bad real estate

a twenty three year old female, looking to make healthy life choices not to imitate the pages of Vogue, but to empower herself. replacing (some) wine with water, and trading in cigarettes for cardio.
I got caught up with life per usual. It’s so trying on my patience to have days where I cannot even find an hour to relax and exercise- especially in the summer. I’m a graduate student with a lighter schedule (supposedly) during the summer. It should not be difficult. But it is. Wednesday July 21 I managed to do Jillian Michael’s yoga workout. I was sore all day, and loving it. I have tried yoga before but normally like something with a quicker pace, so Jillian Michael’s workout was that perfect combination of stretching, balance and movement. The repetitions worked my muscles well, and I just felt much stronger and much more flexible by the end of it. Success- I will keep trying it. Thursday July 22 I did a hodge-podge of exercises at a slow pace. I completed day 6, level 1 of Tracy Anderson’s boot camp. It’s getting really boring for me now, but still challenging (Reps: Legs- 30/40; Stomach- 40; Arms-skipped). I think I will move onto level 2 sooner than later, considering I started level one earlier this month, took a few weeks off and restarted. It’s probably more like day 12 than day 6. After the muscular structure work, I did Tracy’s dance cardio. The yoga workout yesterday made my legs sore today, and I could not do nearly as much bouncing as normal for the dance cardio. I made up most of my own moves. The video was a 15 minute one. About an hour after this, I had some second wave of energy and did a pilates youtube video for 20 minutes. Pilates and yoga are really my saving graces. I love getting a good sweat, but those stretches and core-strengthening work makes my posture so much better that I always feel leaner after doing either workout. Tracy’s muscular structure is described as “pilates-esque” but I’d have to disagree. Pilates is pilates, and its awesome. :) I wish I could work out this way every day and not only once or twice a week. Finding that time is really an issue for me now- and it’s going to only be more of an issue when I’m back in the school year. I’m going to try small changes- like getting off the train a few stops early, walking everywhere, and using an exercise ball instead of a chair. But it just is so annoying to me that I cannot fit a 1-2 hour workout in each day. Maybe in the mornings? How do people do it?!

I got caught up with life per usual. It’s so trying on my patience to have days where I cannot even find an hour to relax and exercise- especially in the summer. I’m a graduate student with a lighter schedule (supposedly) during the summer. It should not be difficult. But it is.

Wednesday July 21 I managed to do Jillian Michael’s yoga workout. I was sore all day, and loving it. I have tried yoga before but normally like something with a quicker pace, so Jillian Michael’s workout was that perfect combination of stretching, balance and movement. The repetitions worked my muscles well, and I just felt much stronger and much more flexible by the end of it. Success- I will keep trying it.

Thursday July 22 I did a hodge-podge of exercises at a slow pace. I completed day 6, level 1 of Tracy Anderson’s boot camp. It’s getting really boring for me now, but still challenging (Reps: Legs- 30/40; Stomach- 40; Arms-skipped). I think I will move onto level 2 sooner than later, considering I started level one earlier this month, took a few weeks off and restarted. It’s probably more like day 12 than day 6.

After the muscular structure work, I did Tracy’s dance cardio. The yoga workout yesterday made my legs sore today, and I could not do nearly as much bouncing as normal for the dance cardio. I made up most of my own moves. The video was a 15 minute one.

About an hour after this, I had some second wave of energy and did a pilates youtube video for 20 minutes. Pilates and yoga are really my saving graces. I love getting a good sweat, but those stretches and core-strengthening work makes my posture so much better that I always feel leaner after doing either workout. Tracy’s muscular structure is described as “pilates-esque” but I’d have to disagree. Pilates is pilates, and its awesome. :)

I wish I could work out this way every day and not only once or twice a week. Finding that time is really an issue for me now- and it’s going to only be more of an issue when I’m back in the school year. I’m going to try small changes- like getting off the train a few stops early, walking everywhere, and using an exercise ball instead of a chair. But it just is so annoying to me that I cannot fit a 1-2 hour workout in each day. Maybe in the mornings? How do people do it?!

realme333: My motivation to get back into eating and exercising right. Starting Tracy’s metamorphosis tomorrow!

realme333:

My motivation to get back into eating and exercising right. Starting Tracy’s metamorphosis tomorrow!

thehealthyfoodie: Best Carrot Salad Ever Best carrot salad ever, really! Loaded with dried fruit and nuts and a secret ingredient: Shredded Coconut! So incredibly good, you have to try it to believe it!

thehealthyfoodie:

Best Carrot Salad Ever

Best carrot salad ever, really! Loaded with dried fruit and nuts and a secret ingredient: Shredded Coconut! So incredibly good, you have to try it to believe it!

Lemon-Lime Water

xxhealthyhabits:

If you have a bad habit of always drinking juice, or pop, try this instead.

Just add half a cucumber, a lemon and a lime and let it sit in the fridge.

Voila!

Bad Real Estate

To catch you up to speed…

1st blog post.
5th day of Tracy Anderson, level 1.
3rd month since quitting smoking. 

I decided it was more than time to start a blog tracking some major life changes. I originally chose this user name- Bad Real Estate- because I have been apartment hunting for about a month now, and I’ve found some ridiculously awful apartment photos on Craigslist. Landlords and real estate agents somehow believe that posting photographs of messy beds with cats crawling around piles of dirty laundry is going to make me pick up my phone and give them a call for a tour. Nope.

But at the same time - I am still without an apartment for an August 1 move-in date. I have been judging these “Bad Real Estate” pictures so harshly that I am the one that is missing out. Those apartments will be occupied- and I will be the one that has to keep searching because I have some arrogant ideal of perfection that these spaces must meet. These ideals of perfection lead me to using this “Bad Real Estate” blog for another purpose: my own state of health. Judge and be judged. 

I have made two major life changes since spring of this year: I have stopped smoking and I have started exercising regularly. “Bad Real Estate” will track these changes and make me accountable for them.

I started smoking as an accident, a freshmen in college who wanted a vice and picked up a pack of American Spirits on way too many night walks, and I suppose I quit accidentally as well. On April 15, sick from a horrible cold, I had no desire to smoke. I smoked about ten a week- nothing crazy, but still enough to make me tired from climbing three flights of stairs. In April, I used a neti pot to clear my sinuses, and suddenly I was breathing from my nose more clearly than I had in years. Smoking seemed repulsive. But I still liked it as a habit, and I tried smoking more than once. Twenty times in the past three months I’ve picked up a cigarette hoping to have a little stress relief, a little buzz of relaxation from it. Each and every time, I’ve hated it. I’ve documented each time and I will continue to document each time. Since reaching three months, those reaches for Spirits have grown less and less common. I hope soon the urges will be gone all together. I’ve kicked the addiction, and now I hope to kick the habit soon, too.

I hope to replace cigarettes with cardio. I have been getting familiar with Tracy Anderson’s DVDs since quitting smoking. I started the Metamorphosis (Omnicentric) program in late May, but then a sudden flight out East for a funeral threw a wrench into everything. When I came back, in mid-June I re-started, but with Tracy’s Bootcamp DVDs. Something came up, and I stopped again. In July, I re-started bootcamp again.

I am currently on Level 1, Day 5 of Tracy’s bootcamp, and I wish to use this blog to track my progress and keep a record of how I am doing and what I am feeling.

Tonight:

Muscular Structure work

  • Legs - 15 reps
  • Abs - 20 reps
  • Arms - 30 reps

Cardio, 30 minutes.

As I move forward on this path, I hope to record my diet as well. I am looking to intake about 1200-1500 calories per day. I restrict not to be unhealthy, but because I need to lose weight and cutting calories is the way to do that. That’s fact, and with an office job that does not burn many calories at the desk, this intake has been working well for me and allows me to think more about what I am eating. I have done the unhealthy route many years ago— and do not aim to go down that dark, depressed path again. But more on that some other day.

As for now- cheers to clean and healthy living! Here it goes.