Uforia Studios: San Francisco

April 24, 2015

I had planned to go to the Japantown Cherry Blossom Festival Parade, and so I thought it would be a great idea to try out a class at Uforia Studios early in the morning so I could head to the parade straight after. I confess that I never actually went to the parade as I couldn’t find anyone to go with me (and it was SO cold that day), but I have to tell you about how my class at Uforia Studios was!

Uforia Studios

I was kindly invited to try out a class of my choice at their newest location in Nob Hill, and after some mulling over their class choices, I decided on a grit class. Their website states that grit is “a perfect blend of conditioning and cardio … build long and lean muscles!’ – hey, sounds good to me!

The class was at 9am and with the knowledge that finding parking in San Francisco is such a tossup, I woke up around 8am (so hard on a Sunday) and drove off with a green smoothie in hand (recipe coming soon by the way). Luckily, parking was suuuper easy to find and I arrived there with plenty of time to spare. I was given a water bottle because I was a first-timer, which I thought was such a sweet gesture! Already pretty impressed, I had a little peek around the rest of the studio before class. It is a gorgeous space! It has a really modern feel to it and it is just beautiful … you need to see it to get what I’m talking about!

Grit

Okay, so onto the class. I was hoping for minimal upper body work because for some reason, I had been working out my upper body a lot last week. Although there was of course upper body work, we also did some lower body work, ab work and lots of high intensity moves. I really liked that we used a variety of equipment including gliders, a box and light weights. Although I thought the weights were a little light, we did a high amount of reps which really made everything burn. Although I felt like killing the instructor, Lee, during the workout, I felt so full of energy and good about myself for having done such a fantastic workout. And on a Sunday morning, no less! Oh plus, they offer you a cold towel and blueberries after class – really nice and thoughtful touch.

A Special Offer

Grit have been kind enough to offer not one, but TWO amazing deals for you guys! If you use the code honestlyfitness when choosing a class on their website, you will get that class free. And then you can tell me what you think about uforia studios 🙂 Also, if you want to buy a classpack, you can use the code honestlyfitness-20% and this will take off 20% of any class pack you purchase. FYI, they also have a location in Palo Alto, which is much easier to get to if you’re in the South Bay.

So, I’ve got your weekend plans sorted 😉 These are both such generous offers and I highly suggest you take advantage of them. I seriously can’t wait to know what you think about them; let me know how the other classes are since I haven’t tried them out yet! Here’s a sneak peek of what you can expect at Uforia Studios.

Honestly yours,
Alice

Disclaimer: I was given a free class at Uforia, and I get a small portion from every classpack bought. My thoughts are always my unbiased and own, and I only showcase what I think will be helpful for your health and fitness journey, and I thank you for supporting the brands that support Honestly Fitness.

Blogs I love, Fitness, Health, Sunday Summary

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 🙂

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.

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

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!