I’m eating a quick and easy breakfast for dinner while I blog tonight: a 100 calorie whole grain sandwich thin, Teddie’s all natural peanut butter, and sliced banana. Since I felt short on time, I decided it was more important to spend my time getting a healthy lunch packed for tomorrow than making an elaborate meal.

I try and make it a routine to pack my lunch from the night before. Once it becomes a habit, it’s pretty easy to do, and the benefit is not having to rush around in the morning before heading out for the morning commute. Also, you get to control what you are eating the next day instead of just grabbing something not so great while in a rush, and it’s a big money saver.

When I say make my lunch though, I’m really talking about my food for my entire 9-5 workday. I tend to eat a lot of smaller options throughout the whole day rather than your typical three bigger meals.  Sometimes I get comments at work about “all the food” I pack in my bag for the day, but I don’t care. Eating smaller portions more frequently not only keeps my metabolism up, but it helps to keep my hunger levels down. This is important to prevent over-eating when it does come time for that bigger meal.

Tomorrow’s food plan is:

• Breakfast: Low fat cottage cheese with cinnamon and blueberries.
• Morning snack: Raw almonds
• Lunch: Salad with mushrooms, yellow pepper, tomatoes
• Afternoon snacks: A pomegranate flavored Chobani yogurt and some green grapes

I’ll need to keep my energy level up since Tuesdays are a double class night!

Anyways, back to tonight. After an almost two week hiatus, I made it back to CBC. I carpooled over to Somerville with Liz and Jen, two of my fellow instructor friends, and we all caught up on our respective trips that have kept us away from the Y and CBC the past two weeks. There were a lot of “only you guys would appreciate this” comments as we exchanged on the road workout stories and highlights. So true! Also, Liz brought me a CBC bracelet, and I rocked it during class. 🙂

Tonight’s lineup was a class called Perfect Lines, followed by a kickboxing class called Jam’N Cardio Kix, or Kix as we refer to it as. For Perfect Lines, the instructor Christina had us warm up by doing some knee raises, and then we headed for the barre right away.

• Move 1, on both sides: 1 leg up on the barre, to the side. Stretch up and over toward the raised foot. Then turn to face the bar, leg still up.  Reach up and over toward the same raised foot. Then reach arms overhead and hold. To finish, lift foot off the barre and hold for 10 seconds.  It’s hard to keep your leg up there without dropping it!
• Move 2: Facing the barre, in first position. Rise up onto the toes, and do regular plies (on demi pointe for us former ballerinas!), then continue the plies but only come halfway up. Finish by holding. Thigh burner!
• Move 3: Facing the barre, step feet in so they are directly under the barre. Hold on to the barre and lean the body back, feet/knees together, so it looks like water skiing. Keeping the hips raised, bend down and up 10 times, then pulse. Then bend all the way down to the ground, then halfway, then hold the same pulse.
• Move 4: On the mats, on both sides. Put one foot flat on the floor in front of body, with the other knee on the ground leaning into the hip flexor for a stretch. Hold, then lift the knee up to balance in a runner’s lunge, hands on floor. Then bring hands to knees and hold, then hands overhead and hold. Once finished, sit back into the back leg with the front leg extended straight in front of the body. Finish with a split.
• Move 5: Lying flat on the stomach, one leg at a time. Legs straight out behind the body, toes pointed. Slow leg lifts straight up to the ceiling, finishing with faster pulses. Second part of this move entails bending the knee so the foot is flexed toward the back of the leg, and doing the same move with the foot flexed to the ceiling. This works the glutes.
• Move 6: Frog pose. Still lying on the stomach, bring the knees out and heels together, toes out. The body should look like a frog. Do the same slow, then quick lifts, this time lifting the knees up to the ceiling. Definite butt burner.

I could tell I hadn’t been in awhile tonight!  I was sweating big time. I need to start practicing the routines at home so I can start teaching it soon. 🙂

Oh! Don’t forget to vote for CBC as the BEST Kickboxing Class in Boston on Boston’s A-List. Exciting.

I’m spent! Goodnight!

Let’s chat! Do you make your lunch from the night before?