Category Archives: Articles

I’m Back! Weekly Workouts and Some Other Stuff

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Well, hello there.  Long time, no see!

I am back from all my time off!  I spent the past seven days relaxing down the Cape.  Spent quite a lot of time like this:

Pretty awesome.

Prior to the Cape, I spent a few days in Boston following July 4th just enjoying some time with no work or class teaching.  I haven’t been in the office since July 2nd and I haven’t been at the Y since July 3rd.  It was pretty rough being back at work today — especially since I’m jumping right back in with my 14 hour Mondays!  Today is my official start to my new Group Exercise Coordinator position at the Y too.

Anyways, I had a wonderful time and hope that you guys enjoyed all the wonderful guest posts that I had lined up for you while I was gone.  In case you missed any of them, here’s a recap:

A big thank you to Caitlin, Katie from K.E.P.T You Fit, Jamie, Jen from nutcaseinpoint, Jen R, Kristen from Be Fit With Kristen, Kate, Jess, and Abby from Back At Square Zero for keeping Fitness & Feta up and running in my absence!  You ladies are wonderful!  Also, in case you missed it, Fitness & Feta celebrated its 1st birthday last Thursday!  Happy birthday to my blog — click over to this post to check it out.

Weekly Workouts

Last week I didn’t post my weekly workouts while away, so you guys get a two-week summary of my vacation workouts today!

Workouts from July 4th week:

  • Sunday:  Off
  • Monday:  20 minutes of HIIT cardio on the elliptical + taught Core Strength with this class
  • Tuesday:  Taught Kickboxing (subbed for Liz’s class), then taught an outdoor bootcamp class for Circuit
  • Wednesday:  15 minutes of backyard bootcamp during our 4th of July cookout
  • Thursday:  90 minutes of kayaking + my Jack, Jump, ‘N Crunch Workout
  • Friday:  Off
  • Saturday:  Erin’s Cutz class at CBC, followed by 45 minutes of Kix with Sue

Workouts from Cape Vacation week:

  • Sunday:  Off
  • Monday: Random circuit work in the yard that looked like this:  Upper Body Tabata Move, then lower body glute strengthening move, then 30 seconds of cardio intervals.  I did 6 rounds of random exercises.
  • Tuesday:  Did another one of the combinations from the “Six Moves, Four Workouts” in last month’s issue of Women’s Health.  Same moves as the 15 min backyard bootcamp above, but this time you see how long it takes you to do 12 reps of each move, 5 rounds total.  Will post soon!
  • Wednesday:  20 minutes of Kickboxing in the yard + this Circuit
  • Thursday:  Off
  • Friday:  Off
  • Saturday:  20 minutes of Kickboxing in the yard + another combo of “Six Moves, Four Workouts” + concentration curls + rear delt flies + 3 different standing abs exercises + 1 minute plank

Not too shabby for being in vacation mode, eh?  Although I’m bummed my vacation is over, I am excited to be back to my normal “schedule” of workouts.  Here’s what’s up for this week:

This Week’s Workouts

  • Sunday:  Off
  • Monday: Some type of cardio + teaching 20 minutes Core Strength
  • Tuesday:  Back to Two A Day — Kix and teaching Circuit
  • Wednesday:  Physical therapy sweat sesh in the am, probably won’t do anything at night because I have a double on Thursday, if anything maybe yoga?
  • Thursday:  Teaching 6am Circuit, also teaching 6:30pm Kickboxing + Core
  • Friday:  Off or TBD
  • Saturday: Off or TBD

Humor

Just had to share the following, sent to me by my lovely gym friends last week!

From Jen:

From Jess:

From Ashley:

Thanks guys!

Links

I didn’t get to do all that much blog reading while I was away, since I did try to unplug as much as possible.  I did scroll through my Google Reader app during some of our day trips in the car, and read a few posts here and there, but mainly I starred the links that looked interesting to me so I could come back and read them this week.  Not gonna lie, everything else I marked as read so I wouldn’t have massive amounts of unread blogs in my reader this week.

For today, I thought it might be fun to share the ones I starred in case they sound interesting to you guys too.

Enjoy 🙂

For now, I’m off to the Y — hope nobody forgot who I am, it feels so long since I’ve stepped foot in there!

What’s everyone been up to?  Tell me something fun that I’ve missed!

Have a great night!

Six Interesting Reads

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Hi guys!

Just checking in quickly to share a few links.  I love that many of you have sent me health and fitness related articles lately.  Since I found a lot of these reads very interesting, I thought some of you might too!

Six Interesting Reads

10 Packaged Food Words to Beware

Enough with the Bullshitting

When Working Out is Too Much of a Good Thing

The 75 Year Old Body Building Grandma

10 Ways to Survive Your Injury Without Being a B*tch

Disney Sets New Standards for Food Advertising to Kids

Enjoy!!

Anyone have any fun reads they’d like to share!?  Leave the link in the comments!

Off to teach my Core class and work a floor shift at the Y — if you’re around, come say hello!

P.S.  Happy Birthday JESS!  Hope you are having a wonderful day 🙂

Guilt Free Grilled Cheese Sandwich

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Hello!

Did you guys know that today is National Grilled Cheese Day?

In honor of such a glorious idea (seriously, who thought up such a wonderful thing?), I decided to whip up a guilt free grilled cheese sandwich for dinner tonight.

Guilt Free Grilled Cheese Sandwich

Ingredients

  • 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
  • 2  slices whole wheat bread
  • 1/4 cup reduced-fat mozzarella cheese, shredded
  • 1/4 cup drained canned artichoke hearts, sliced
  • 1/3 cups red bell peppers, sliced
  • Cooking spray, to grease

Directions

  1. Spread mustard on 1 bread slice.
  2. Top with cheese, artichokes, and bell peppers.
  3. Top it with another bread slice.
  4. Heat a large nonstick skillet coated with cooking spray over medium heat until hot.
  5. Add sandwiches to the hot skillet; cook 2 minutes on each side or until golden brown.

Yum yum in my tum.  Was a bit messy, but otherwise satisfied my grilled cheese craving.

What’s your favorite way to eat a grilled cheese sandwich?

Of course I guess it doesn’t matter if you opt for a guilt free grilled cheese sandwich if in the hours before you consume said sandwich you snack on everything in sight.  Today after work was just one of those days for me.  I was literally chomp chomp chomping away!  Chocolate covered almonds, bits of my baked oatmeal, Triscuits and strawberry salsa – you name it, I was picking at it.

Finally I forced myself to brush my teeth, drink a huge glass of water, and go upstairs.  Oh well.  It could have been worse.

How do you guys curb your snacking cravings?

Anyways, I’m glad the work week is almost done.  To play catch up, Wednesday night’s workout was a double sesh at CBC.  Party trucked it over with Ashley and Aloisia to take Cutz and Kix.  Holy sore.  I could barely jab by the end of Kix because Cutz was so shoulder intensive.  My workout’s have been extra hardcore this week – during class on Tuesday night Ashley said “you know you’re working hard when planks are your rest,” and teaching PUSH this morning definitely “pushed” me over the edge.  I totally get why that class is called PUSH now.  I definitely kept saying “Keep pushing through!” over and over and thought it was so funny.  Loser alert.  What did you guys think of class this morning?  You probably didn’t find me saying “push” repeatedly as humorous as I did.

Jess – hope this was “painful” enough for you (yes folks, people actually request painful classes!), Ashley – hope you liked the 70’s playlist, and Meg – sorry I didn’t do booty blasters per your request but somehow I don’t think you were that upset about it!

Sorry I can’t post the workout for copyright reasons, but if you guys have any questions please let me know.

What’s been your best workout this week?

On the way home from the gym this morning, I think the same turkey that was in my yesterday was crossing the road.  Bobbing its head Egyptian style across Chestnut Hill Ave.  Stopping traffic.  Why am I still laughing about this?  Turkeys are such an awkward animal, don’t ya think?

Ever seen a turkey randomly crossing the road? 

Time for SLEEP.  And if you aren’t ready for bed yet, here are some articles of possible reading interest:

Have a great night!