Hey hey hey! How’s your day going?? It’s been a wild week over here but all is well.

For today’s post, I wanted to talk about cardio dilemmas, and what type of cardio to do after weight training sessions. I feel like there’s a lot of confusion about this, and one of the things that hinders people from doing solo cardio is the fact that they don’t know what to do. It’s SO MUCH EASIER to get it done if you have a plan in place.

What Types Of Cardio Strength Training To Do After Strength Training

Why do we need cardio? How much cardio should we get in each week??

Cardio (also known as cardiovascular exercise) is not only an effective method to burn fat, build endurance, and increase speed, but it’s also obviously important for heart health and helps build muscle mass. Cardio consists of anything that keeps our heart rate elevated for a sustained amount of time. From this website: “Building cardiorespiratory endurance through regular physical activity allows your heart and lungs to work more efficiently, thereby improving your physical capacity to deal with stress and lowering your risk factors for several chronic diseases. Regular physical activity helps control obesity, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol — with a net result of cutting your heart disease risk almost in half, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC. By providing weight control, regular exercise also cuts your risk factors for developing Type 2 diabetes and certain cancers. Additionally, building cardiorespiratory endurance benefits mental health by providing a buffer against anxiety and depression.”

There are so many cardio methods in the fitness ocean, but I like to break them down into 5 main categories:

-Steady-state

-Tempo work

-Hill/resistance work

-HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training)

-Active recovery or NEAT (Non-exercise Activity Thermogenesis, or what I refer to as “unintentional exercise,” like gardening, vacuuming, walking the dogs, cleaning, etc.)

According to NASM, we need at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity cardiorespiratory exercise, 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity, or a combination of moderate- and vigorous-intensity exercise per week. The weekly recommendation for resistance training is 2 or more times a week with exercises for all the major muscle groups (minimum of 1 set of 8-12 repetitions for each muscle group). Flexibility and neuromotor exercises (balance, agility, coordination) are also recommended at least twice per week.

Why we should alternate cardio intensities:

It is SO important to not only vary the mode of exercise you do but the intensity of the workload.

The body is a smart machine and gets used to the same demands over time. For example, if you hike a strenuous trail for the first time, chances are that your heart rate will be elevated, your legs will be sore, and you’ll burn a ton of calories. If you begin to hike that same trail, every day, for weeks on end, you may find that it starts to feel easy. Your heart rate isn’t as elevated, it doesn’t feel challenging to you, and you burn fewer calories. Also, maybe you begin to feel a nagging pain in the outer part of your knees from the slight tilt of the trail to one side.

When we

Sharing some tips if you want to incorporate a weighed vest in your routine!

Hi friends! How’s the week treating ya? We’re in the 874th day of January and I’m ready to move on lol. With the fam being sick, it’s thrown off all of our routines, but thankfully they’re feeling better and back into it.

For today’s post, I wanted to share something that I’ve been using in my own routine and have seen them surge in popularity: weighted vests! They can be a great way to add an additional stressor and challenge your fitness routine when used correctly. I wanted to chat about some benefits, potential drawbacks, and everything you need to know before incorporating a weighed vest into your routine. As always, check with a doctor before making any fitness changes. Honor your body and modify as needed. Here are some things to consider while wearing a weighed vest.

What Is a Weighted Vest?

A weighed vest is exactly how it sounds: it’s a vest that you can wear with different weights and sizes available. You can use them for a variety of activities including, walking, running, strength training, bodyweight exercises — even chores.

 Benefits of Using a Weighted Vest

Here are some of the potential benefits of wearing a weighed vest.

Improve Strength and Endurance:

Adding extra weight challenges your muscles and cardiovascular system, leading to increased strength and endurance.

Bone Density Benefits:

Weighted vests can help strengthen bones through weight-bearing activities. Research published in the Journal of Aging and Physical Activity demonstrated that exercise training with weighted vests improved bone mineral density and muscle strength in postmenopausal women.

Enhanced Calorie Burn:

Wearing a weighted vest increases the intensity of workouts, leading to higher calorie expenditure. In this study, individuals wearing a vest that added 10% of their body weight burned significantly more calories than those not wearing any weight.

Improved Posture and Core Strength:

Carrying weight on the upper body can activate core muscles and encourage better posture.

Things to Consider While Wearing a Weighted Vest

While all of this sounds fine and dandy, there are absolutely some cases where a weighted vest isn’t warranted or may even be counterproductive.

Posture Matters

For some people, they start off with too heavy or a vest or the wrong fit, or they may already have compromised posture and alignment. So often we’re in a forward leaning position, hunched over our phones and computer screens. A vest can make it worse, especially if you have tight chest muscles and weak upper back muscles. Make sure your alignment is on point with shoulders down and back, core engaged, neck long, and spine neutral.

Start Slow and Build Gradually

I think it’s so important to

Sharing my top blog posts and pages of 2024

Hi friends! How are you? How was the weekend? Ours was a good one. The kids had lots of friend time, P had a basketball game, and I taught two barre classes. The Pilot had to work and it’s hard to believe it was his last drill weekend EVER; he retires at the end of the month!

For today’s post, I’m sharing a roundup of my top blog posts and pages from the past year. It’s always fun to go through analytics and see which posts perform well, and almost all of these are posts I created to try to give a ton of value, like a recipe, a how-to, full review, etc. It’s also an interesting year because quite a few of these are posts that my SEO team went back and did surgery on. SEO is SEO-ing and I’m into it! It’s also such a great way to introduce new readers to the blog and keep posts from being published and dying.

Here’s the full roundup!

Top posts and pages of 2024

1. The blog homepage

This one means the most to me because it means that a majority of readers are my internet besties who click directly to the blog without finding it through Google. I love hanging out with all of you each day and it means that world to me that you check in to see what’s going on. <3

2. Healthy Homemade Dog Food

Masiey’s dog food recipe! I loved putting this post together because she LOVES this dog food so.much, and so many people have let me know that their pups love it, too! I make a huge batch every two weeks or so and she goes crazy for it.

3. Homemade gelatin gummies for gut health

This is a recipe that the kids ask to make all the time; they love it and it’s such a good way to get in some gut-nourishing ingredients.

4. Easy enchiladas with rotisserie chicken

Seriously the easiest enchilada recipe that I make all the time and is a true crowd pleaser. Using rotisserie chicken makes it way faster, too!

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Sharing my tips on dealing with burnout.

Hi friends! I hope you’re having a wonderful morning. We have a couple of appointments today, and it’s back to school and the *real world* after a glorious winter break. We slept in almost every day, watched a ton of movies, played Tucson tourists, ate takeout, got together with friends and family, and just enjoyed our time together. I hardly touched my laptop, but I’m excited to be back at it today!

For today’s post, I wanted to talk a bit about burnout, which is a little bit of a triggering topic. So many of us know exactly what burnout feels like, and it’s horrible. I picture myself in full burnout mode, and how exhausted and utterly depleted I felt, and I just want to give my past self a hug.

I was a Type A, super anxious child, who spent my childhood into my 20s in flight or fight. Then, I got married, started this wild adventure of a military life (we’re almost done!!) and became a mom. It was such a beautiful time, but it was a hard time — I feel like I missed a lot of the girls’ baby years because I was dealing with postpartum depression/anxiety, and completely burned out.

I know that this is what led me down the path towards mystery health issues and autoimmune symptoms.

While I’m not *fully* recovered from burnout, I’m now symptom-free and feel a million times better. I’m always a work in progress and learning as much as I can, but wanted to share some of the things that helped in today’s post. As always, this is not medical advice! Just sharing my experience, and if you’re dealing with burnout, please reach out to someone who can help you on a path to wellness and peace; you deserve to feel amazing <3

How to deal with burnout

Let yourself be a little more Type B

This was a huge one for me, and has also been the hardest one. I just learned that I can’t be everything to everyone all the time. I can’t do everything, I can’t be perfect, I can’t have a perfectly clean house 24/7, wear makeup and look cute all the time, and say yes to the millions of social activities and kid events.

Sometimes now I’ll leave the dishes in the sink until the morning, I’ll leave laundry on the chair for an extra, day, I’ll go out in public looking like a hot.mess, and will say no to events and invitations. I also used to work 24/7, but I stopped answering emails after hours and try to close my computer at a reasonable time.

The messy house is a stressor for me, so I still try to clean every day, but I’ll set a timer. When it goes off, that’s it. Also, the kids are older now and can help more!

Incorporate things in your day that you enjoy, that are just for you

This is SO important. It’s so easy to feel burned out when your entire day is consumed with tasks for other people. You *have* to t

Sharing the top 15 reader purchases of 2024! 

Hi friends! How are you? I hope that you had an amazing weekend and that you’re enjoying the New Year so far. Liv’s birthday is in two days, the kids are still home from school, and I’m here trying to slowly get everyone back in the swing of things 😉 School wakeup is going to be ROUGH lol.

For today’s post, I wanted to share the top reader purchases of 2024! I always love to go back through analytics and see which products you love the most that I shared here on the blog. Thank you so much to those of you who shop through my affiliate links. They directly support this little blog and our family <3

Here’s the full roundup!

Top reader purchases of 2024

1) HigherDOSE Sauna Blanket

#1 by a landslide and I’m so pumped that so many of you love it as much as I do! I get amazing comments and messages about this blanket almost every day!

It’s especially cozy during the winter months when it’s cold outside; nothing feels better than crawling into the toasty warm sauna blanket, watching a movie or show, and getting an awesome sweat. I sleep so well when I use this, too! My code is FITNESSISTA15 if you want to check it out here

2) Canopy shower filter

This shower filter is a GAMECHANGER for skin and hair — we all noticed a difference right away! You can check it out here and use FITNESSISTA for a discount.

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