Fitness today

Fitness today

Workout: The FIRM Ignite Calorie Burn

Food epiphany: 1. Sometimes I can eat calorie controlled junk instead of dinner. Really. No guilt.

2 it's good to eat breakfast ( muesli and low fat yogurt) even if it's at 10,30 am.

3. From Nice Girls Finish Fat - one doesn't always have to be perfect, do everything well.

General: I lost over a kg this week. With cardio ( mostly Just Sweat), calorie awareness and mindfulness.

The FIRM Ignite workout is two workouts, each roughly twenty minutes. You can do one or both workouts and , to my mind, are the FIRM's answer to the very popular Jillian Michaels' twenty minute workouts. High intensity cardio bursts with strength training intervals.

I like these workouts. The two instructors, Emily and Rebekah, are encouraging. Since the strength training is not done at lightening speed, I can actually go a bit heavier than I can with Jillian. I used 3 kgs.

There are cardio bursts, each athletic and each eight seconds. Four in a row, with twelve second recovery moves in between, before the next strength training or cardio or standing abs.

Today I fell flat on my face, doing the big boy push ups and tricep kickbacks with weights, in Rebekah's Interval Blast The workout fairy must have had a good laugh!

And the morning glories, with bicep curl and overhead press...well let's just say a core and balance challenge for this mum of seven!

I'd rate the workouts high intermediate or low advanced. Not killer. But good. One could make it easier with low impact and lighter weights. Or harder with even more energy and heavier weights.

And twenty minutes on time challenged days is super...good calorie burn intervals equal the burn of slower, steady rate cardio.

And fun! The fun factor, you know, is pretty important to me.

So, another fitness post! Check in next week for an update....

A snapshot

I keep a sometimes journal, a sometimes log of our unschooling activities. I aim to do it daily, to meet Homeschool regulations .

Many days I list our activities in curriculum areas.

Some days I list the educational outcomes matched to the activities.

And the best diary days are those little lists of our days.

Just a list.

Just a snapshot.

Of the days and of the learning.

So here is a snapshot of Friday.

Anthony has been wanting to visit the crypt of St Mary's Cathedral for awhile. And so have I! I thought after am work and before pm work we could squeeze it in.

We were going to go with friends but that didn't pan out. So we went. Nothing stops we intrepid unschoolers.

I came home from work, Anthony's brothers left for college. Anthony was gaming with his brothers then played piano. I hope he tidied his room!

We drove into the city, Anthony choosing music on my iPod on the way,

And wandered and wandered around the crypt, using the map and description and recalling our long ago reading of the Pictotial History of the Catholic Cburch. Made a note to strew those books again this week.

Prayed. Visited stain glass. Prayed again.

We searched and searched for the remains of the original cathedral ..and celebrated our finding with a photo on Facebook and a Mr Whippy ice cream.

Walked around Hyde Park. Watched a chess game in the park.

Sat in the sun on the grass and met friends for lunch. Sitting in the sun, eating, chatting.

Then home. In a traffic jam. A race because I had to get to work.

I dropped Anthony at the local library, with an errand to visit the ABC store for me. He caught the bus to piano lessons and then had a hot chocolate and a cookie at Subway, waiting for me to pick him up after work. And read more of A Little Princess. I know. He told me about his reading in the car!

Then when I was at mass Anthony went to youth group in our parish. With his brothers,

And home again. For more reading and a family viewing of one episode of Murder She Wrote.

I still have that crime unschooling rabbit trail in mind....last year it was a romantic comedy rabbit trail...why not crime movies this year..

Yes, why not?

From museums to churches to romantic comedies to crime genre. A snapshot.

Of unschooling.

A fitness post

Be strong.

Be fit.

Have fun.

Lose weight.

Billy Blanks' Taebo motto.

I haven't had a fitness post in awhile. But I'm still working out. And wanting to lose a few kgs

But how? As someone who lost almost 40kg over a five year period, I know the ins and the outs, the ups and the downs, of weight loss. Of weight maintenance .

I am chubby. I don't think I will ever be slim. There was a period just after my weight loss when I was sick and I lost even more weight.. And people at church said I looked fantastic. Maybe I did. I wasn't eating but I was working out hard.

But I can't continue that in my normal life. Well, not at the present. So I am at a normal weight for me now. Not a fantastic looking weight.

However, I would like to lose a few kgs. Not to be at that fantastic looking hard for me to maintain weight . But to be healthier. To not cringe quite so much, when I look at myself.

And to work on that emotional eating.

Because one day recently I not only felt strong emotions but I expressed them. And as soon as I did I knew I needed to eat. Eat something fattening. To help with feeling and expressing those strong emotions.

I wanted pasta but settled for fish and chips. Too much fish and chips.

Mmmm

I know I eat to deal with emotions but I do it anyway. ( At least it's a big step up from not knowing why I eat)

Nice Girls Finish Fat. A book I have owned for awhile but that I couldn't let myself get into. Because I like being nice. And what would happen if I wasn't?

I read a section and thought, well, maybe I can set limits and boundaries. For myself. And others.

For example, I can make The Plan for my continuing workouts and for getting eating on track. I can make food the last thing I turn to when dealing with emotions. I can enjoy the food and alcohol but choose lower calorie versions . I can savour and eat mindfully.

I can put a stop button on myself.

I can blog my weekly exercise and food because maybe others are here, too.

I can pray.

I can risk not always being nice.

I can take who I am as a strong person, a strong woman, and be strong where I am weak. With the strength of prayer . Because Mary, our Mother, was strong, too. And her prayers are strong.

So... Update for this week? I have loved, loved, loved more cardio workouts ... Especially Just Sweat, the workout part to the Wii Just Dance game. And Ellen Barrett's pilates based floorwork. And today a very cool kickboxing work.

And watching my calories. Yet still eating yummy stuff!

And doing that whole mindful thing... Why are you eating?

It's been fun! Especially the cardio workouts. I am a bit addicted to those.

So maybe I will blog on fitness again. Every now and then.

We are what we eat. And do. And think.

That's living without school.

More Marian Strewing

More Marian Strewing

So how goes the month of May in your Homeschooling home?

Any May crownings?

A maypole perhaps?

Some extra Marian prayers?

I pray a prayer each evening to Our Lady, Untier of Knots

I am trying to dwell on Mary as a mother, for me and for my sons.

I am trying to rest my cares with Our Mother, for her intercession.

I am trying to remember Mary as a role model, that feminine genius oft discussed by Blessed John Paul Ii and by St Teresa Benedicta.

"What Lucifer lost by pride Mary won by humility." True Devotion, no 53, St Louis de Montfort.

And I am strewing some more Marian activities.

Thanks once again to Meredith Henning and her book "Mondays With Mary".

Next week we have the feast of Our Lady, Help of Christians, patroness of Australia.

So, in addition to mass and prayers, I thought we could celebrate with cooking. As usual. Based on the snake or devil theme yet again. For Mary crushes the head of the serpent.

Jelly with lolly snakes set in the jelly.

And Devilled Eggs.

The following week, May 31, is the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin.

Strew a bouquet of flowers, near our dining table statue.

Pray or recite The Magnificat.

Make a special cake, with candied rose petals as decoration.

And eat, and think, and pray, for..."If the hurricanes of temptation rise against you, or you are running upon the rocks of trouble, look to the star - call on Mary!" St Bernard of Clairvoux

Strewing Mary in the month of May

Strewing Mary in the month of May.

I attempt to strew my life, my love, my devotion to Mary, by the way I live, who I am, how I pray

But May is also a good time to strew in practical ways. To enrich the unschooling life.

On our table we have the book Through The Year With Mary by fellow homeschooler Karen Edmisten. Quotes throughout the year, one for every day, quotes on Our Lady. We can read one every few days, we can pick up the book and peruse when sleepily chewing toast for breakfast...I can even share some quotes on Facebook!

At the computer table, we have the book Mondays With Mary by Meredith Henning, also a fellow homeschooler. Kept handy ( at a computer, that hub of life!) so that we can pick and choose activities for some of the Marian feasts this month.

Like tomorrow. May 13. Our Lady of Fatima. Anthony and his friend will be making a paper plate sun for a table decoration ( the day the sun danced) and baking Devil's Food Cupcakes ( representing the vision of hell) and covered with blue cream cheese frosting ( representing Mary's mantle of grace).

And more strewing ideas for other feasts this month.... Our Lady Help of Christians ( May 24) and the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary ( May 31 and son Luke's confirmation anniversary ).

But I will share those ideas another day.

For we have the whole month of May for focused, Marian, unschooling strewing.

"My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God." Fatima, June 13, 1917

Strewing the month of May

The month of May is dedicated to Our Lady, Our Blessed Mother, Mary.

I often seem to be the antithesis of the qualities ascribed to Mary...the antithesis of holy, gentle, loving.

Yet I take hope in her intercession for me, her love for me. That I will act as I am called.

Mary's prayers for her children are powerful indeed.

For...Mary was raised to the dignity of Mother of God rather for sinners than for the just, since Jesus Christ declares that he came to call not the just, but sinners. -- St. Anselm

Here is one of our table displays for the month of May. How comforting to come downstairs and have this greet me, of a morning. To have this greet the family, as they, too, wander downstairs, half awake.

Don't talk to us in the morning. If you can help it. We are not really morning people. Let us just be. Let us just gaze. At our current unschooling strewing.

An icon of Our Lady.

All my own perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity is founded upon Our Lady.
-J.R.R. Tolkien

Mary as mother is an unschooling wife and mother's hope. We place our hope, our trust, our motherly and wifely worries in her care...and we know she will intercede for us to Christ, her son, Our Lord.

So perhaps as we look at unschooling strewing, so perhaps we can strew Mary in the month of May... icons, prayers, consecration, the Rosary, quotes from the saints and from the Catechism, books.

Our lives, dedicated to our Blessed Mother and her Son, to our families.

The measure of unschooling is, in part, us...who we are speaks volumes to our family... and our children become snapshots of their life with us. Of their unschooling, learn-and-live-and-share lives.

Yes. As we follow Mary today so we show Christ to our family.

The reason why Christ is unknown today is because His Mother is unknown. Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman