Good Morning, gym rats, and happy Sunday Funday! It's a gorgeous Summer morning here in Portland and I'm feeling energized and excited to take on the day ahead! I'm now officially less than 3 weeks out from the Yankee Classic and the motivation I was lacking a week ago has come back in full force (thank goodness!). I think having a cold for a week straight was the main cause of my motivational issues. Luckily, aside from an annoying cough that seems to arise at the most inopportune of times, my health is back to normal now.
After struggling through a long workout yesterday and going to bed feeling over-trained and exhausted last night I was planning on skipping the gym today. I have another 3 hour maXtreme photo shoot this afternoon and wanted to be sure I had preserved my energy as much as possible. However, when I awoke at 5:19 am this morning I felt game for some sort of exercise to get my body going so I got up, made one of my go-to breakfasts of scrambled eggs, coffee, and an Ezekiel english muffin with almond butter, walked my dog, and then headed over to the gym for a half-hour on the arc trainer. I'm not a huge fan of this piece of equipment as it always feels awkward for me, like it's made for someone with much longer limbs, but increasing my cardio to 4 days/week is starting to tire my legs out so I wanted something low impact and different. After my speedy workout I gave myself a good stretch and then came back home to shower and start the rest of my day. I'm now sitting here on the coach drinking a delicious protein shake that I made in the blender with 3 ice cubes, 1 cup of unsweetened almond milk, 1 scoop of About Time all-natural cinnamon swirl whey, and 1/2 cup of fresh strawberries which I picked yesterday. Delicious! I try to go strawberry picking every year and usually consume them in massive quantities the following week; however, this time I behaved and froze the majority of them for future use. It's crunch time and there will be no cheating going on here!
From Sunday through Wednesday of this past week I did my version of mini peak-week where I cut my carbs down to only 2 starchy servings per day. As expected, the first 3 days were a breeze but come Wednesday night I was dying. I can only hope that this pre-show carb cycling works for me the same way it did in April. It did wonders for the look of my muscles when I woke up on Thursday and my abs were more defined than they've looked in a long time. However, I did not drop any weight this week as I thought I would, having done the carb-cut and then also facing my regularly scheduled 1-month-out diet cut. Hmmm things like that are a little disgruntling but then again, perhaps weighing myself the morning after a semi-cheat sushi dinner wasn't the best idea ever. So many things can factor into weight loss that it's really just trial and error. It could be something as simple as the fact that I've been getting up so early lately that I've been unintentionally getting less sleep than usual and we've all heard time and again that a minimum of 7 hours of sleep is recommended for maximum health - which includes weight loss and muscle recovery. Then there's the fact that I have a million overwhelming things going on in both my work and personal life right now and really just want this month, which hasn't even begun yet, to be over with so I can calm down and get my life back on track.
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Shit. Fast-forward 4 hours. Right as I finished that sentence I received a text from Kingsley saying he was running a few minutes late. Late for what? Ahhhh somehow despite the fact that I did write down the time correctly in my calendar, I mixed up the shoot time in my head and I was actually scheduled for 9-12 this morning! Good thing a) I was up and at it early this morning and b) he was running late as well! I threw a water bottle in my bag and off I went to Portland's East End for my photo shoot, arriving just as Kingsley was parking. Phew!
Talk about a brutal shoot. My diet cut was beyond evident as my lack of body strength combined with the sun beating down on me peaked my muscle attention span (if that's not a term then I just coined it LOL) after about an hour. I felt bad as I know my form was sloppy toward the end and I wasn't able to do some of the explosive jumping moves he wanted. At least he had a guy scheduled right after me so hopefully he was able to get those moves out of him. Luckily this was my last scheduled shoot for this Summer unless there's an impromptu shoot set-up to cover anything missing once he has a chance to review the hundreds of pics and videos taken over the past month or so.
I was feeling dizzy, weak and over-heated on my walk back to my car so I stopped into Whole Foods and got an iced coffee for the ride home. That always does the trick! I need to ask them what brand of coffee they use in their cafe as it is always brewed to the perfect strength and tastes like liquid perfection :) Now I'm back home sitting in a sweaty mess while re-fueling on coffee and lunch; baby spinach salad with carrotts, snap peas, almonds, chicken, and Annie's Asian sesame dressing. Yum!
I'm pretty much spent now. I may take the pup for a walk later when the sun goes down but I think that's it for the day. I know once I put my feet up I'm toast. Ahhh well anyway, the sun is out, the guns are definitely out, and I've gotten a day's worth of activities done by only 1:00 pm. Not bad! How are you all spending your Sunday Funday? Hopefully getting some sunshine and relaxation as tomorrow it's back to the corporate grind. Oye.... Happy Sunday!
After struggling through a long workout yesterday and going to bed feeling over-trained and exhausted last night I was planning on skipping the gym today. I have another 3 hour maXtreme photo shoot this afternoon and wanted to be sure I had preserved my energy as much as possible. However, when I awoke at 5:19 am this morning I felt game for some sort of exercise to get my body going so I got up, made one of my go-to breakfasts of scrambled eggs, coffee, and an Ezekiel english muffin with almond butter, walked my dog, and then headed over to the gym for a half-hour on the arc trainer. I'm not a huge fan of this piece of equipment as it always feels awkward for me, like it's made for someone with much longer limbs, but increasing my cardio to 4 days/week is starting to tire my legs out so I wanted something low impact and different. After my speedy workout I gave myself a good stretch and then came back home to shower and start the rest of my day. I'm now sitting here on the coach drinking a delicious protein shake that I made in the blender with 3 ice cubes, 1 cup of unsweetened almond milk, 1 scoop of About Time all-natural cinnamon swirl whey, and 1/2 cup of fresh strawberries which I picked yesterday. Delicious! I try to go strawberry picking every year and usually consume them in massive quantities the following week; however, this time I behaved and froze the majority of them for future use. It's crunch time and there will be no cheating going on here!
From Sunday through Wednesday of this past week I did my version of mini peak-week where I cut my carbs down to only 2 starchy servings per day. As expected, the first 3 days were a breeze but come Wednesday night I was dying. I can only hope that this pre-show carb cycling works for me the same way it did in April. It did wonders for the look of my muscles when I woke up on Thursday and my abs were more defined than they've looked in a long time. However, I did not drop any weight this week as I thought I would, having done the carb-cut and then also facing my regularly scheduled 1-month-out diet cut. Hmmm things like that are a little disgruntling but then again, perhaps weighing myself the morning after a semi-cheat sushi dinner wasn't the best idea ever. So many things can factor into weight loss that it's really just trial and error. It could be something as simple as the fact that I've been getting up so early lately that I've been unintentionally getting less sleep than usual and we've all heard time and again that a minimum of 7 hours of sleep is recommended for maximum health - which includes weight loss and muscle recovery. Then there's the fact that I have a million overwhelming things going on in both my work and personal life right now and really just want this month, which hasn't even begun yet, to be over with so I can calm down and get my life back on track.
*********************************************************************************
Shit. Fast-forward 4 hours. Right as I finished that sentence I received a text from Kingsley saying he was running a few minutes late. Late for what? Ahhhh somehow despite the fact that I did write down the time correctly in my calendar, I mixed up the shoot time in my head and I was actually scheduled for 9-12 this morning! Good thing a) I was up and at it early this morning and b) he was running late as well! I threw a water bottle in my bag and off I went to Portland's East End for my photo shoot, arriving just as Kingsley was parking. Phew!
Talk about a brutal shoot. My diet cut was beyond evident as my lack of body strength combined with the sun beating down on me peaked my muscle attention span (if that's not a term then I just coined it LOL) after about an hour. I felt bad as I know my form was sloppy toward the end and I wasn't able to do some of the explosive jumping moves he wanted. At least he had a guy scheduled right after me so hopefully he was able to get those moves out of him. Luckily this was my last scheduled shoot for this Summer unless there's an impromptu shoot set-up to cover anything missing once he has a chance to review the hundreds of pics and videos taken over the past month or so.
I was feeling dizzy, weak and over-heated on my walk back to my car so I stopped into Whole Foods and got an iced coffee for the ride home. That always does the trick! I need to ask them what brand of coffee they use in their cafe as it is always brewed to the perfect strength and tastes like liquid perfection :) Now I'm back home sitting in a sweaty mess while re-fueling on coffee and lunch; baby spinach salad with carrotts, snap peas, almonds, chicken, and Annie's Asian sesame dressing. Yum!
I'm pretty much spent now. I may take the pup for a walk later when the sun goes down but I think that's it for the day. I know once I put my feet up I'm toast. Ahhh well anyway, the sun is out, the guns are definitely out, and I've gotten a day's worth of activities done by only 1:00 pm. Not bad! How are you all spending your Sunday Funday? Hopefully getting some sunshine and relaxation as tomorrow it's back to the corporate grind. Oye.... Happy Sunday!
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