The New Jules: Day 1 =)

Today for the Bikini Challenge from Tone It Up, I combined Day 1 and Day 2 (since you're supposed to start on a Monday but today was Tuesday).  The everyday requirements include drinking half your body weight in ounces of water-- so I'm aiming for 65-70 oz-- as well as eat a lean, green, clean dinner that doesn't include heavy starches, cheeses or fried food.  In my family, we always eat dinner between 8:30pm and 9:00pm so another goal of mine is to not eat past 7pm and be in bed by 11pm.  I'm hoping this isn't too ambitious 'cause I want to succeed!

Anywho, here's how my newly fit day went!

The challenge for Day 1

For Bikini Challenge Day 1, I woke up 30 mins early and did the Body Slim DVD from YogaWorks.  It was fun!  They alternate "deep burn" poses with "cardio" poses, taking you through the most common poses at a great pace.  It was a nice combination of static poses (like Warrior II, Triangle Pose and Side Plank) and flowing poses (including three variations on Sun Salutation).  And in case you're a total yoga newbie, they have someone doing slightly modified poses.  For more information on poses, the Yoga Journal website is a great place to start =)  You can also find the DVD that I did this morning at Amazon.com!

The challenge for Day 2

Fast forward a few hours.  I spent the afternoon doing housework so Real HouseMom could come home to a clean house after a week at my grandparents' lake house, and I modified my fitness plan (see update below).  I'm addicted to Pretty Little Liars on ABC Family so I had to watch it at 7pm.  Well, dinner took a lot longer to make than anticipated so I ended up eating around 7:30, which isn't too bad for my first attempt.  Once I finished eating (and the Rosewood drama had subsided for the week), it was time to do the 2nd half of my challenge workouts for today.  I did the Day 2 Bikini Strap Workout with my 5-lb hand weights on the floor of my living room while watching TV.  They said to do 12-20 reps of each move, so I aimed for 15 since I'm not exactly in peak condition right now.  Some of the moves were a little more tiring than others but I did 3 sets of each of the moves and it felt good!

Bikini Challenge Day 1 Summary Checklist:

• Check in with the Tone It Up girls: Almost check!  Once this post is finished, I'll link it in a tweet to them-- and you'll be able to see it in my Twitter box on the right.
• Drink 65-70 oz water: Check!  My 24 oz blue Camelbak has the lines marked on it so it's super easy to see how much I've drank.  I drank 2 bottles already and have about 5 oz left in the third one, so that would be about 67 oz =)  I also had two glasses of sweetened (not sweet) tea...
• Eat lean, green and clean for dinner: Mehhh kind of failed this one.  I ate with my mom and we had whole grain brown rice with a frozen Chinese stir fry.  No breads or potatoes AND a healthy portion of veggies, but the sauce was probably pretty high in sodium and added sugars =/
• And I'm so excited to be developing these great new habits!!  Although a printable version of the challenge would be SUPER helpful *hint hint* =)

Running update: Since I live in Chicago and one of the best half marathons in the country is the Chicago Half Marathon, I asked around a little bit to see if any of my friends will be running it.  Turns out, several of my friends are signed up for it!  In case you didn't know, I'm do a lot of stuff on impulse.  A lot.  An hour after I heard back from my friends, I registered for the half marathon.  And since it's a month sooner than the one I was originally considering, I found this 10-week training program from Fitness Magazine-- which is perfect because the HM is Sunday 9/11 and that's 10 weeks away!  Since it's already after 11pm (which was when I was going to try to go to bed every night!) and creepy dark out, I'm postponing my run to first thing in the morning.  I'll let you know tomorrow how day 2 goes and I'll try to get some "before" pictures so I'll have something to compare with in a couple months!

Have a great hump day =)

-Jules