Granddaughter's Birthday today!

Happy Birthday Mo!  You're 4 years old today.

So I splurged on my diet today and had a piece of your Disney-themed birthday cake.  It was so worth the extra calories to see your smiling face after you ate cake and opened your presents.

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Anyway, it's been about two weeks since my last post.  Grandma Does Daily Burn has an announcement.  In addition to my darling 4-year-old granddaughter, I have a new grandson!!  He was born two week's ago and Mo is now a proud big sister.

So I haven't been here because it's been hectic with the new baby and helping my daughter.  I have continued to do the daily workouts, but haven't had much time to talk about them.

Today, however, I did do a great workout.  The May 26th workout was led by Gregg Cook.  It was a Sports-themed workout that incorporated moves from Basketball, Volleyball, Discus throwing, Boxing and a bunch of other sports-like activities.  It was a great aerobic workout that had high cardio and a bit of lower body workout toward the end.

Also, Jenna Ushkowitz from "Glee" was a guest on the show.  Before the workout started, J.D. said that Jenna was stuck in traffic and tweeting about being late.  However, Jenna has a podcast called "Infinite Positivities" on i-Tunes.  When she finally showed up in the studio, she spoke about her podcast and how she uses positivity in her life on a daily basis.  She said that positivity is a choice and when she wakes up, she chooses to be positive.  Gonna have to check it out!

It was a very good interview and I'm going to try and take some of the things she said to heart.  There are times where I get so frazzled and hurried in my day-to-day activities, I can't help but have some negativity in my mind.  Listening to her make is sound so easy to be positive, really makes me want to try and reframe my mind and work on being a more positive person.

Reframing or resetting has been the theme all week long and Jenna reminded us that it's not difficult to reframe a negative to a positive.  "You learn from your past experiences," she said.  "If you're not learning, you're not growing."

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So I have a four-day weekend for the Memorial Day holiday.  I'm going to spend the weekend catching up on some zzzzz's, doing some Spring cleaning, and of course, working out with Daily Burn.  It's gonna be great -- I'm positive about that!

"Positivity is a choice.  When I wake up, I choose to be positive." 

-- Jenna Ushkowitz

Laughter as Medicine

Today, DB365 continued with its weekly theme of the theme of "Laughter as Medicine."   Host JD Roberto emphasized how important it is to laugh on a daily basis as a way to stay healthy.

The guests were Chis Ryan and Giovanna Cicerchia who are on the reality show "Strong."  Chris is a trainer and Giovana is one of the contestants.

JD said it was "word of the day" Wednesday.  The word of the day was "love."  Every time fitness instructor Dara Theodore said the word of the day during the workout, then the class would do burpees at the end -- one burpee for each time she spoke the word.

Dara led the class through a combination of standing lunges and ground abdominal moves.  The first half of the workout was gradually getting the heart rate up.  I didn't start breathing real hard until she introduced an 8-count move.  She began standing and counted 8 moves to the floor to get into a plank position (1 left thigh, 2 right thigh, 3 left shin, 4 right shin, 5, 6, 7 and 8 hands on the floor to plank). Once in the plank, she took one hand and touched her and then did a salute.   She switched hands and did heart/salute with the other hand.  Then she brought one knee to her chest and then the other knee. Finally, she did a cute "shake your booty" wiggle while still in plank followed by the 8-count in reverse (floor, floor, floor, floor, shin, shin, thigh, thigh, stand up).  This move was done for one minute and I did that about eight times.  Once the minute was up, I was dripping with sweat and my heart was racing.  I'm going to definitely have to remember that move.  It was fun to do and not too difficult, but it got my heart rate up in such a short time.

Oh, by the way, the word of the day was "love."  Dara only said it two times, so after doing today's workout, two burpees were a breeze.  I don't (can't) go down to the pushup position, but I do plank and jump my feet out and then jump up to standing.

The take-away quote from today's workout is:

"Go out and conquer because you are awesome." -- Dara Theodore

I REALLY love Daily Burn!

Hi!  I'm Mary.  I'm a Grandma.  I love Daily Burn.  I really love Daily Burn.  I've been doing it now for about a year and just started following the DB365 program.  I'm going to talk about my experience doing this program, my ups and downs, success and failures  (wait -- no failures -- just setbacks), successes and setbacks, and overall opinion of this wonderful resource.

So, today is my first post.  I just finished a workout after coming home from work.  I don't think I'll be able to do this every day, but I'll certainly try.  Life does get in the way sometimes.  I also take a Zumba class on Mondays and Thursdays, so I'll probably do this on my off-days.

My goal is to do the half-hour session and then write about what I got out of the workout.

Today the instructor was Erika Shannon and the guest was Joe Wicks (The Body Coach).  I like Erika's spirit and energy so it was nice to see her lead another class again.  She led the class with a kick-boxing workout today. We threw a lot of punches and quite a number of kicks.  She mentioned that there's always one side of your body that everyone has a harder time with.  For me, it's my left side when it comes to kicking.  I have mild scoliosis that went undiagnosed in my youth.  My spine has a slight "S" curve in it.  It's not a major curve, but it's enough that my hips are misaligned and the left hip cracks whenever I try to lift the leg above my waist.  It's just something I've learned to live with.  I know how to adjust my body to compensate on the left side to avoid the hip cracking.

Today's workout was not as intense as other workouts, but my arms did get a bit of exercise and my heart rate got up a little.  There was no floor work or strength moves today.  Overall it was a nice change from the usual Tabata routines.

But Joe Wicks.  OMG, what a gorgeous hunk of protoplasm.  Oh, if only I were 30 20 years younger.  And better looking.  And about 50 pounds lighter.  And no gray hair.  Did I mention that Mr. Wicks seems to be the long lost twin of Kit Harington?  (Spoiler alert -- Jon Snow lives!!)  Seriously, it's like they were separated at birth.  He spoke about his food book "Lean in 15 -- 15-minute meals and workouts to keep you lean and healthy," and demonstrated some quick and easy high-protein meals.  He mentioned that one of the keys to keeping weight off was to prep meals in advance to control the portions.  Preparing your own food allows you to control the ingredients and making small changes in your diet will yield results over time.  So I'm probably going to have to buy the book because I want to look at the pictures of Joe... I mean the recipes.

So, that's it for today.  My first DB365 workout.  I will try to come back here as often as possible and give my opinions of each workout.  'Till then.