Cardio Cut Down Challenge

Say what? Yes you heard me correctly, it is a cardio cut down challenge. From past posts its obvious to see that I love to run.  Running has been a passion since age 9. This nine year old McKayla would run with her Dad from then till the day she moved out! 

As much as this hurts I have decided I want to test the waters with muscle building. So a week ago I started Jamie Eason's Live Fit plan. It is a free twelve week plan that will help anyone with determination get fit! I am already in good shape but I am lacking muscles like in my arms and places you do not reach with abdominal workouts and running. If you are brave enough I dare you to try it out with me.

WEEK 1

This week was kind of interesting, I have never skipped out on cardio and the first phase of this program says NO CARDIO. Me being the rebel that I am decided a little hopefully will not hurt. So along with her workouts she has for me I do like a 15-20 minute run.

12 weeks of not only a workout change but a meal plan too. Luckily for me I am already a pretty healthy eater, so I have not had to make any dramatic changes. The biggest change I have had to make is that I have to eat every 3 hours. This seems so odd to me, eat more but lose weight? Here is how it works: Unlike cardio, a muscle workout burns calories all day (even when you are deep in slumber) cool huh? So if your body is constantly burning and losing weight, it is important to keep something going in you so your body will keep burning. If you do not then your body goes into starvation mode and will stop burning calories and fat. But eating a lot does not mean eating what ever. My diet for the next 12 weeks consists of Oatmeal for breakfast, tilapia or chicken with veggies for lunch, three egg whites with fruit or veggies for a snack, chicken, potato and rice for the next meal. That is a lot of food and it is like 1/3 of what Jamie says to eat! 

The rebel that I am I still have sweets.. A cookie never hurt anyone right? 

I feel like I am always eating.

Next comes the workout. The daily workout is on the website for your 12 week plan. Every day she works 2 muscles. As I have began trying them out I face the sad truth that I may be in shape but I have zero muscles in places like arms and shoulders.. The legs and butt muscles were on Monday and I still am sore from that workout! 

Ether way I am having fun and it never hurts to try something new! 

Here is a picture of Jamie Eason so you know her credibility! 

BYU PURPLE RUN!!!

Monday was a great day for a run, it was beautiful outside. Skies clear and crazy blue! Have you heard of a better October day?
Seriously though.. it was like 75 degrees!
As always I decided to take that as yet another opportunity to run. I'm a girl that likes to laugh, be embarrassed and have fun though. Solution: I had my best man friend Korey Sutton come running with me! Unlike myself Korey does not think running is the most fun thing to ever happen to this whole entire planet. But that is okay because this gives me the opportunity to make the run more fun! Korey and I decided that every half mile we would stop where ever we were at and he would do 20 push-ups while I did squats or jumping jacks. I hope you can all imagine how incredibly great we looked, me with my PURPLE running shorts and Korey with his PURPLE shirt taking up the whole side walk at times to do push-ups and squats. It was the best thing ever to witness people awkwardly trying to get by, and then to top it off... Korey lives at Raintree which is fairly close to the BYU campus. This in our brains is a great privilege to take our goofy running techniques and show off on a campus where my shorts were way to high for the dress code! Now as we ran and did our silly techniques we had tons of people to surrond us and cheer us on as they walked around campus! I only wish I could of known what people were thinking, the looks on faces could be described as wow or do they know how dumb they look? Maybe even a couple, "They think they are so funny". Which we totally did, even if others didn't. Before long we had ran over 4 miles and did not even realize it because we were having so much fun! On our way in on the side walk across from Raintree we found some PURPLE hearts painted on the side walk. It was perfect so we took a picture!

Make your run a PURPLE run, it is a blast that makes time fly by. (: