Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Keeping Up With...Workouts (Recap of 3/23 - 3/29)

Howdy from Texas!!  Just wanted to drop in quickly to update you on how I'm keeping up with my exercise streak for the year while I'm traveling.  Some days have been harder than others, but for the most part I have been able to keep up without any disruption to our plans.  I am very glad that I decided not to stipulate what kind of exercise it needed to be since a lot of this week has been walking while sightseeing.  I'll have a lot more to say about our trip in the next week or two (spoiler alert - we're having a GREAT time!) so stay tuned for my recap.

For now, here's what I've been doing for exercise:
Wednesday - Walked Daniel to school in the morning & to pick him up in the afternoon.  Also multiple trips up & down the stairs while packing.
Thursday - 10 minutes on the stationary bike in the scary hotel in Little Rock (more on that soon)
Friday - Walked to Six Flags from our awesome hotel in Arlington & then walked around the park for about 5 hours
Saturday - Walked around Six Flags for about 6 hours
Sunday - Walked in my brother's neighborhood with Adrian for about 15 minutes
Monday - Walked around the Perot Museum for about 4 hours (what a cool place!!)
Tuesday - Walked around Fort Worth for about 2 hours, including 25 minutes in a cow pen maze with the family

Thursday and Sunday were by far the hardest days to get the exercise in.  Thursday we were on the road for over 13 hours.  I almost exercised before I left but we were ready to get on the road so we went.  I was determined to do something & thankfully Adrian is super supportive and told me to go as soon as we got settled for the night. 

Sunday was Easter & also my birthday.  And I was exhausted from the road trip and 2 days in the park.  I was really trying to relax and rest and just enjoy being with the family.  But since the weather was great and I needed to do something, Adrian and I snuck away for a quick walk.

We have 2 more days here in Texas before we hit the road for Ohio.  Friday will be another challenging day to get my exercise in, but I'm sure I'll figure something else out.  I think every other day I will be fine.  Stay tuned to see how I do!
The Jones family in Texas!

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Keeping Up With...Workouts (Recap of 3/16 - 3/22)

I'm just dropping by real quick to share what I've been up to with workouts this week.  It has been a weird week for me.  We had a super packed weekend and then part of it cancelled which was great.  But then Adrian has been super busy at work so I've been single momming.  And Zak is sick, he's been pretty miserable for the past 2 days so I've had to cancel just about everything I had scheduled.
I'm also really focusing all of my attention on getting ready for our trip.  I don't know why I'm really stressing out over packing for this trip.  We've gone away for this long before (although I did forget my underwear the last time we traveled!)  Maybe it's because there are some extra things, Easter, birthdays, multiple hotel stays, etc.  I'm sure it will all work out fine but I will be very glad when we're on the road.

I got a few birthday gifts from my students this past week.  They are so sweet!!  I love the new head bands and who doesn't love cupcakes & brownies (this was my breakfast one day - no shame!)  I love my students and am so grateful to them for thinking of me.



I'm determined to stick with my exercise streak while on vacation so look for a recap sometime next week of how that is going.  My plan is to walk most days, with a few Zumba and Silver Sneakers practice sessions thrown in there.

Here's how the past week went:
Wednesday - Taught two Zumba classes - one for 90 minutes & one for 60 minutes
Thursday - Taught one Zumba class, walked for school pick up
Friday - Taught one Zumba class, walked for school pick up
Saturday - Taught one Zumba Toning class
Sunday - Practiced my Silver Sneakers class for about 45 minutes
Monday - Taught one Zumba Toning class, walked for school pick up
Tuesday -Practiced the weights portion of my Silver Sneakers class for about 20 minutes

I weighed in for the last time until well after our trip this morning and I'm maintaining my current weight.  I won't weigh in next week since we'll be away or two weeks from today because I know I will gain weight on vacation and I don't want to feel bad about it.  But I will be keeping up with the exercise streak so look for a post next week to see how I'm doing it!

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Keeping Up With...Workouts (Recap of 3/9 - 3/15)

As I mentioned last week, I went to Silver Sneakers training this past Sunday.  I am now officially licensed to teach Silver Sneakers Classic & Silver Sneakers Circuit classes.  I will start teaching Classic classes at the Y as soon as I get back from vacation.  I'm excited and a little nervous about this new class.  I've been shadowing the classes and it's a great group of about 40 members.  The current teacher is amazing so I have big shoes to fill.

The training this weekend was OK, not one of my favorites.  I felt like between other trainings I've attended, going to the classes & the online course work I knew almost all of what they taught.  I did get a few good ideas of exercises to add to my class.  And I saw a lot of friends so that was nice too.  Silver Sneakers has a few other, higher intensity programs that I'm interested in so I'm hoping to get that training very soon.

I also got a gift this week from one of my Zumba students.  She got a new FitBit and gave me her old one.  I need to figure out how to set it up but I'm interested to see what it tells me.  I have this horrible feeling that it's going to tell me I'm active enough but I don't sleep good enough.  My goal is to have it set up before vacation so I can know how many steps I'm taking over the week.

This week was a pretty standard week for me and next week will probably be as well.  After that we leave for 10 or 11 days (not sure when we're heading home) so I'll have to get creative to stick with my goal of 10 minutes of exercise each day.

Here's how the past week looked for me:
Wednesday - Taught 2 classes - 90 minutes of Zumba & Zumba Toning & 60 minutes of Zumba
Thursday - Taught Zumba
Friday - Taught Zumba and walked to school to pick up Daniel
Saturday - Taught Zumba Toning
Sunday - Silver Sneakers training, 45 minute Classic class & 60 minute Circuit class
Monday - Taught 2 classes - Zumba Toning and Cardio Dance and walked to school to pick up Daniel
Tuesday - Rest Day - Walked to school to pick up Daniel (about 1 mile)

I weighed in yesterday & I stayed the same as last week.  This is the goal until the beginning of April.  I'm not counting calories right now, just trying to finish up all the food that will go bad while we're away.  Luckily it's mostly fruit & vegetables so I'm eating pretty healthy!

Sunday, March 13, 2016

Keeping Up With...Food (Menu Plan 3/14 - 3/20)

As I mentioned on Wednesday, I have Silver Sneakers training most of today so I'm just stopping by real quick to share my meal plan for the week.  I'll be back on Wednesday with a review of the Silver Sneakers training. 

This will be my last meal plan for 2-3 weeks since we're going out of town for spring break.  You can see even this week I'm slowing down with cooking so we can use up all of the food that we have.  I had a great week last week, cooking everything that was on my plan.  And we have a nice stash of leftovers from everything I cooked last week to start us off this week.

Here's what we're eating this week:
Monday - Chicken Parm Baked Ziti
Tuesday - Potluck dinner for me & the kids, Leftovers for Adrian.  I am bringing a vegan dessert so I'm trying out this brownie recipe
Wednesday - Leftovers - Boys have baseball, I have PTO so we'll be eating on the run
Thursday - Crockpot Chili (yields a lot of leftovers)
Friday - Veggie Omelets to use up some eggs & veggies
Saturday - Leftovers - We have like 10 things going on this day, yikes!
Sunday - Pizza with my brother & his family to celebrate my birthday!!

Water flavor - Lemon to finally use up all of the lemons that I had in the fridge

Food prep - I set up my water already & am planning on cooking the chicken for tomorrow.  I also have the food list ready to go and a plan to get all of the shopping done.

Next week we will just be eating leftovers or frozen meals Mon-Weds then we head out of Thursday for Texas.  Can't wait to get away for the week!  We'll be visiting family, riding rides at Six Flags, celebrating Easter & of course celebrating the big 4-0!

As always, I'm linking up with Laura at Mommy, Run Fast.  Go check out the other blogs on the link up for some more yummy recipes!  Have a great week!!

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Keeping Up With...Workouts (Recap of 3/2 - 3/8)

As I mentioned last week, I am planning to recap my workouts each week.  There isn't a whole lot of variety right now between teaching my normal Zumba schedule and training to start teaching a new class in April my schedule is pretty full.  I'm hoping once I get my April class up and running I can start going to different classes again.  I also know with summer coming up there will be a lot of swimming, hiking and playground trips with the boys!!

This coming Sunday I am going to training for the Silver Sneakers program and will start teaching classes at the YMCA in April.  I'm so excited to expand into this format!  I know a lot of the members who take those classes and I'm excited to help them on their continued journey to stay healthy, although I am a little nervous as I'm filling some very big shoes. 

This new format will be a big change from teaching Zumba for a few reasons.  First it is a lot lower impact than Zumba since I'll be mostly working with people age 55 or older.  I'm excited to give my body a little break as teaching multiple Zumba classes is exhausting.  Second it is not a dance class.  I will be using music and staying with the beat some, but mostly I'll just have it on in the background.  Third I'll be using equipment including dumb bells, balls & bands.  I have some experience using dumb bells/toning sticks from Zumba toning, but I've never used the other 2 before.

I've been going to as many classes as I can get to recently to observe and take notes on what to do.  I've also done a lot of online training to prepare for the training.  I feel OK about taking over the class, although I am very glad I have until April to get the class finished.  I'll be working on it a lot on the drive back and forth from Texas at the end of the month!  I'll let you know what I think of the training next week.

Here's how the past week looked for me:
Wednesday - Taught 1 Zumba class - My morning class was cancelled due to lack of childcare at the gym
Thursday - Taught 1 Zumba class
Friday - Taught 1 Zumba class
Saturday - Taught 1 Zumba Toning class
Sunday - Rest Day, 15 minutes on the stationary bike to keep my streak going
Monday - Taught 2 classes - Zumba Toning and Cardio Dance
Tuesday - Took/observed Silver Sneakers Classic

I weighed in yesterday and I gained 1 pound.  I'm not surprised, I spent most of the weekend stress eating.  I have been feeling really overwhelmed recently and it got the best of me this past weekend.  I did reevaluate a few things and got a lot done over the weekend so I feel a little better.  I'm hoping this week is better.
Sweaty selfie after Monday's classes

Sunday, March 6, 2016

Keeping Up With...Food (Menu Plan 3/7 - 3/13)

So last week started off amazing and then on Thursday I went to cook dinner and realized that I didn't have a few key ingredients for the planned meal.  And I also didn't want anything to do with the chicken I had thawed out.  So we made Greek salads for dinner that night.  Then on Friday I forgot to set up and start my crock pot meal and didn't feel like cooking at all so Adrian picked up Firehouse subs on his way home.  Saturday we had to use the thawed chicken so we decided to try this Thai Chicken Pizza - it was amazing!  Sometimes things don't go as planned and end up working out better in the end.  Today we're back on our schedule.
This week I'm trying to start using up some of the things that are in our fridge and freezer in preparation for our upcoming trip.  I also need to make the two meals that I didn't make last week and have everything bought for.  It's a fairly light week for us, at least as of right now.  We're in between sports, hockey has ended and baseball hasn't started yet so we have some downtime.  Baseball will pick up very soon for all 3 boys and we'll be running like crazy.

Here's what we're eating this week:
Monday - Chicken Pot Pie - didn't get to this last week
Tuesday - Taco Tuesday!
Wednesday - Squash Stew - didn't get to this last week
Thursday - Pepperoni Eggs
Friday - Pasta to finish up some leftover sauce in the freezer
Saturday - Sausage for Adrian, AJ & Daniel.  Zak & I have a birthday party for one of his friends
Sunday - Turkey Reubens and Salads - I will be at training all afternoon and don't want to have a complex dinner to prepare.

Water flavor - Orange/Lemon - I have a few lemons left over from my free bag and I got a great deal on oranges this week.

Meal prep - I am making this quiche today for our breakfasts for the week.  I will actually make two and freeze one for later.  I am also making the chicken pot pie today so that just has to be popped in the oven tomorrow.

As always, I'm linking up with Laura at Mommy, Run Fast.  Go check out the other blogs on the link up for some more yummy recipes!  Have a great week!!

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Keeping Up With...Workouts (Recap of 2/24 - 3/1)

So when I went to update my goals for the year yesterday, I realized it was really hard to remember what I had done workout wise from week to week.  I try to keep my calendar correct so I can look back at it, but I don't always remember to delete things.  Instead I decided to start doing a weekly recap of what I've done each week.  I will try to do them each Wednesday since that is the day that I normally weigh in each week.

This past weekend I went to my first Zumba Jam session of the year.  It was SO much fun!  If you aren't familiar with a jam session, it's when Zumba instructors get together for about 3 hours and learn new choreography for 2-5 songs.  They learn from a licensed Zumba Jammer, practice the songs and can then take them back to their classes.  I love going to them, between the new choreo and seeing all my ZIN friends I have the best time!
My little "Z Group" - so thankful for them!

The whole group of Zumba Instructors
Sometimes the choreo doesn't work for me, but that was not the case with this last session.  I absolutely love 3 of the 5 songs we learned & will be adding them for sure.  I really like the 4th song and with some practice will probably use it as well.  The 5th one is just OK for me.  I learned choreo for it at a jam last year too & still haven't used it.  I may try to do a mash up of both choreos...or just move on from the song.  We'll see how I'm feeling about it in a few weeks.

Here's how the rest of the week looked for me:
Wednesday - Taught 2 Zumba classes
Thursday - Taught 1 Zumba class
Friday - Taught 1 Zumba class & assisted in a Zumba Gold Toning class
Saturday - Taught 1 Zumba Toning class, then did the 3 hour Zumba Jam session
Sunday - Rest day - rode the bike for 15 minutes to keep my streak going
Monday - Taught 2 Zumba classes
Tuesday - Shadowed a Silver Sneakers class for my upcoming training

I weighed in this morning and lost 2 lbs over the past week, yay!  I'm trying really hard to stay under my calorie goal for the next 3 weeks...then we'll be on vacation so I'll take a week off.  I'll be back next week with another recap and some thoughts on my upcoming Silver Sneakers training.

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Keeping Up With...My Fab 40! - Feb review

February continued the trend of being up and down, very similar to January.  We had multiple colds come through the house which derailed some of my plans.  We also had a week long birthday celebration which took a lot of time and energy and was so worth it.  I stayed as focused on my goals as I could without driving myself and everyone around me crazy. 

Here's how I'm doing after 2 months.  I have broken them down into two categories (on-going & one time) so it's easier for me to update.  I'll be adding a third category (finished) in upcoming months.  The goals are in black and my current month comments are in red.

On-Going
1.  Lose 40 pounds - one for each year - Lost 6 of the 40 lbs.  I stalled a little this month with the birthdays, but I'm happy that I still lost some.
2.  Read 12 books - I was so close last year! - Read 2 of the 12.  I stalled here as well.  I wanted to go back & read a classic so I decided to reread "Little Women."  It's really long!  I'm about 30% thru it.
3.  Go on 12 dates with Adrian - Went on 3 of the 12 - We got 2 dates in Feb!  Look for a recap of our dates later this week
4.  Get rid of 12 bags of stuff - Donated 1 bag and threw out at least one this month when we organized our game closet.  3 of the 12 are gone.
5.  Take 1 picture every day for the year - Up to date on this 61 of 366
6.  Go on 2 special dates with AJ - Went on 0 out of 2, but he wants to see Kung Fu Panda 3 so we're doing that soon.
7.  Go on 2 special dates with Daniel -
Went on 0 out of 2, but we just got an ad for a Snoopy play so I'm buying us tickets this weekend.  It's in April
8.  Go on 2 special dates with Zak - Went on 0 out of 2, I'll be saving these for the 2nd half of the year when he's in preschool everyday.
 9.  Do a 365 day exercise streak - 51 days of 365, every day from Jan 11-March 1!!  This was really tough a few days, especially when I had the stomach bug (I did Wii Free Step in the living room) and on the last day of party week.
10.  Finish the 30 Day Shred - Did 0 days of 30 - I need to get started on this one!
11.  Attend one class each week that isn't mine - Did this 6 weeks out of 52.  I missed the first two weeks of Feb between the stomach bug, snow days and the birthdays but got right back to it. 
12.  Teach an average of 5 classes each week -
Did this 7 weeks out of 52.  I can't believe I was able to get to 5 classes the week of the stomach bug, wow!
13.  Menu plan and prep our dinners each week - Did this 7 weeks out of 52.  I've had to juggle meals around but very little food is going to waste over here. 
14.  Go to church every Sunday - Did this 9 weeks out of 52.
15.  Do one blog post each week - I did 7 posts in Feb.  I plan to start doing a weekly workout recap on Wednesdays so I can remember what I'm doing each week. 
16.  See 2 movies that aren't animated - Saw 0 out of 2
17.  Pay off our Best Buy card and not incur any new debt - No new debt so far, and on plan to pay off best buy card in 5 months
18.  Have a family board game night once per month - Did this 2 out of 12 months
19.  Have a family movie night once per month
- Did this 2 out of 12 months (Inside Out, Charlie Brown Valentine's special)
20.  Have a family video game night once per month - Did this 2 out of 12 months
21.  Go to 4 Zumba jams this year - Went to my 1 out of 4 and I loved every minute of it!  Look for a recap tomorrow.  And I'm signed up for jam #2 in April.
22.  Make one homemade breakfast for us each month - I made 2 (muffins &
breakfast burritos) in Feb

One Time
23.  Go on a family trip to Dallas - Planned for March - SO excited!
24.  Go on a family trip to NJ - Booked for June!!
25.  Go on a family trip to Tennessee - Planned for July
26.  Go zip lining
27.  Go on a family hike in Hocking Hills
28.  Get 1 fitness certification - Signed up for Silver Sneakers in March
29.  Go to the doctor for routine check up and tests - Appt is made for next week
30.  Go on family camping trip
31.  Host an alcohol exchange with my girl friends
32.  Power wash and stain our play set
33.  Renovate our downstairs bathroom
34.  Conquer the Lynd's corn maze in the fall
35.  Tour Dallas Cowboys stadium - Planned for March
36.  Go to Dollywood - Planned for Aug
37.  Go to Six Flags Great Adventure - Planned for June
38.  Go to Six Flags Over Texas - Planned for March
39.  Renew our Zoombeezi Bay passes and go at least once every other week over the summer
40.  Do something special to celebrate mine & Adrian's 10 year wedding anniversary

All in all another pretty good month.  I'm excited to get started on my birth-month celebration and keeping up with all of these goals!