Kayla Itsines Round 2 – Week 6

November 2, 2014

Happy second day of November everyone! The temperature has definitely started to cool down in San Francisco and honestly, I do not mind at all. San Francisco is not equipped to deal with hot weather and I was finding it really hard to sleep during our brief heatwave. I am currently in Salt Lake City for the weekend (visiting the boyfriend) and it is starting to feel really cold here. My nose does this weird thing where it feels like it’s been punched if it gets ‘hit’ by a cold gust of wind. That only happens when it gets to a certain temperature!

Kayla Itsines Round 2 – Week 6

Okay enough moaning about the weather, onto health and fitness. I weighed myself a few days ago and I have maintained my 7 pound weight loss which is awesome. The abs and arms workout for Kayla Itsines this week were not as bad as I thought they were going to be; which means I have gotten stronger! The leg workout was crazy though. I was really proud of myself because I pushed myself incredibly hard on Friday to complete as many exercises as possible, and my legs are actually still sore! The leg workout this week was full of big explosive plyometric moves such as tuck jumps, jump lunges, and split squats (to name a few). I feel like I have hit a bit of a plateau unfortunately. Eagerly awaiting abs, haha!

I’ve been having a lot of wraps this week with that yummy wrap I told you all about last week, which has been a nice change of pace from the pita wraps I was eating. I went to this amazing Japanese BBQ place in San Mateo on Monday called Gyu-Kaku and loaded up on protein for the week 😛 Has anyone else ever been? I am so obsessed. And this weekend, my boyfriend and I had some fun dining experiences. We went to get Japanese food at Tsunami on Saturday night and got an amazing spread of sashimi, sushi, ahi tuna poke, gyoza, miso soup, and mussels. I LOVE Japanese food!

And this morning we tried out a breakfast hot spot called Penny Ann’s Cafe. My boyfriend and I have heard that it was really popular and had won a lot of awards. Since it is right by where he lives, we decided to check it out. Be prepared to wait if you do! We arrived at 10:30am and had a 45 minute wait for a table of two. Worth it though! I got the pork chili verde skillet with sourdough toast, which was absolutely delicious, and my boyfriend cot the corned beef hash omelette with hot cakes. The hot cakes were really moist and fluffy … I am glad I only had a few bites of his and not one for myself! I didn’t manage to get any photos because we had already dug right into our food before I remembered. Sorry!

How was your weekend? What do you usually do if you hit a plateau?

Don’t forget to enter my giveaway with Harmless Harvest so you can win some delicious coconut water! Enter here

Honestly yours,
Alice

Fitness

Kayla Itsines Round 2 – Week 5

October 26, 2014

I cannot believe it has already been a month since I have started! This month has been so full of workouts, food, friends, ups and downs. It is amazing how much can happen in a month.

Kayla Itsines Round 2 – Week 5

I was really nervous for this week because even though all of the Kayla Itsines workouts are hard, things really get turned up a notch for weeks 5-7 and weeks 6-8. Needless to say, my body felt like lead for most of this week! The arm workout was definitely the most challenging for me though due to the crazy combo of mountain climber push ups, decline push ups, and tricep dips with legs raised. I was only able to get through 1 and a half sets of each arms and abs workout and it was so hard driving back home after lol. I am excited to see how much stronger I get over the next few weeks though and I welcome the challenge (and having my arms more toned!). The abs and cardio workout wasn’t bad at all although I still couldn’t get through 2 sets of each circuit :/ One circuit had 3 minutes of jump rope (which only gave me 4 minutes to run through the rest of the exercises) and in the other circuit, the raised leg sit ups really take me a while to get through. Does anyone else take a while doing raised leg sit ups?

Food wise, this was a great week. I have been obsessed with eating warm brown rice and chicken salad with this fabulous sun dried tomato and herb goat cheese that I picked up at Safeway. It is delicious, healthy and surprisingly quite filling. I also picked up some sprouted ancient grains tortillas at Whole Foods on Friday and have been using that to make delicious turkey wraps with tzatziki. I was particularly hungry during the weekend (think ‘that time of the month’) so I ate a little more than usual. Ooh, and I got an amazing health package delivered to me on Friday by the kind people at Purity Organic! Purity Organic are a local and San Francisco based company that make organic juices, teas and coconut water. Everything I have tasted so far has been so delicious and I am excited to slowly make my way through everything they have to offer 🙂

[Tweet “Make this easy & healthy salad – 2C salad leaves, 1/2C brown rice, grilled chicken, sundried tomato and herb goat cheese!”]

Along with the usual 10 million hours of studying in the library, I attended the Breast Cancer Walk in golden gate park this Saturday morning. It was so much fun! A family friend of mine died from cancer not too long ago and my godfather died of throat cancer, so I loved to think that I was helping out a great cause today. I gave my friends some juice and coconut water which the kind people over at Purity Organic gave me, and they loved them!

Today is rest day (from fitness anyway, I spent the whole day in the library as per usual lol)!

What did you get up to this weekend?

Honestly yours,
Alice xx

P.S. If you missed it, make sure you check out my review on The Balanced Blonde app by clicking here.

Fitness, Health

Kayla Itsines Round 2 – Week 1

September 28, 2014

Today marks the end of week 1 of Kayla Itsines bikini body guide! Feels weird to say that considering I already completed the program a few months ago 😛

Kayla Itsines Round 2 – Week 1

It truly blows my mind how the exercises are still SO HARD. In all fairness, I am using an app I downloaded recently called ‘Pacer’ to keep myself accountable and not rest for too long between sets … but still. Week 1 was HARD. I would have to say that the legs workout was the hardest workout for me this week. I will always have a love/hate relationship with burpees. I absolutely love the benefits of burpees (burns a lot of calories and hits a lot of different muscle groups), but they use up an enormous amount of energy.

Lol, death by burpees – for more silly photos visit my Instagram

I am surprised at how easy it has been to follow and stick to the H.E.L.P guide. For those of you who do not know what this is, the H.E.L.P guide gives you a 7 day meal plan and a general guide to healthy eating. I did not feel at all deprived and in fact felt full of energy throughout the whole week. You eat something from every food group everyday, and I think that aspect of it helps a lot in making sure you do not feel deprived. I can still have my beloved carbs, cheese, and lattes! Lattes are so necessary as a graduate student. The only time I really deviated (i.e. ate out with a friend) was for dinner tonight, but we went to a tapas place so it was still easy to stick to having foods recommend by the H.E.L.P guide. It is pretty flexible so I can honestly go anywhere provided I can get some lean protein, vegetables and complex carbohydrates.

The BBG gets the ‘job done’

And by this I mean you get an effective and intense workout in less than 30 minutes. This is why it is so important to make sure that you are truly pushing yourself throughout the whole workout and pushing yourself to the edge. My ability to do masses of push ups have decreased but I still did as many as I could, right up until my arms gave way lol.

I am excited at how everything has been going so far and I look forward to the challenge of week 2. I weigh myself every Monday, buuut I sneakily weighed myself this morning … 4 pounds lost, eek! I am so happy but I need to not get my hopes up too much. As long as my body looks better, then that is all that matters; I try not to get too hung up by the number on the scale

How did your exercise routine go this week? Did you make sure to push yourself to the max? If you wanna give the BBG a go, you can click on the photo on my sidebar and buy the guides (affiliate link, fyi).

Honestly yours,
Alice xx

BBG review