21 Day Fix - Cycle 2 Results

The results are in....

After 2 cycles of 21 Day Fix, I have lost 12 lbs!  In addition, I have lost 2 inches off of my bust, 2 1/2 inches off of my stomach, and 3 3/4 inches off of my hips!  Yesterday I had a great Non-Scale Victory when I bought jeans that were 2 sizes smaller than my jeans at home.  Here are some pics from our measurements this morning:

 This is Before, After the 2nd Cycle, and my Current After shot

 Here is my before (July 6th) to today (August 24th)

This week we are off of the program, but we aren't going off of the deep end.  We have still made food plans for the week, and we are going to try some new activities.  I  haven't gone running since we started this program, so I am going to that this week, and we are going to try the PLYO Fix DVD that came with our program that we haven't used yet.  We also have soccer on Wednesday.

Next week we will start 21 Day Fix Extreme! From what I have read, it is the same food plan, but more intense workouts.

Who else has done this program with success? Either 21 Day Fix or Extreme? What are tips/advice/results?

Staying on Track While Camping

This weekend, Robin & I went camping with some friends.  Since we're smack in the middle of our second 21 Day Fix plan, we didn't want to throw everything away over the weekend.  We struck the best balance we could.

We have found that the more prepared we are when going into situations like this, the better.  If I just hope to make smart choices, it will never work out.

First, for the workouts.  We did our Friday workout and missed Saturday, but we went on a long hike and played disc golf on Saturday.  It helped to feel good knowing that we were choosing healthy activities and not just sitting around and eating all weekend.

For food, we portioned and planned ahead of time.  For Friday, we packed snacks for the car including strawberries, cottage cheese, and string cheese, and brought chicken sausages to grill when we arrived.  On Saturday, we had an egg, sausage, and veggie scramble for breakfast and our shakes for a snack some cold brew coffee I brought.  For snacks, we packed fruit, cottage cheese, sliced peppers, and baby carrots.  Lunch was a sandwich with chicken deli slices and guacamole.  Dinner was chicken sausages again.  We did have some beer throughout the weekend, but we made smart choices and brought Miller 64 instead of heavy micro brews.

On Sunday, we had the same breakfast and stopped and bought some iced coffee to mix with our shakes.  We had Panera Bread for lunch, cottage cheese for a snack, and ate dinner when we arrived back at home.

Overall, we had a great weekend, and today began doubles workouts week, so the "break" was nice.  Today was Total Body Cardio + Pilates Fix.  I'm wiped out!

Oh yeah - one more thing.  I wore a bikini this weekend!

Have a great week!

21 Day Fix: The Workouts

Today I want to talk about the workouts I've been taking on during 21 Day Fix.  Each day I workout for 30 minutes.  Autumn Calabrese is the trainer, and I love that she pushes, but is also not a drill sergeant.

The schedule is this:  

Monday: Total Body Cardio

Tuesday: Upper Fix

Wednesday: Lower Fix 

Thursday: Pilates

Friday: Cardio Fix

Saturday: Dirty 30

Sunday: Yoga

I love the combination and flow of the weekly workouts, and I have had great results! In our first month, I lost 2 inches each off of my bust, waist, and hips.  I am one week into my second session of 21 days, and I'm enjoying each of working off those inches again!

Tonight is Upper Fix - let's do this!

A Day in the Life - 21 Day Fix

Today is the first day of the 21 Day Fix for Robin & I.  This will be our second trip through these 21 days.  When I was getting used to this plan the first time, I found that seeing a typical day from other people was incredibly helpful, so here it is!  A Day in the Life of 21 Day Fix (with pictures of course!):

Breakfast:  Chocolate Shakeology with strawberries and peanut butter (PB&J)

Mid-Morning Snack (not pictured): Blueberries

Lunch: Salad: Chicken with Mediterranean seasoning, lettuce, red pepper, cucumbers, turkey bacon, and 21 Day Fix Balsamic Dressing (homemade)

Afternoon Snack (not pictured): Cottage Cheese (did you know they sell 3 lb. containers of this at Costco!?)

Pre-Dinner: Total Body Cardio Fix (don't mind the double sports bras - they are essential to my success)

Dinner: Mac n' Chz with Chicken & Broccoli from the Fixate cookbook.  It tasted less like mac n' chz and more like an alfredo sauce.  Once we thought of it like that, we enjoyed it a lot more.

*Photo courtesy of my lovely wife, Robin Babaris

That's it folks.  Day #1.  Tomorrow we're having leftover mac n' chz for lunch and steak fajitas for dinner - yum!

21 Day Fix

Greetings! I can recognize that it has been awhile...4 years to be exact.  I guess I just needed some time to develop something to say.  I've finally found it, and it hasn't changed much from the things I wanted to say when I first started this blog.  What is hilarious is that one of my last posts on here was "before" pictures as I started to lose weight.  Ironic, right?

As I have many times in my life, I've recently begun a weight loss, fitness, and healthy eating journey.  This time is different.  I can feel it.  My friends Heather and Nicole introduced my new wife, Robin, and I to the Beachbody program a few months ago.  Heather suggested that we try out the 21 Day Fix program in order to jump start our progress.  A few months went by, we got married, spent 2 weeks in Italy on a honeymoon that incorporated lots of food and wine, and then we were ready.

Robin and I started the 21 Day Fix through Beachbody on July 6th and committed 21 days to get our nutrition and fitness right.  It sounds like a gimmick or fab diet at first glance, right?  I promise that we initially agreed, but we were both so desperate for a plan that we went for it.  There are two parts: food and exercise.

Food
The beauty of the food plan is that it is so simple.  Many people gave us a hard time for paying money for a program that is so easy to understand.  Beachbody hasn't come up with some magic potion for weight loss.  It is all about portion control and eating whole foods.  Here's the thing.  I knew all of these things, but I still didn't lose weight or follow any of it.  I would buy fruits and vegetables and they would go bad.  I just didn't have the will power or control to do it on my own.  I needed a plan, and for me it was worth spending money to gain access to the work someone else did to develop it.  The food plan has different colored containers that correspond to different food groups (vegetables, protein, fruit, carbs, healthy oils, seeds/nuts) that you get a certain amount of each day.  The plan also gives you a list of "approved" items that fit into each of these groups.  From this, you can develop recipes or use some from the Beachbody blog that tell you their container equivalents.

It involves a lot of prep (an hour or so on Sundays planning the week and prep/cooking each night), but I've found that I love it!  I feel so much more involved and in control of what I am putting in my body.  It is great!  Here are some pictures of meals we've eaten this month.  Many are pictures from my lovely wife (I have to make sure to give her credit).

Fitness
This is VERY simple.  You work out every single day for 21 days straight for 30 minutes a day.  Sounds extreme, right?  What's great is one day is yoga and one is pilates, so you get two "active recovery" days as our trainer, Autumn Calabrese, calls them.  It is a week that equals out to a complete full body workout: 2 days of straight cardio, 1 upper body, 1 lower body, 1 full-body strength/cardio, and 2 recovery days.  In the last week there is an option to do doubles which we did and phew, that killed us.  I mean that in the best way.

Results?
Before:
Weight: 161 lbs.,
Bust: 41 1/2 inches
Waist: 36 1/2 inches
Hips: 43 3/4 inches

After 21 Day Fix:
Weight: 153
Bust: 39 1/2 inches
Waist: 34 1/2 inches
Hips: 41 1/2 inches

Before and After Pictures:

What's next?  We're doing it again!  Robin and I took off 4 days off in which we still followed the food plan and a more relaxed version of the fitness program.  Today (Sunday) we feasted!  We ate at Brann's, had beer, and went to the movies which included soda, candy, and popcorn.  Phew! We're ready to get back to it tomorrow.  More results to come!

I'll leave you with this victorious picture from a week or so ago:

And this one that Robin created to show how much our faces have changed:

See you soon!