I am not a vegetarian, vegan, or anything. I am not on a crash diet, flush, or fast. I'm just a young mother trying to eat better and get my kids to do the same. I fell in love with vegetables during my last pregnancy, and that's usually what I have for lunch. Most of my reason for starting this blog is to document the simplicity of the healthy meals I eat so that others can enjoy them as well, even in a short amount of time (or with one hand, as is often my case).

Friday, June 27, 2014

TV Show Workouts

I have reached a decision. My baby weight is not coming off as quickly as I thought/hoped it would, and it's really been bugging me. But here's the thing: It's not a big deal. Of course it would be fantastic if I could fit into all my cute clothes again, instead of rotating through my race T-shirts and not feeling all that attractive, but listen. I'm healthy. I eat healthy, and I try to work out at least 3 days a week, and I have a 4 month old baby! So I'd say I'm doing pretty well.

I did have a few weeks where I lost 4 lbs, and that was awesome. I did cardio almost every day those weeks, and it led to a potential stress fracture in my ankle. Go me. So now my options are down to elliptical or swimming, both of which require working around Hannah's shaky sleep habits, so it's not always possible to get my cardio in.

Basically it comes down to this: I will not get in more than two days of cardio a week, and I'll be lucky if I can even get one. But I recently learned something cool -- 1 lb of muscle burns 100 calories a day! So I'm going to try to get in some strength training every day.

How am I going to do this? you may ask. The answer is simple: I'ma watch me some TV!

Have you seen these workouts that are tied to TV shows? I have a bunch pinned on Pinterest, but I haven't been able to find one for all the shows that I watch. A friend pointed out the other day that I can just make my own by looking for a drinking game for the show. I didn't realize drinking games were that popular, I guess, probably because I don't drink ;)

So I spent the afternoon looking up drinking games for some new shows I'm getting into. Hopefully these work out well, because I haven't watched enough of these shows to know the frequency of the triggers. I guess we'll find out :)

So here is the workout I came up with. Basically I'm just looking up drinking games for whatever show I want to watch and assigning this list of workouts to them, so if this is not a show you watch that's what I'd suggest doing :)Feel free to change out the workouts or increase/decrease the reps on any of them - the reps I've listed are about at the level I'm at, or a little lower to allow completion of the entire workout :) Again, these are purely strength based, there's no cardio, no jumping, no running, nothing that would aggravate a sore ankle. I'm kind of worried that the lunges might, but we'll give them a shot.

I've linked each workout to a video that shows what to do, in case you are unfamiliar with one. Also please note that I'm only doing side planks - that's a personal thing, feel free to do regular planks. They just hurt my chest right now so I'm laying off a bit :)



Chuck Workout
Every time...                                                     Do...
Anyone says "Chuck"                                      15 sit ups
Anyone says "Morgan"                                    5 metronomes to each side
Anyone says "Intersect"                                   15 hip raises
Chuck flashes                                                   60 bicycle crunches
You see the inside of Buy More                       30 side plank on each side
You see the outside of Buy More                     30 second wall sit
There's a slow-mo scene                           20 cross-body hammer dumbbell curl
There's an explosion                                        20 lunges
Chuck ignores orders                                        15 triceps dips
There's an awkward Chuck/Sarah moment     20 dumbbell bicep curls

Captain Awesome says "Awesome"                5 half bridges
Bryce Larkin is mentioned or shows up           50 squats