After weeks of reporting inactivity on the bridal bootcamp front, I’m happy to announce the charts are baaaaack! :)

My (soon to be) mother-in-law signed up my (soon to be) sister-in-law and me for six weeks of personal training. Talk about a hard workout! We did all kinds of stuff I hadn’t done in months and worked muscles that I didn’t even know I had. It was pretty intense and I then spent the next few days following holding myself to sit down and wincing every time I raised my hand. I must be out of shape or something!

Before Thursday’s hard-core workout, my week wasn’t very strong. I wanted to keep the momentum going so I worked out on Saturday with jelly muscles. My calories fluctuated all over the place, no thanks to having people over and birthday dinners. Because of that, it’s no surprise that my weight also maintained between 123-125 lbs.

This current week is a little better, which you’ll see soon. I’m slowly learning that the important of losing weight is working out. If I want to eat more (and, let’s be honest, I always want that), then I have to run at least 30 minutes to get those extra 300 calories.

How are your workouts going?

Part One’s goal of the Bridal Bootcamp was simply to show up and make an effort. It consisted of amateur  drawings and charts hanging on my wall.  For the second part of the bootcamp (the middle six weeks) I am going to bring it up a notch and make this a little more tech-savvy (aka: bye-bye paper drawings). I may bring them back for the final six weeks (part three), but since I’m moving in three weeks we’ll just do spreadsheets:

PART TWO GOALS:

• Counting Calories: In Part 2, I am going to start keeping track of my calories, courtesy of my new app “My Fitness” (it’s a fantastic tool to keep track of each thing I eat). In order to lose a pound a week, I need to eat 1,300 calories a day. That seems extremely low, but for my current height and weight I need to at least stay under 1,800 calories in order to maintain my weight.

• Increase Cardio: Running is my go-to cardio exercise, but since it’s so cold out (it was 23-degrees when I got up this morning), I need to find alternative ways to get in exercise even inside. I will have a gym in three weeks (yay!) so until then maybe I’ll do a video or take long walks? But after I have access to the gym, it’s go time! I have no excuse for no cardio!

• Weight Train: I need to get MUCH better about arm exercises and leg workouts. My goal this week is to come up with a strength-training routine to do every-other day.

• Push-ups & Crunches: My goal is do 100 push-ups and 100 crunches at least four times a week… obviously I did not give myself that goal last week (shown above) but that’s my goal moving forward.

Any questions? How are your workouts going? Anyone have any good winter workout ideas?

For those who don’t remember (because it’s been so freaking long!) as an effort to lose weight and get in shape for my wedding, I came up with a Bridal Bootcamp. It consists of three parts of six weeks leading up to a few weeks before my wedding. I’m quite behind on updating my bootcamp progress (I blame Thanksgiving), so here is a recap for the last two weeks of Part 1.

Part 1: Week Five

This was probably the last really good week because I ran four times. It’s been so long since this week that I don’t remember what was going on!

Part 1: Week Six

Week 6 was Thanksgiving week and unfortunately I did get a little off track. However, Thanksgiving morning my sister and I took our dog for a brisk run, which is certainly better than nothing!

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The goal for Part One was simply to show up.  Mission accomplished (most of the time)! Now it’s time to get serious about this bootcamp and take it to Part Two….

Finally a week that I’m not embarrassed about! Okay, so I didn’t get in as many crunches and push-ups as I would have liked, and yoga was pretty pathetic, BUT! I actually ran five out of seven days!

The whole point of Bridal Bootcamp (Part 1) is really about showing up and getting back into the groove of working out. I feel like I found my “groove” this week. I think it was the chilly weather, so refreshing and exhilarating first thing in the morning. And it probably had a LOT to do with the sun actually being up now when I run. Now, if I can continue in this pattern of five times a week, all I will have to do is increase my distance and work on getting toned. I love my 1.5 to 2-mile route through my neighborhood, but I know that if I really want to tone up and look my best, I’m going to need to work a little harder. But for now, I’m pleased with my progress. I still have Part 2 and 3 to increase the intensity… and thankfully I’ll have an indoor gym for those weeks!