Still {Toning It Up}

As promised…I’m going to talk about Tone It Up. J So, for the most part,
it’s been super easy to stick to the Tone It Up plan. Since I already like
pretty much every variety of fruit & vegetable, it’s not too challenging for
me to create a TIU-friendly meal. I am definitely a creature of habit, though,
and find myself eating the same things repeatedly during the week for lunches.
I’ve done that for the longest time though. When I was in high school, one year
I literally ate a salad every single day for lunch along with a perfectly
sliced apple. Another year, I took a PB&J every. single. day. I actually
did the PB&J thing when I was in law school too. Some things never change,
I guess. Anyways, I digress. So I tend to find something I like and stick with
it. During the week, that’s perfectly fine and easy too…I’ve gotten grocery
shopping and lunch-making down to a science because of it!

As far as grocery shopping, I prefer to get some of my “staples”
and produce from Trader Joes. Unfortunately, TJ’s is a little bit of a drive
for me, so I try to go once every 2-3 weeks. I usually buy these things from Trader Joes:

• Tofu
• All-natural pineapple juice (for Bombshell Spells!)
• Unfiltered apple cider vinegar (for Bombshell Spells too!)
• Kale
• Mushrooms
• Cucumbers
• Butternut squash
• Nonfat Greek yogurt
• Luna bars, Balance bars, and ThinkThin bars (for an ‘on the go’ TIU-approved snack!)
• Oranges
• Frozen asparagus
• Organic brown rice
• Quinoa

I’d say a majority of my grocery list comes from Trader Joes, but since I don’t go but once every 2 weeks, I sometimes replenish fruits & veggies from my local grocery store. I use Whey protein powder for my TIU protein pancakes, and I actually prefer Walgreens whey protein over others I’ve tried…and the price is pretty good too!

Amazing TIU protein pancake 🙂

Overall, I love how I feel when I eat “cleanly”. It’s super easy to follow the Tone It Up plan during the week, as it’s easy to maintain structure during the workday. I eat breakfast at home, then have a 10am snack, 1pm lunch, 3:30pm snack, and then dinner at home. On the weekends, it’s a different story, especially due to the fact that we’ve been running around like crazy pretty much every weekend running wedding errands! With that said, I might skip snacks and just have 3 meals a day on the weekends at any random time, but I do try to make sure I’m getting plenty of protein & veggies in all my meals! I’m obsessed with peanut butter, which luckily, is TIU-approved. I also use PB2 to replace the use of calorie-dense peanut butter on some days. It’s pretty delicious…and low-calorie with about 5g protein per serving, so it’s pretty similar to the protein content in regular peanut butter.

The TIU workouts are awesome, too. The TIU girls post new workouts on their blog just about every day, so it’s always nice to try a ‘new’ workout to prevent boredom. Of course, I do run just about every day as well. I’ve been traveling so much in the past month, that I haven’t really been waking up to do early morning HIIT runs, but I do still run longer distances in the evenings. A while back, I had been running about 40 miles per week, but I kept getting injured and never healed properly…because I never took a break. I’ve gotten comfortable running about 25-30 miles per week, in addition to a 90-minute hot yoga class once a week. I’ve noticed that I feel a lot better and I don’t have constant injuries now…which I know is partly attributed to the yoga classes. I highly recommend hot yoga & vinyasa. It’s a life-saver if you’re a runner or other type of athlete!

So, have I talked anyone into trying Tone It Up yet? 🙂