spiteri? Overall, I thought today went great! Let me just start by saying that waking up at 4:30am to make sure that I could get my full workout in was rough. I am not a morning person. But I managed to get myself out of bed, drank my protein shake and ate my hard boiled egg (according to the meal plan) before I headed out the door, making my way to my local YMCA.
Once I got to the Y,  figured I would start by doing my shoulder routine as well as some cardio. My cardio, according to my plan, is a 30 minute walk (3-4mph) 3X per week, for the first week. I hopped on a treadmill and started my walk at 3.8mph and quickly found myself getting bored, even while watching Law & Order:SVU (which my my favorite show ever!). To put my boredom to rest, I decided to kick up the speed to 6mph and run my remaining 20 minutes.
Following my cardio session, I headed to weight room to kill my shoulder routine. I have never ever ever had a day designated to shoulders, mainly because I felt like it was such a small muscle group, that I had to work out another body part to make my lifting session worthwhile. Today, I learned that my mentality was totally wrong about that. It started with smith machine shoulder presses, then throw in some cable upright rows, lat raises and some plate front raises, and I could definitely feel the burn.

After the gym, I came home and ate my banana along with my rice cake and 15g of peanut butter. I have never been a breakfast person. I rarely eat before 2pm (unless it's a protein shake) so I was not the least bit hungry after the gym. I forced myself to eat it, because that's what the plan said to do. By 10am, I was starving so I had my cheese stick however that didn't hold me over for very long. I could not wait to come home and eat lunch. My lunch was filling enough to hold me over until my 3:30 snack which consisted of a 5.3oz container of plain greek yogurt with blueberries mixed it.

Around 5, I could hear my stomach rumblin' again. For me, this is such a strange feeling. Normally, if I do eat breakfast or lunch, I'm not hungry for the rest of the day. Dinner was 100g of chicken, 100g of broccoli and 100g of white potato. Now I'm sitting here, filling you in, and I could not be more stuffed. Every time I ate today, I was incredibly full, but it seemed like hunger was held off for only an hour, and my next meal time could not come soon enough.

Even though I dreaded waking up as early as I did, it felt amazing once I got there. Hopefully tomorrow I can remember how good it felt, and I won't have to coax myself into going.

That's today's update. I won't be blogging and updating every day, as I'm sure most days are going to be pretty much the same, just different workouts. I am extremely excited to see where this next 8 weeks takes me, and to see what my body is capable of. I am also eager to see how much of a difference this eating plan will make not only for my workouts, but also how it will make my body feel, as compared to my usual habit of eating out.

Burpees! Burpees! Burpees!

I love burpees. It's a full body workout! With cardio! Although many people hate them, I can never get enough. They are challenging  but well worth it. They actually burn more calories than you would think! In case you don't know what they are...

• Begin in a squat position with hands on the floor in front of you 
• Kick your feet back to a pushup position (...and do a push up)
• Immediately return your feet to the squat position
• Leap up as high as possible from the squat position 
• Repeat, moving as fast as possible

They sound much easier than they are! As if burpees weren't challenging enough, you can spice things up a bit by adding some variation which can make them much harder. Some examples include...

• Do 10 mountain climbers while in a push up position
• Do one push up, lift your right arm and left leg of the ground and hold for 5 seconds. Do another pushup then repeat with the other side
• Do a jack push up or clap push up instead of a normal pushup (or some other push up variation!)
• Add 5 high power jumps instead of just the single jump up 
• Single leg while in pushup position
• single arm while in pushup position

My goal for the end of the summer is to be able to do 100 burpees a day! How many can you do?

Give it a try!


...Remember, make it fun! Listen to some rockin' music and just think of how good you'll look in your rockin' beach bod! :) 

xoxoashleyanne

Make these few changes to your workout routine and step up the intensity!

http://fitbie.msn.com/slideshow/weight-lifting-exercises-build-muscle-fast

^^This link above has absolutely been my lifesaver. Some of the exercises have been harder than I'd like to admit but they really do work! Give it a try! How many of the exercises do you currently do? How many of them will you add to your current fitness routine?


xoxoashley






borrowed from fitbie.msn.com