Workout

Good Tuesday morning!  I’ve been trying to blog on Mondays and yet I completely forgot yesterday!  Mind you, for the next two Mondays I won’t be home, so I’ll try to get back to Sundays.  Not that anyone is waiting with breath held until it arrives.  I do hope that folks do find something interesting in them, though.

Today, I thought I should get back to a health update, mostly focussed on my workout.  I’m focussing on that because I’m afraid that I haven’t been strictly paleo for the last couple of weeks.  Not that I have gone crazy with eating, but I have had some things that are not on the paleo list, like the peanuts, the popcorn and some cheese. I’m not talking gallons of any of those things, just in moderation, but I have had them.

So, on to the topic at hand!  Each morning now, I am doing the oil pull with coconut oil. You can look that up on the internet--it’s supposed to be good for all kinds of things, pulling the toxins out of the body, whiting teeth, etc. I’m not seeing any real changes, but I’m going to stick with it for a while.  After I spit the oil out and rinse with salt water, I drink my concoction.  The concoction consists of a cup of water, two tablespoons of lemon juice, two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and a teaspoon of honey.  This is also supposed to get toxins out of the body, as well as jump starting the metabolism. It does make me more regular and cuts down on the bloating.

After all that stuff, that I do while responding to email in the morning, the workout begins!  I start with 12 minutes on the T-Zone vibration machine.  This is my warmup and I don’t know if it does much for me, but it does take my heart rate from about 72 to 94.  Not what you would call an aerobic workout, but for someone with the inability to really work out my legs and get the heartrate up, it’s not bad.

Next, I either do an upper body workout on the Bowflex, or with the free weights.  On the Bowflex, I use 60 lbs. On each side, but with the free weights I just use 10 lbs.  With the Bowflex, I work out my belly, arms and legs.  With the free weights, it’s just my arms that get the workout.

Then, I stretch out on the parallel bars.  These were build for my mother-in-law, but I use them for balance.  After the stretch, I put on four pound ankle weights and do leg raises using the bars to keep me from falling--front, side and back--36 for each leg and then bent knee raises to the front and back.

The fourth ‘station’ is the kettlebell.  I do a workout with a 10 lb. kettlebell that includes my squats, that I was doing in my cool down.  This set is when I actually sweat!

The fifth and final ‘station’ is my cool down when I do arm circles (50 in each direction), shoulder rolls and side stretches.  This concludes my workout and it takes about 40 minutes from beginning to end.  I’m trying to get up the gumption to add in a routine of plank exercises, but I have yet to get the ambition.  I know that once I get started, I’ll keep it up.  I just need to get started!

So, you are thinking:  is this doing any good?  I must first confess two things:  one, that I don’t really look forward to the workout, but I feel really good when I’m done and two, my workout included at one time, a workout on the elliptical, but it really affected my MS, so I work to what I can do.  I will also say that my belly is actually shrinking, I am getting ‘lady guns,’ and my legs are looking much better.  Conclusion?  Keep going!  I’ll add more weights as I think I can--I did get new ankle weights with two pound pockets, so I can go up to 10 pounds!

Well folks, that’s my morning!  Cavan then makes us a smoothy and, after my shower, I’m set for the day!

I pray that everyone enjoys their week!  God bless!