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!

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.

It’s time for everything to go back to normal.

My dearest sister reminded me a few days ago that I’ve been very bad at posting on this blog lately. Well, not reminded. I was aware of that the whole time, just taking a much-needed break and slowly plotting my return if you will.

Let me give you a little bit of background: My posts totally stopped sometime in the middle of September, just after my trip to Lake George. That’s because the day after I got back, I had a nervous breakdown at work. Nothing too overly dramatic, but the stress became tears at some point in the day. I was a little embarrassed, but I was simply at the point where something’s gotta give.

I realized later that day that while Sleep and Repeat has been a great outlet for me, I’ve been putting too much pressure on myself to post more often, network with other blogs, increase readership, and so on. I really don’t need that level of added stress on top of my job and the recent apartment hunt, so I decided to step away for a while.

Anyway, now that I’m officially moved into my new apartment and starting to get back into some sort of schedule, I’ve decided to come back and do things a little differently. I want my blog to accurately represent me and my personality and most importantly, stay manageable and not get overwhelming. A few things that I’m going to try to focus on:

• Moderation: I have definitely previously pushed myself to blog when I don’t want to or don’t have much to say. More power to those awesome bloggers out there that post multiple times a day, but I just can’t do that alongside my full-time job.
• Honesty: A lot of the healthy living bloggers I follow seem to be naturally happy, energetic people and it shows in their blogs. Sometimes I look back on my posts and realize that it doesn’t sound like me because I was trying to emulate that writing style. In real life, I’m usually sarcastic, sometimes grumpy, and often stressed. While I don’t want to start writing only when I’m in a bad mood (that would make this blog completely depressing), I do think some true self-reflection in those times would probably be therapeutic.
• Label-Free: I started this blog wanting it to be a healthy living blog, but then I started thinking it would be better suited to be more of a lifestyle blog since I write about balancing healthy living and work often. But now I know that if I decide to make it more of a lifestyle blog, I’m going to get hung up on trying to cover healthy living, work, fashion, and anything and everything that could fall under that. So I’m going label-free! It’s my blog and I’m going to write about whatever I want to write about, blog genres be damned.

So now I’m moved into my new apartment. I’m going to the gym less and going to Local Barre in Hoboken regularly. My office is mostly recovered from Hurricane Sandy with the exception of some personnel restrictions in the building.

So that’s that. I’m ready for things to go back to normal now (including Sleep and Repeat).

When I started making a conscious attempt to be healthy a few months ago, I decided to also cut back on going out and drinking. I used to go out every single weekend and sometimes both Friday and Saturday nights, but now I limit myself to going out two or three times a month, one happy hour a week, and usually no more than two drinks at a time.

I thought I missed it, but this past weekend, I went out for a friend’s birthday and realized that I don’t. We went to four different places, Hofbrau Bierhaus for dinner and beer and then three others while bar hopping on the Lower East Side. By the time we got to the third, I realized I could have done without the last three. I was perfectly happy with the liter of beer and salad I got at the bierhaus and could have called it a night after that.

Christine and I at Hofbrau Bierhaus

Cut to my latest revelation: I am now officially a grandma.

I’m totally okay with that. The problem is that it’s hard to be social and hang out with friends without drinking. For most in their early 20′s, hanging out tends to revolve around drinking.

Christine, Belinda, and I

So with that being said, my goals for July (and I know I’m a bit late on this!) are:

1. Plan some get-togethers with my friends that don’t revolve solely around alcohol.
This is for my own benefit as well as theirs! While I love a nice glass of wine after a long week, I don’t think that the goal of every hangout needs to be: “Get drunk and have an awesome time!” And while I understand that everyone has different interests and philosophies, I think it’d be beneficial for some of my friends to cut back on their drinking too. Hopefully, my healthy habits can benefit them positively!

2. Make some new friends!
Not that there’s anything wrong with my friends right now, but most of them wouldn’t be up for a day spent kayaking on the Hudson if I brought it up out of the blue. I would love to put myself out there and make some active-minded friends similar to myself.

3. Volunteer!
I absolutely love volunteering. I miss having something I’m committed to outside of school/work. I’ve been trying to get involved with various organizations in the NYC area but not really following up enough to get serious. So one of my goals is to finally find some sort of volunteer opportunity to commit myself to for the rest of the year!

4. Take a class at my gym.
I don’t think I took a single class at my gym all month, even though I kept wanting to! I keep getting intimidated or changing my mind as I walk into the gym and deciding I just want to do something on my own. Time to suck it up and do it! I may try for Zumba tomorrow with my sister if her gym’s still open.

5. Keep a food/exercise journal.
I keep dropping on the ball on this once! Since I realized I’ve been having stomach problems, I wanted to try keeping some sort of food/exercise journal so that I have a record if I ever need to consult a nutritionist or dietitian. I just keep forgetting though! Boo. I’ll start tomorrow… For real this time.

6. Reduce my level of stress.
This last one is the hardest! I am naturally very easily stressed and I carry a lot of stress in my shoulders. I’ve written about how my stress levels negatively affect my health before. Now that I’ve acknowledged it, I need more follow through to actually reduce it! I have no idea how… but that’s what I’ll try to figure out this month!

To make this post slightly less boring, I’ll add some food photos from the past week!

My Rainbow of Hoboken roll at Ayame in Hoboken last Thursday:

Drunken noodles for lunch at Hi-So Thai on Monday:

Veggie enchiladas with salsa verde at Charrito’s yesterday:

My family and I are heading off to Applebee’s for dinner in a bit – my mom has a gift card, yay!