If there is a new author it is in their blogging rights to be able to introduce themselves to the wild world of wordpress, to make their mark in the blog to say their aim and how they will contribute to the blog and make it better rather than diving in head first and just getting on with it.

But intro posts can be a little bit annoying especially if you get lots and lots of new authors. This is a group blog, not an individual thing so we move together.

Maybe intro posts should be allowed?

Leave a reply, start the intro post rebellion!

Welcome to the first post of The Pinterest Workout Challenge! *fanfare*

I’m Miranda, and I’ll be your guide through this awesome, sweaty journey. (Note: the “awesome” is me being optimistic about this whole process. You can all look at this post and laugh at me later.)

But what IS this journey, you ask? HOLD ON, I WAS GETTING TO THAT!

Ahem. This will be a journey through the wonderful workouts to be found on Pinterest.com. If you’re familiar with the site, you’ll know that there are MANY of them to be found. Usually, they’re presented in a list format, like this:

(Note: this is not the one I did today)

Some of them are even week or month-long workout plans, but I won’t be doing any of those yet.

Anyway, what I’m going to do is go to Pinterest every day, click on the “Health & Fitness” section, and do the first workout I see. (Except if it requires weights/a treadmill etc., because I don’t own any of those. I might pick up some weights later.) I won’t do repeats, either- every day will be a DIFFERENT workout. I’ll only skip a day if I have to be at work all day long for an event (which happens sometimes, but not often) or if I’m really sick.

Why am I doing this? Well, I need to lose weight, and I’m really, really terrible at getting myself motivated to do ANYTHING athletic. I’m also a really weird and picky eater, which will hinder me in my quest, but I’m not going to blog about that part. I also kept seeing the workouts on Pinterest and was wondering if they actually worked/how hard they were. This blog will answer those questions. Hopefully it’ll help someone else out there, too, but if you just want to laugh along with me as I attempt to do a jackknife sit up, that’s fine too.

I will be rating the workouts on two scales:

1. How much I like the workout (on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being I HATE THIS WORKOUT AND WILL NEVER DO IT AGAIN, and a 10 being I LOVE THIS WORKOUT! I WANT TO DO IT EVERY DAY! I don’t think I’ll get many 10′s, because I’ve never been able to find a workout that I WANT to do every day, but hey, I might surprise myself.

2. How hard the workout was, with a 1 being “I didn’t sweat at all, it was as easy as a walk in the park” and a 10 being “OH MY GOD THAT WAS SO HARD, EVERYTHING HURTS SO BAD”. Note that I won’t (always) necessarily hate harder workouts- if I got sweaty but could actually do the moves and FEEL like I worked out, I’ll give it high ratings on both scales. I’ll also make some notes on how easy the workout was to understand here. I am a COMPLETE newbie to the fitness world and don’t really know how to do many moves at all, other than push-ups and sit-ups (and even then, I’m terrible at both of those). OF COURSE I am being careful and looking up how to do these moves before I do them, and making sure I know how to do them before I attempt them. If there’s a move I KNOW is impossible for me, I try the best I can. (I don’t want a lot of angry comments about this, I’m just trying to work out and blog about it)

Anyway, I don’t want to overload you with too much exposition. Nothing can kill a post like too much exposition. (5 points if you get the reference)

DAY ONE: The Quiet Workout

This workout comes to us from http://backonpointe.tumblr.com. 

Original post:

http://backonpointe.tumblr.com/post/22087833743/need-to-keep-it-down-for-sleeping-roommates-or-a

As you can see by her lovely picture, this workout is meant to be done when you have sleeping roommates/need to be quiet, but I had none of those problems today, so I decided to play music and not be very quiet. Heh.

This was a pretty tough workout that didn’t take me very long. It did *look* very intimidating- that’s quite a long list!- but I got through the exercises pretty quickly. I did have to look almost all of these up on Youtube, but that’s my own fault.

By far, the hardest exercise was those jackknife sit-ups. I hadn’t heard of this before, and it looks so easy on the 7-second video!

But I assure you, it’s not, at least for me. I think it’s physically impossible for me to get the top half and the bottom half of my body (scientific terms are fun!) lifted at the same time. Yes, this is pathetic. Because of this, the vertical leg crunches were also tough, though they were slightly easier because then you at least *start* with your legs in the air. I didn’t “crunch” very much on those, though. Sit-ups/crunches were easy for me when I was little, but now they’re a lot harder because I have terrible upper-body strength (well, terrible strength ANYWHERE on my body, but still…). 

The planks were also super hard. It’s so deceptive because you’re literally just holding one position, but it hurts more than moving around every which way. 

Anyway, on the ENJOYMENT SCALE (with 10 being the highest) I rate this workout a…

6.5

Because while it was difficult in parts, it also didn’t last too long. I didn’t really love DOING any of the moves, but I’m not sure if that’s the idea.

On the DIFFICULTY SCALE (with 10 as the hardest), I will rate this workout a 

5 

Because while some of the workouts were difficult for me personally, I think that someone with training would be able to blast through them pretty quickly while still breaking a good sweat. If you’re out of practice like me, though, I’ll warn you that the moves are hard, but not impossible.

Tune in tomorrow for another workout!

Have a cute kitty:

Coming December 1st

The dilemma at 24 however, is not which journal to scribble in or what web host to use, but instead it’s more a question of content. I wondered, should I write exclusively about one topic? and what would it be? natural hair? film? music? would I chronicle the general strife of the 20-something-girl even though it’s been done before? In the end the indecision left me stuck so I decided I would write about all of those things, or none of those things. I decided that sharing various bits of myself would not be detrimental.

I have had blogs in the past where I felt as if I shared too much, or too little, and there doesn’t seem to be a right way to go about it. So I’ll do what’s always worked for me, and that’s just: WRITE. The rest will take care of itself.

So in short, my name is Ray, and I plan to write about many things.

I may occasionally make a personal food-related post, so this isn’t purely a recipe and review blog. It’s about a fucked up relationship I(and many others) have with food, especially fine dining. Eating the wrong foods didn’t just make me gain weight, it made me sicker than I already am.

This is just the trailer, but I highly recommend you find the full documentary and watch!  There’s more to this issue than this film covers, and even differing opinions.  Feel free to let me know your opinion, but please be civil and respectful.  Thanks!

ETA: I found the full documentary on Hulu.

I’ve three main passions in life: food, history, and writing. Here, you’ll get to see each one extensively as I cook, bake, learn, and write my way through the world. I hope to open a bakery someday, and this is my crazy journey to get there. Thanks for stopping by!

Enjoy.

I “moved out” of my 2 old blogs and am now on (in? under? around?) my own domain with a brand new adventure awaiting – well, many of them actually! I started with a new iPhone 5 recently, which is rather humorous. My family is sophisticated when it comes to technology. I prefer two wax paper cups connected with a string. Yelling at high volumes across distances is also my idea of social networking. No buttons to push or systems to crash :)

So with my new phone I have managed to accidentally delete an important voicemail, laugh when it buzzes in my purse and not figure out a host of other fancy pants things. BUT – I did manage to get the following picture, which is what I feel like saying to the technoschmeer that won’t behave in my life.

This site is brand new and still in the process of getting established. Check back often – or sign up to follow me! –  for new pix, videos and written blurbs on unleashing my inner artist.

*Runs with loaded paint brushes, laughs at fancy phones*