Snow Day Workout

Who doesn't love a snow day? It's a perfect excuse to not get out of bed until 10am, to not change out of your pj's all day, eat junk food and to not workout, right? Wrong! Well, at least wrong on the last two parts. I have not left my house today but I successfully eaten several healthy meals, got my heart rate above resting and even broke a sweat! Rather than being completely lazy, use your day off to try out a new recipe, cook that chicken for the rest of the week and practice your arsenal exercises!

Let's start with a meal. So you slept in, your kind of in brunch mode - rather than reaching for the normal cereal or worse, just going back to sleep for another 5 hours, try this meal. It's protein packed and is guaranteed to keep you full for several hours.

Egg Scramble: An essential to have in the fridge is a big container of egg white (high in protein without the extra cholesterol from yolks). I dove into my fridge and pulled out some veggies (tomato and arugula) and left over chicken. Chopped it all up and threw it in a pan. After it was warm in went the egg whites. I treated it like a scrambled egg (mostly because I'm terrible at omelets, but either works)

Oat Bran with Mixed Berries: Oat bran is fantastic because it's high in fiber and has more protein. Cook up a 1/4 cup of dry oat bran in a pot and when it's basically done throw in some frozen berries and cover the pot. The steam will help thaw out the berries. Stir in a packet or two of no calorie sweetener. I have recently converted to Truvia although Splenda is a cheaper option. 1/4 cup of dry oat bran is the perfect amount to get about 10 bites of carbohydrate - which is the perfect balance of carbs without overdoing it.

*By all means use fresh fruit if you have it - but it's unrealistic for me to keep fruit around when I only go grocery shopping once a week. Frozen mixed berries are my favorite because they last and you get all the nutrients as you would from fresh berries (they just might be a bit mushier)

The finished product! (I swear it tastes better than it looks!) 

The Workout

Remember the arsenal exercises? Here's another way you can utilize them at home. When I'm discouraged and need a workout I consult my mentors/former bosses at Metabolic Effect. Even though this video is described as a hotel workout it is easily applied to snow days as well. Notice he uses only the arsenal exercises I discussed earlier!
Here's the link to the YouTube: Snow Day Workout

Here's an explanation of the basis of this video: Pick 1 exercise out of the 4 to "add on to" (This is called a compact chain). In the instance of the video he adds on to push ups. So on the first round he will do 1 lunge, 1 squat jump, 1 push up, 1 burpee (see below for explanation). Round 2: 1 lunge (other leg), 1 squat jump, 2 push ups, 1 burpee. Roud 3: 1 lunge, 1 squat jump, 3 push ups, 1 burpee. Get the picture? Once you get to 10 push ups start back at 1.
Beauty of this exercise chain is you can pick ANY of these exercises. So want a leg workout day? Add on to squat jumps or lunges. Want a core day? Add on to burpees. Out of this one video you can get 3-4 solid workouts in.
Next - pick your time limit. 10, 15, 20 minutes and get an online stopwatch. See how many rounds (1-10 push ups) you can get through in your alloted time. This workout will make you breathless, to the point where you will have to stop. That's fine. Stop when you need to, and start again when you can and know you can push out some more. Continue that start/stop cycle until the time runs out. Push hard, make yourself rest - you'll get a better workout out of it.

Burpee Explanation: real quick so you are caught up. A burpee consists of squatting low to the ground and placing your hands on the floor. Your feet shoot out from under you so that you are in a push up position. In the video he then does a push up. After the push up, jump your feet back towards your hands so that you land on your heels and explode up into a squat jump (again see video)

Happy Snow Day!