Hello boys and girls. My slacking self is back to writing, although I did think about “cheating” with another vlog today. I quickly realized I would need to make sure my room was neat, hair was done, clothes matched and realized it was easier to blog without you seeing what a hot mess I can be!

I am also suffering from an injury which is keeping me from my supplemental booty shaping workout and forcing me to take an actual rest day. *GASP! So I might as well be productive and actually write, right?

As many of you know I have been doing ChaLEAN Extreme which has a catch phrase of “Go heavy or go home”.  Since I already am at home for my workouts I’ve been making sure I go heavy every time for these workouts. The results are already showing and I have quickly graduated to weights that I didn’t think I would ever be using. *insert happy dance here.

During Friday’s workout in the PUSH phase I went heavy for my deadlifts but I think I went a little too heavy and/or a little too low as I felt a “tweak” in my right hamstring. I didn’t think much of it, did a little extra stretching when I was done and went on with life.

Fast forward to Sunday where I was running up the stairs at home and felt a sudden “pop”, then pain, then tightness in my right hamstring. I hobbled my way into my room and knew this wasn’t good. I was instantly scared that I really messed myself up like I did almost a year ago when I had to stop all workouts for 2 months, not cool!

I spent all of Sunday night resting and last night I took a friends advice and bought an Ace bandage. The tightness of it being wrapped was absolutely dreamy.

Today I stretched it out and I must say it is feeling better. I made a promise that I would take it easy and allow it to heal and so far I am keeping to that.

I am jealous of everyone else who is working out because I really want to right now but I need to heal in time for a 5K on September 11th that I signed up for. I also don’t want to end up sitting out on the sidelines for 2 months like I did with my back injury last year. I’ve come way too far to mess up now.

Since I can’t do my workouts I’ve decided to take this time and regain  control of my nutrition which hasn’t been very ideal the past week. *Confession: Last Wednesday night I had cheese fries and only cheese fries for dinner. Not one of my prouder moments.

I have goals that I want to reach with my fitness and I have set dates to reach them by. There is no reason why an injury should set me back when there are other ways I can reach them. It would be easy to use this as an excuse and turn into a lazy couch potato but it’s just not in my nature to do. I’m hoping to maybe do some light cardio on the stationary bike tomorrow – something is better than nothing right?

Basically, the point of this post is that injuries suck. I am not a patient person. I have nutrition issues that need my attention NOW, I am not always camera ready and I needed to get back to writing.

If you have any nutrition tips you would like to share with me please feel free to comment. I could use some protein bar ideas as I am bored with my current ones. Also I love to snack so I would love to hear what your favorite snacks are. Lastly, if you have a recipe to make Greenberry Shakeology taste good I would LOVE to hear it. I have packets of the stuff piling up.

My newest fitness journey began this week and the program of choice for me….ChaLEAN Extreme.

It’s another 90 Day in home DVD based fitness program and it runs in 3 phases much like P90X did – Burn, Push and Lean.

What drew me to this was the philosophy behind it… “Muscle Burns Fat.”  You want to build “lean muscle” so you can burn away that excess fat.  Chalene understands that the quickest way to burn fat is to build muscle, and lean muscle (you’re not going to bulk up and look like the Hulk doing this).

Now some people laughed and thought I would be bored with this after 2 Rounds of P90X (you know who you are) and after my first workout, Burn Circuit 1,  I agreed.

However, after sitting back and thinking about what I had just done during the workout I realized I needed to up my game to a new level. I needed heavier weight for this program because it is a different animal than P90X was. So the next day I headed to the sporting goods and picked up some heavier weights.

During my next workout on the program, Burn Circuit 2 I REALLY felt the difference. The new weights were just what I needed to get myself to failure by 10-12 reps and I really enjoyed the slower pace to the lifting.

Today’s workout with Burn Interval and I must say I really enjoyed it despite the nasty things I called Chalene while doing it. When I first popped the DVD in and saw we would be using 5lbs weights I thought this would be easy peasy but man was I wrong. Five pounds might not sound like a lot but when you are doing a bazillion bicep curls you feel it and beg for that last rep to hurry up and arrive! I really enjoyed the cardio kickboxing moves as well.

My biggest complaint with the workouts so far is the warm-up is too short. All you do is throw a few punches, a few leg stretches and you jump in. I prefer a longer warm up – especially in the morning so I do my own based off what I did with P90X and then start my Burn workout for the day.

Other than that I don’t have any other complaints so far.  I love that they are full body workouts so I work my arms, legs, abs, thighs, butt….you name it – everything is sore the next day and that makes me happy!

I look forward to seeing what kind of results I can achieve with ChaLEAN!

Now for a shameless plug:

If you would like more information on this workout program or if you would like to order it please contact me or visit me on my facebook fan page.