I guess this posting once every two or three weeks thing is just… my thing now. I think I’m okay with that.

My last three weeks of workouts!
Monday, 4/8: Rip Ride (6:30 pm with Christianne, 60 min)
Tuesday, 4/9: Uplift Strength (6:30 pm with Liz, 55 min) – I loved this class. It was really upper body heavy, which is exactly what I wanted on the warmest day so far this year. Tank top season, here I come!
Wednesday, 4/10: Reinvention Chair (6:30 pm with Rachel, 55 min) – My first class with Rachel at Chaise23! She has so much energy and I was sweating like crazy with the small specific movements.
Thursday, 4/11: Flybarre (7 am with Kara, 60 min) – I’m quickly learning that any class with Kara is killer. This one was murder on my legs, but hey, that’s what I came for!
Friday, 4/12: Rest
Saturday, 4/13: Rest
Sunday, 4/14: Rest

Monday, 4/15: Flybarre (7 am with Khori, 60 min) – Killer class! It felt so good to work hard after three days of rest.
Tuesday, 4/16: Rip Ride (7:30 pm with Kira, 60 min) – Kira was on fire! Awesome class with incredible energy. We went almost fifteen minutes over and my heart rate monitor read 748 calories! Now that’s a workout.
Wednesday, 4/17: Flybarre (7 am with Todd, 60 min) & Uplift Workout & Wine: Book Club (6:30 pm with Shannon, 55 min) – I decided to take Flybarre on a whim the night before. And with serendipitous timing, I got my favorite mat! It turned out to be kind of a gross morning but Todd’s energy is infectious and got me going. On the flip side, I’d been planning to go to Uplift’s Book Club for a few weeks now but didn’t finish the book (Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In), unfortunately. It didn’t matter too much because the whole discussion ended up being more about feminism and our own experiences than anything else. It was an empowering night with the badass women of Uplift!
Thursday, 4/18: SLT (6:30 pm with Liz, 50 min) & Flybarre (8:15 pm with Todd, 60 min) – I met Liz at Uplift last week and really wanted to try her SLT class. She hit the core hard, as every SLT class does. My class with Todd after was excellent as always. I left especially happy after because Todd pulled me aside at the end to tell me how much I’ve improved since I started going to Flybarre. Always nice to hear!
Friday, 4/19: DJ Ride (8 pm with Dyan & Kira, 60 min) – Two of my favorites teaching together. Um, yes, of course. Not only were they hilarious together, but having a live DJ there took the energy over the edge. Loved it!
Saturday, 4/20: Flybarre (8:15 am with Kara, 60 min) & Uplifting Strength (9:30 am with Michelle, 55 min) – Oof. I’m gonna have to try to get into Kara’s 9:30 am classes on Saturday from now on because the 8:15 class is seriously stressful. Last week, my train was running late and they gave my mat away. This week, I managed to get off the train and call around 8:12 so I kept my mat but I rushed in last minute at 8:16. Oh well. Still a fantastic workout! I followed it up with Michelle’s strength class at Uplift, which was killer. She threw a lot of moves I hadn’t see before in there. Love!
Sunday, 4/21: TRX/Stretch (9 am with Katherine, 60 min) – My first time at Pedal NYC through the Classtivity passport and my first time trying TRX! I got a good workout in, but it was kind of hard to start because um, I have some serious trust issues and didn’t trust the skinny yellow straps. Also, I was a little hungover and a lot tired. But no accidents were had, so I may just venture back into TRX territory soon!

Monday, 4/22: Rest – This day was such a fail. I’d planned to go to 7 am Flybarre but couldn’t get up. Then I wanted to go to 6:30 Refine after work, but I missed the bus and knew I couldn’t make it after that. Whoops.
Tuesday, 4/23: Flybarre (7 am with Shay) & Uplifting Strength (6:30 pm with Liz) – I love Liz and her Uplifting Strength class. Girl knows her stuff. Thos class really effective and I like a lot of the moves she gives for the cardio tabata drills. We did half-burpees with a push-up for tabata which was fun. And we did 3 1/2 minutes of plank and plank variations at the end for abs. I didn’t think I’d make it but I actually had to cheat surprisingly little. Yay!
Wednesday, 4/24: Nalini Method (6:45 pm with Rupa) – My first time here, courtesy of Classtivity! I bought a LivingSocial deal for five classes here a while back so I’ll be back soon.
Thursday, 4/25: Real Ride (7 am with Kristen) & Flybarre (7 pm with Todd) – I have no idea why I hasn’t been back to Kristin’s class since the very first class I ever took at Revolve. That class had been awesome and so was this one! We rode Carson Pass and I had so much fun.
Friday, 4/26: Rest – I woke up late and missed Michelle’s Uplifting Strength class. Yeah, the alarm has not been my friend lately…
Saturday, 4/27: Zumba – I was visiting my parents so I went with my mom to her Zumba class which was… not a workout. I thought I was doing okay following along, but it just didn’t get me sweating.
Sunday, 4/28: Rest

I realized something yesterday that struck me as kind of weird. I did Flybarre in the morning, but didn’t book a class after work because I had the feeling that it was going to be a long day. Sure enough, I got stuck at work until 6. For my Jersey-commuting self, that’s basically the worst time to be ready to leave the office for a workout. It’s too late to get to a 6:30 class, but too early for a 7:30 class (I’m highly impatient and hate waiting). Anyway, I was kind of antsy from work and knew I didn’t feel like waiting an hour and a half for a 7:30 class. I spent a few minutes looking for a class at 7, but couldn’t find anything so I decided to just go straight home from work. This is when the kind of weird thing happened. I got on the light rail to go home and took out my phone and kept looking up classes at 7:30 that I could go to. I just really wanted it to work out. I didn’t feel super stressed or like I had a ton of energy to burn off either, so I have no idea why. I just really wanted to even though I knew I should just go home, save the money on the class, and relax.

Anyway, if you told me a year ago that in a year, I’d be convincing myself out of working out, I’d probably laugh in your face and then feel bad about my level of fitness and go binge eat some chips. I definitely didn’t enjoy working out the way I do now, but at the time, I was working out in a gym alone and hadn’t discovered group fitness yet. I’m glad that I’ve made so much progress and don’t feel like I’ll be stopping anytime soon. Group exercise feels like an important part of my life now, which is awesome because I feel that it’s given me so much of the purpose that I was missing a year ago.

Self-reflective moment over.

On another note, my hip has not improved since I received the cortisone injection in my left hip two and a half weeks ago. My doctor said it could take up to a week to start improving, but could take up to two weeks. Today makes three weeks since I had the injection, and I’m sad to report that I’ve seen no progress. It still pops with every step I take when walking which doesn’t hurt, but is annoying. I was hoping to be ready to start running again sometime in May, so not seeing much progress is frustrating. Equally frustrating is the fact that my doctor explicitly told me to let her know how the hip was doing in two weeks. I called her office and left a message for her last week, but didn’t hear back. When I called again this week, I was told that she wasn’t in the office and would be back next week. Oy.

And lastly, I bought a $300 masticating juicer over the weekend! It’s the Omega VRT350. I almost couldn’t justify spending so much money on it, but then I realized that I probably spend that much money on juice in two months right now anyway. Sooooo yeah.

Juice prep: three apples, four stalks of celery, a few cups of spinach, half of a lemon, and a tiny bit of ginger.

Using my Omega VRT350 to make green juice!

Excited to stock up on produce this weekend and try some more juice recipes!

And on another tangent, that is the Arrested Development box set on the right side of that second picture. I am PSYCHED for the season to start on Netflix at the end of this month – it will be awesome! Anyone else excited?

I have two weeks worth of workouts to catch you up on today. Whoops.

Here’s how the last two weeks went:
Monday: Rest
Tuesday: Revolve Rip Ride (7:30 pm, 60 min)
Wednesday: Barre Fusion (7:45 pm, 60 min) – I really wanted to love this class, but there really wasn’t as much barre as I’d hoped for. I was expecting a pretty typical barre class, with slightly more time spent on stretching and maybe a sun salutation or two but instead it seemed more like a straight vinyasa yoga class to me.
Thursday: Bowchickawowow Flybarre (5:45 pm, 60 min) & Revolve Red Hot Rip Ride (7:30 pm, 60 min) – I normally don’t double up on weekdays but I couldn’t resist this particular day! Two of my favorite classes were doing Valentine’s Day themes. Flybarre had a bowchickawowow class full of sexy music and Rip Ride had a ladies’ only class and playlist. Such a fun day!
Friday: Rest
Saturday: Rip Ride (10:30 am, 60 min) & Flybarre (1:15 pm, 60 min)
Sunday: Flybarre (4 pm, 60 min)

Monday: Flybarre (9:30 am, 60 min) & Body Ride (12:30 pm, 45 min) – Can I have every Monday off, please? It’s too fun. The Flybarre class was a blast with Shay, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite Flybarre instructors. She’s so cheery but with a laidback cool vibe. And Christianne’s class after that was incredible too. I was really feeling that day’s music.
Tuesday: Rip Ride (7:30 pm, 60 min)
Wednesday: Body Ride (7 am, 45 min) & Flybarre (6:45 pm, 60 min) – After a lot of back and forth on Jason’s Body Ride on Wednesday morning, I’d decided not to go the night before. But I just so happened to have insomnia that day and woke up at like 6 am so I went and rocked it out. It was an awesome way to finish out my unlimited month at Revolve. I would’ve skipped Flybarre after work but I was already past the free cancel period so I went anyway. I tried a new-to-me instructor this time, Amanda, and she was really upbeat and fun. No regrets.
Thursday: Rest – This is what the title refers to. I reluctantly took this planned rest day, even though I didn’t want to.
Friday: Revolve DJ Ride (7:30 pm, 60 min) – I really liked this ride. They had a live DJ and both Christianne and Kristin were teaching. Both are amazing and it was awesome!
Saturday: Rip Ride (10:30 am, 60 min) & Flybarre (12 pm, 60 min) – Rip Ride was amazing as always. I tried another new-to-me Flybarre instructor, Khori, and she was awesome! The triceps work was especially tough.
Sunday: Flybarre (4 pm, 60 min) – This class is quickly becoming my Sunday afternoon staple. Love it.

Recently, I’ve had a lot of trouble with rest days. As in, I don’t want to take them because my workouts are the perfect form of stress relief and too much fun. Though I really should take more for the sake of my bank account. Those expensive classes really add up.

Anyway, last week, I’d planned to take a rest day on Thursday but I wasn’t too excited about it. What made it even harder to stick to taking my planned rest day was my schedule for that day. My boss and I spent the day recruiting for interns, which meant the day started early and ended early. Usually I’m busy with work so I jump at any chance I get to get to classes during work hours and beat the after-work or before-work crowd. I got home around 3:30, so of course, I was so, so tempted to squeeze in a late afternoon Flybarre class, but ultimately, I decided it would be better to stick to my rest day.

I felt like I was wasting my free time, which annoyed me at the time, but in retrospect, it was a really smart decision. It gave my body time to recover from from my workouts earlier in the week and I felt strong at Revolve’s DJ Ride on Friday night.

My lesson learned for the week: rest days are your friend!

And just to include some color in this post, last night I went to Plataforma in the city for a work dinner and their salad bar is just as unbelievable as people say. For those who haven’t heard of it, it’s a rodizio (Brazilian BBQ) place, but their salad bar is supposedly so great that it even draws vegetarians. Truth!

It seems like my bursts of work busyness ALWAYS seem to come at a bad time.

Case in point, this week I’ve been tasked with working with senior management on an important strategy deck that’s due this Friday. Normally, I really wouldn’t complain at all about having to work hard and stay late for this type of thing. I’m good at these kind of things and I recognize the importance of getting exposure to your senior management in your first few years of work.

It’s kind of a different story this time though. I woke up with a seriously sore throat yesterday morning, which morphed into a full-blown cold by the time I woke up this morning. I’d had plans to go Revolve’s Rip Ride with Kira after work today, but decided earlier in the day that I’d just have to cancel so I could go home and rest up. But rest and my warm bed wasn’t in the cards tonight… Instead, I ended up getting stuck at work until 8:30 for a meeting for my new project.

I don’t mean to complain with this post. Really, I just want to remind myself that I need to work on this work-life balance thing and making sure I get enough “me time” in a week. “Me time” is important to me. All of my friends know that it’s a priority. I can’t totally blame work for the lack of “me time” either. I mean, just look at the last week or so when things were slower at work:

Sunday: Local Barre (5:30 pm)
Monday: Local Barre (5:45 pm)
Tuesday: GoRow (6:30 pm) & Local Barre (8:15 pm)
Wednesday: Local Barre (7:15 pm)
Thursday: Revolve Real Ride (7 am)
Friday: Rest
Saturday: Revolve Body Ride (8:30 am) & Local Barre (10:15 am)
Sunday: Local Barre (10 am)
Monday: Local Barre (7:45 pm)
Tuesday: Rest

That doesn’t leave a lot of “me time” on the weekdays. So anyway, while I would love it if I could manage to work my usual hours in a day, work out, and still have “me time” in the evening, it’s just not realistic. I need to work on treating myself a little better.

Anyway, switching gears now. One of my favorite ways to treat myself is with good food! On Sunday, my parents and aunt met me in the city to see Chicago and get dinner afterward. We ended up going to New Wonjo in Koreatown and it was amazing! It’s the perfect cuisine for cold winter day!

Let’s take a better look at the table!

Dduk boki (spicy stir-fried rice cakes)

Sundubu Jjigae (spicy soft tofu soup with kimchi)

Bibim Bop (rice with ground beef and vegetables)

Galbi Jjim (boiled marinated prime short ribs and vegetables)

Anyway, that’s more than enough of my introspective self-indulgence for this blog. Nyquil always makes things interesting…

I feel sort of ready to get back to blogging more regularly… or at least slowly ease back into it. I miss being able to look back at old posts and see what I ate or did. I can’t even begin to count the number of food pictures on my phone that never see the bright light of the Internet, though I guess a good amount are still out there since I decided that my Instagram account should exist solely as a dumping ground for food photos.

But anyyyyway. My OCD self doesn’t quite feel right starting up my blog again without giving an update on my life – more for myself than anyone else.  So here we go!

Fitness: I started going to barre classes at Local Barre in Hoboken in October and I’m loving it! I really can’t say enough good things about it. I’m stronger, more toned, and more flexible than when I started. I go four or five times a week with a few rest days spaced out. Barre classes are mostly strength and toning though, so I want to start re-incorporating some cardio into my rest days soon.

Health: My cholesterol has been high for over five years now. In June, I had it tested and was disappointed to find that my total cholesterol was 251 (125-200 is normal) with 165 milligrams of LDL (the bad cholesterol, <130 is normal). I had it tested again in December with much better results! This time my total cholesterol was 224 with 133 milligrams of LDL. I’m not sure what changed, but hey, I’ll take it. I’m planning to keep up the same diet and exercise routine with a few tweaks here and there to hopefully get it to go down even more. Unfortunately, it’s most likely genetic so there’s no telling how much more I’ll be able to get it to go down. I still want to try though.

Food: I no longer count calories but I think I typically eat between 1200 and 1400 calories a day. My meals are mostly plant-based but I still enjoy fish, turkey, chicken, and some occasional lamb and pork. I rarely eat red meat and seafood since those have been shown to cause high cholesterol. I always try to drink red wine at happy hour too since it’s good for heart health. I still eat a lot of fruit and definitely get enough fiber every day; if anything, I would like to get better at learning how to incorporate proteins from plants into my meals. I’m sometimes not sure how to ensure I’m getting enough protein short of drinking protein shakes or eating Luna Bars (which are my favorite thing ever).

Body: I’ve been at a steady 126 pounds since September or so (I can’t be sure of exactly when since I don’t weigh myself regularly). I would like to lose a few more pounds, but it isn’t a priority for me. I like my body the way it is right now, and I feel comfortable most days. I do still have some abdominal bloating and discomfort every once in a while though.

Unfortunately, the hip popping I started experiencing in August hasn’t gone away even though I’ve been using an anti-inflammatory cream. It gets sore if I walk a lot, but other than that, it doesn’t affect my daily life except for the fact that it’s annoying to feel it catch and pop. I’m happy going to Local Barre and am now not as bothered by the fact that I can’t run as I was when it first started. I’m planning on going back to my orthopedist later this month so she can take a look and let me know if there’s anything else I can do.

Work: Work is work. I don’t love it every day and there are definitely days that I don’t like it, but I’m lucky to have a fun group of work friends that always find new and fun ways to make me laugh and the day pass. (That rhymed!) That’s been especially important lately since this year has gotten off to a slow start as I’m completing a transition into a new team and role. I’m hopeful that it’ll be picking up soon with some new projects though. Honestly, I can’t complain too much. I know I’m lucky to be employed at a reputable company and get paid a great salary with great benefits.

Personal Life: Of all these different aspects of my life, my personal life is probably the one that I think needs the most work. Unfortunately, the friends I first made when I first started working in the area like to go out clubbing and drinking a lot, which isn’t really my style. I’d always prefer a yoga date, low-key dinner, movie night, or happy hour with friends rather than crazy late nights out at clubs (though those are fun every once in a while), but I wish I had more friends that are interested in that kind of thing.

Dating-wise, I’ve only been a few dates in the past year or so and none very successful. As my mother loves to remind me, the clock is ticking… Of course, I don’t really believe that. I’m fully happy being single and focusing on me right now, though like everyone else, there are times (like the holidays) when I wish I had someone special in my life. I guess the plan for 2013 would probably be to put myself out there a little more and see what happens – for both platonic and romantic relationships. It can’t hurt.

And random, but I’ll say it here since I don’t know where else it can fit. I want to start reading and writing again. I’m pretty sure I haven’t read a book since my Hawaii vacation over the summer and I haven’t written anything besides this blog for at least double that long. Yikes. It’s time to get back on that proverbial horse.

This is a long enough post for now and it’s been fun writing this down – it makes me feel like I’ve really come a long way from where I was about a year ago! Be back soon with some more variety and food photos.