Food & Fitness: Wine, Chocolate + Levo League
Hello friends! Happy Friday! Do you have anything fun planned for the weekend? I got the Hubs tickets to see Eddie Izzard, a comedian, so we are going to see him on Saturday night. Welcome to this week’s edition of Friday’s Food & Fitness!
Remember when I told you guys about the Best Meal Prep Services? Well, I accidentally forgot to cancel one of my memberships (I love to cook in the summer!), and I got a delivery from Blue Apron this week. Oops!
But the bright side was that I made these delicious enchiladas! So yummy and filling!
I also had this awesome fried quinoa dish. It was supposed to have shrimp in it but I’ve been a little off seafood recently so I threw out the shrimp and just had the quinoa with veggies. I add in an egg for extra protein but that didn’t make it into the photograph!
I also made this delicious salad! I got the idea from the barre3 website. It’s a kale, grapefruit, avocado and walnut salad. I love it so much. I used this amazing salad dressing on it from Brianna’s. It’s their Blush Vinaigrette. I thought it was a good choice because it’s a vinaigrette, which is typically made from olive oil and vinegar. It tasted so amazing! Turns out, the first ingredient is sugar. Whomp whomp. That’s what I get for not actually checking the label.
Oh and then there was this! A new study finds that red wine and chocolate may not have the health benefits we originally thought they did. In an Italian study, resveratrol, the antioxidant in red wine and chocolate shown to have health benefits in lab animals, did not have an impact on the longevity of the 1,155 study participants. This is terrible news!! I have been calling myself healthy for years because I eat chocolate and drink red wine! This is like pulling the rug out from under me. Whomp whomp.
This week I had my first workout as the Networkout Chairwoman of the Levo League NYC. It went really well! I’m happy to say we had a great turnout and everyone was super excited for the event. Thanks to Equinox for hosting us! We did a tabata workout which is a high intensity workout where you work for 20 seconds and rest for 40 seconds. We did a series of about 8 circuits and repeated each circuit 4 times (my math may be wrong so don’t shoot me, I had trouble remembering because I was breathing so hard!). So for instance we would do something like 20 seconds of squats with 40 seconds rest and then 20 seconds of hops with 40 seconds of rest and repeat that entire sequence 4 times. Then we would move on to the next set of moves until we finished the entire workout. Think burpees, sandbag throws, crunches, jumping lunges and other painful activities!
(Back when I could still do jumping lunges!)
Even though it was a really intense workout, I was able to modify to suit my preggo capabilities. I didn’t push myself to go as fast as possible. When you do tabata, the idea is to get as many reps into those 20 seconds as possible and try to maintain that rep count for the remainder of the sets. I picked a moderate pace and kept up with that. I also eliminated some of the jumps (read step back into a plank instead of jump into a burpee and alternating lunges instead of a jump switch lunge). I also used slightly lighter weights and sandbag. Even with all my modifications, it was still an amazing workout and I’m kind of sore! Dom, the Group Fitness Manager, at Equinox was an awesome instructor and kept everyone motivated even though it was super hard! I talked to the other women after the event and it seemed like everyone had a great time and is really excited for the next event. Oh yeah, I gotta plan that!
I love the networking at the end of class! Everyone stood around and chatted for awhile and got to know one another. It was so great to meet other health-minded, professional women in the city. I can’t wait to see who comes to our next event!
Readers, what’s the best thing you ate this week? How you make modifications for high intensity workouts? What do you think about this chocolate/wine study?