Fitness Friday: Niquole A.

This has been a crazy, crazy week. I feel like I really hate the whole premise of Daylight Saving. I don’t even get it. What is the purpose? I love long summer days but as a parent, the hassle of changing the clocks a full hour every few months is so ridiculous. I saw on someone’s Facebook page a brilliant idea… why don’t we just change it a half an hour each rotation and call it even? Then we can do away with DST completely.

I should be getting a full hour of additional sleep these days. But let me just tell you something. When you have kids, forget it. Because ya know what happens? You stay up an hour later to adjust your life accordingly, but the kids still wake up at their “normal” time — which just so happens to be an hour earlier than it should be. For example, I’m now going to bed around 10 pm, which is old-school 11 pm. But my kids are waking up at new 5:30 am, which is old time 6:30 am. So there. I’ve just now officially lost an hour of sleep. Let’s add that up over the last seven days and here I am, a complete zombie.

Whatever.

SO HAPPY FRIDAY!!!!!!!!!!!

My birthday isn’t “technically” until Monday but I’m looking forward to celebrating this weekend. And I use quotes because frankly, in case you missed the memo, my birthday is actually the entire first half of the month. I made a deal with my husband last month that he can have the latter half of November this year. We’ll have to revisit this next year because I’m sure I’ll conveniently forget to share our birthday month again.

Yay birthdays! 😉

I have a great guest blogger for you today. Her name is Niquole and she blogs over at Fitty Duck. She’s got spunk and has a great fitness routine to share. She knows more about fitness than anyone I know, and always keeps up to date with the latest luxury fitness trends. Here she is!

—

What is your favorite fitness day/activity?

I love to run & hike, the next best things are trail
running and yoga or pilates.

What is your favorite fitness routine?

3 sets of 15 V crunches w/ weighted ball

3 sets of 15 squats including variations

Various planks, ( side, revers, traditional,
elbow etc.)

4 sets of 12 tricep extensions

4 sets of 12 flutterkicks,leg raises, & v
leg raises.

In the gym I love using stability balls, med
balls and bosu balls to knock out multiple muscle groups at once thus, reducing
my time working out.

Why do you choose to stay fit?

I love to be active and being fit is just an added perk of me
getting up and moving my body regularly. I also like the challenge of
maintaining physical fitness, it’s a commitment and not something you can just
stop on a whim if you truly want results. I love discovering how strong I really
am, and I do that through staying fit!

Aside from physical exercise, what other ways
do you incorporate healthy choices into your life?

I love veggies and fruits, so I add them into filling
smoothies as often as I can. I also eat a lot of salads so eating healthy isn’t
really a big problem.

How have you dealt with any setbacks that have prevented you from working out, staying in
shape, or eating healthily?

Currently my left knee is really messed up. I torn cartilage
in three places around 4 years ago, had surgery to fix it but no follow up PT
to restrengthen my knee so it has gotten weaker and unstable because of it. I
am currently limited to walking (carefully) and bike activities as long as I am
careful. It has made working out very difficult as the moves I love to do are
high impact and high intensity.

What advice do you have for someone just
beginning their journey into healthy living and/or exercising?

Don’t give up! I know it can be overwhelming but know that
you are not alone and for every person that tells you you can’t lose the
weight, walk 5 miles, run a marathon, there will be 5 more telling you that you
CAN. It takes a while to see changes,especially for weight loss, it took more
than a day to put the weight on so it will take more than a day for it to come
off. Also, don’t read too much into the number on the scale, at the end of the
day, it is just a number and doesn’t say anything about you as a person or the
shape you are in. You can lose five pounds but be down 3-4 pant sizes! A scale
isn’t the only way to measure progress.

—

You can follow Niquole on Facebook and Twitter!

Have a great weekend!