Fit Fig

We have a winner for the Total Body Conditioning travel workout.  It’s commenter #2, Catherine Harris.  Congrats to Catherine!  If you’ll email me your address, I’ll get this out to you ASAP.

I have yet another DVD to give away! This one is called Total Body Conditioning with Summer Montabone.  For more information on Summer, check out her website here.  This workout is designed to work well for travel, as it doesn’t require a lot of heavy equipment.

Here’s how it’s described on the back cover:

Innovative workout options are presented using a ball, a band, or your body weight. Follow Summer and Tanya as they breakdown total body conditioning into warm up, upper body, lower body, core, and cool down. There are endless possibilities for training at home or in your hotel room. Technique tips are given throughout the video.

For a chance to win, just add a comment below.  Tell us how you exercise when you travel. Do you exercise with bands, use special equipment like weights you add water to (I know I’ve seen these somewhere), use hotel gyms, just get cardio by walking, running, or do you do something else I haven’t thought of here?  Or do you just figure travel time is time off from working out?

For me, it depends on where I’m going, how long I’ll be there, and other factors. I have taken bands a few times so I can get a resistance workout. I am always traveling for vacation rather than work, so I spend a good deal of time walking or hiking and generally end up fairly exhausted at the end of each day, so I don’t usually do any other cardio.  How about you?

As always, the winner will be chosen by a random number generator based on comment number and I’ll announce it next Monday (the 8th). That’s a full week to see who stops by to comment.  Contest is open to anyone in the U.S. or Canada.

Tomorrow I’ll be starting an exciting new workout program called ChaLEAN Extreme by Chalene Johnson.  Well, it’s new to me, anyway.  A lot of my friends were doing it a year ago, but I was pregnant and didn’t want to do a heavy weights program at that time.  So now I finally have it myself and I’m ready to go.  I ordered it from BeachBody through my friend Jenn, who is a BeachBody coach — there’s a link for her over there on the right ——>.

It’s a 3-phase 12-week program, so that’s 4 weeks a phase (duh).  Tomorrow I’ll start the first phase — Burn Circuit.  It looks fun but tough.  Not only do they have the weight workout DVDs but the program also came with a very helpful guidebook, a food guide, a DVD full of tips about form for the exercises and info about nutrition, etc., cardio and ab DVDs, a motivational CD, a resistance band, a thigh toner band, and a body fat tester thingey.  I also ordered some bonus DVDs because I’m crazy like that.

I’m very excited about starting tomorrow.  Let’s hope it kicks my butt. Or that I kick its butt. Or whichever of those would be a good thing.

(And I am aware I sound like I’m gushing and advertising for this, but I assure you I paid full price for this and I’m not getting anything for free or any money back — I’m just goofy and excited to get started with it.)

We have a winner for the Denise Austin 3-Week Boot Camp workout.  It’s Laura, our lovely commenter #3.  Congrats Laura!  Please email me with your address and I’ll get this out to you ASAP (probably Monday or Tuesday).

Come back in a couple days and I’ll have another giveaway up with a DVD from another instructor.

My son Ewan doing yoga with me

Busy week here but I’ve been out and about on the internet and wanted to share some links.

First, here’s an article called How Revving Up Your Heart Rate, Even A Bit, Pays Off.

This is a bookmarkable post by Jen of Advanced Workouts about 25 healthy snacks for kids.

The kickass MizFit offers 6 tips for workout success.

Check out my friend Evily’s blog When Pigs Fly, about preparing for the Flying Pig Marathon.

Interested in the Health at Every Size movement?  I still need to finish the book, but here’s a website where you can pledge to support HAES or go to their blog to learn more.

And here’s a link only vaguely related to fitness: Happiest States of 2009: The List.

And finally, have you seen my new(ish) blog, Fig Walks?  It’s a photoblog from local walks and our travels.

I have another Denise Austin DVD I want to giveaway this week.  This one is her 3-Week Boot Camp, which I received from Lionsgate.

You can see a full description and a clip here at Collage Video.

This is another workout with convenient short segments.  I have to confess (as I have probably confessed before) that I do not like workouts with the words Boot Camp in them. I’ve basically stopped ever doing boot camp workouts at all–even from my favorite instructor, Cathe Friedrich.  It’s just not a Fit Fig thing.  However, if you dig Denise Austin and like doing boot camp workouts, this one is for you!

To be in to win this DVD, just post a comment at the bottom.   Tell me, a) Do you like Boot Camp workouts? (you probably do if you want this DVD) and b) Do you like it when the instructor wears camouflage-inspired outfits in a boot camp DVD (doesn’t look like Denise is doing that in this video)?  Personally I think it’s goofy to wear the camouflage theme, but I’ve seen it done.

The winner will be chosen by a random number generator based on comment number (so you can totally disagree with me and still be chosen if your number comes up) and I’ll announce it next Saturday (the 20th). That’s a full week to see who stops by to comment.  Contest is open to anyone in the U.S. or Canada.

Kimberly Lee, you are the winner of the Denise Austin DVD. Please email me your address so I can send this out to you soon.  Congrats!

Everyone else, stay posted for another giveaway to be posted in the next couple days.

Yes, I’m back into the swing of things and ready to give something away.  When I was heavily pregnant or busy with new baby, I received a couple of Denise Austin DVDs for free from Lionsgate and put them aside.  This weekend I stumbled across them and thought, “Oh yeah! Need to give these away!”  So I’m starting with one this week and will do another next week.

So this week it’s Denise’s Body Makeover Mix.  You can see a full description and a clip here. I personally don’t enjoy Denise’s workouts, just because she sounds like a Kindergarten teacher. Nothing against Kindergarten teachers — I just would prefer a different voice from my fitness instructors.

The main advantage of this workout to me is the shortness of it–sometimes it’s nice to just have a quick workout.  There are 3 workouts (1 lower body, 1 upper body, and one abs) and each are about only 15 minutes long.  On days when my baby is needing extra attention, 15 minute segments may be about all I can pull off.  It’s an intermediate workout, so if you’re more advanced than that, you might still enjoy it on a light day or when you’re sick.

To be in to win this DVD, just post a comment at the bottom.  Tell us which DVD instructor you think has the best voice. If you don’t usually do DVDs for your workouts, just tell us something like which actress or actor you’d like to hear talk all day.  Personally I’d listen to Ewan McGregor read the phonebook.

The winner will be announced next Wednesday (the 10th). That’ll give us a week to see if anyone stops by to comment.  Contest is open to anyone in the U.S. or Canada.

Edited to add: winner will be chosen by a random number generator based on comment number (excluding my own comments).

Today I decided to try one of my newer workouts (I’ve actually had it awhile now but I am just now getting back to regular workouts): Amy Bento’s 10-Minute Solution 5-Day Get Fit Mix.

In the interest of full disclosure and in compliance with a new FTC rule (seriously, can you believe the FTC cares what I write on this little blog?), I received this workout DVD free, compliments of Anchor Bay Entertainment.

Now that we’ve got that out of way, I decided my review this time would start off with just copying over the little notes I took between segments, so you can really get my fresh first impressions.

Here’s what I wrote for each segment:

Fat Blasting Intervals — challenging cardio sections; weight sections don’t feel very effective so I guess it’s mostly about the cardio.  Feeling a bit nipply, Amy?

Pro: great cardio moves; minimal equipment/space.  Con: had to clutch my boobs during jacks — need new bra! OK, never mind, that’s my own problem.

Belly Fat Burner — I just realized Amy’s personality/style seems different from her usual workouts. It’s like Michelle Dozois has possessed her.  My mat keeps slipping — am I losing the sticky bottom?  Should clean soon.

Pro: variety — not your standard crunches.  Con: standing work doesn’t seem very effective — the floor work is better.

Lean Body Sculpt — liked compound moves — love how efficient and gets heart rate up; feel uncoordinated on some of them, though.  Floor work all good.

Pro: all felt challenging, effective, fun. Con: not long enough — oh wait that’s what this whole DVD is about — quick workouts.

Cardio Kickboxing — problem with a 10-minute kickboxing segment is by the time you teach the combos, you don’t have much time to actually get the heart rate up — probably not effective first time but would get more effective with subsequent workouts.  Love the fun combos.  Eek jumping not so good with current bra.  Her personality is back on this one — yay!

Pro: really fun combos, goes quickly.  Con: hard to keep up first time.

Power Yoga– nice that they finish with  yoga.  Was very excited to do some yoga until I remembered it was power  yoga — too fast for little ol’ me (or big ol’ me as is more accurate at the moment).  Ewan (my 4-year old) wanted to joined me so I had to pause and get his mat out.  He likes yoga but thought she was too fast (he also likes slow yoga).

Pro: not that kind of yoga that annoys me with the spiritual mumbo jumbo; also very doable but still challenging. Con: moves fast (which is fine if you like that, I’m sure).

So now you know the kind of stuff I am thinking while I do a workout.  As you can see by the names of the workouts, there’s a lot of variety on this one.  The reviewers on Collage really seemed happy with that.  It is fun to do 5 different 10-minute workouts and feel like you pack in a lot of variety, but I think I generally prefer the 10-Minute Solution DVDs that have 5 different workouts but focusing on the same body part. Like 10-Minute Solution Quick Tummy Toners, 10 Minute Solution: Belly, Butt & Thigh Blasters.  Usually they will have a particular focus such as all Pilates or Kickboxing but the various segments are all for different body parts.  I wish they’d do an all upper body workout that could be paired with an all lower body workout. Then I could just choose how long to do each one and feel like I worked different parts more thoroughly.  That being said, the variety is indeed fun when that’s what you’re in the mood for, and these are a nice choice to add just a segment or two on another workout when you feel like you want just a little more.

The best thing about this workout (and any 10-Minute solution workout) is that it doesn’t take a lot of equipment or time. I did all 50 minutes today but of course you can choose to do anything from 10-50 minutes.  I was also happy to work out with Amy, one of my favorite instructors. The worst thing is just the fact that it’s really hard to pack a tough workout into just 10 minute segments. On the cardio segments, by the time you get your heart rate up, it’s time to bring it down again. On the weight segments, you don’t have time to work up a good burn in the muscles.  So I don’t think I’d make it my only workout, but I think it’s a keeper for the odd day when I just want that variety or can’t decide what kind of workout I want to do.

My husband and I have been on a great clean eating kick since Christmas.  Even though I am the one usually interested in fitness, it was my husband who instigated turning over our new leaf. He started reading a book I’ve had for awhile but haven’t read (I have a bad habit of buying new books and stacking them in a corner while I read something else).  The book was 101 Foods That Could Save Your Life by David Grotto.  I first heard about Grotto and his book over on MizFit’s blog where he has done hilarious guest video posts, such as this one.  Anyway, Brian was inspired by the book and shortly after Christmas he even went to the grocery store (we’re usually very 50’s traditional-type couple around here and I do all the shopping and cooking).  Then he brought home all sorts of lovely clean foods and cooked for us every day until he went back to work (and has still cooked some on the weekends and made us steel cut oats many mornings).

Meanwhile, I ordered the newest book by Grotto: 101 Optimal Foods.  We’ve only read a little of that one as we’re still exploring the first 101 foods.  Over the weekend we decided to make a nice clean homemade pizza with what we had in the fridge.  We came up with the lovely mess you see at the top there.  You’ll see we only topped it with jalapeño slices.  I like a little jalapeño but not so much has my husband so that side was his size.

It wasn’t a perfectly “clean” pizza. We did use a regular Boboli Thin Crust and we used a bit of Ragu Pizza Sauce (just a thin layer, though, in our defense).  Can you see all the other stuff we layered on top of that?  Well, let me see if I can remember: garlic, purple onion, olives, mushrooms, blue cheese, part-skim mozzarella, red pepper, spinach, cilantro, and of course jalapeños on the one side. I think I might be forgetting something, but that’s all I can see on the picture.  Several of those are on the 101 foods list.  Brian loves to make a meal with several of the 101 foods at once. When we first put that jumble of food in the oven I had my doubts. I was still a little wary of actually eating it when it came out.   But it turned out to be delicious.  Yay for mostly clean pizza!