Kayla Itsines Interview

May 17, 2014

Kayla Itsines Interview [Exclusive]

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!! I am so so so excited to share with you all an interview with my ultimate fitness idol, Kayla Itsines!!

Omg, I am fan girl-ing way too hard right now. Keep cool, Alice.

Ahem, so you may or may not know, Kayla Itsines is a personal trainer who became an Instagram sensation due in part to her incredibly toned physique and because of her client transformations. All of her clients lost fat and started to take on the same look as Kayla, which she describes as a bikini body. You can see a snippet of her client transformations on her website and on her Instagram account. I have been doing Kayla’s bikini body guide and have loved the experience so much. I am in my final week and couldn’t be happier with my progress in terms of how my body looks, how much stronger I am, and how good I feel. My progress may not be as dramatic as some other girls, but I am so proud of how far I have come and will definitely continue to incorporate the workouts into my workout routine. Kayla was also my original inspiration to work towards doing unassisted pull ups and chin ups. Still far from my goal of doing 10 in a row, but I can do 3 now!

I am so excited to introduce you to her!

Hi there Kayla! Tell us a little bit about yourself and your fitness philosophy

Hi, my name is Kayla and I am a twenty-three year old personal trainer from Australia. I specialize in training women and helping them achieve their goals whether they are appearance, health or confidence based. I love summer, the beach and travelling with my partner, Tobi, and hope to continue to grow as a person and be able to bring more information to women around the world.

My fitness site can be found here.

A typical day in the life of Kayla Itsines looks like this …

I’m not hugely different from the normal person I guess. I wake up at 6AM and go for a walk. I come home shower and have breakfast. I drive to work with my baby husky, Ace in the back. Open up my studio and train my clients from 8-11AM. I have a break for a few hours where I either workout or prepare content for all my followers and then head back to work. I finish with my evening clients 4PM-7:30PM and that’s it. I come home, have dinner with my boyfriend and relax. Oh and I have over 700,000 amazing followers online who I get to chat to every day 😛

Tell us a little about your boyfriend, Tobi. How did you both meet?

I’m sure this is a huge surprise, but we met in the gym. We didn’t talk or anything really, but I apparently came up in the “people he may know” section on Facebook and he added me a day later. A week went by and we were at coffee and a month after that we were at dinner. Two years later we are in our own house with a beautiful puppy and we couldn’t be happier.

Where did your passion for fitness come from?

I have always been healthy and fit. Whether it was basketball, other sport of just working out I am far too impatient to not do something with my time. Now my mission is what inspires me. I have a dream to end confusion within the health and fitness industry. Fads and scams in this industry have created so much distrust and insecurity around weight-loss programs.

I want all people to understand their body, have a place to learn about health and fitness and in turn feel confident & happy.

Did you always have such an amazing body?

NO! Not at all. I was always a little “too skinny” during my childhood and often got bullied for it. I put in years of training and research to try to get my body to where it is today. Now I am in a position where I can educate girls to gain OR lose weight to get their dream body. Everyone’s goal appearance is different, but the goal is still really confidence. This is what I bring to girls all over the world.

Okay, so although your body is out of this world, even fitness idols have their own fitness idols right? Who would you say yours is?

This is so true, I idolise Iza Goulart like there is no tomorrow. I also love Candice Swanepoel AND she followed me on Instagram a while back. Possibly one of the best days of my life!

I get a lot of questions from girls asking me about your Bikini Body Guide. What is so special about it?

I guess the biggest different is the goal. Rather than being a weight-loss of a muscle gaining program it is simply a plan to get you a particular look. It will help work both ways, to gain strength and to lose fat. The workouts aren’t easy but this is compensated by some amazing flexibility in my meal plan (and recipe books coming very soon). If you want to have a look at the results just visit my reviews or transformations page.

Cardio or strength training? Which do you think is more important?

Both. One training protocol will never supersede another purely because they all provide different benefits. I think the most important thing is to have balance between the two as well as recovery.

When girls workout, should they do heavy weights and low reps, or low weights and high reps?

Like I said above, I believe in a variety of rep ranges, weights and exercises. Try the free downloads on my website to get a guide of how I train.

What are your views on green juices and smoothies? Passing fad or here to stay?

I personally love a green smoothie/juice. I think they will be around to stay for a little while purely because they pack so many nutrients. But, like anything they are not a sole source of nutrition and sometimes girls only have smoothies for a whole day. This is not the right way to go about things.

Any advice for girls who can’t live without a certain ‘bad’ food?

Have it! The choice is always yours. If you can accommodate this into your meal plan with a cheat or flexi meal then do so. But the point still stands, if you “can’t live without it” every day of the week then don’t expect to live with your dream body.

Biggest pet peeve?

People who workout once and complain they don’t have an amazing body. It’s as simple as that.

Any tips for all the ladies out there looking to get bikini body ready?

Find a simple play and stick to it. Consistency is the biggest piece of advice that can ever be given to anyone. If you train 110% and eat 110% perfectly 10% of the time you’ll still only get 10% results. I would rather eat and train well always and get 100% results.

What can we expect from you in the future?

Without giving away too much there will be recipe books and a Bikini Body Training Guide 2.0. Along with this there may be the opportunity for girls all over the world to never have to leave their home to train. Interactive programs and fitness equipment may be a thought here 🙂

I sincerely hope you enjoyed this interview! How many of you are doing Kayla’s bikini body guide?

If any of you want to buy Kayla’s guides, click on the photo below 🙂

Honestly yours,
Alice xx

Fitness, Sunday Summary

Sunday Summary – Kayla Itsines Week 11

May 11, 2014

Kayla Itsines Week 11

I literally spent Tuesday through Saturday with the stiffest and most sore legs I have EVER HAD!!! For those who follow me on my bikini body guide journey, you will know that I have now completed week 11 of Kayla Itsine’s bikini body guide .. yay! On Tuesday, I did my leg workout and although I have done it once before in week 9, I truly pushed myself to the max this time. Hence the stiff legs for almost the entire week! It was pretty ridiculous, every night I would go to bed thinking ‘okay, so tomorrow they won’t be sore anymore’ and then wake up with equally sore legs -__-

I love the workouts for week 11 though. They are so intense and really make you realise just how strong you are. I have to say, the ab workout for this week has been my absolute favorite of the entire guide. It hits every part of my abs and makes them feel oh so tight and toned afterwards.

The arm workout is great too, although I have much more of a love/hate relationship with it. I did approximately 157 push up variations when I did my arm workout for this week, so hopefully that gives you some indication as to how ridiculous it is. But hey, at least now I can do that many push ups!! I normally do my workouts in the group exercise room at the gym, but for some reason an unannounced class was being held in there when I arrived on Friday, so I had to do it in front of all the cardio machines. A little embarrassing to say the least but I did look pretty bad ass doing all those push up variations, so it didn’t really matter in the end.

In other news, I was doing SO WELL on my #HFsugarfreemay until this weekend. It was my boyfriend’s graduation and so I wanted to bake him some yummy treats which inevitably ended up with me tasting these yummy treats too .. oops. Regardless, I think trying to stick to sugar free as much as feasibly possible as it is really quite helpful. It made me stop putting honey in my tea, stevia/brown sugar in my coffee and just made me think more about whether I really wanted that dark chocolate or not 😉 I am all about balance so having sugar/sweets/ice-cream or whatever once in a while is alright as long as you are being mindful about your choices and not completely gorging on whatever your indulgence is. With that in mind, I will leave you with a photo of my boyfriend and I at his graduation, haha.

So all in all, it was a great week and I am so excited (but kind of sad) to be finishing Kayla Itsines bikini body guide next week. Be excited for that next week and also for a really, REAAALLLYYY exciting post on Tuesday. Trust me, you will not want to miss it!

Honestly yours,
Alice

Fitness, Health

Mint Studios Spring Open House

April 29, 2014

So I mentioned in last week’s Sunday Summary that I wanted to write a post on the spring open house that I attended at Mint Studios because my brief little summary of it did not do it justice!

Let’s start with this – what is Mint Studios?

Mint Studios offers yoga, barre and pilate’s classes including pilate’s reformer. If you guys do not know what pilate’s reformer, please go and try it right now .. at Mint Studios!! I got to experience pilate’s reformer for the first time during Mint Studios spring open house as they were offering several complimentary classes throughout the evening. My class specifically was called the cardio sport pilates reformer class and it was so fun and upbeat! I have always wanted to try a pilates reformer class, especially after reading about how several Victoria’s Secret models do it regularly 🙂

The actual reformer machine itself is a bit strange to use, especially when you are new and have no idea what you are doing, but it is easy to get the hang of. The pilates reformer machine kind of looks like a bed, with a flat platform called the carriage which moves up and down on wheels within the frame of the machine. The carriage is attached on one end to a set of springs which provide varying levels of resistance (so it can be used for all levels!) and on the other end is a footbar. The machine also contains straps with handles which can be pulled with your legs or arms.

Image from www.mintstudiospilates.com

The teacher for this class that night was called Lisa and she was great; she made sure to check everyone’s form and to see how they were feeling in general. I was really surprised at how much it worked my core, especially because I thought I had quite a strong core to begin with. I woke up the next day and literally couldn’t stop touching my stomach as it felt really nice and flat, it was a bit ridiculous. I felt as if it had made my core muscles pop, had made them ‘wake up’ for lack of a better metaphor. I would love to try the other pilate’s classes and come back for a full session as the complimentary class I took was only 30 minutes long – but long enough to make me know that I loved the workout.

In addition to this fabulous and hard core (pun intended) workout class, there were several San Francisco local vendors present too. Project Juice in particular caught my eye because Brandon, Project Juice’s community wellness manager and health coach, was there and handing out samples of the juices they make. Although I do not regularly buy juices, I certainly note their nutritional value and enjoy drinking them on occasion for a healthy pick me up. My two favorites in particular were the D-Tox juice and the Mint-Chip Shake. When I tried the d-tox juice I was honestly expecting a rather bitter and unpleasant taste but on the contrary, it was really refreshing and sweet! And I think the mint-chip kind of speaks for itself .. it tastes like a mint chocolate chip shake but is much healthier 🙂

Got to sample these lovely juices!!

Ensoma Spa were also there offering complimentary brow waxes (which I missed out on due to a dinner date, boo) and there were free protein bars from Premier Protein. I took home the mint chocolate protein bar (obsessed with this flavor combo) and it was delicious, although it perhaps was not as ‘wholesome’ a protein bar as some others. But still pretty tasty honestly.

I am so glad I found out about Mint Studios spring open house! I love finding out about health & fitness events, and hope to attend more in the future. I had a very fun night and I hope some of you try out their classes soon. If you do, let me know which ones you did!

Honestly yours,
Alice

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