Happy Monday! It’s the start of another week and I am finding myself energized and motivated! This is the first Monday I have felt this way in quite some time and I am enjoying it so far.

The weekend was pretty good for the most part. Andrew’s parents got us a really nice grill for Christmas/Housewarming and with the unseasonably warm weather we have been having in Iowa, we are taking FULL advantage of it. The great thing I love about grill is that it is fast, easy and for the most part healthy. There are some definite bad decisions that can be made, but as long as you make the choice to keep it healthy, it can be.

After the gym on Saturday I treated myself to a Panera bagel and coffee. It was so nice to pat myself on the back with a good job for getting my put to the gym in the mornings. I decided, while enjoying my bagel at Panera, that I will only treat myself if I have met my workout goals for the week. This will help give me something to look forward and a tasty goal to reach. Also, if I get to have my “treat” I will take that time to create my workout (and eventually food) plan for the rest of the week. This week I am still trying to reinforce the habit of waking up and working out, so while I want to push myself a little harder for my workouts, I still know that I can’t go to hard and wear myself out so soon.

I am definitely sore from my workouts, which is a good thing and means that even with the less intense session I am still making something happen. It took a few days for my mood to really start improving due to the workouts, but yesterday and today I feel great and can’t help but think that working out is helping that. I have always been a goal oriented person, so having some success is going a long way for me.

After this week I will be starting to work on two major things. First, I want to plan my workouts and make sure that I am getting the most out of each session. I will be alternating strength training and cardio with a few interval sessions in the mix somewhere. Planet Fitness just opened in my town and I was very excited. I went to that gym in College and like the fact that they are open 24 hours during the week. They also have a interval room that is timed and designed for you already. I have 6 days of workouts so I think I will try to work in two days of intervals, two days of strength (upper and lower) and two days of cardio. My hope is that I can continue to find new things to do and change it up so I won’t get bored. I am going to try and look up some exercise and create some plans this week so I can make some decisions during my Panera treat (hopefully).

Second, I need to start working on my eating. I have never been able to conquer both working out and eating right at the same. Usually I go hard care either way and ignore the other. This time I want to take it step by step and strive for a good balance. As I mentioned in a previous blog, my lifestyle just won’t call for health food every day, but I can make good choices everyday and allow myself some slack when a bad choice slips in. The important thing will be to not fall apart. I am starting slowly with this as it is usually my weakest area, so my plan for this week to start preparing for better eating is to drink more water at work. This is a pretty easy thing to do; I just have to make it happen!

Talk to you all tomorrow!!