Guess who’s back…back again…my good mood. Told all my friends. There’s a solid chance you read that to the tune of Eminem and if so, you’re truly my kind of person. {Almost} out the door went my pissy attitude. This Workout Wednesday is MUCH brighter. Energy has reappeared. Motivation right on par with where I left off. Before anyone starts to think I let working out dictate my vibe for the day, let me clarify. I am a grown ass woman and I dictate my own vibes. Never do I wake up hoping to be crabby. But randomly I will and that’s why I workout first thing in the AM. It forces me to refocus my energies for 45-75ish minutes and 99.9/100 times when I’m done, I’m good to go. On that note, we shall dive head first into this week’s questions:

Top 3 Questions of the week…

Do you follow a diet? Did you? Have you ever dieted?

I’ve avoided this question for the last 5 weeks. It was honestly the #1 question in my second Workout Wednesday post {and every since} and has been a regular in my DMs for years now. Simple answer: no. No I do not follow a specific diet. Did I? Not for a LONG time. Have I ever? Yes. The best way to describe my eating is that I loosely follow the 80/20 rule: 80% of my calories are lean, clean & green while the other 20% are anything else. Not every week is that totally true, some weeks are super super ‘healthy’ and others just are not. I’ve done the FWTFL Intermittent Fasting Program & Whole 30. Both have great aspects to them. BUT if you have any sort of struggle with eating disorders, skewed perceptions of food, etc. I would encourage you to NOT do either. Those programs allowed you to eat well, but they personally triggered some unhealthy habits for me and I was a little to obsessive with them. Never done other fad diets or taken ‘weight loss’ pills. Slippery slope for me personally. Ok, that’s a long-winded enough answer for a Workout Wednesday question but it is looking like an entire ‘Eating’ post will be coming soon…

How long have you been doing yoga?

On a consistent, weekly basis, I have been doing it since January 1. Every single Sunday since. Haven’t missed one yet, and don’t intend to. The best part about streaming yoga classes (I use my Peloton app & LOVE Aditi Shah) is I literally have no excuse because I can pull one up anywhere I am. Legit don’t even need a yoga mat. Though it does kind of suck without one! But I’ve gone in waves with it in the past. I took 3 solid (4-5x/week) months of hot yoga a few years back, have dropped into numerous local classes or studios while on work trips and streamed a bunch of online videos since making fitness a priority back in the Spring of 2013. My flexibility is SO. MUCH. BETTER. from the recent consistency, that I am curious how good it actually could be if I did it even more often. If you’re looking for free yoga options — I cannot recommend Yoga with Adriene enough. She got me started & I always enjoy pulling up one of her videos when I need a reset.

What kind of music do you listen to when you workout/run? Do you have a playlist on Spotify?

Call me crazy but I don’t listen to music when I run. I made the switch to either {now call me REALLY crazy} quiet runs, podcasts or chatting with whoever I’m running with. The BPM of songs was affecting my cadence too much and I wanted to regain control of that. Now it kind of annoys me to hear music if I’m running. My favorite podcasts to listen to while running: Absolutely Not, The Bitch Bible, The Morning Toast & Ben Shapiro’s The Daily Wire or Clay Travis’ Outkick the Coverage. It’s called balance. Raunchy feminism to pop culture to politics to sports, I consume it all. When I lift, I like a variety — usually 90s/early 2000s rap & hip-hop or that same time frame’s rock. Who doesn’t love working out with a little System of A Down or Three Days Grace? 🙂 As for Spotify, I’m a big fan of THIS THROWBACK PLAYLIST but always open to suggestions, so send them my way if you have one that is similar!

Workout Wednesday Workout of the Week

LEG FOCUSED

What you’ll *ideally* need: band, 1 heavy dumbbell, 1 set of medium-weight dumbbells, exercise ball. To make it tougher — up your weights and/or add a band to your squats & iso-holds. To make it easier, do these moves body weight-only and/or lower your reps.

GIVEAWAY ALERT

I’m so excited to be teaming up with Little Movements & Koala Clip to give away 1 clip and 1 high-impact sports bra (sizes XS-3X) to one lucky lady! Giveaway goes live at 5pm on my Instagram, so be sure to check it out!