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

Kayla Itsines Round 2 – Week 4

October 19, 2014

I cannot believe it has already been a month since I jumped back onto the Kayla Itsines train! Although the last two weekends have seen me indulging a bit much, I can see that my arms and core are much tighter, and that my clothes are fitting better. I decided not to weigh myself because it is coming up to be ‘that time’ of the month and because I had more food than I should’ve this weekend. Oops! I do not want to discourage myself so I will weigh myself again in a few weeks and focus on the physical changes more. I will have to be more active in ensuring that I do not indulge every weekend. Every few weekends sure, but I want to give my all during my Kayla Itsines challenge.

Kayla Itsines Round 2 – Week 4

The rest of the week food-wise was fine though. I am obsessed with having brown rice in my salads as it makes them much heartier and gives a great texture. I met up briefly with a good friend of mine this morning and we got some green smoothies! Needless to say, I made a custom smoothie and while it was very healthy, the taste was not so fun. I don’t know why the photo is so small! If you go to my Facebook page, you can see a bigger sized version of the photo 🙂

Fitness wise, I feel SO much stronger! My big weakness for this week was previously the push ups with mountain climbers, and although I am still not 100% at them, I was able to do much more in a row than I could two weeks ago. Ahh, progress is so satisfying! I had the most ridiculous experience at the gym on Friday by the way guys. I normally always workout in the group exercise room at the gym because it tends to be less full and there is more space to workout. There was thing young guy (guessing 14 or 15) who I kid you not, was facetiming his girlfriend. He kept doing a few burpees every couple of minutes and saying ‘I love you’ constantly too. I tell you, I was SO frustrated!! Plus I forgot my headphones so I could hardly drown the guy out. Ugh. Sorry for the tangent, just had to share with you. Who comes to the gym to Facetime people and do 30 burpees in the space of 20 minutes? Thank goodness I look like such a bad ass doing my Kayla Itsines workouts (might be exaggerating heehee). Especially with my new ASICS 😀