Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Workout Wednesday: House Cleaning

Before I get to the house cleaning part of this blog, a little bit of an exercise update for ya...

I've been really hitting my stride in terms of working out lately. No, my foot isn't 100% yet, but it is bothering me less and less. Just in the past couple of days I've been able to go on a 4 mile hike, a 2.5 mile walk, a 2.4 mile bike ride and a 45 minute spin class. I was a little worried that all of the variety of workouts was going to tweak my foot a bit, but so far, so good.

My foot is finally to the point where I feel comfortable being on it multiple times a day and therefore have been able to re-implement my morning walk/bike ride. It's really stunk not being able to get up and go first thing in the morning, but I really wanted to give my foot it's best chance to heal. I've really been missing my morning walks for the most part because of how much I believe in them. I feel SO MUCH better on the days that I do something first thing in the morning. I don't know whether it's because I "jump start" my body or because I cough up a gallon of mucus, but whatever it is, it works! If you're looking to start some type of exercise routine, I would HIGHLY suggest starting out with a morning walk. I know that I am so thankful that mine can resume.

I had another spin class today and yet it again, it kicked my booty. Every time we go back I try to push it a little bit more than the last time. What's cool is I'm able to keep up with the instructor much better than before and don't feel like I'm going to puke for the entire time. Now I'm down to feeling like I'm going to barf for only half of the class...small victories. This is another workout I would highly recommend. It's low impact. You have a motivator in front of you the entire time. And you can go at your own pace. I promise you that it will get you sweating a ton and breathing really heavy.

And finally, my most surprising workout of the day, cleaning the house. Mandi hung out with some of her girlfriends tonight so I wanted to surprise her with a clean house when she got back. Between getting home from the gym and handling some work issues, that didn't give me much time to get it done. In all, I dusted, unloaded and loaded the dishwasher, cleaned the toilet, Swiffered the entire house twice, mopped the entire house and did the laundry. Let me tell you, I had to break out my sweat rag from the spin class to wipe off the liquid pouring from my forehead. So here's the deal, if you think working out isn't for you, start with this. Write out a list of all the household chores you will do and an amount of time you plan on having them done by. Time yourself and see if you can meet your goal. If you do, lower the time the next time that you're doing those same chores. Maybe it's because I'm out of shape or maybe it's because it works, but all I know is that cleaning the house makes me sweat up a storm!