Living Room Workouts With Roger

I used to workout at the gym, in bright lights with loud music and people talking and laughing (okay, maybe not laughing) around me, and with access to almost any machine, tool, or doohickey that I wanted to use to fashion the best 60 minutes of exercise that I could. With a baby in the house and my early morning hours house-bound, those days are over. Instead, I'm in my living room with Comcast On Demand, working out in the mid-dark with the volume on practically silent, with whatever pitiful dumbbells I've managed to cram into my coffee table/ottoman/toy storage container. 

Weights, blocks, and Risk. It's how we roll.

I get through my 30 or 45 minutes, depending on whether the baby wakes up, and then make my coffee, standing sweaty in my kitchen, panting and drinking water. They're not the intense training sessions I used to enjoy, but we'll get to those again soon. For now, this is a pretty good deal.


Comcast On Demand has a whole slew of workouts, which you probably already knew but I am just now finding out about. My favorites are the 10-minute ones by Roger Dickerman. 

They're challenging and creative, and I usually supplement them with some of my own work. He makes me do burpees, which I hate but do anyway, and by the end of three or so of his little workouts, I feel like I've done a body good. Then I move on to some Pilates and if I'm lucky, a cup of coffee before everyone wakes up and starts bossing me around.


Someday I'll get back to the gym but for now, this is working great! I've lost two more pounds and when I tried on my shorts this morning it was nice to see a light at the end of the post-baby weight loss tunnel. Just about 10 pounds of baby flab to burn off and I'm ready for the beach! Well, maybe the park and a kid's birthday party.


Exercise is flexible like that - find 10 minutes here and there (about six batches of 10 minutes, that is) and you really can improve your fitness. Or, cram them all together like I do and take your chances when you can!  Either way, Comcast's On Demand workouts are a great way to get out there and get healthy.

No gym, no problem! (At-home workout fun.)

I'm one week out from being able to hit the weights again, thank God. I honestly think the six weeks I am spending away from the gym are harder than the 10 months I spent pregnant. Yes, pregnancy is 10 months, my friends. 40 weeks does not equal 9 months, even a History major like me can figure that one out! :)


But anyway, I put my gym membership and trainer on sabbatical to save money while I am home with my baby, and also because for some reason my sweet precious little angel hasn't yet bought into the concept of arranging his sleep around my schedule. So, no 5:00 am workouts for me unless I plan to do them at home.


Good thing that's exactly what I plan to do! Today, I wandered into my home gym to do a little inventory. Now, when I say, "home gym," I mean a random collection of stuff my husband and I have accumulated over 14 years of marriage. Honestly, I'm pretty proud that there aren't more gadgets in here. Although, I think there is an ab wheel thing in a closet somewhere and more ankle weights than I care to admit.

We have a pull-up thingy, some free weights, boxing stuff, a weight bench, yoga mat, exercise ball, and apparently, a rebel fleet trooper helmet left over from when my husband went to Dragon*Con. I also have an elliptical machine but its not in the picture because it's across the room, next to the bar, because everyone likes to stare at half-empty bottles of Kahlua when they're working out and think of the cocktails they can't drink because they're trying to lose their baby belly. :)


Anyway, it's all cool because I don't need half of that stuff. My bye-bye belly workout will consist of, duh, running and a lot of body-weight exercises like burpees, plyometrics, and fun stuff like jumping rope and maybe trying a few rounds on my hubby's boxing stuff. You can read about how to create your own body-weight workout here. 


So. Gym inventory done. Now I just need time to actually workout. :)  No worries, you know I can always find a way. That's what baby monitors are for, right?


Have a healthy day: get out there and get healthy!

Can't workout? Imagine you can!

I'm still a few weeks away from being able to really workout. And let's be honest, after three months of pretty much nothing, my first stab at retro-fitting myself isn't likely to be really working out. But hey, I'll take it.


One thing has creeped into my mind lately and it's a little freaky: just how normal not exercising has become. Just as we get accustomed to any change, like sleeping through the night or getting to eat at regular intervals or remembering to look in the mirror before leaving the house (all of which have made swift exits from my life in the past month); I've become accustomed to not exercising. Scary. I hate it. I really really don't like it one stinking bit.


I used to ache for the gym, and now it's a distant memory. Muscle soreness?  Please. My eyelids and boobs are the only thing getting a workout these days. It's all for a good cause (cause my baby is WAY cute and super sweet) but still, I don't like how not working out has become my new normal.


Visualization helps. By imagining myself working out, remembering myself in a fitter body, and visualizing what I will do and how I will feel when I am able to be more active, I can remind my brain that this is not the new normal, that I will get back to the old normal, and that it better not forget it for one single second.


I've been unhealthy and I've been healthy. Healthy is better. Here's how I am on the way to getting back there!

Now come on, enough babbling. Get out there and get healthy!

Bye-Bye Belly Update (and healthy food swaps)

Day seven of my Bye-Bye Belly plan is good news!  Down 3.5 lbs to 151.5. Now, of course I didn't actually lose 3.5 pounds in a week. That would mean a calorie deficit of 12,250 calories! Um, no, I've been sitting on the couch watching HGTV and feeding my baby every day. So I'm chalking it up to water weight, which means that soon my weight loss will revert back to it's usual habits, which generally net me about 2 ounces lost each month.

Insert good-natured eye-roll here

But, that doesn't mean I am not still making healthier swaps. My day has become a lot more colorful as I've been eating less grains and more veggies and fruit. Here's today's healthier food switcharoo: 

Bye-bye cereal for breakfast. It was fun, but I have a better bowl now.

Helloooo oatmeal! Those are cranberries, by the way. Not Craisins, not sugar-soaked dried cranberries, they're actual natural cranberries. You can get them in the frozen food section and when added with walnuts, oats, and cinnamon they are a power-packed antioxidant rich breakfast that's perfect before a walk in the beautiful fall weather. Read here about the health benefits of cranberries.


Just FYI, the cranberry sauce in the can does not have health benefits, no matter what my husband tells you.


Okay, back to baby feeding and couch-sitting. What are you doing to get out there and get healthy today?

Nursing Mothers Burn More Calories? Plus body image info :)

New moms everywhere have always been comforted by the knowledge that nursing mothers burn more calories, which helps take off the weight gained during pregnancy. Well, now that I am in that category of people I've been wondering how true that really is.  So I did a little experiment: I put my GoWearFit armband on and for the past five days have compared my sedentary calorie burn to my burn on rest days before I was pregnant.  On average, I'm burning about 2,100 calories just sitting around on the couch watching daytime television.  On my rest days of Thursdays and Sundays this time last year, I burned about 2,000 calories a day. So, technically I am burning more but nowhere near the 500 calories I've read about! But hey, I'll take it. Calories are calories! 


A few of you have jumped on my 10-pounds-gone-by-New Years bandwagon and to you I say, "climb aboard!" I expect my weight loss will be mostly related to those whopping 100 extra calories I am burning each day, since I am not going to be lowering my calorie intake for a while or adding lots of exercise. Nope, I still have three weeks to go before I can start working out again, and since nursing my baby is priority one, I won't be dieting for a while either. But as I have said over and over, wellness is 80% nutrition, and so much can be done for greater health just based on what and how you eat. I've started making some healthier swaps already and eating more vegetables, which I couldn't stand when I was pregnant. I already feel so much better and have way more energy. Yay!


I was also smart enough to buy some non-maternity clothes in larger sizes before the baby was born, knowing that I would want to wear something normal but would instantly get depressed if I tried to squeeze into my old stuff.  And let me just say now that I would like to retroactively kick myself for all the times I thought I was fat because these days I am feeling amazing about my body and how much it has transformed in the past two weeks but it is still WAYYYYYY too big for my pre-pregnancy clothes. So yeah, a little perspective there. :)


Speaking of perspective and body image, the biggest thing I am doing for my wellness this week is channeling positive energy. Read here about the valuable impact that I healthy body image can make on your weight loss and how you can start creating one today. :)


It's a wonderful day to get out there and get healthy!