Winter Shape Up 2016
Hi friends! Happy Monday, and happy WSU!
Welcome to Winter Shape Up 2016: a perfect chance to revamp your fitness routine, thrive from healthy eats, and revitalize your love for healthy living. Whether you’re looking to achieve a fitness, fat loss, lifestyle, or energy goal, hopefully this plan will provide you with steps, ideas and inspiration along the way.
For the friends who are new to Winter Shape Up, here’s how it works:
– I’ve been doing the Shape Up plans on my blog for years as a way to share free fitness and meal plans with my readers. I’m so happy Anne has joined in the fun to share her expertise as a Registered Dietitian. She’s my WSU partner in crime, and we love being able to put together these plans for you all.
Each week, for the next 4 weeks, Anne and I will be posting free full workout schedules, meal plans, videos, printables and grocery lists.
While you can follow these exactly as suggested, remember that these are just suggestions; they can be always be adjusted or modified to suit your personal needs and schedule. If you have a class that you like to do each week at the gym, by all means keep it in, but just remember not to do the same type of workout on consecutive days. For example, I wouldn’t take a hardcore bootcamp class the day after Workout 1, and avoid strength training the same muscle group two days in a row. If you need help shuffling things around, please hit me up in the comments or tweet me @fitnessista
Your 4 week focus:
-Visualize a goal. What’s your intention behind Winter Shape Up? Looking to shake up your routine? Burn fat? Get stronger? Write it down what you’d like to accomplish and remind yourself daily for the next 4 weeks. If you made an inspiration board, this is a great time to update it and check it regularly! If you’re looking for fat loss/muscle gain, I highly recommend a body fat assessment towards the beginning of the Shape Up, or take some pics and measurements so you can gauge progress. Keep in mind: this isn’t a weight loss plan. While weight loss may be the result of changing up your routine and implement new diet or fitness strategies, remember that weight is a poor indication of overall health and body composition. Focus on foods and habits that will encourage fat loss and encourage lean muscle retention/building if that’s your overall goal. All in all, use strength, energy levels, and confidence as some mental success meters. <3
-Nutrition. Eat like a PRO: meaning you’re going to emphasize PROtein and PROduce. Anne has a variety of delicious, healthy and satisfying recipes in the meal plan with vegan and gluten-free options.
-Consistency. The greatest way to achieve a new fitness or health goal is consistency. Stick with it and remember that the little things definitely add up! Be gentle with yourself throughout the challenge, and endeavor to be consistent in your actions to achieve your personal goal for the 4 weeks.
-Be a cheerleader for yourself and other Winter Shape Up participants. Make sure to check in each morning with your workout, pics of your healthy eats and to cheer each other on! The comments are a great option (which is how you’ll enter the giveaways), or if you’d like to tweet/Instagram, use the hashtag #wintershapeup and tag us @fitnessista @fannetasticfood.
We also have a private Facebook group with lovely supportive, active members. Check it out here!
The Winter Shape Up will run from Monday, January 25 to Sunday, February 21, 2015. Here are links to all the content (this page will be updated as the new pages are published).
More details and FAQs are below!
How do I enter the giveaways?
We’ll have two giveaways running each week. Check in on each weekly post for your chance to enter! (For week 1, you’ll check in for your workouts below in the comments, and check in with your eats on Anne’s week 1 page.)
How do I keep track of all of the deliverables and info? It seems like a lot!
This page that you’re currently reading (the Intro post) will be your home base for ALL things Winter Shape Up-related. Each week’s meal ideas and workouts, plus any giveaways will all be linked here. If you’re joining in, keep this page in a safe place (bookmark it, Pin it, keep it in your pocket) so that you can easily access all of the info. I’ll also add a widget to this page at the top of the blog (on the upper right side bar).
A special thanks to our Winter Shape Up sponsors, who will be providing amazing giveaways along the way:
Cabot | Sabra | Sizzlefish | Pure Canadian Maple Syrup | Daily Harvest | Gluten Free Chex | Crunch Live (use code WSU30 to get a free 30-day trial. After 30 days it will roll over to a membership at $9.99, but can be canceled at any time)
This week’s featured sponsor is Daily Harvest! I’ve been obsessed with their smoothies for a while now, and am so excited to share them with two lucky winners.
A little bit about Daily Harvest:
Each blend contains a mixture of fruit, healthy fats and superfoods. Add you do is add liquid in a blender, blend it up, and enjoy! The combos are soooo delicious, and I especially love that they don’t use any added sugars or preservatives; just whole, REAL foods. You can add protein powder to the smoothies, but I find that I almost never want to do that. They taste amazing on their own, and have a great mix of greens, fruit, and energizing super foods. Everything is picked at the peak of freshness and flash frozen, and the ingredients are non-GMO and organic whenever possible. One of my favorite things about Daily Harvest is the convenience and accessibility. For example, I love maca, but it isn’t really worth it for me to have a giant bag in the pantry to sprinkle into oats and smoothies. Also, when I make a smoothie, it’s fast and furious. This makes it so much easier to put the container in the blender, add almond milk or coconut water, and blend. If the container is two servings worth, it usually works out well because my tiny smoothie bandit (Liv) will claim it as her own.
Some of the other ingredients that they use: kale, avocado, cashew butter, pink Himalayan sea salt, ginger, cacao nibs, and wheatgrass.
2 lucky Shape Up participants will each receive a 6-pack of Daily Harvest smoothies, and can choose which flavors they’d like to try.
Here’s how to enter:
Leave a comment below EACH TIME you complete a workout this week! That’s right, you have multiple chances to win.
Bonus entry: Instagram a sweaty workout pic, and be sure to tag us (@fitnessista @fannetasticfood #wintershapeup)
Let’s get this party started! Are you joining in the fun?
xoxo
Gina
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I did a cardio/upper body HIIT bootcamp class today and I am definitely feeling it!
Finished 3 rounds of workout 1! It was a sweaty one!
Today was a long walk for steady state. I needn’t exercised in a while so I’m easing my way back into it.
2 days down***!!!
Can’t get over how motivated WSU gets me! Just did an outdoor steady state.
Did workout 1 today during my baby’s naptime! Win!
Steady state for today is done!
Forgot to comment yesterday after body pump/spin combo!
Today I took a fabulous sweaty spin class!
today was spin for cardio! barre tomorrow 🙂
And my first Barre workout is in the books! Thanks Gina!
Checking in! I love going to the power intervals class at the new gym I go to which is an all women’s gym 🙂 the class is similar to crossfit. Today we focused on shoulders & heavy weights. I’m feeling it!
Day 3 work out in, energy flow Barre. Hoping to get a nice long walk in later.
Hi there – checking in with my workout yesterday. I had a sick kiddo, but my mom was gracious enough to stop by the house for 15 minutes for me to go on a run. It obviously wasn’t perfect – 45 minutes would have been much better- but it felt so good to get out of the house after being cooped up all day.
Thanks!
Did the barre workouts for today! I alternated between them, which made it less of a hurdle to do them both twice (I sometimes get irked by hearing the same dialogue so soon if I do a double). Really easy to do in my apartment and didn’t require lots of space!
Finished the barre workouts. Like others I alternated the two to rest muscle groups. I also added in a 5 minute standing abs routine at the end to target my core just a bit more.
Just finished the Barre workout and loved it!
I’m on the tail end of New Rules of Lifting for Women, so I did that workout and the elliptical today
I did the elliptical steady state today!
We did the workout through 3x. It was a good one.
nice and sweaty! 3 round early morning workout!!
Spin class this a.m! Switching up the schedule/days – barre/yoga tomorrow.
Didn’t feel like working out this morning, but glad I pushed through. Did the barre and strength video workouts twice, alternating the two. I don’t have hand weights so I used wine bottles and that worked out just fine. 🙂 Definitely felt the burn!
Currently finishing barre3 challenge so have completed 3 days of barre ranging from 30-60 minutes!
six mile run in the Midwest cold this morning. Energizing.
Your first workout was awesome! Love the balance challenges that are integrated into it, with the one-legged lunges. I also did a nice 30 minute steady state on the treadmill yesterday before an evening meeting — would’ve liked more but ran out of time! Switching Weds. and Thurs. to accommodate my busy day today! Thanks for putting this together.
I completed the Barre Burner 2x and the Barre/ HIIT once. My knees got the best of me after the first round. 🙁
TDM Wednesday.
Completed the Barre burner today!
Did the barre workout last night and it was awesome! Was really surprised by how much it kicked up my heart rate – I was sweating like crazy at the end!
These barre burners always take me by surprise. They are so challenging! I was able to get through 1 of the cardio workout (which I loved!) and 2 rounds of the strength in the time I had this morning. My legs were shaking as I brushed my teeth. Ha!
Just finished Barre & HIIT for today!
Took a cycling class for cardio yesterday!
Did WO1 plus taught Pilates on Monday!
I took a barre class 🙂
lunchtime sweaty HIIT workout!
I did the barre HIIT and barre strength workouts today! I didn’t think I could do them twice through but I did it. Such a mental as well as physical challenge 🙂
Took a great PiYo class this morning!
And a crazy sweaty cardio boxing class yesterday!
We did a 30 minute circuit run/walk.
did both Barre workouts today!
Rest day for me. Back at it tomorrow!!!
Barre HIIT + cardio today!
I’m counting yesterday’s rest day as a workout! I went grabbed birthday drinks with a friend instead. 🙂
Since I took a rest day yesterday, I did Tuesday’s steady state workout tonight. I did one of the longer, slightly-less-intense turbofire workouts.
Starting late but loved workout 1 today!
Today’s barre classes completed 🙂
DONE!!!!
Cardio day today!!
Wednesday is a rest day for me! Taught a hot yoga core class though so I still got a good sweat on.