A Recipe For Success

Guilt free dessert and drinks all night? Sign me up! Here's a quick recipe for success to make dessert and drinks available again, without necessarily dancing. Although dancing will maybe allow for that high calorie latte in the morning.

Here’s a quick travel workout to make it so you can eat more without packing on the pounds.  The recipe will need about 5 minutes of prep time and only 20 minutes to cook.  Prepare for 25 minutes now that will translate to drinks and dessert later.

Ingredients:

• 2 cans of soup, or similar sized/weighted object that you can hold easily with one hand.
• 1 carry on bag preferably with two handles for both lengthwise and horizontal lifting.
• Mat or towel unless you have a comfortable carpet and can lay on the floor
• Stopwatch (or clock with a second hand) so you can time yourself

Prep:

Holding your small weights (cans of soup) in your hands, start jogging in place for 60-120 seconds.  The goal is to increase your heart rate to about half of what we are going to accomplish in the session.  The better shape you’re in, the longer you’ll need to start to feel an increase in difficulty.  To increase circulation, take some deep breaths with your arms.  Lift both arms up overhead on your inhale, and let the arms open wide to come down for your exhales.  Incorporate 10 breathes somewhere in the middle of this beginning set.

After initial heart increase, jump up your heart rate even more by raising your knees up to your chest while jogging.  Lifting each knee as high as you can.  Try to stay light on your feet, so no one downstairs can hear you.  For an added challenge, raise your weights overhead during the high knees.  Stay at high intensity for 15-30 seconds before returning to your mid intensity jog for half the length from your warm up.  If it took you the full 120 minutes to feel any sort of change in intensity, your jog interval will be 60 seconds and your high knees interval will be 30 seconds.  If you felt an increase in difficulty at 60 seconds, your jog interval will be 30 seconds and your high knees interval will be 15 seconds.  Alternate 6 times.

Keeping weights in your hands, extend your arms to either side of the room keeping your elbows in front of your shoulders and at a height that is lower than the shoulders.  Your feet are parallel hip width apart and your knees are soft.  Start to make small little circles with your middle fingers, as if you are drawing a circle on either side of the room.  Your palms start facing down towards the floor.  Keep circling for 30 seconds.  Then, reverse the circles and turn your palms up towards the ceiling.  Repeat 4 times.

Place your luggage bag on the floor with the handle facing you.  Straddle the luggage.  When facing your luggage, make sure your handle is above your knee and below where a short skirt would hit your thigh.  The height in relation to your body will determine whether you keep the bag horizontal or vertical.

• Bend your knees, keeping them behind your toes, as you stick your butt out to grab onto the handle of your bag.  Make sure both palms face your body and elbows able to open wide.
• With a deep exhale, extend your legs and bend your elbows out to the sides of the room to lift your luggage.
• Carefully bend your knees keep your elbows bent to return the bag back to the floor.  Extend your arms, lift your chest and return to starting position.  Repeat 8 times.

Kneel on the mat with your right leg forward and your left leg back.  Both feet are hip width apart (even though they are not touching) and both knees are at 90 degrees with the middle of the foot lined up with both your knee and your heel.  Tuck your back toe under and stand up, keeping your front knee a little bent.  Keeping your chest lifted, your back knee leads the way as you lunge down, and on an exhale draw your back knee to your chest.  Inhale to lunge again.  For an added glass of wine, as you draw your knee to your chest, jump off your front leg.  Than land and press back to your lunge.  Do 20 on each side.

Lay on your mat and cross your arms over your chest as if you were a mummy.  Try to keep your arms crossed and your heels connected into the mat.  Nod your chin and curl all the way up to a seated position.  Then roll back down again one vertebrae at a time.  Try extending your arms if the mummy position is too much.  If this isn’t available to you yet, place a belt around your feet.  Slowly lower yourself one hand at a time down the belt as you roll down.  Then climb up the belt one hand at a time to roll up.  See how little you can use the belt to complete the exercise.  Complete 4 full roll downs.

On the last one, swing your legs around and come into a high pushup position.  Hold this plank.  Keeping your hips equal, bring your right knee under your body and point it towards your left elbow.  Do the same on the other side.  Keep going alternating sides 20 times each.  Then 10 times bringing the knee to the same side elbow as fast as possible for mountain climbers. Repeat 4 times alternating between opposite sides and parallel.

Congratulations.  You have officially earned yourself Starbucks and dessert!