Yay, it’s Friday! All the days kind of run together a bit right now, but like I’ve said before, Fridays tend to be a nice, calm work day for me since the boys usually wrap up their schoolwork a little earlier.
I was up at 5:00 sharp this morning. I’ve slept good and hard the last couple of nights which has been amazing. It is a foggy, strange looking morning out my window, but I think it’s supposed to clear up and be 72 degrees later, so we’ll take it.
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| Current office window view….hard to tell but it’s FOGGY! |
I’ve been doing early morning workouts, which is different from my usual routine. I have to say, I AM LOVING IT! I don’t know that I would really like going to the gym at this time (having to get in my car, be “presentable”, go outside in the winter…) but throwing on some leggings, brushing my teeth and slipping my sneakers on and being instantly ready to push PLAY is working for me right now. Also, I love being able to then take 3 steps and be in my office, enjoying a cup of tea and writing my blog posts within 5 minutes of finishing my workout.
I just finished the last real workout of Week 3 of Beachbody On Demand’s “The Work” program (tomorrow is a stretch day). I have been beyond impressed with this workout program. It’s been so intense, so fun, so challenging and just so amazing. I usually do my strength routines at the gym, but this has been an incredible change. I feel strong and although it’s really hard (REALLY hard! I am literally gritting my teeth sometimes and talking to myself to keep going, with sweat pouring off of me), I am feeling like a total bad@ss pushing through these workouts.
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| I am a huge sucker for checking things off a list. I get a sort of sick pleasure from completing a task and documenting it. So, this calendar that I printed from the Beachbody website is fitting the bill for me. I know I’m a total nerd, but what can I say. It’s who I am. 🙂 |
A couple things that are helping me out right now:
- Accountability
I met a girl on Instagram who is doing this same program with me (but from her home in Orlando). She is so sweet, so fun to follow along with and it has been extremely motivating to me, knowingthat she is doing the workout too. There have been quite a few days that I’ve been tired or whatever and I know I might have skipped the workout if I were on my own. But because she and I tend to check in with each other once a day, there’s that nagging feeling inside me saying, “Ugh, you aren’t really going to tell her ‘I skipped the workout’, are you??” I’m usually a “solo” exerciser, so this is new to me- but it has been amazingly effective!
- Adopting the mantra “Don’t Think!”
With the morning workouts, I’m not even really fully awake when I get going. This sounds painful, and sometimes it kind of is, but I have been just telling myself “Don’t think.” If I start thinking, it’s all over… I start telling myself I’ll do it later, or maybe I should write my blog post first….NOPE! Just don’t even think about it. For the most part, it just hasn’t even been an option. Get up, get dressed, do the workout. Done. This has been extremely helpful to me and I am proud to say, I haven’t missed a workout yet from this program.
Have a great Friday! Anyone doing anything exciting this weekend? I have…. No plans. Haha! Got a good start on painting the deck rails the other day but now it’s been rainy on and off, so we’ll see if things can dry out to finish that up.
Are you working out during this time? What workouts are you doing? Does anyone do Beachbody? Like I said, I’m usually a total gym rat, but this has been fun!
P.S. First task on my list this morning….as soon as my children wake up, get their butts downstairs to clean up the piano area!! This is how they left it apparently after they finished their virtual lessons last night!! What the heck? Were they raised in a barn?? I wish I could say they are creative geniuses who were composing new pieces in some sort of grand fury….but no. I can guarantee this is just called “laziness”. Or “slobby-ness”, whichever term you prefer. 🙂
5/15:
Steps: 10,223 (juuuust squeaked those 10,000 steps in…)
Meditate: Done!
Read: 30 minutes
Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful for new connections! I had a great chat with an awesome and super interesting girl who lives in South Africa this morning via IG (who I met on the Writing Webinar with my other new buddy 5 am Joel recently). Also, I have really been enjoying chatting and connecting with my new workout friend Megan in Florida. I’m not really one to make a ton of friends very easily, but I am really grateful for a few new connections that have brought some happiness into my life!
GRATEFUL KAE 
I did some beach body programs in 2017 when I was getting married and I really loved them! Then I got pregnant right after getting married and have struggled to fit everything in… but when we are out of this more demanding phase of life/done with family planning, I would like to get a membership again as I loved having access to so many programs!We are doing a little play date this weekend for the first time since COVID struck. But we will be outside at my friend's house and our kids go to the same daycare so are exposed to the same stuff. My friend and I will keep our distance from each other. I'm looking forward to it as I just really need some social interaction right now. Zoom/text/phone calls just aren't enough!
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I hope you enjoy your time with your friend this weekend! We actually did the same thing last night with a neighborhood friend last night. We stayed outside and the kids mostly just biked around and I chatted with my friend in their garage. I thought it would feel so strange to "be around" someone again, but it ended up just feeling totally natural! Sort of like nothing had changed. It was surprising to me. Have a great weekend, Lisa! I'm glad to hear it is going well with your son back at daycare, too. Must be such a relief to just be able to get your work done during work time. 🙂
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Weekend? What's a weekend? All our days are exactly the same! :-p Hoping to get a few outside tasks done but it's supposed to start raining so we will see how far we get. Pizza and movie night tonight and we might Skype with friends in Dublin and play a game with them tonight after the kids go to bed. We are moving into Phase 1 of our recovery on Monday and the hardware stores and garden stores will finally reopen so we have been making lists left and right of tools, paint, seeds, etc that we need to finish various household projects.My main workout program lately is called "The Garden" and it is much harder than I thought it would be! Not sure how whole body it is but I have better shoulder/arm definition than I've had in years! I can see improvement over the past month – I had to wheel a 50 lb bag of manure from the driveway to the garden this morning (about 100 m up hill) and then carry it from the garden gate into the polytunnel and it was soooo much easier than it was a month ago. I've shifted about 20 of those bags – that's alot of horsesh*t! – and I'm quite pleased with my increasing strength.I like your mantra "Don't Think" – I definitely feel like that at 5:45 am when I've already been up in the night with the baby and am so overtired I can't even see. If I just get out of bed and to the door, I'm always happy I did. It's those first few steps that are often the hardest!
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I can definitely see how gardening would be a major workout! I remember seeing your garden, too, when I was there- I'm impressed that you got a 50 lb bag up that hill!! Hope you got to talk with your friends. That sounds fun. I was going to ask if you've been successful in sticking with some early morning wakeups yet! Those first few minutes are always kind of painful, but the reward is great! 🙂
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