Tag: GymIt

Five on Friday {5.27.16}

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Good morning and TGIF! I have a few hours of work and then I’m off until Tuesday- amazing! I’m hoping for good weather- I need to work on a tan for the wedding 🙂 Let’s jump right into some highlights going on this week:

  • Yogathon hosted by lululemon- On Saturday, June 5th, lululemon is hosting a 12 Hour “Yogathon” in Honor of Nation Cancer Survivor’s Day at The Street in Chestnut Hill to benefit two organizations devoted to sharing the health benefits of yoga. There are various different classes to choose from, so if this interests you and if you’re around on June 5th, all you need to do to register is make a donation of any amount to bodhi & mind yoga, which offers free one-on-one yoga and meditation practice to women battling breast cancer, and Triyoga Boston, a non-profit organization offering therapeutic yoga classes, using the Yogathon Eventbrite page.
  • Thankful for great friends– If you follow me on social media, I’m sure you know that I had my bachelorette party last weekend. I will do a full recap on it, but for now I’ll just say that I felt SO special, thankful and grateful for having so many wonderful friends in my life. They planned the most amazing weekend, filled with lots of my favorite things and I ended the weekend feeling so humbled by everything everyone did for me.

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  • Bags & Beats @ GymIt- Earlier this week, I taught my first classes at GymIt in Watertown as a result of completing my BoxFIIT certification. I was pretty nervous going into the classes: new gym, new crowd, new class format, new app… after 4 years of mostly teaching at the same gyms to the same crowds, this totally put me out of my comfort zone, but you know what? I think I kinda rocked it! I had big shoes to fill, but I think members were happy with the classes I taught so I’m hoping to grow them over time. If you’re interested in checking it out, I teach on Tuesdays at 5:30 and 6:30pm and the classes are Bags & Beats so we use the heavy bags and do punching combos to the beat of the music mixed with non-boxing exercises. It’s a fun class and Tuesday reminded me that it’s so important to get out of our comfort zone and try new things because sometimes that’s exactly what you need to ignite a new fire within.

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  • Embracing the weather & season- Yesterday I decided to take a rest day. It’s been a long and busy week and I feel like I’m still catching up on sleep/getting back to normal after my bachelorette weekend, so I decided to take a rest day yesterday. I knew I needed this because after my run on Wednesday, I felt abnormally sore and tired. I set my alarm yesterday morning to get up and go for a walk before work, but when my alarm went off I realized I would benefit more from sleep. Listening to our bodies is so important, and somethign I admit I still have to work on, but I was proud of myself yesterday for listening to my body and resting (and enjoying vino after work).

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  • New Workout Plan- With our wedding coming up (38 days from today, to be exact!), I decided that I wanted to spend some time focusing on me when it comes to workouts. Lately I’ve been teaching a lot and have had a lot of other things going on so my own workouts have fallen a bit by the wayside; I still workout 5-6 days a week, but they aren’t as structured or formatted as I’d like them to be in order to see changes I’d like to see. With that said, I reached out to my girl Athena to have her create a month long upper-body focused workout plan for me for the month leading up to my wedding. I am by no means trying to lose weight, but rather I just would like to tone up my upper body and back and see what kinds of changes I can make when I consistently follow a plan. She sent me the workout plan the other day and upon first glance it looks great and I can’t wait to start- sometimes just having a new plan to follow is exactly what you need to get excited about something again!

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And that does it for me! We don’t have a lot planned this weekend which is really nice. I’m hoping to get some sun, sleep and relaxation 🙂

Questions for you: How has your week been? When is the last time you got out of your comfort zone? Do you like to follow structured workout plans? How are you embracing the weather?

Weekending: Wedding Update & Double Easter Celebrations

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Good morning! Hopefully by the time this post goes up, I will have already gotten my butt kicked by Eliza at the Watertown GymIt/EBF studio. As part of the Box FIIT certification I’m working on, I’m trying to get as much class experience as I can with other instructors to help better prepare me for when it’s time to start teaching my own classes- eek!!

This past weekend was another good one- lots of family time with both families which is always a nice treat! However, I am looking forward to this weekend since we FINALLY have a weekend with virtually no plans, which hasn’t happened in forever. I have so many general life things that I want to catch up on, so hopefully I’ll be able to get a bunch done!

After work on Friday I went to the Paper Source in Lynnfield to finalize our wedding invitations. I started them online which helped because I went into the store knowing exactly what I wanted and how it looked, but I was also able to work with a super helpful lady who helped me add more text lines and change the layout a bit. They are super simple, but classy- I love them and can’t wait until they come in! Oh, and the best part? All wedding invitations and related things were 20% off, which really helped keep them within my budget.

Once that was done, I picked up a few things at Whole Foods: pizza ingredients for dinner and quiche ingredients for Saturday brunch with my family. I made this quiche which was a big hit.

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The pizza I made for RM and me was also fantastic- the dough from Whole Foods is so good!

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Saturday started off with a sweaty kickboxing class. I don’t know if it’s because I hadn’t worked out in 2 days or if it was because I hadn’t slept well the night before but the class kicked my butt!!

After class we showered up and headed into the city to go to my sister’s apartment for part 1 of our Easter celebrations. So much food, so much wedding talk, so many laughs! I also brought out my biggest of hair for the occasion 😉

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Oh! And my mom washed her vail and brought it down to see if I wanted to use it for our wedding. I think it will be so special having my “something old” (and something borrowed) as her veil. I just need to find a nice comb to attach it to.

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(and yes, I am a giant next to her!}

We stopped at Branch Line for a few drinks on our way home. As good as the drinks are, we REALLY need to get back there for dinner because everything looked and smelled amazing!

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Sunday morning I kicked off the day with a quickie 20 minute bodyweight tabata workout (I’ll share it with you on Wednesday!) and then went to church. I haven’t been to church since we moved, so I figured Easter Sunday was as good a day as any to start. I hope to get back into a more regular church-going schedule.

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When church was over I went food shopping and got wine and flowers for the Easter dinner at RM’s mother’s house. I didn’t get any photos of the food, but it was quite a feast: homemade lasagna (homemade noodles and everything!), grilled lamb, salad, brussels sprouts, potatoes, peppers and so many desserts. My future SIL’s parents came and when her mom walked in with a bunny cake it made me so happy because my mom always made me a bunny cake for my birthday/Easter!

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As much as I didn’t want to food prep when we got home, I knew it would be better if I just got it over with!

And that about does it- the weekend came and went way too quickly, per usual! I hope you all had a great weekend and have a kick ass week!

Questions for you: How was your weekend? Did you do anything fun? What did you do for Easter? Did you get any good workouts in? Do you go to church?

Weekending: Keeping Warm!

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Good morning! I had yesterday off which was such a nice treat, especially after drinking vino all afternoon at the Boston Wine Expo on Sunday 😉 Our weekend was filled with lots of good eats, tasty drinks and plenty of love to keep us warm- let’s recap!

  • A free sweetgreen lunch on Friday was a nice treat 🙂 If you come to my 5:30 sweat-KICK class at Foster Fitness, you can also get a voucher for a free meal at sweetgreens;)

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  • After work drinks at Tony C’s at Assembly Square with some college girlfriends was a fun treat, but coming home to surprise early Valentine’s Day flowers and a delicious spaghetti with clams dinner was even better!

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  • I thought my kickboxing class on Saturday would be quiet because of the weather, long weekend and holiday, but there were still about 40 people who showed up to sweat with me- they killed it!

  • I did a huge grocery haul at Whole Foods after class so we didn’t have to leave for the rest of the day… which must’ve been everyone else’s plan because it was SO BUSY!

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  • I started my Box FIIT certification later that afternoon. I can’t believe how much time and energy George Foreman III put into this certification- it’s so impressive and I can’t wait to be part of the team!

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  • Paleo Chocolate Chip Cookies- enough said!

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  • I slow cooked chicken all day to make pulled chicken for taco night… or what was supposed to be taco night! I was prepping the last bits of the meal when we lost power in half of the apartment, including the stove, which meant no tacos for us 😦 While the pizza we ordered was delicious, I was REALLY looking forward to pulled chicken tacos!

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  • Sunday morning we still didn’t have power in half of the apartment so we headed over to RM’s mothers to have our pancakes there. I had all intentions of making cute heart shaped ‘cakes, but these still did the trick!

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  • We bundled up and headed into the city on Sunday afternoon for the Boston Wine Expo. It was such an awesome way to spend a frigidly cold Valentine’s Day!

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  • We also ran into our friends from Tre Olive which was a fun surprise. I’ve posted about them a few times (here and here) so it was great to get to see them. Every time we went to their booth they were slammed, but I did manage to get a photo with them and they were gracious enough to give us quite the goodie bag. Seriously- look at all of the oils they gave us and the fig balsamic which is literally drinkable it’s so tasty. If you’re looking for an interesting gift to give your boss, client, parents, friends who are getting married, etc., Tre Olive has everything you’d need! Their packages make the best gifts.

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  • After the wine expo, we weren’t quite ready to stop having fun so we popped in at Rosa Mexicano for a drink and a snack. So tasty!

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  • For dinner, I was able to make the pulled chicken tacos that I couldn’t make on Saturday. I apparently forgot to take a picture, but they were fantastic!  I sautéed some broccoli slaw and bok choy for the base, topped that with pulled chicken and homemade pineapple salsa and avocado. We had plenty of leftovers so I made us a quesadilla last night- just as good!

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  • I had Monday off so I spent time in the morning filming some cardio kickboxing combinations before heading over to Gymit in Watertown to checkout the new Everybody Fights addition. George has been teaching a bunch of intro classes and luckily I had time in my schedule to take one. It was such a great class- very challenging and let’s face it- you feel like a total badass punching the big bags 😉

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  • And finally, the rest of the day was spent doing more of the certification and doing lots of meal prep! Love starting the week out with lots of healthy food options right at our fingertips.

Did you make it this far? I had more to share than I thought I did! I hope you all have a great week- soak up this warmer weather while you can 🙂

Questions for you: How was your weekend? Did you do any good workouts? Did you do anything for Valentine’s Day? How did you keep warm? Do you prefer quesadilla’s or tacos?