Turbo Fire's The 5-Day Inferno Plan

Can you get hot for the weekend? With this plan, it is possible!

Chalene Johnson is generous enough to insert the 5 Day Inferno Plan to give us a headstart on the fitness program or to help us get back on track if we fell off the bandwagon for a few days. Or a week. In my case, a couple weeks....

Life and Christmas got in the way of things and I overspent on my Christmas budget! That did not leave much room for buying healthy, nutritious foods. I had to buy the Banquet brand pot pies and eat that for a couple weeks. Not exactly healthy for me and it doesn't give me all the nutrition I need for an intense workout like TurboFire.

Point is, if you don't get the proper nutrition for the workout, you're not going to see results. No matter how hard you try at your workouts, your performance will not be your best due to lack of nutrition. Underperformed effforts will lead to undesired results. Your body needs carbs, protein, fiber, potassium, so on.

Anyway, this 5 Day Inferno Plan not only gives you the tools for success, such as which classes from the TurboFire program to take and a meal plan, it's described in detail what your calorie level should be and how you can tell if you need more calories. Oh yeah, you definitely need enough calories to avoid burning out early- but you need the healthy kind! She also gave you tips on what not to consume as they contain empty calories and have no nutritional benefits for you whatsoever.

If you're a little out of shape, I do suggest you begin your nutrition-conscious diet a couple days before the plan. Get those essential nutrients in your body! Do a couple jogging sessions to get your body ready and drink plenty of water. If you don't hydrate well, you will not perform well.

I'll end this post with praise to Chalene Johnson. This fitness program has been a lot of fun and may be my soulmate workout-even though some of the classes really kick my butt! TurboFire has been my best investment ever on my fitness journey!

Recipe Post! Brown Rice and Vegetables

I have a great recipe I wanted to share with everyone! It's cheap so people like me who overspent at Christmas can buy something cheap and it still be healthy, nutritious, and filling!

This is called Brown Rice and Vegetables.

What you'll need is vegetable broth, the Minute Rice Instant Whole Grain Brown Rice and the Green Giants Weight Watchers Sliced Carrots Sugar Snap Peas, Black Beans and Edamame Lightly Tossed with Butter Sauce.
You should also have some seasonings available to taste. I used about 1 tablespoon lemon juice and a dash of garlic powder.

Heat half a cup vegetable stock, plus half a cup of water. When liquid is boiling, then follow package directions for cooking brown rice. Meanwhile, microwave Green Giant Healthy Weight with carrots, sugar snap peas, black beans and edamame. Mix heated vegetables with cooked rice and add garlic and lemon juice. Mix then serve. Great as a side dish or serves two as a whole meal. Quick and easy! :)

Vegetable broth nutrition information varies, so I didn't add it into the nutrition information and it's ok to cook the rice without the broth, just be sure to follow package directions.

Nutritional Information:
For the whole bowl it'd be: 480 calories,8 g fat (2 g saturated fat) 480 mg sodium, 96 g carbs, 14 g fiber, 6 g sugar, 16 g protein
Not bad, right? :)

An Afternoon with Abbey

Totally took advantage of the nice weather outside! Warm, sunny, cool breeze.... who couldn't ask for a better day than this today? I took Abbey out for a nice run in the free lot across the street and tried to train a new command, but she just couldn't focus. Too busy just wanting to run and play. Oh well... it's not often we get to spend the afternoon outside. She was a very happy dog!

We went for a walk afterwards and boy, did that walk wear me out! Maybe I spent too much energy throwing the ball for that energetic dog.... but she is now napping on the floor by the door enjoying the sun's ray on her fur. It was energy well spent.... until she wakes up from her nap. She'll be needing another run soon before we settle for the night. :) I'm so amazed with myself. I've grown up thinking German Shepherds are aggressively unpredictable and by giving my husband the chance to have his dream dog, i gave myself the chance to open my eyes to what a true, loyal German Shepherd is like. We got ourselves a wonderful girl!

Fitness: A Priority

For a long time, I’ve always come up with excuses for not making fitness an integral part of my lifestyle. I was too busy, I work 10 hours a day, my work schedule changes. Other excuses I’ve had were everyday chores, I was too tired, I don’t have the energy, I wasn’t motivated. At the time, living a healthy lifestyle wasn’t my primary concern. All I cared about was making enough money to pay the bills and put a little in savings. I wanted to finish my house chores. I cared about keeping my German Shepherd under control. Spending time with my husband was also important to me.

So the last three years, fitness wasn’t my primary concern, and wasn’t even on the top of my priorities list. Sure, my health is important to me, but aren’t health important to everyone without all the hassles of exercising, eating right, and taking the right kind of supplements? No one wants to be sick, have a vitamin or mineral deficiency, or a weak immunity system. So the last three years, as other things became my primary focus, my health was at the bottom of my priority list. I gained weight, ate junk food, and did the occasional “I should start working out” pep talk to myself. Fitness was even on my resolutions list for the New Year. However, I never really succeeded. Fitness just never clicked for me, and it never made its way into my top priority list.

So what changed? How is fitness now a priority? I chose to make fitness a priority. A few months ago, I was considering a temporary part time job to make some extra money. A friend of mine asked me to come on board with Team Beachbody. I am familiar with the group from the Shakeology, P90X, and other fitness products that she uses and sells. I thought, why not? It could help me be in better shape of my health and body. And, boy did it help! Along with becoming a member of a wonderful team of coaches and learning about fitness and health, I could sell products, make a little money for myself, and get discounts on the products I want to use. Not to mention, I could really help people with their fitness goals! For this to be successful, however, I had to work on my priorities. I had to choose to make fitness high up on the list with my family and faith. Self-accountability for my goals helped put things to focus. I learned that fitness goes hand-in-hand with health. A strong, lean, happy body is a healthy body.

Holding myself accountable for my goals and having a team of other coaches helping me keep up with my accountability, helped me become more aware of the foods I consume and what I am doing for my health. I have learned so much and am happier with my body and health since I joined Beachbody. Fitness was finally a top priority with my family and faith, and now I have no excuses for not working out! I’m motivated everyday, I found a workout program that works for me, and I’m happy! Fitting a workout into my busy schedule is non-negotiable. It has to be done. I found a way to make it work and I love the results I am seeing from my body changes.

The key to successful fitness is making your exercises a non-negotiable schedule. You get the workout programs on your schedule and you tell yourself that this schedule cannot be changed, just like your work schedule cannot be changed. I cannot stress this enough. If being in shape and having a healthy body is important to you, you must make fitness a priority.

One change in particular that I noticed since I became fitness-conscious was the food I consume. Sure, I was eating healthier food so what I consume doesn’t undo my workout purposes. However, it didn’t always matter how low the fat is or what the calorie count is, or if it’s got enough proteins and fiber to be considered a meal. What really mattered is the nutrition and the ingredients behind the foods I consumed. All the additives and preservatives… they’re not good for the body. I had to learn to look beyond the nutritional information and consider the ingredients. The more natural foods consumed are healthier for my body. It’s a learning lesson every day I choose to make conscious, informed choices for myself.

For people to be successfully fit, they made the choice to have fitness be a priority in their lives. It’s a priority in my life now… and I couldn’t be happier with my choices!

Hey!! LOOK At What You Are Consuming!!!

Let's face it: We are now living in the times where what we consume are going to have a lot of stuff added to the foods and drinks that just might make our stomach slightly upset, make our digestion a little out of balance, and have gunk build up in our bodies (arteries, intestines, etc). When we eat a lot of these processed foods on a daily basis, we're slowly becoming even more unbalanced, slowly getting that build up of gunk in our bodies.

Maybe it's time to start paying attention what we're consuming, yeah? For example: Lean Crusine. This brand does offer healthier alternatives to frozen food, fast food, and pizza. However, nutritional information is not the only thing we need to be looking at. We also need to look at the ingredients list. When looking at the ingredients list, you can see there's a bunch of stuff listed in there. An average individual like myself, who is not a registered dietitian or nutritional expert, am not going to recognize a lot of these words such as "gum arabic, autolyzed yeast extract" and so on. However, we can tell they are additives. To keep the food fresh, to add flavor, etc. Oh yeah, and a lot of them are going to have a high sodium content. I've stopped eating Lean Cruisine when I started to realize there are a lot of additives that doesn't sound healthy but is fine to eat on occasion. Our bodies are not made to easily process additives and anything chemically processed just to make the food taste good. It's not natural and I'm willing to bet that long-term use of these foods can eventually catch up to us and we will have problems later in life from the processed foods we eat.

MorningStar Farms frozen food. I've heard some healthy stuff, but the long list of ingredients is a little alarming. Just a little for a reason. A lot of their products got half of the natural ingredients. The other half are ingredients I can't pronounce and the only time I usually see these words are in chemistry class. What's worse is, why does the brand feel the need to add what kind of vitamin a chemical is? If it's naturally added... it wouldn't be on the ingredients list. The vitamin would be in the nutrition information list. This getting you to think?

I'd like to add something about natural flavors. Just why do they feel the need to say "natural flavors", hmm? Maybe they're also added stuff that's just under the federally regulated guidelines for what is artificial flavoring and natural flavoring. Just my opinion here. It could be "natural flavors" because that's the natural flavors of that flavor. One of these days I will be taking classes on nutrition and learn more about the foods we are eating and whether or not I was right to be concerned with these things.

On a lighter note, I got good news for the coffee drinkers. We've all looked at our ingredients list from time to time to see what's in the coffee creamer we consume, right? And we all see just how many stuff is in one tablespoon's worth! I'm happy to announce that I have tried CoffeeMate's Natural Bliss. Instead of the 20-somethings (might be more, might be less) ingredients found in most processed coffee creamers, the two flavors of CoffeeMate's Natural Bliss only have four ingredients. That's right, just four! Nonfat milk, sugar, heavy cream, and natural flavors. Again, not sure why they added that last part but it's still much better than the regularly processed coffee creamers, yeah? Maybe the Sweet Cream Natural Bliss's "natural flavors" would be just that: the natural flavor of Sweet Cream.

Hopefully this post have gotten my readers to start thinking about the foods we eat. My hope is that my readers will start looking at the ingredients list and weigh in whether or not the product is worth the lower calories and fats for all the additives in that food. No more just looking at the nutritional information. Sure, it's nice that the food tastes great. Are they worth the trouble our digestive bodies will have to go through to reject the processed chemicals that we don't need to be consuming? That's the question you all need to ask yourselves. Think about it: They lowered the bad stuff in nutrition, but what did they add to keep the food tasting great?

Update!

Let's face it. I'm destined to have random accidental self-inflicted injuries. Several weeks ago, I fell onto the gate in my driveway and had a huge hematoma in my thigh. I've had no updated pictures of my body due to the biggest, ugly bruise I've ever had. It's mostly gone now, and will be doing an updated picture in a couple days. That's not all that happened, however. I also managed to fall down the stairs and mess up my shoulders, so that put me off the exercising job for another week. During this down time, l had some time to think about the fitness program P90X. I noticed my body responds more to cardio-style workouts and not so much on weights. Not to mention, I do have bad wrists and am not really looking forward to being back on joint supplements again. P90X is a little too extreme for me to deal with. So after some research, I decided to go with TurboFire! This 90-days program is mostly cardio, designed by Chalene Johnson. I'm so excited to try this program! I should be getting it tomorrow and I will be starting this program this weekend. Sooo excited! I'm also worried, since the cold is here, the cold virus is everywhere, and I am really, really hoping that God will grant me the grace and the sense of balance I will need to make it through the next three months without hurting myself. Please pray for me! :)

2 More Shakeology Recipes

I have found my personal cup of liquid to add to my shakeology. I prefer a cup of water with a splash of milk when it comes to adding an extract. To avoid any confusion, when I type that I add a personal cup plus a tsp of something, you'll know that I am saying it's a cup of water plus a splash of milk.

Almond Shakeology: Personal cup + a tbsp almound extract. This has a chocolate nuttiness taste to it and is therefore very good. It goes well with a cup of straight black coffee instead of personal cup and you can always add a splash of milk.

Caramel Shakeology: Are you a caramel lover? I sure am! I love those Caramellos you find at the store, the rich, thick caramel drizzling out of those chocolate squares... yum! Sadly, I did not find a recipe for Chocolate Shakeology that would contain caramel in it. Not sure why, but I decided to wing it with Caramel. I added a tablespoon of imitation caramel extract (couldn't find the real one, maybe that doesn't exist?) and my personal cup. The result is a bit suprising. It's still mostly chocolate, but once you swallow, you can detect the caramel taste. I added a bit more of the extract to my drink but still could only get a hint of that caramel taste. Don't fret, caramel lovers. I shall achieve this drink! The recipe just might need a little tweaking so we can enjoy the taste some more!

More of the Flavors of Shakeology journey coming soon!