Ep: 123 I Dare You To Workout My Way And Win The Holidays

Hello, my loves. Welcome to Lean and Clean with Fitness chef Christine. Today we are going to talk about our fitness, right? Because our pillars are fitness, fat loss, food and faith. I truly believe that God wants us to be our healthiest as long as we can be there. Right. Part of that is movement, whether it's strength training, Pilates, yoga, combination of everything, water, fitness, whatever it is you love. Maybe it's just dancing or just walking, it's all good. So we want to focus on getting a lot in there. But I know that holiday times, things get crazy because they're already starting to get crazy for me. For a long time I was a professional baker, and so everybody wants their holiday pies and tarts and things, and I want to make them for everybody. But that narrows the amount of time I have for myself. I've devised a way that I would love you to implement as well, and that is the one minute workouts. What do I mean by that? You set a timer and you do as many reps as you can for one minute and then you go off and maybe you change the laundry over or then you make time for another minute and so on throughout the day. And your goal is to get at least 20 to 30 minutes in during the day, maybe more, maybe less, but that's about the right amount. So maybe you have a little bit more time and you do five minute increments. However you want to break it up, it's up to you, but it's just a great way to make sure that you're getting that little extra in there, aside from just your normal daily activities. So let me give you an example. This is just an easy example, but I think it helps. I'm going to move this light just a little bit. There we go. And so we're going to start with some bicep curls. I'm just going to start with just some eight pound weights. Okay, so we're just going to stand nice and turn. And actually we're going to do some hammer curls. I lied. So we're going to do some hammer curls. So we're going to bring them up and back down. Now, if you want to do a combination, you can bring them up, press it up, however you want to do it. I'm going to do it for one minute. Now I'm going to show you how much you can get done in a minute and how long a minute feels when you're exercising. You'd say a minute of exercise, you're like, ah, that's nothing. But when you start to do It. Oh, it starts to add up really quickly. You might get to the point where you can't even make it a minute. You've got the right amount of weight. You might not be able to do a full minute and that's okay. You just do what you can do. Now maybe you have light weight, in which case you might need to bump it up. If you get about halfway through and you're still rocking it out and it's not. You're not really feeling it, that's time to increase those weights. And we don't want to swing, we want to press.

Get some. There'll be a little bit of momentum, but we try to keep as much of it out as possible. Keep your shoulders nice and relaxed. But whether you choose to do it with weights or I'll show you in a bit, if you want to do some Pilates, however you want to do that, maybe you don't have any equipment and you don't really know Pilates. You don't really know what you're going to do. There we go. That was a minute. And I can tell you, I really feel it. But let's say I didn't have any equipment at all, right? And I said, okay, I don't have any equipment. So when I aim this down, I could do a minute of push ups, right? I get right down here and do push ups. So maybe I can't do a full push up. Maybe I can only do from my knees. But I guarantee you, if you do a minute, it's gonna be a struggle. It's not easy. I'm move this reformer out of the way for a little bit. Now let's take another minute, Take another minute. For this one. I'm going to use my watch because I can't see the timer from there because I don't have my glasses on. That's one of the lovely things about being over 50. Here we go. And we're just going to do some glute bridges. So for now I'm going to do it without any weight. I could add a weight to here, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to pull my pelvic floor, pull my pelvic into my stomach area and then I'm going to go and slowly rise up. When I get to the top, I'm going to squeeze those glutes and slowly come back down. So I'm being very intentional about it. Coming up, squeezing, coming back down.

Coming up, squeeze, come back down.

And so we're just going to keep on Doing this, we've got about another 20 seconds.

And then of course, you can make it a little harder. You can just do one leg.

Then you can switch legs.

So that just gives it a little bit more challenge.

Come back to both.

You can even do another variation. You could do a figure four and come up and squeeze. So there's lots of ways to do that, believe it or not. That was a minute. Now let's flip it over.

You can see we can incorporate a lot. So I'm going to reset the timer for a minute.

Get some cats and cows in there. So we're going to get our stance in. We've got our shoulder, our arms under our shoulder blades, and we're just going to roll up. Everybody's got a different range of motion, so you do what you can do. We're going to separate our shoulder blades and look up and really stretch our chest forward. Tuck that chin in.

And look up.

I've had the same yoga instructor for years and years, and she's amazing. I'll have to look her up. She goes by the Feel Good Yoga Girl.

And she taught me all about yin. And yin is a wonderful slow yoga practice. If you haven't looked it up, you really should. It's about holding your poses for long periods of time, maybe three to five minutes each, but really let your muscles release. And even though it doesn't seem like you're actively doing work, your body is doing the work. That's great. Okay, we've been in a minute. Okay, so we're going to come back up.

Fix this a little bit. A little adjustment. Hello there.

And let's say now that we want to do a little bit more for our arms and our shoulders, and so we want to just come out to the side. So we're just going to do this for a minute.

And maybe you want to come to front and then decide front and side. So there's been many times over the years that I've done heavier weights and then I've had to drop it back when I hurt my shoulder. But it doesn't matter because all of it is just doing your best, making progress wherever you can. So by doing these little micro workouts, really getting a lot done since the start of the podcast, it's only been seven and a half minutes. I've been able to work quite a bit, and I'm feeling it.

These weights start to feel much heavier. So if I get to a point where I feel like, okay, that's getting a little aggressive, I'll drop it down and that's, that's what I want you to do. Let's say, all right, I don't have any weights, what could I be doing? So you could just do some regular squats. So just squat down however it's comfortable, keeping your chest forward, coming up.

And let's say you could do that for a minute. Now, you can do that anywhere. Let's say you're cooking breakfast and you got everything on the stove and you got a few more seconds. You set a timer for one minute. You do a minute of squats, you're good to go. Let's say you don't want to get down on the floor. You do a minute of wall push ups. Still good to go. You do a minute of jumping jacks. Right. You could just touch under. If jumping isn't your thing, there's a million different exercises you can do. But what I'm going to challenge you to do is really set the timer a couple minutes here and there and get the work done. It doesn't have to be the whole time. It can be just here and there. Now let me show you on the reformer. Just another couple things you can do. Now, maybe you don't have a reformer at home. Not a lot of people do. No big deal. You might have a strap, a yoga strap can do the same thing. You could do it without any resistance, but I'll show you regardless. Just so that you have an idea of what you can do, I think that's always important. We'll grab our box here.

So these loops are going to come around my feet. Now, I've used the ones that attach to the wall and those work great as well. But we're just going to go ahead and put one on here, one on here. And while this is really a lot of core work, it also works our legs. So we're just going to pull down.

Nice point and pull back up. So do a minute of those.

What I want you to see is just how much you can get done in a minute. It's just amazing.

Come nice and slow. If that's too easy for you, you can add resistance or you can come up and lift or butt up and come back down. So just adding a little bit more, contracting those abs a little bit more.

And let's say you want to change it up even more, you can come out and circle.

When I travel, I have bands that attach to the door.

So I can still do this. I can still use them with my arms.

About seven more seconds.

But I want you to be creative.

And we'll come back to the top. I'm going to flip over.

We'Ll swing it around.

And again you can attach the bands to the door so you don't have to have a machine. This just makes it convenient. I'm going to use the lower strap so there's a little bit more resistance in there. I'm going to lean back, I'm going to pull myself forward and lean back so I'm working my abdominal areas as well as that Nice rowing motion.

Now I'm going to set the timer.

I forgot to set the timer there, so I have a little bit of extra.

But if you have no equipment at all, everyone can do sit ups, push ups, leg lifts, and there's tons of variations of those. So there's never an excuse not to strengthen your body. You can do it with body weight, you can do it with weights, you can do it with pulleys, you can do it a million different ways. But don't give up. Keep working on it. Keep getting better and better. Right? This is what we're trying to do. We want to be our very strongest for as old as we are blessed to live so we don't break a hip, we don't fall down, we don't lose our balance. These are all things that we need to work on. Maybe it's as simple as standing on one leg while you brush teeth, but I'm telling you, all these little things add up to a lot. They really help to keep us very fit. Now, all the fitness in the world isn't going to do us any good if our nutrition is not on point.

So it's been 12 minutes in total since I've started and I've been able to work a good grouping of.

Muscles. I'll probably continue a little bit later too. But the thing is, I got it in there right where I could have just blown it off. Because right now it is time. Is it? It's quarter to eight at night. I could have blown it off. I could have said, eh, I don't have time. I've been busy all day and I have a new grandbaby who is just the sweetest little pumpkin. And so I went over there and I ran around and did all my errands and I had two zoom calls with clients and meetings and everything else so I could have owned enough. But just by doing this micro workout I still got something in and I don't have to feel the guilt of not getting it done. I want to show you a couple other options just because I want to Keep encouraging you that you don't need a lot of equipment, you just need a few things. Let's see the kettlebell, right? These are wonderful. You can do so much with them. You can bend over and row.

You can upright row.

You can swing using your hips. You can swing with single arms. There's just a lot you can do with this one little piece of equipment. And the next thing I want to show you are maybe you're just not ready for weights. Maybe that's not in your wheelhouse. These little Velcro things come in anywhere from £1, all the way up to £10, £20. And you could just do arm circles. I promise this really works. You could just do those arm circles while you're standing there. Maybe you're on the phone, right? Get it in there. You set your timer, you go take it off, you switch sides and you're doing it in the space that you have. These also can go on your ankles and you can do the same thing. You can do circles, you can do front and back, you can do pendulums. Lots of different options. You can lay down and do leg lifts. Do not get stuck in a box thinking that you have to go to the gym for two hours to get the results. Think micro workouts, little bursts of time throughout the day where you can get that extra in. And I promise you're going to see such great results without all the stress of having to run to the gym or even run to your home gym and try and cram it all in there. Getting up at 4 o' clock in the morning, hey, kudos to you if you can do it, but I'm telling you, you don't need to do that. You can still make progress in the time that you have. Back to what I was saying about nutrition. All the good work in the world isn't going to help you if your nutrition is not on point. I have been at a stage in my life where I worked out twice a day for an hour and I wasn't seeing results because I was not eating correctly. So don't make those mistakes, okay? We talk about nutrition an awful lot and I really want you to concentrate on getting that really great protein in every meal because those healthy fats don't fear meat fat. It's actually really good for you. It's good for your brain health. I've shared with you before that my mom had als, so she really needed a lot of healthy fat. And she grew up in an era where everything was fat free or I grew up in there. Everything was fat free. And she followed that and so that was really starved her brain of important nutrients in the beginning and when the doctors found out, they told you you can't be fat free. But she was so afraid to gain weight and that was so ingrained in her that she just couldn't get with that program. But now we know better. It's coming back around. We have to eat like our ancestors did, okay? They would hunt and they would eat what they got. They would eat the organs, they would eat the whole animal, all the fat. They would render down to cooking. Those are, that's an important way for us to replicate in a world of fast food and crappy food and processed foods. Really go for the simple natural foods. Visit your farmer's market, eat fruits and vegetables that are in season. Eat your meat, absolutely that should be your staple because that's what's going to keep you full and keep you progressing and keep those muscles and those bones strong and really just keeps us moving. It has helped me tremendously with my leg neuropathy. I still get those night cramps, I still get the charlie horses but not nearly as bad as I was. So my wish for you is that we have a stress free holiday. We're gonna keep on working that goal all the way up and through with the new year so that when we get to the new year we are not those spazzy people making all these changes to our diet trying to lose all the weight. We're just gonna sail in there. Smooth sailing. Alright my friends, if you have not subscribed, please do. It is free and I love keeping in contact with everybody. Leave me some comments, send me some emails. Krisnoble Health coach at gmail dot com. I just, I love connecting with everybody. All right my friends, I will see you on Sunday. Much love. Have a great week. They're always in my prayers.