Just Dance. Seriously. And my exercise tip of the day.

Mondays are a lot easier when you know you get to sleep in, wake up to your favorite bowl of oatmeal, and head off to the gym with your mom. I’ll take that as my regular Monday routine any day.  I knew time was going to be limited, and I wanted to get in my maximum calorie burn, so today’s workout went a little something like this.

50 minute intervals on the Stairmill
10 minute intervals on the elliptical (I got reaaallly bored on the stairs. AKA nobody was doing anything very exciting around me making the people watching sub-par.)

30 minute full body multi-tasking weights routine
– 15 Squats with a shoulder press
– 24 Alternating reverse lunge with a rear DB row
– 15 Squats with a bicep curl
– 12 Single Leg squats down to a push up and back to single leg stand

I alternated through all of these twice. I normally like to lift weights 4 days per week, splitting up muscle groups. Back and biceps, legs and shoulders, chest and triceps, and legs and core. I do legs twice because they are my favorite. However, when I know that I may not be able to follow my lifting schedule I do full body workouts as many times as I can get in that week. I make sure to do multi-tasking movements, like I mentioned above.
When you do exercises that involve two, or more, muscle groups at once you will save yourself time. The workout above works every muscle in your body. It’s quick and efficient when you don’t have the time to spend doing a full workout.

Don’t skip the weights! My mom and I had this conversation yesterday… Often times when we get busy and we have the choice of doing some cardio or lifting weights we opt for the cardio because it’s an instant high calorie burner. What most people don’t realize is that when you lift weights you may not burn as many calories per hour as your cardio may burn while you’re performing the exercises, but lifting weights gives you what is called an “afterburn.” Your metabolism is revved from lifting weights and will continue to burn more calories per hour after your workout. With cardio you burn what you burn while you’re working out, and when that heart rate comes down, you go back to your normal burn rate. You are also increasing the amount of calories your body burns per hour when you add more lean muscle to your body. So, don’t skip out on the weights!

Also…have you ever played the game on the Wii called, Just Dance? It’s the best thing that ever happened to me, and obese kids everywhere. You can’t help but shake your groove thing…my nieces and I had a great time with that one today. We really couldn’t stop playing. It made me think of what a great option these new active games are for kids who love their video games, but aren’t active.

 I went for a thin crust, with a basil tomato sauce, spinach, green peppers, red peppers, sliced tomatoes, olives, pineapple, and some shredded chicken. With a little bit of part-skim mozzarella on top. My brother told me mine looked like more of a salad than a pizza. It was gooood.

 We had so much fun making different creations. Some of the favorites were a bbq chicken pizza with fresh cillantro on top, a pesto pizza with fresh sliced tomatoes, and a stuffed crust meat lovers pizza. It was a great family activity, and the pizza’s were pretty healthy if you watch your cheesy-ness.