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100 calorie whole grain sandwich thin, Teddie's all natural peanut butter, and sliced banana

Eating a quick and easy breakfast for dinner while I blog tonight.

Since I felt short on time tonight, I decided it was more important to spend my time getting a healthy lunch packed for tomorrow than it was to spend time making an elaborate meal tonight.

Healthy Tip:  Make it a routine to make your lunch the night before.  Once it becomes a habit, it’s more annoying to NOT make a point to make it!

• Benefit:  Not having to rush around in the morning before heading out for the morning commute.
• Benefit:  Not having to buy lunch = you control what you will put into your mouth.
• Benefit:  Not having to buy lunch  = money saver!

When I say make my lunch, I really mean prepare my food for my entire 9-5 workday.  I tend to eat a lot of smaller options throughout the whole day rather than your typical three bigger meals.  Sometimes I get comments at work about “all the food” I pack in my bag for the day, but I don’t care – it keeps my metabolism up, which means I burn up more calories and therefore more fat during the day!  Also, it helps to keep my hunger level down which is important to prevent over-eating when it does come time for that bigger meal.

Tomorrow’s food plan:  For breakfast, low fat cottage cheese with cinnamon and blueberries.  Almonds for a mid-morning snack.  For lunch, a salad with mushrooms, yellow pepper, tomatoes, cucumber, broccoli, grilled chicken, and shredded mozzarella.  And my new favorite salad dressing – Ken’s Lite Raspberry Pomegranate.  I also packed a pomegranate Chobani yogurt and some green grapes to snack on throughout the afternoon.

I’ll need to keep my energy level up since Tuesdays are a double class night!

Anyways, back to tonight.  After an almost two week hiatus, I made it back to CBC.  I carpooled over to Somerville with Liz and Jen (my fellow instructor friends) and we all caught up on our respective trips that have kept us away from the Y and CBC the past two weeks.  There were a lot of “Only you guys would appreciate this” as we exchanged on the road workout stories and highlights.  So true!

I was excited because Liz brought me a Corpbasics bracelet.

I rocked it during class.  🙂

Tonight’s lineup was Perfect Lines, followed by Jam’N Cardio Kix, or Kix as we refer to it as.

From the Corpbasics’ website descriptions:

Perfect Lines:  This class will help you create the look of a ballet dancer’s long, lean muscles. Using the ballet barre, transform the shape of your body by combining principles of isometrics, ballet conditioning and stretching, and interval training isolating the thighs, hips, glutes, and core.

Tonight for Perfect Lines, Christina had us warmup by doing some knee raises, and then we headed for the barre right away.

• Move 1, on both sides:  1 leg up on the barre, to the side.  Stretch up and over toward the raised foot. Then turn to face the bar, leg still up.  Reach up and over toward the same raised foot.  Then reach arms overhead and hold.  To finish, lift foot off the barre and hold for 10 seconds.  It’s hard to keep your leg up there without dropping it!
• Move 2:  Facing the barre, in first position.  Rise up onto the toes, and do regular plies (on demi pointe for us former ballerinas!), then continue the plies but only come halfway up.  Finish by holding.  Thigh burner!
• Move 3:  Facing the barre, step feet in so they are directly under the barre.  Hold on to the barre and lean the body back, feet/knees together, so it looks like water skiing.  Keeping the hips raised, bend down and up 10 times, then pulse.  Then bend all the way down to the ground, then halfway, then hold the same pulse.
• Move 4:  On the mats, on both sides.  Put one foot flat on the floor in front of body, with the other knee on the ground leaning into the hip flexor for a stretch.  Hold, then lift the knee up to balance in a runner’s lunge, hands on floor.  Then bring hands to knees and hold, then hands overhead and hold.  Once finished, sit back into the back leg with the front leg extended straight in front of the body.  Finish with a split.
• Move 5:  Lying flat on the stomach, one leg at a time.  Legs straight out behind the body, toes pointed.  Slow leg lifts straight up to the ceiling, finishing with faster pulses.  Second part of this move entails bending the knee so the foot is flexed toward the back of the leg, and doing the same move with the foot flexed to the ceiling.  This works the glutes.
• Move 6:  Frog pose.  Still lying on the stomach, bring the knees out and heels together, toes out.  The body should look like a frog.  Do the same slow, then quick lifts, this time lifting the knees up to the ceiling.  Definite butt burner.

Corpbasics’ Jam’n Cardio Kix:  This is the ultimate calorie burning cardio class. The average person burns about 600 calories in this 60 minute workout! The class puts several musical patterns together in to what we call a Martial Arts musical form. These forms are then put to the latest, hottest music making that hour of exercise go by before you know it! Though this class is considered advanced, all levels are welcome.

I could tell I hadn’t been in awhile tonight!  I was sweating big time.  I need to start practicing the routines at home so I can start teaching it soon.  🙂

Don’t forget to vote for CBC as the BEST Kickboxing Class in Boston on Boston’s A-List!

I’m spent.