exercise Archives - Beth Daigle

The Whole30 – Plus 30

With my computer transition behind me, I can finally focus on other things. It’s incredible how preoccupied I can be when things like a new computer, the holidays and my girls’ basketball schedules consume my attention. Over the past two months a lot of things fell by the wayside; most noticeably – diet and exercise.

Diet – The Whole30

As far as eating and drinking go, I really went all out during the holiday season. While I enjoyed every minute of fun and frolic, it’s time to dial it back. Just after the first of the year, I joined a group of friends to tackle the Whole30. If you’ve not heard, the Whole30 is a nutritional program designed to get you on a healthy track by eating clean foods for 30 days. No sugar, no alcohol, no grain, no dairy and no legumes.

I actually just started getting serious about it this week. Seeing I have felt constantly full for at least a month, it is actually nice to remember what a pang of hunger feels like.

Typically, diets like this (oops, I should say “programs or lifestyles”) are not my thing. But, let’s face it, any lifestyle that doesn’t involve bread, cheese, martinis and the occasional glass of wine is not one I can sustain.

Also, the idea that elimination diets like the Whole30 or Dukan, Atkins or Paleo, often result in the participant gaining weight back when normal eating resumes, seems pointless. But sometimes, it’s more about cleansing than losing weight.

So, I’m approaching the Whole30 from the perspective that a protein and veggie diet is a good thing. Fruits are also OK on the Whole30, which makes it even more appealing.

After the pure gluttony of the holidays (I ate so much bread it was insane), it is now time to detox, deflate and push the button for a hard reset. We are what we eat, after all.

Exercise – 30 Minutes

Now, onto the Plus 30 part of this post. I have decided that instead of wasting two or more hours of my day running back and forth to the gym, I am going to commit to just 30 minutes a day on one of the three pieces of cardio equipment I have at home. I will eventually get bored with this, but if the past month of no gym time at all is any indication; it’s this or nothing.

30 minutes is better than no minutes at all!

My attempt at healthier living this January is not a resolution, just something I want to do to feel better and get some energy back.

But I won’t lie, I’m going to miss my 3 Olives & a Twist martini. Let’s see if I can hold out.

Are you doing anything new to undo holiday damage?

Spinning In & Out of Control

Spin class photo by Pixabay — Outdoor Spin Class – Nice!

In my case, the “out ” preceded the “in,” because, as so many have reported, summer 2016 was out of control with regard to eating, drinking and socializing. It was bad, really bad! I don’t know if it was the never-ending string of warm, dry weather or the fact that we, as a country, are looking to drown our sorrows as we face one of the worst elections in American history. Either way, and I speak for myself, I ate and drank with reckless abandon and now it’s almost October and I’m just getting around to undoing the damage.

Folks, this is not my first time at this rodeo – I do this all the time. I’m always trying to get back on track after having fallen off the healthy horse. Back in March, I blogged about this very thing and crossed my fingers that I would stay on track (Back on Track, 3/2016). Oh well!

So here I go again, looking to get motivated. First things first, I need to cut back on the cocktails. I actually don’t even drink very much, but what little I do really slows me down. I’ve committed to be alcohol free until Halloween. Halloween is random, but I chose it to give myself some structure and also, I don’t have that much on the calendar for October so I thought it was doable. I love Halloween so that seemed a reasonable end date and an opportunity to celebrate what I hope to be good behavior for a month.

Next up – stop eating everything in sight. No fancy diet this time, just dialing back my general consumption habits -bigtime. I once had a facial by a tiny, adorable Swedish woman who told me the best way a woman can lose weight is to “shut her mouth.” OK, I’ll give this a try.

Finally – back to the gym. I don’t know what I was thinking this summer, but I didn’t exercise at all. This was probably the biggest contributor to my downfall.

Thankfully, I’m motivated once again and I’m at a new gym that happens to offer some good Spin classes. I’ve always liked Spinning, but my old gym didn’t have classes that worked with my schedule. Now, after just a few Spin classes, I’m remembering why I like it.

Benefits of Spin Class

It’s a great workout – I sweat like crazy and, for me, that’s a good thing. I totally appreciate the cleansing factor of a good sweat.

The Spin classes I’m doing are 45 minutes long. This is genius. I’ve always done hour long classes and I can’t get over how quickly these 45 minutes classes fly by.

The new Spin bikes have a display that shows RPMs (rotations per minute) and the instructor calls out the exact RPM you should be striving for at each interval. It’s really nice knowing if you should push harder or back off.

Spin class puts me in control and there are days when that really matters. Spinning is an activity that allows you to progress at your own pace without everyone in the class knowing when you aren’t keeping up.

Finally, Spinning is easy on my back and joints – after Spin class I don’t feel quite as achy as I do after higher impact activities. This really helps me to keep going back.

So for now, I spin, I sweat and I swear I will try to keep this going, at least until Halloween. After that, I’ll re-assess -we’ll be closing in on the holidays after all.