Monday, January 2, 2012

A health and fitness post to kick off the New Year

I started this blog a little over a year ago. At that time it had a heavy focus on my journey through post pregnancy weight loss, healthy eating and lifting weights/ fitness. Then by the summer I had reached my goal. We were eating clean. I was exercising and lifting heavy and I was down to my lowest weight since my very early 20's.

In August I stopped nursing my daughter, put back on about 5lbs, which was probably a more realistic weight for my body and kept up my routine for another month. In September we were shocked to find out I was pregnant. We were sort of trying, but I hadn't even got my period back from nursing.

Fast forward a few weeks and enter morning sickness...or better yet, ALL DAY sickness. It was bad, really bad. I had constant migraines and was literally on the verge of puking ALL day. I stopped eating my usual healthy, veggie rich diet and ate whatever I could keep down. For a few days that was plain noodles. It was tough because I felt horrible and knew I was taking steps backwards in all I had accomplished.

As I entered the 2nd trimester things went back to almost normal. I haven't been eating AS healthy but I am at least getting more variety. I have been pretty exhausted and that leads to less cooking, but I am hoping that might change.

The one bright spot in the early pregnancy woes is that I was pretty good about getting to the gym. I believe I had one really bad week where I only made it once, but otherwise I have gone at least 3 days a week. Sure, it isn't as good as the 5 I was going before, but I am okay with that at this point. Now that I am feeling much better I have been going 4 days. It helps me keep a balance, 3 mornings of "sleeping in" (which means 6;6:30) and 4 morning of early wake-ups and fitness.

So that is where I am at right now. I am just ending a nice, long vacation and I feel well-rested. My husband is back to wanting to eat as clean as possible and so I am hoping with his encouragement we can do a bit better in our diet through this second half of pregnancy.

I have tried to keep my workouts to at least two days of strength training, so what does that look like for me? Here's what I did this morning:

-20 minutes, high intensity intervals on the elliptical (I find I need a longer warm-up to get this preggo body going)

-3x's 10 of romanian deadlifts

Alternating sets of
 One leg, leg presses on press machine (3x's 12) 40 lbs
Lat pull downs (3x's 10) 50 lbs

Alternating sets of
Free weight shoulder press (3x's 10)
Squats on reebok core bored w/ 20 lb kettlebell raises (3x's 12)

Alternating sets of
Kettle bell oblique sidebends (15 lbs in each hand x's 3 sets)
Various ab work with 10 lb medicine ball (3x's 15)

End with stretching with foam roller (hurts go good)

As you can see, it is nothing too crazy, but hopefully will keep me strong enough that I will not have to start at square one after delivering this little girl.

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