Lindsay's Ramblings

Happy Monday! I completed the three weeks of the strength and hypertrophy plan I've been following, and I really enjoyed it. I changed things up a bit from the program with the isolation exercises, but stuck with the plan for the most part. Here are the workouts I did: Week 1 Monday This was just a fun "bodybuilding" day, basically. I switched this one up a little each week based on what was available at the gym. 1)Hammer strength seated row: 3x10-12 2)1 arm chest press: 3x12 3a)1 arm lat pulldown; 3x10-12 3b)Pushups 3x12 4a)Cable pullthroughs: 4x15 4b)Single leg hip thrust: 4x10 4c)Band standing abductions: 4x12 5a)Farmer's walks: 3x30 seconds 5b)Banded deadbugs: 3x8/side 6)Hanging leg raises: 8/7/6/6 Wednesday This workout got me pretty sore, especially weeks two and three. It felt like someone took a baseball bat to my quads! It was a tough workout, especially when the weights got heavier after the first week. I've been doing reverse hyper...

Infographics are all the rage these days on Instagram and Facebook, and there are some really good ones out there.  Here are some of my favorites:

Happy Monday! The past few days here in Kentucky have been amaaaazzingg!! I'm so sad that it's going to be so much colder this week, but hey, I mean it is October and it has to come eventually. I'm going to miss my hammock time, though. I spent a lot of time outside this past week, soaking up as much of the great weather as I could! Matt had a wrestling show Sunday, so I decided to treat myself to Culver's, since we don't really go to places like that now that he can't eat carbs. It was sooo good! Worth every calorie. So here's an update on Matt: He's on week three of his second 6 week cycle of chemo. He's been doing pretty well with it, but this past week his seizures came back. These are not full out seizures like many people think of, but something called partial seizures, or focal seizures. They last just seconds usually, and the person stays aware the whole time. When he was having them before the surgery, he would ge...

"If happiness is your highest aim in life, you will find nothing but emptiness. God rarely uses happiness to draw near , for he knows that when we are happy we rarely seek God out.  Questions do not begin to be asked until we have experienced pain, a man does not say “Where is God?” when he is happy. It is when he has been knocked down that he begins to ask these questions. Love blooms in the season of sorrow, as odd as it may sound, it is in the work and toil that we begin the task of laying down the crops. It is in the struggles of life that we see the face of God; For when we have had everything ripped away from us, we will see, like the dawn of a new day, that the cross was born out of sorrow. Happiness is wonderful, it fills us up and makes us content, but what are we content in? Do we ever cling to the cross in our self-happiness? Do we look to Jesus and truly see the man who was described as being a man of many sorrows? (Isaiah 53:3) Happiness is comfort...

For sustainable fat loss, it’s important to take baby steps. You do  NOT  have to  completely  overhaul your entire diet in one day. In fact, you’re  most likely setting yourself up for failure if you try to change your eating habits in one day. Instead, focus on a few habits that you can incorporate into your lifestyle, and let the results come slowly over time. You will have a much easier time maintaining your fat loss that way and in making it a lifestyle change, rather than just another quick fix diet. Here are some of my top tips to focus on if fat loss is your goal: *Don't snack mindlessly Eat your structured meals and snacks, but eating between meals when you're not even really hungry is a quick way for extra calories to add up. *Fill up on protein and vegetables Protein and vegetables will help you to feel fuller longer, and when fat loss is the goal, you're going to need filling foods that are low in calories. Protein and veggies do the trick....

14 years.  14 years ago, to my dismay, Matt  walked across Ohio Valley Wrestling’s parking lot, shook my hand, and introduced himself to me. He told me to stay and hang out after the show the following week, but of course, me, miss ‘always play hard to get’, left right after the show the next few weeks so that it wouldn’t look like I was just another wrestling fan girl.  At the time, my sister was dating another wrestler who was friends with Matt and got him to go out to eat with us and a few other wrestlers after a show one night. Matt asked me if I wanted to ride with him in his Jeep…and this time, I hopped right in. He asked for my number that night...and the rest is history! “A good marriage isn’t something you find; it’s something you make and you have to keep on making it.”  – Gary Thomas “And I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you.” – Kiersten White ...

I've still been really enjoying my workouts lately. I'm not following a program, but I have been tracking my gym workouts on my phone just to keep track of weights and reps so that I can try to improve or do more in some way each week.  I'm happy with my strength on squats and deadlifts....even though my weight has come down a few pounds somehow! It's crazy that I can lose weight without even trying(I know y'all are all like, 'oh, poor you.') But for someone who has has spent their whole life trying to get bigger, it's not cool. I think it was just the New York trip that got me outta my eating routine. It'll balance out. But anyway, over the course of a few months, I worked up to 235 for 2 on deadlifts, which is a PR for conventional for me, and 200 or 205(not sure what the bar weighed!) for 3 on squats. Here are a couple of clips from a leg workout I did a few weeks ago:  190 for 4 reps on squats 235 for 2 on deadlifts So bef...

✴Happy Friday 13th! ✴ I thought I'd do a Friday faves round-up, since it's been a while!  Here are some things I'm loving lately: October.  I love Summer, but October is such a great month! It's so beautiful, the weather's cooler(sometimes), and there's pumpkin patches and pumpkin spice everything! Strawberries All the strawberries I've bought lately have been sooo good!  I love having them with my eggs and toast for lunch. Banana "milkshakes" MuscleTech's Banana bliss is my current fave protein powder. Blend it with some powdered peanut butter and almond milk, and it's like a drinking a banana milkshake!  Pears I've been on a total pear kick lately. Definitely my favorite fruit right now! Chicken sausage My rest day lunches always consist of either turkey or chicken sausage, and these are one of my favorite brands. They're really good in an omelette! Ranch cauliflower This is ...

While I don't advocate any particular "diet" for most people, and I am definitely #TeamCarbs, my husband has been following a keto diet for his brain tumor for the past couple of months now. I've been trying my best to make this an enjoyable thing for him, and so far he is actually liking it! He's only "cheated" once since he's started, and that was with pizza on our trip to New York.  We try to keep his carbs under 50 grams a day, so that's basically no added carbs. He does eat strawberries or blueberries on workout days, but besides that his only carbs pretty much come from nuts and vegetables. During the week he mostly eats eggs, cottage cheese, ground turkey or beef, nuts, lots of oils, and whey protein. He actually hasn't lost any weight(a good thing) because we make sure that he is eating enough calories to maintain his weight. (FYI: if you think that a keto diet is magically going to make you lose weight, well, yeah, it probably w...