Six Week Six-Pack Update

So, I've been doing the Jillian Michaels Six Week Six-Pack video for 3 1/2 weeks now, and I'm seeing some serious results! I'm on week 4, so I just moved up to the Level 2 workout this week that I'm supposed to do for the second three weeks. It's a killer, but I'm loving it! I'm feeling fit, my stomach is looking flatter, and I think I can see some definition. I wasn't expecting a six-pack, but I think if I followed this program for another 6 weeks after this, I might end up with one. I actually was looking at Jillian Michaels' other videos online yesterday morning (right after my workout), and there's one called Killer Abs that's next on my wish list after I finish this one. Also, she has two different 30-Day Shred DVDs that look good.  If anyone's tried any of these, let me know how it was!

I've been getting up early a few days a week to do my workouts in the morning instead of the evening, which has made it so much easier and enjoyable. Working out in the morning just gets you pumped up for the rest of your day and wakes you up a bit! I hate waking up early, but it makes my evening so much more relaxed when I take the time to work out first thing in the morning.

Also, thanks to Cassi from Pretty in Pink Vegan for the advice on eating bigger breakfasts and lunches. I've been eating more in the morning and afternoon and an afternoon snack sometimes, and it's been helping me to take more time to cook food instead of just snacking on whatever's around and making quick meals. This is very helpful, especially since I'm doing this No-Spend January Challenge, and my meals seem to require a little more cooking lately. I haven't been eating any convenience foods in the past few weeks (mostly because I ran out of them in the first week and a half), and I miss them! Some nights I just want to come home and throw a frozen pizza in the oven, but I'm eating much healthier without that processed stuff and looking slimmer thanks to my diet, running, and Jillian Michaels!

How have your New Year's Resolutions been going?

Six Week Six-Pack and Mini-Marathon Training Update

Jillian Michaels Six Week Six-Pack

I'm finishing up Week 2 of the Jillian Michaels Six Week Six-Pack (or 6W6P as I've been marking it on my calendar), and this week has been a little more difficult.  Week 1 I was super pumped, and there was a convenient holiday in the middle of the week.  Doing the Jillian Michaels workout 5 days/week on top of mini-marathon training and my busy work schedule has been tough, but I'm sticking with it!

Here's the problem I'm having: When I get home from work around 6:30 pm after my hour-long metro/car commute, the first thing I want to do is EAT because I'm super hungry by then! (Maybe I need to try eating a bigger breakfast or lunch?) So I usually make dinner as soon as I get home, then eat and watch some TV with my husband and end up commandeering the TV set (We only have one.) to do my JM workout around 9:30 pm or sometimes even later in the evening.  This keeps me awake later because I have to get my heart rate down, relax, and take a quick shower before I can go to bed. On Tuesday night I had my running group, so I didn't do my Jillian Michaels until after 10pm, and then I still had to shower, pack my lunch, etc. afterwards.  So it feels more like a chore because I'm relaxed and feeling kind of lazy by the time I start working out.  (But I do feel really good about it afterwards!)

What's a busy/lazy girl to do?  I'm not a morning person, so I'm definitely not getting up super duper early at 5:50 am to do my workout before I need to get ready for work at 6:30 am.  This week, I ended up skipping two of my workouts during the week because I was just too tired and it was already late, which means that I have to do them on Friday and Saturday when I was planning on taking those days off.

Possible solution:  I'm going to try eating a little more for lunch or maybe having a snack in the afternoons so that I can do my workouts right away when I get home from work or running, then make dinner, etc., etc.  I hope this works out!  If not, I'm going to have to try the waking up early idea, and that will probably make me tired and Ms. Grumpy-Wumpy Pants.  :(  And nobody wants to see grumpy Elise in the morning!

On the plus side, the moves in the video are getting easier with experience, and I've been moving up to doing the more difficult moves for most of them!  I can feel a definite difference in my stomach! (No six-pack, yet, but I'm actually hopeful that I'll have some visible definition and serious size reduction in the abs region by the end of 6 weeks.)  I'm even thinking about sneaking a few Level 2 workouts in next week!  You're supposed to do Level 1 for 3 weeks, and then Level 2 for 3 weeks, but I'm feeling pretty strong and think I might need more of a challenge.

Mini-Marathon Training

I've been running more miles this week and feeling great about it!  This past Sunday I ran 6.4 miles (!) with my Siberian Husky, Miki, for my long run of the week.  (If you're a serious distance runner, yes, 6 miles is a long run for me. Don't make fun!)  She loved it!  I was only planning on running 5, but I was feeling good and my dog wasn't slowing down at all, so I kept going.  Now I'm a week ahead of schedule for my training plan!  This was the longest run I've done in probably the past year, so it was a big achievement for me.  Also, the weather was ridiculously cold and there was still lots of slush on the sidewalks, so it was a big effort just for me to get myself out there.

This weekend, I'll be running 7 miles on the trails at Great Falls Park with some lovely people from my Tuesday night running group!  I'm excited about this!  I reached out and let people know that I was looking for a buddy for some longer runs leading up to the mini-marathon in March, and found a whole group that meets regularly for morning runs over the weekends. 

Yes, I'm a runner, but during the winter time I have a lot of trouble with motivation because of the colder weather and precipitation.  This year, I've improved leaps and bounds in relation to this problem.  One of the women from my running group proposed a challenge to run just 1 mile every day from Thanksgiving to New Years.  This challenge really helped keep me accountable and whip me into shape.  I missed a handful of days, but only a handful!  And I normally probably would have only run once or twice a week without this challenge.  It got me a little more comfortable with the treadmill, too.  (Or the "dreadmill" as I prefer to call it because I finding running in place to be ridiculously boring!)

Vegan-Powered MeetUp Group

More great news on the running front!  As well as being a regular attendee of a Tuesday night running Meetup Group (DC Capital Striders NOVA, Tuesday Tysons Corner run at Potomac River Running store, in case you're in the area and wanted to join), I'm also a member of the Vegan-Powered Meetup Group.  I'm not a very active member, but I try!  Recently, the head of the group sent out an email to the group asking for suggestions and talking about events in the upcoming year.  I responded talking about some races I'd like to do and how I'd love to get together for some group runs with the group.  She responded and asked me to be a co-organizer of the group to set up events for these races and group runs

I sent out an email and created some events for the group, not expecting much response.  The positive feedback has been overwhelming!  I've received over 25 email responses!  I'm so pumped about putting together and leading these runs!  It's only been about 24 hours, but I already have 7 attendees who RSVP-ed for my first Fun Run group run on February 1st!  (Okay, that's probably WAY too many exclamation points in a row, but I'm SO EXCITED!)

Things are seriously looking up on the exercise front, despite my struggles with finding time to get my Jillian Michaels on, and I'm looking forward to organizing all of these events and running the DC Rock n' Roll Mini in March! 

Readers, have you been exercising more this year or have you made any health/fitness-related resolutions?  What's your favorite type of exercise or what exercise do you plan to try out for the first time in 2014?

Happy New Year!

No, I haven't  left you, my dear dedicated readers (all two of you)!  I've simply been very busy with holiday vacation, traveling to visit family, and working on preparations for some new endeavors!

So instead of my New Year's Resolutions, I'm going to give you some of my January Challenges and Personal Goals for the coming year!

I have two new challenges for January:  (Well, one is technically for January and February, but close enough, right?)

1) No- Spend January!

The rules: No spending on non-essential things such as: going out to eat, new clothes, movies, etc. Only $1/day to spend on groceries as needed.  The only spending this month will be on bills and necessary expenses. 

My husband is totally on board, and I stocked up groceries this past Sunday.  The only potential problem I see at this point is running out of fresh fruits and veggies.  I have some frozen and canned ones to hopefully tide me over for the month, but as a vegan, I go through a lot of fruits and vegetables in an average week.

The point of this challenge is (selfishly) to save money, but also to limit needless spending and consumerism.  Sometimes I find myself buying lots of things I don't even need.  I've been making an effort this last year to become more minimalist, but hopefully this challenge will help highlight how to save money and be more conscious of spending.  Also, my husband and I love to go out to eat, which is probably another large source of spending.  So hopefully I'll be challenged to be more creative in my cooking and eat through some of the various grains and canned goods that I have stockpiled in my kitchen.

Wish me luck!  So far I have managed to spend $0, so I still have $31 left to spend for the month.

To see my inspiration for this challenge, check out these links below to some blogs of other families who've successfully completed this challenge:

30 Days of Nothing from Living the Frugal Life

Thinking About Nothing from Bushel and a Peck

Yes, entire families!  We're only two people, and I think it's going to be a little difficult.  But if they can do it, so can we!

2) Jillian Michaels Six Week Six-Pack

I know, an exercise resolution!  But this one actually seems pretty damn awesome!  I'm planning on completing six weeks of following the Jillian Michaels exercise routine.  According to Jillian, you should do the 30-minute routine 5 times/week for 6 weeks.  There are two different levels, and you're supposed to do Level One for the first 3 weeks and Level Two for the second 3 weeks. 

I've only been doing this routine for less than a week, but I feel a difference already!  My stomach looks and feels tighter.  (I should note that I've also been exercising, running, and eating healthy on the side.)  Now, I don't expect to have a six-pack at the end of the 6 weeks, but I believe that I'll be more toned and lose some fat.  I've taken a before picture, and I plan to take an after picture to show you my results of this challenge at the end of the six weeks.  So stay tuned!

Goals for 2014:

1) Complete a mini-marathon (or two)!

I'm already signed up for the DC Rock n' Roll Half Marathon on March 15th, and I've made myself a training plan for how to reach this goal.  My plan is to run at least 3-4 days/week with a long training run on Saturdays or Sundays.  The plan is kind of flexible, but I have my first longer training run this weekend (5-6 miles, depending on if I feel strong enough to go for 6 this week).  I hope the weather gets better! We just got about 3 inches of snow, and I had to do 4 miles indoors last night.  I hate treadmills, so I only did one mile on the treadmill and 3 miles on the elliptical.  The elliptical isn't really comparable to running outside, but it's better than nothing!

2) Pay down some serious student loan debt!

My 30 Days of Nothing/ No-Spend January challenge should help with this goal, but I want to make more of an effort to spend less on entertainment and fancy food and to have significantly less debt.  We recently paid off one of my Sallie Mae student loans with the highest interest rate (10.75%! Yikes!), and it felt so good!  I want to keep this up because one day, we'd like to be able to buy a house.  If we pay off large amounts of our debt, we'll have more money to put in our savings each month for that goal.

Between myself and my husband, we have about a dozen student loans and one car loan for my car that we just got last year.  We pay more in loans each month than we do in rent, and adding it all together it just becomes a staggering amount!  I've read a lot online about other people tackling their debt, and I've become inspired to be more frugal and work on this for myself.

Other News:

I've done some thinking about the purpose of this blog.  I initially started it to keep track of my 90 -day Vegan Challenge, but it's become more than just a challenge and turned into an entire way of life!  I've decided that I'd like to expand my blog to include all of my interests.  There are lots of other things than being vegan that I'm passionate about:  running, exercise, music, nutrition, and more.  I'm planning on writing more about these topics in the coming year.  I'm currently thinking up a new title to my blog and expect to see some design and layout changes this month.  I hope you enjoy it, and I appreciate your feedback!


What are your goals/resolutions for 2014?  Do you have any short-term goals for the month of January?