Fitness Journey Part 2: Cardio, adding resistance, and having a routine

Hey! welcome back to my blog! My name is Victoria and I’m so glad you are spending some time with me today. If you are new here, you should get to know me a little better before you leave. Don’t forget to follow me on twitter. I love connecting with new people!

I can’t believe it’s been over 6 months since I wrote my first post and started my fitness journey! As someone who swore she would never work out, I can’t believe how much fun I’m having! I’ve updated my routines, added new things to my routines to make it better, and tried several new workouts.

I’m totally still at the beginner level though. I am in no way a hardcore fitness person. To be honest, over the Christmas holidays I totally got off track with my workouts and it was that much harder to get started again after new years. But i’ve been putting in work and I’m definitely feeling it.

Before I share all of the workout stuff I’ve learned, I first want to share my absolute favorite thing to watch for workout inspo. Call on me music video by Eric Prydz. I love everything about this video. The 80’s vibes, the dancing, the music, the costumes. It just makes me want to workout. I listen to the song on Spotify and I also watch the music video on TV while I workout.

I haven’t been tracking my progress…

If you read part 1 of this series, you would have seen that I am not trying to lose weight. I am comfortable with the weight that I was when I started, I just wanted to tone everything up and get a flat stomach. So basically I haven’t been tracking my weight or measuring myself at all. I don’t own a scale and I don’t want to. I’m afraid that I will become too obsessed with my weight and I’m not ready for it to consume me yet. I just want to work out and feel good. Even if I don’t get super model abs by summer, I will be OK knowing that I put in the work.

I started doing cardio

When I first started my journey I just wanted to keep the weight I have and get a flat stomach. But guess what my friends? It doesn’t work that way. One thing I had to learn the hard way is that you really can’t spot treat fat. This was quite disappointing because in a dream world I would just do an ab workout for a month and have a flat stomach but I realized pretty quickly that wasn’t going to happen.

As much as I hate to admit, I love the way I feel after doing cardio. Notice I never said I enjoy doing cardio, because it sucks. It honestly makes me feel like I’m going to pass out sometimes. But when I’m done I feel absolutely amazing.

Like I said, I am not a hardcore fitness person and I don’t do cardio for long periods of time, I like to do a quick 10 minute cardio session in the morning and this is the video I like to watch. I do HIIT cardio which stands for High Intensity Interval Training. It is what it says. High intensity training that really makes you put in a lot of work in a short period of time.

video via Heather Robertson youtube

I added resistance bands

I’ve been seeing these all over Instagram for many years. Never thought I would ever order any though. Resistance bands really help me get in a little extra work with each set that I do. I use them when I do booty workouts. My current favorite booty workout video is by MadFit on youtube

Eventually after I do these workouts enough, I’ll start memorizing them and I won’t need to watch the videos anymore. I will be able to just do them from memory and that would be nice it’s just nice to watch the videos because they all have count down timers so I know how long to do each set.

I got obsessed with activewear

I never owned a single sports bra before starting my workouts and I bought my first one from Victoria’s Secret when I was ready to start. That’s when I started getting super interested in having cute active wear. I have two hot pink sports bras now and a really cute white one. I always buy them when they are on a really good sale. I’m still looking for the perfect shorts and more pants though. But I found that shopping for cute active wear is really fun.

I finally created playlists!

Music really helps me power though my workouts. I notice a huge difference in my performance when I don’t have my music. It took me such a long time but I actually created playlists last week. I wanted to create one for cardio, and one for booty workouts to start. I’m kind of picky about the songs I add to my cardio playlist. The music has to be really high tempo or else I feel like I am moving too fast for the music.

I’ve suddenly become obsessed with being fit

I guess It’s because I never struggled to stay fit before, but now that I have been putting on weight, I really want to make sure that I am staying fit and maintaining the weight that I currently have. It’s crazy because 2 years ago you would NEVER find me working out or being obsessed with fitness. Life is such an adventure lol. I really hope this inspires you to start working out as well, you will feel so amazing when you do.