Tone It Up Week One

I just finished week one of this 8-week journey with "Tone It Up" and I am pretty excited about it so far. If you haven't heard of Tone It Up check out the fabulous Karena & Katrina here. 

So I've been an avid Crossfit junkie for three years but after some recent soul searching I realized that I need to take a step back and pursue some other fitness options. My best friend did Tone It Up last year before her wedding and she looked g-o-r-g-e-o-u-s; so when we heard that K&K were releasing Beach Babe 4, we joined the team! PS: You can buy the Beach Babe 4 or you can do the free workouts they suggest in its place, both are great.

There is a daily workout plus usually some accessory work and all of it is done in 20-50 minutes depending on the day. So let me be honest here- I'm in my final week of Crossfit where I lift daily, so when I saw the weights used for the TIU workouts were 4-10lbs. I thought it would be easy. I was wrong. Horribly wrong. I've been using 8lb weights and I've been absolutely dying!! It just goes to show that different kind of workouts work-out different muscles in your body. Overall I've loved the workouts and they've kicked my booty (especially the beach booty workouts, ha).

Workouts are one thing but honestly where I fall short is food. I love food and it makes or breaks you in the gym that's for sure. This week I killed it with the food plan and I feel so much better it's kind of stupid. I even texted my friend and told her I think I have abs coming in (which I don't, but I just feel that less-bloated! ha). So here is a quick compilation of what I ate during week 1: 

Monday

M1: Scarmbled eggs + 1/2 Banana

M2: Strawberries + Protein Banana Muffin

M3: Turkey burger (crumbled) + grapes + cucumber wedges + bed of greens + sweet potato chips

M4: No time

M5: Pork tenderloin + oven roasted veggies

Tuesday

M1: Egg cups (with peppers, mushrooms, spinach and ground turkey) + stawberries + booty call shot

M2: Raspberries and Greek yogurt + protein banana muffin

M3: Bed of lettuce and argulua with leftover pork tenderloin + cranberries + raspberries and grapes with balsamic and blue corn chips

M4: Larabar + cutie

M5: Zoodles with grilled chicken in homemade pesto

Wednesday

M1: Veggie and Turky egg cup (peppers, mushrooms, spinach and turkey) with 1/2 cup Greek yogurt and raspberries

M2: Banana and two banana protein muffins (oops, too much banana)

M3: GF wrap with grilled chicken, lettuce, mayo/mustard + grapes + mango

M4: Starbucks Acai tea lemonade with 1/2 the sweetner

M5: Avocado balsamic chicken + steamed peas 

Thursday

M1: 2 Egg cups (veggies + turkey) and 1/2 cup Greek yogurt and raspberries

M2: 1/2 banana + protein banana muffin + grapes

M3: Leftover balsamic avocado chicken + sweet potato chips

M4: Veggies with hummus and stawberries

M5: Tilapia + small sweet potato + green beans

Friday

M1: Homemade oatmeal with maple syrup and raisins + Green smothie

M2: Banana protein muffins

M3: GF wrap with ham, spinach, cheese, mayo-mustard mix + stawberries

M4: No time

M5: Homemade chicken tikki masla over rice 

Saturday

M1: Greek yogurt with fresh berries + Turkey Veggie Egg Cup

M2: Banana Protein Muffin

M3: Pesto shrimp + mango + strawberries + tropical smoothie

M4: No time

M5: Chicken pad thai (my 'splurge' meal)

Sunday

M1: Scrambled eggs + 1 piece of GF toast and peanut butter + strawberries

M2: Larabar

M3: Tuna on a rice cake and cheese + argugula salad with grapes and sunflower seeds + pineapple
M4: (not pictured) trail mix with peanuts, raisins, almonds and M&Ms (technically not 'compliant')

M5: burger on bed of arugula, pineapple, goat cheese and balsamic +  sweet potato fries + watermelon

Today (Sunday) I am going to meal prep for the week ahead which includes washing and cutting veggies to be roasted later this week or dipped in hummus, washing and cutting fresh fruit, mixing any dressings or dips I'm going to use, dicing and slicing chicken and making turkey burger patties, making homemade paleo granola and portioning out yogurt and cottage cheese for the week. Looking forward to week two and feeling even better. If you're looking for a new lifestyle to refresh your whole body, mind and soul join with me!!!

Goal for the week: Do all of the workout videos + look for a "goal" trip to take with my best friend when we complete this 8-weeks.

A Spot of Tea

So here’s the gym I’ve been talking about for the past few days. It’s tiny compared to American standards, but it gets the job done. My favorite part is that they have wifi, so I’ve been hitting up the bike like nobody’s business and getting back to one of my loves: PINTEREST!! I can’t get Pinterest to come up on my laptop over here for some reason; anyways…I digress; I still need to figure out the conversion of my weight from pounds to kilograms or whatever they use here, because every machine needs my weight and I am totally guessing what the conversion is! I need to google that. 

Thursday I woke up to a rare occurrence here in Northern England, sunshine! I walked to the bus stop to head to the gym without a jacket or my umbrella because the sun was shinning and it wasn’t raining. I love walking to the bus stop early in the morning, between 8 and 8:30 because in Keele Village we live next to an elementary school, so I love seeing all the parents walk their kids in their precious uniforms every morning. Rain or shine, parents take the bus and walk all the way to school in their cute red and black uniforms. The girls wear red tights with a black jumper dress, and the boys wear black pants with a red shirt, a tie, and a blazer. It’s just so English. This morning all the kids were out laughing and playing in the “gardens” before school started; it was so nice to just close my eyes, hear the laughter and the warmth of the sunshine on my cheeks.

I caught the bus back to Hawthorns and changed into a town-appropriate outfit (my tennis shoes and Nike stuff just wasn’t going to cut it), heated up the other ‘sausage roll’ I bought from town yesterday, and headed out towards Stoke-on-Trent.

I go off the bus at the Stoke Train Station which is this absolutely stunning old building with some gorgeous architecture. I’ve been on a mission to find Mom & Kelly a hotel to stay in while they visit me so I marched into the train station to inquire about a hotel, but it turns out the ONLY hotel in Stoke-on-Trent is the “hotel-from-hell” as the people on TripAdvisor have dubbed it. So that was an epic fail. It looks like Mom & Kelly will be staying in Newcastle in a quaint cottage or B&B while they’re here :)

Although Stoke-on-Trent didn’t look like much of a town, and it was starting to drizzle (I’ve become smart and carry an umbrella in my Longchamp bag at all times), I decided to discover the town anyways. Staffordshire College is in Stoke-on-Trent which is where English students go from the ages of 16-18 or the “gap years” as they call them, which are the years between high school and when they go to university. It’s an optional two years of schooling, but it’s basically like a glorified high school, or so it appears.

So because of that, with the average age of residents of Stoke on Trent being 17, you can imagine the town was a bit…sketchy. However, I kept on walking because I saw a sign that said Hanley Park was up ahead. I drugged on through the cobblestone pathways and came across Hanley Park which had a beautiful and tranquil lake. It was a quiet little park, full of ducks and geese, an occasional older couple walking hand-in-hand and a few people feeding the pigeons. I walked all around the lake in the light drizzle enjoying the older couple ahead of me sharing an umbrella and occasionally stopping to stare off into the lake where the ducks quacked playfully. 

After finding my way out of Hanley Park, I caught the bus into Hanley City Center which was actually a large town. The town was bustling with people and pigeons! There was a town market again full of fresh fruits and vegetables and street vendors selling potato jackets (baked potatoes) and fish & chips! I wandered into some of the more metropolitan stores such as The Potteries, Gap, and TK Maxx! It wasn’t as cute and quaint as Newcastle but it was nice to experience the city-vibe in Northern England for a change of pace.

Oh, and on the way back to Newcastle I jumped off the bus at this old church I’d seen just to see what it was. It was St. Peter’s Church. The grave yard was mysterious and eerie but quite peaceful at the same time; and the church itself was a beautiful beacon on top of a hill, with grand gothic architecture elements. Very beautiful!

Now I’m sitting in the Chancellor’s Building coffee shop with a spot of Earl Gray tea and a chocolate muffin listening to the Pride & Prejudice soundtrack on my Mac. It’s been a full day of exploring towns, and now I’m quite ready for the bangers & mash my flatmates are going to prepare me tonight!!

Baby It's Cold Outside

Today is so cold, my nose might fall off! They’re completely numb currently :) I got an e-mail from the I.T. Office last night telling me to come into the office, and I had been so nervous they were going to tell me that my laptop had exploded or something and was completely unfixable!

[Side-note: for those of you who don’t know, my laptop had stopped playing sound on Saturday so I brought it to the IT Desk to see if they could help me figure it out, and they broke it instead! Well sort of, anyways. They were doing a system update and didn’t plug it in when they did it, so it died half way through and my computer wouldn’t start afterwards!! They had no idea what was wrong with it, so they had to keep it and they said they didn’t know how long it would take to fix!! So I’ve been using a loaner laptop they laoned me] 

Anyways, I went to the I.T. Office this morning on pins and needles. Luckily, my laptop was alive!! Yay. They weren’t ready for me to take it, but they wanted me to come in and see the updates they’d done. They still haven’t fixed the sound, which is why I went into them in the first place so they said it may take a few more days before I could actually have it back. However, at least its up and running again.

Then I went to the gym for about an hour where I found a wifi spot, so I was able to check e-mails, Facebook and Pinterest; it was awesome. I love it when I actually recieve wifi on my phone :) Afterwards, I caught the bus back to my block where my roommate was still sleeping at 11:35, so I made myself a pita-peanut-butter-sandwhich and headed to ‘X’ block which is one of the common areas in Hawthorns where they have free wifi, and I talked to mom for a while and am now watching ‘Under the Tuscan Sun’ all bundled up in my jacket and Hunter’s because I’m so stinking cold!!

Tonight I think I’m going out with the people in my flat to ‘Quiz Night’ which is a fresher’s week activity :) you answer random questions, like a quiz I guess, and can win prizes. Here’s hoping my toes and nose don’t fall off before then!!