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kayla itsines

Fitness, Sunday Summary

Kayla Itsines Round 2 – Week 8

November 23, 2014
Kayla Itsines Round 2 - Week 8

I’m back! … back to doing the Kayla Itsines workouts, that is 🙂

Kayla Itsines Round 2 – Week 8

After last week’s hectic schedule, this week seemed utterly boring and felt like it was dragging on SO slowly. The only particularly interesting thing I did this week was have a lovely baking filled night with a good friend of mine at her place in Santa Clara on Saturday night. Everything else was very mundane and underwhelming (think class, work and the library) although I was presented with a big, fat bill on Friday after getting my car serviced. Just what every student needs!

However, I was very excited to see my first ‘published’ piece up on Fiterazzi.com. Click here to read my post – hint, it’s about organic foods 😉 (update: sadly, the site has gone offline and with it, my article. Let me know if you want me to send it to you!).

Kayla Itsines Round 2 - Week 8

Workouts

My poor legs. After a week of not being worked out they received a crazy and plyo heavy leg workout this week and it seriously took me about x days to feel normal again. The arms and abs, and abs and cardio workouts went pretty well. I was a little slower than I would’ve like in my arm workout as I only managed to do about 1 and a half circuits for each round. All in all a very challenging week of workouts as usual, although the leg workout was particularly brutal. Watch out for it, ladies!

Nutrition

Nutrition-wise, I did well although I definitely ate a bit more than normal for two reasons. A) The temperature really dropped this week in San Francisco due to the rain we’ve had and B) It’s that time of the month 🙂 I’ve still been eating a variety of healthy foods but have added in more carbohydrates and fruits. Although Saturday night was kind of naughty and not particularly healthy hehehe. But it’s all about balance; find your healthy lifestyle balance and you’ll be happier from it.

That’s all from me! I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving. My lovely boyfriend will be flying into the city on Wednesday night which I am verrry excited for and we will be spending Thanksgiving with his parents. And I will continue to do the workouts, and I hope you continue to workout too! Don’t let the holidays stop your progress. Just alter what you do to fit around this busy and wonderful holiday.

What are your Thanksgiving plans? For my non-Americans, how do you deal with working out and eating healthy during the holidays?

Honestly yours,
Alice

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Tea, Healthy Treats & Recovery

November 16, 2014

Despite having a day off of work (but not uni work) due to Veterans Day, this week was busy and jam-packed full of uni, work and social related events. 

On Thursday night, the communication studies department at SF State held a talk with Abdur Chowdhury, former Twitter chief scientist and former chief architect at AOL. Needless to say I was extremely excited to attend the talk and hear what he had to say about social media, coming from the father of hashtags himself. It was a really interesting talk with so much cool information. Although it was all interesting stuff, his discussion of the minimization of social networks was particularly interesting. Check out his app ‘Steven’ to understand a little more of where he is going with that idea.

Social events wise, I attended a fun event at Lorna Jane on Saturday, attended the San Francisco international tea festival this morning, and will dine at Le Cheval in Walnut Creek tonight to celebrate my dear friend Alyssa’s birthday.

Lorna Jane SF

Okay so, the event at Lorna Jane featured Lauren Shaber, a Bay Area healthy living blogger, who was there to share her healthy meal planning tips and to give out samples of healthy treats. The healthy treats were so good and I wish I had taken photos so I could show you all; there were chocolate stuffed raspberries, PB&J power balls (my personal fave) and chocolate peanut butter cookies … mmmmm. It was great to actually meet her in person! She was lovely and I am hoping we will get together soon and try out some healthy hotspots in the Bay Area 🙂

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 San Francisco Tea Festival

On Sunday, a friend and I attended the San Francisco Tea Festival which was held in the Ferry Building in Embarcadero. Ironically we are both half British and thus have a keen appreciation for tea. One of the highlights of this festival was a stand featuring tea flavored chocolates! Now I will let the photos do the talking … be prepared for many, many photos of tea now.

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This blog post is soooo long, I do apologize! I’ll end quickly by telling you how I stayed active this week while ensuring my foot recovered. It basically involved a lot of  the elliptical machine (most boring method of cardio ever), focusing on the core and upper body (thank you Kayla Itsines week 2 arms and abs and pilates reformer), and yoga. I definitely ate a little bit more indulgently this week but it hasn’t really affected me weight wise. For some reason I decided that this week was mocha coffee week and I made a batch of my refined sugar-free and grain-free fudge brownies which I snacked on all week despite giving about 3/4 of it to my housemates!

[Tweet “Grain-free and refined sugar-free fudge brownies! No joke, click for the recipe”]

What did you get up to this weekend? Share, share, share!

Honestly yours,
Alice

Fitness

How to workout with an injury

November 11, 2014
how to workout with an injury

In my latest recap of my Kayla Itsines journey, I let you all know that I was injured. Luckily, it is not too serious (mild perineal tendonitis) but it means that I am taking it easy this week and making sure I do not do anything that exerts too much pressure onto my foot. 

I.e. no Kayla Itsines workouts this week!

How to workout with an injury

I wanted to write this post to help any of you who may be injured and are wondering how to workout with an injury. When you are injured, it is vital to rest and recover to ensure whatever is injured gets better and does not get damaged any further. When you are injured, it is best to workout whatever body part is not injured. Since I hurt my poor foot, I will be focusing on incorporating low impact cardio on the elliptical machine, and focusing on upper body and core workouts. On Friday, I will be attending a pilates reformer class at Mint Studios because it is a low impact workout but still works your muscles like crazy. I will also be focusing on fitting in a few yoga sessions to keep myself flexible and to ensure my mindset stays positive!

For Lower Body Injuries

  • Focus on upper body and core workouts
  • Here are some great upper body and core workouts you can do:
  • Get Flat Abs Fast
  • TRX upper body workout
  • For cardio you can use the rowing machine, the elliptical or do boxing (there are lots of great free resources online such as Youtube where you can find a cardio boxing workout)
  • Check out the local pool and do some laps for a low impact workout

For Upper Body Injuries

  • Focus on your lower body – work those legs and glutes!
  • Here are some awesome lower body workouts you can do:
  • 14 minute leg blast
  • Killer butt workouts
  • Go for power walks or go on a hike with a friend

Hope this helps you! You absolutely can stay fit and healthy even if you may be injured. Just make sure to listen to your body and stop doing something immediately if it is aggravating your injured spot. Be gentle with yourself and soon you will be healed and able to do more intense and all over body workouts again soon.

How did you deal with injuries in the past? 

Honestly yours,
Alice

Featured photo courtesy of Health Me Up