This week my oldest daughter returns to preschool! This means we reinstate our school routine, from morning wake-ups to the bedtime routine. I figured this would be a good week to introduce you to my routines. I crave routine as much as my children, so I’ve developed several of them to make our life a little easier. Today, we are going to look at my exercise routine.
I’m a few weeks in now and it continues to be a challenge to lose the excess weight. The cruise is coming up and less than two months so I’ve stepped up my game a bit. I’m down about four pounds, but I can feel things changing. My legs are getting muscular, so maybe this isn’t all about weight loss, but toning as well. So what exactly is my exercise routine? Well, actually, it’s quite simple.
Now that my daughter is back in school three mornings a week, we leave a bit later those days, which gives me more time to work out in the morning. The mornings have been so tough for me. I don’t really want to do the aerobic activity for some reason, but I’m all about stretching and weights, so that’s what I do.
I like to use the quick and easy routines that come from Real Simple. I’ve included one for an exercise ball, but I have several. Each month, there is a new one. I’ve done one that focuses on the stomach and one that focuses on the legs, it’s always a great work out. I’ll probably incorporate this one this week.
The mornings consist of something like this. I do the exercises in my basement while I watch the morning news. It’s actually a nice way to get going in the morning and I feel a whole lot less tired than I do on the mornings that I skip the exercise.
I wrap up with a shower and a decent breakfast and it really seems to complete my morning.
The second part of my daily exercise routine happens at night. I require myself to get 20 minutes at least of aerobic activity. Most of the time this consists of running on my elliptical machine, but if it’s nice outside and not too hot, I will take the kiddos, pop them in the bike carrier and take a nice ride around our city. There are a couple of nice playgrounds so we will take the long way to one of them, stop and play, get back in and I get a nice ride back as well. Sometimes my daughter complains I’m going too slowly and I want to offer to let her pull mommy around in the trailer, but then I remind myself to kick it up and burn more fat and ton more muscles.
When I’m on my bike, I generally just listen to the sounds around me and talk to my kids, but when I’m on the elliptical, the kids are generally playing in the basement while I run and I’ll watch TV or read from my Kindle while I’m on the machine.
I attempt t o complete this routine every weekday, but that doesn’t always happen. Three days a week for morning workouts and five days a week for aerobic workouts generally sum it up.
Hopefully I’m able to get in shape for the cruise and keep up this routine every after we return. It’s not just good for getting ready for the week-long bathing suit celebration, it’s also a good way to keep my body and my mind healthy.