Every night, I look at the LA Fitness class schedule and plan my workouts for the following day. Last night, I decided I’m going to do the bodyworks & abs class, yoga, and run for 30 minutes. The bodyworks and abs class is a full body weight training workout for one hour which has tons of squats, lunges (front, stationary, and reverse), combined with upper body exercises. Tonight was the first time in four weeks, I didn’t feel like I was going to die when doing the endless squats and lunges. What was different was this class had really good bootie-shaking music so I started singing along with the songs to power through the tough parts and stay focused on keeping the right form. What I didn’t realize until the very end of the workout was I wasn’t singing the songs in my head, I was singing them out loud. I’m the first to admit I can’t sing, it’s even worse when I’m singing breathlessly, no wonder the lady next to me kept looking at me funny.

Weight training always wipes me out but I thought yoga afterwards would be really relaxing then I’ll run so I can burn some extra calories. Mental note: not all brilliant ideas should be executed when you are wiped out and hungry. Yoga started pretty great because the instructor gave us peppermint oil to put our hands and shoulders. During some of the tougher poses, I would get tired, then get a whiff of the peppermint and it helped to refocus my thoughts on the pose instead of thinking defeating thoughts like “I’m tired” or the soreness in my arms and shoulders left over from weight training. I’m thinking I might buy some peppermint oil and put it on my hands when I’m running, maybe it will help me remember the relaxed feeling I get from yoga.

It’s really cool to see the strength I’m gaining and the flexibility I’m maintaining from these workouts. Some days I love working out because I get to do Zumba which is an hour of salsa, merengue, bacchata, mambo, cumbia and a little bit of hip hop that burns TONS of calories (600-700 calories isn’t bad). Some days, I force myself into the gym. I spent a long time looking for a magic pill which will burn calories or melt fat and the only thing that’s really worked to reshape my body is diet and exercise. Once I changed the way I ate, the pounds started coming off and the workouts have gotten easier.

Anyone have any tips on keeping with the diet when going out to eat? What is the best way to sculpt your body? Is anyone doing the P90x workouts, what do you think of it?