Playing Pretend

Lately I've been playing pretend.....pretending to be an aerobic instructor. No, not just for fun (though I have been toying with the idea of getting trained once I am close to my weight goals), but because I'm going to be in my home state of Montana for 9 days in two weeks.

Now, I am intensely happy ecstatic about this trip....I will get to see my entire family (which only happens about once a year), I will enjoy the *hopefully* snow covered mountains of my beloved Rockies, as well as just enjoying the festivities of Thanksgiving.

BUT, there is a downside: I will be without my gym. Now, my whole weight loss groove has been hinged on my consistency with working out at the gym. I have made it my second home. The gym is absolutely my comfort zone. I don't work out outside. Ever. I absolutely love my aerobic/cardio classes, and take 1-2 classes a day, and do yoga 3 times a week. I don't sweat or push myself around people I don't know unless I'm at the gym. These are things that will need to change eventually, since I will want to develop more of a lifestyle of activity. But for now, this is the way I do things.

So, how on earth am I going to not gain while I'm at home without my gym, with all the delicious temptations that I grew up with, and with my family not being naturally athletic? 

I'm going to create my own workouts! I'm trying to take my comfort zone of my classes with me. :) And, since my family is also taking strides to a more healthy and active lifestyle, I'm going to use them as my guinea pigs and have them join me too! *obviously, only if they want to (Family: don't freak out if you're reading this! I won't force you! lol). My sister Angela has already said she'll join me, and obviously John will work out with me (he's my biggest cheerleader ever).

I planned this 45 minute cardio circuit taking cues from some of my favorite classes. It was difficult to plan since my constraints are that I can only use minimal equipment and we'll be working out in my parent living room (Mom, if you're reading this, hope that's okay! :) It was so much fun to plan! We'll do a circuit of 15 stations, alternating one cardio, one strength, and we'll repeat it twice. After that we'll cool down, do some abs, and stretch.

John and I tried this last Saturday. He said he had no idea that you could get such an awesome workout in the livingroom! I was pretty happy that I was able to push him to get a good sweat on since he's so fit already. And, what about my workout? Oh, I'm not concerned about if I'll be able to keep my heart rate up...in addition to doing all the stations, I have to keep talking to make sure everybody is doing the exercises right and telling them how much longer to keep going!

Talking while you're working out hard = bumping up your workout to a whole new level. So that's all good.

So hopefully, I'll do that circuit workout 2-3 times while I'm in Montana, and I will lead a yoga class 2-3 times as well. My whole family is running our first 5K on Thanksgiving day (Huffin' for Stuffin'!!), and I'm going to make sure I take a walk around the neighborhood whenever I get the chance.

With these plans, hopefully I'll not only just not gain weight during the infamous holiday, but get under the 200 lb milestone while I'm there!

And, I'll get to see if I'm cut out to be an instructor. :)