Day 1: Hammer & Chisel

Today is day 1 of Hammer and Chisel. I decided that I am going to blog my way through the program to help hold myself accountable. My goal is to follow this program to a tee. I think it is easy to follow a program and *think* you are following it completely, but in reality, you aren’t. This means I will be tracking everything I eat, planning my day of meals in advance, keeping a food journal and measuring everything. I have been loosely following the 21 Day Fix meal plan for almost two years. I have got out of the habit of measuring things and have been eyeballing things. That ends today.

I woke up this morning at 3 am and I did Chisel Balance. I do not eat before my morning workouts, but I do drink my Energize preworkout from Beachbody’s performance line. This workout was really tough, but in a good way! This workout was all about lifting weights while balancing. There was a lot of workouts where you balanced on one leg while lifting. For example, doing deadlifts using only one leg. I had no idea how terrible my balance is! In the past, I used to quit when a workout got tough. This is the downside of home workouts – you have to be self disaplined to finish the workout and give it your all. I pushed through the workout and burned a total of 356 calories in the 40 minutes, 32% of those calories were from fat.

I finished up with 10 Minute Chisel Abs. I must say, this probably is by far my favorite 10 minute ab workout I have ever done from Beachbody. It was all using the bench, nothing on the ground. It felt like I was getting a full ab workout on the bench verse doing traditional situps on the ground.

I finished the workout by drinking my Recover chocolate shake. There is nothing better than getting to drink a chocolate shake at the end of a workout! I waited to eat my breakfast until after I showered for work. I had two over easy eggs and a gluten free waffle. I am going to try to give up my morning waffles soon and replace them with a healthier carb. I love the crunch from a waffle and since I am allergic to gluten, my carb choices for the morning are pretty limited. I also had a cup of black coffee.

Snack time was around 9 am and I had a banana. For my lunches, I like to have salads because I think they are an easy way to get my veggies in! I bought bagged salad (Dole) and ditched the dressing and toppings. Love this salad mix because it is cabbage, kale, carrots, etc. Saves me time so I don’t have to chop everything up myself! Today my dressing is my Sweet Onion Citrus Vinaigrette. Since I am trying to go as cheese free as I can this month (just because I feel like cheese is a trigger food for me!) I decided to get sliced almonds for my salad. I spiced them up by toasting them on the stove with some stevia! So good and super easy way to add some sweetness to your salad! To give my salad some substance, I grilled up some chicken with sea salt and pepper to put over my salad. I grilled three chicken breasts at once, diced them up, measured them and put them into individual ziplock bags for the week. This makes it really easy to just grab and go throughout the week.

Dinner tonight is going to be my pork tenderloin with a side of broccoli and my sweet potato chips. Before bed, I will be drinking my Recharge vanilla shake from Beachbody’s performance line.

1,200 – 1,400 Calorie Bracke

• Before workout: Energize Preworkout (free)

• After workout: Recover Chocolate Shake (free)

• Breakfast: 2 eggs, 1 gluten free waffle (1 red, 1 yellow)

• Snack: 1 banana (2 purples)

• Lunch: Salad. chicken, toasted almonds, Sweet Onion Citrus Vinaigrette (2 greens, 1 red, 1 blue, 1 orange)

• Snack: Vegan strawberry shakeology and water (1 red)

• Dinner: Pork tenderloin, broccoli, sweet potato chips (1 red, 1 green, 1 yellow, 2 tsp)

• Before bed: Recharge vanilla shake (free)

*All recipes are in the recipes section of this website!