Fitness Friday no. 5

January 15, 2016February 10, 2016 | The Bee Life

Happy Friday! How is everyone doing with their 2016 fitness goals?

I’ve been making slow progress. I signed up for Barre3 – which offers a plethora of online videos at a low monthly cost, and right now that’s exactly what I need. I’m enjoying the challenge and core building exercises, and I’m excited to keep it up once I start training for my 10-miler.

So this week I want to focus on the “little” things that are just as important to your health and fitness, as the actual physical work. What’s that? Maintaining your stress and positive energy.

Fitness Friday 05 - the bee life - emilyboylan.com

1. Confront It. If something or someone is bothering you, confront the situation. I think the word confront often has a negative connotation – but the way you approach the situation is key and doesn’t have to be negative or defensive. Clear your chest and speak your peace, the rest is out of your hands…

2. Lose Control. Speaking of out of your hands, you can only control yourself, aka you cannot control others. So if you’ve spoken your peace, knowing you’ve tried, work on letting go of the rest. You’ll thank yourself later!
*Disclaimer: I know it’s easier said than done.

3. Release The Stress. With exercise! Not food! Personally, I often crave some bad eatings when I am stressed or had a bad day at work – I find I have a small window to get motivated to exercise, but when I do pick exercise over the burger and fries I feel 10x better AND not fat! Challenging your mind to pick fitness over food in those situations is half the battle.

4. Stretch! I’ve mentioned this before; but since I’ve been stretching more I can’t get over how much I can feel it in my muscles and body and how much it helps. It helps release all those stresses that get stored in our body from long days of sitting at a desk or standing on our feet. Try 10-minutes a day, I bet you’ll feel a difference.

5. Reflect on the Good. It’s easy to fixate on the bad, how we didn’t work out, how we ate bad, the jerk at work… and it’s easy to overlook the good. Try writing down on a post-it at least one good thing that happened during your day and tuck it away in a jar, by the end of the year you’ll have a jar full of happy memories, that hopefully also helped you in the current moment – focus on the good. You can also bring this up with a roommate, spouse, or best friend at the end of the day and both share your “goods” of the day.

Keep focusing on your 30-days there is still time to work towards your goals and build good habits!

Fitness Friday

November 20, 2015November 20, 2015 | The Bee Life

Happy Friday! And I’m happy to introduce the first, Fitness Friday! Coming to you live every other Friday with tips and check-ins on your progress and goals (and mine!) and even some tips to help stay in check especially as the holiday season is right around the corner, literally! And with those holidays, colder weather and darker nights – not the ideal conditions for motivation.

seasons greetings from the mckenzie's

Here are some easy tips to remember:

Drink Water: If you aren’t drinking water consistently throughout the day you’re going to be paying for it later on.
Dress for the part: If you have cute workout clothes and new sneaks you’ll want to make your investment worthwhile and get sweaty!
Stay focused, but mix it up: Know the areas you want to work on and focus on those whether it be your arms, abs, butt, legs or all of the above – but remember your muscles will get used to and immune to the same 5 exercises so mix up the routine and add new workouts to your sets!
Stretch: I recently took a 30-minute yoga class during lunch and I can’t tell you how much my body needed that, it was amazing! If only I took a little more time (regularly) to stretch, my body and tense muscles would feel 10x better. I’ve felt the difference the entire week since.
Stay consistent: Getting into a pattern and routine is half the battle, as soon as you get into a groove, you won’t want to miss a beat! The quicker you can start being consistent, the more likely you’ll be on your way to success.

Happy Friday!

Balancing Life

September 14, 2015September 17, 2015 | The Bee Life

Work: “activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result.”

Life(style): “the way in which a person or group lives.”

Balance: “an even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady.”

With no major vacation this year, I am having some serious struggles with my work-life balance, not to mention my workout routine has been nonexistent, and I hate it.

Being able to workout and maintain a healthy lifestyle is something that is important to me, although it mostly annoys me that cost and work get in the way of a large portion of things that make me happy and used to be a huge aspect of my day-to-day routine. Knowing that I am essentially gym-less and on my own to get some motivation (and have to work) I decided to put together a list of items to be more cognizant of starting ASAP at home and at work (because complaining gets you nowhere).

Life

Morning workouts & weekend runs: Waking up an hour earlier to do a set of exercises for 30-40 minutes in the morning is more than I am currently doing – taking advantage of free time on the weekends will balance out anything missed during the week
Breakfast & Coffee at home: Waking up earlier will allow time to prep a breakfast and make coffee, so that I won’t be tempted by Starbucks which is in the lobby of my office building
Walks with Moz: A quick walk at the end of the day allows for the extra motivation and fresh air – maybe even a quick walk in the morning
Yoga before bed: I have a 10-minute yoga routine I do occasionally before bed, it needs to happen more often
Weekly scrap-booking: It’s something I love to do and don’t do enough up, I have a lot of catching up to do! Even if it’s 30-minutes a week

Work

Afternoon fresh air: A quick walk around the block to break up the afternoon and recharge will take 5-10minutes out of the day but have a lasting effect
Packing a lunch & snacks: Will allow for me to save money and not be tempted by a quick sub or the leftovers in the cafe
Stay above the crap: It’s so easy to get sucked in or be the hitting board for someone’s bad day – remembering to stay above that and not sweating the small stuff
Drinking more water: No explanation needed

I want to start with little items that can be accomplished in order to stay focused and not get overwhelmed, creating good habits is half the battle – so starting small makes sense. How do you maintain a good balance between life and work?

5:2 First Week Recap

January 28, 2015January 28, 2015 | The Bee Life

One week on the 5:2 is officially under my belt. I can’t wait to see the long-term benefits, especially once I get more used to the flow, calorie counting, etc. For those of you who are new to the 5:2, in short it’s a “diet” where you fast for 2-days out of the week. This means that you only consume 500 calories throughout the entire fast day. 500 total calories, not each meal. The Fast Diet book that I have read and been working from (cookbook too) is found here: The Fast Diet by Michael Mosley and Mimi Spencer. Not only are there a lot of long-term health affects to this, on top of loosing weight and maintaining a healthy weight, but you don’t have a radical lifestyle change, it’s only two days of the week and the other five days you can eat responsibly as you please!

Lesson’s Learned:

Plan better with meals, especially dinner and snacks
It’s all mental, knowing you can’t eat just makes you want to eat everything
Need to get a kitchen scale for measuring food!

My Meals:

Breakfast
- 4-egg whites with 10 cherry-tomatoes and basil pieces = 94 calories
Optional Snack
- 8-almonds (96 calories) + 15 blackberries (18.75 calories) = about 115 calories
Dinner
- Night one:
  - Turkey Burgers with Tomato Salsa = 333 calories
- Night two:
  - Chicken with Tomato’s and Olives + Tablespoon of hummus = 404

Obviously the math is off and I was slightly over by about 50 calories… oops! *smiles*

Have you tried the 5:2 Fast Diet? What have you learned?

Happy New Year. Happy New You!

January 7, 2014July 18, 2014 | The Bee Life

A belated Happy 2014 to all!

Call me cliche, but I really feel like this is going to be a good year. Not that 2013 was bad, but there were some moments (as there will always be!)

I started to write a few goals down for the New Year, which I haven’t done before. Which is ironic because, I have always been a firm believer that if you write something down and see it every day, it will eventually happen.

Here are a few of my 2014 Goals;

1) Run a half marathon
2) Read at least one book a month
3) Become an AE
4) Get back into my workout routine – strengthening and cardio
5) Save more money!
6) Take more trips with Bentley
7) Write more on my blog/journal
8) Don’t hold grudges/ be less stubborn
9) Continue to eat healthier

I hope that writing down my 2014 goals will help me strive and achieve self-improvement for a happier life! Writing my goals down has allowed me to reflect on some things that I may or may not want to admit to myself! ie: #8 The good thing about goals is that they can be small and simple or they can be big and require more work. I love taking on a challenge, especially when it’s myself, I can be my own biggest critic sometimes.

For more reflection and self-guidance, Bentley and I are reading a book together, called; “Where Will You Be Five Years from Today?” by Dan Zadra. It’s an interactive work book that allows you to fill out your top values in life, dreams, goals, which ultimately helps for you to assess your life and allow you to be your most productive self over the next 5 years. Reaching and meeting those goals and dreams that you long to accomplish.

In five years I’ll be 29! Eeek!!

The book provides some amazing examples of what people have accomplished in five years, for example;

Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel in under five years.
After loosing their jobs, Arthur Blank and Bernie Marcus created and went public with their business model, Home Depot. Three years later their annual sales reached $1 Billion.

It’s a pretty interesting and thought provoking book, it’s helped me put my life and goals in prospective, although we haven’t finished the book I have been impressed with the first 6 pages!

So here is too a happier you and happier new year! Make this year, a year for you and a year for your future.

Cheers!

xo-eb

Fun ending to 2013 and beginning of 2014!