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 😀

That’s all from me! I have to get back to doing work and studying, sigh. Who else here is a graduate student? Can we complain together please?!

Keep your eyes peeled for an exciting post tomorrow which may involve free stuff … wait, what? 😉

Honestly yours,
Alice xx

P.S. Don’t forget to subscribe to Honestly Fitness to get early insider scoop as to what is happening tomorrow!

Fitness

Kayla Itsines Round 2 – Week 3

October 12, 2014

Out of the past three weeks, I have to say that this week was probably the most successful. I could tell that I had become much stronger because even though the workouts were still hard, I paused a lot less and I was able to do two rounds of each circuit for most of the workouts. I still found the burpees and push ups a little hard but they definitely were not as killer as they were doing the first week.

Kayla Itsines Round 2 – Week 3

Got some cute new workout clothes from CottonOnBody to help keep me motivated and … because they are amazing!

1. Couldn’t find the exact same top, but this one is similar
2. Printed Core Capri
3. Running Short

New workout clothes!!! That was a good workout, I felt so motivated haha

I am continually surprised at how good my progress is my second time around. I have lost more weight than I ever thought possible in the past 3 weeks; I have lost 7 pounds so far! For those who are regular readers of the blog, you will know that I do not think that weight loss is that important. However, I am pleased because I have been carrying around an extra 10 pounds for the past year and a half that I have not been able to shake so this is definitely a mini victory for me. I went on a very low carb diet about 2 years ago where I got quite thin, but then as with all drastic diets, I gained the weight back as soon as I started including carbs back into my diet again. It is really motivating to see that my body is responding so well to eating healthily, and getting enough nutrients from every food group without excluding anything. It just goes to show how dangerous drastic and exclusionary diets can be.

Fitness and health aside, I am in Salt Lake City for the weekend and having a great time. I took Alaska Airlines as they offer affordable tickets and I literally had one of the best flight experiences I have ever had! First off, the plane was half empty so I got a whole aisle all to myself. Secondly, the flight is only an hour and a half long which is NOTHING compared to some of the international flights I have taken. A flight from San Francisco to Phuket (where my parents live) alone includes at least 1 stopover and is about 18 hours overall … it is pretty horrible. I have not got much planned as I have a lot of work to get done, but I want to try a few new restaurants while I am here. Salt Lake City has a surprisingly good variety of restaurants and some of the best Mexican food I have ever eaten.