Back in The Saddle

Tirana welcomes the Dajti Diva home with gorgeous 70-80 degree weather, tress in full bloom, and sunny skies.

I missed my Luminous Lakeside Sanctuary and suffice it to say, I am MORE THAN MOTIVATED to get back to working out H-A-R-D.

To the left, you see a photo of my terrace gym. How can this be a gym? Well with a little bit of creativity, personal drive, and some help from Cross Fit, I am proud to say I am in the process of working off all of the cheese, chocolate, and bread I consumed in France. Watch out love handles and jiggly upper arms!

But I am proud of the extra weight I gained in the past three months. That weight symbolizes the completion of 230 pages of my book. I am now ready to dedicate my time to writing the query letters and proposal in order to get an agent and a publisher.

If that isn't reason enough to celebrate with cheese and chocolate in France, I don't know what is! And it's OK. I have the drive and the power to change my body. We only live once. We only have one body. Our bodies are our homes and our temples. They need to move, sweat, and be challenged. We ALL have the knowledge to create positive physical changes. As long as we cultivate the COURAGE to begin we can achieve anything we put our minds to--from marathons to weight loss.

Every time I experience an accidental exercise hiatus, I am surprised how great I feel when I get back on that horse. Every time I am shocked that I no longer want to eat cheese, chocolate, and pasta because I just worked out and those foods aren't conducive to muscle tone and fat burning. Good habits go hand in hand. Treating our bodies like trash cans doesn't feel as good as endorphins!

I just completed and laughed out loud at how slow and out of shape I was doing it, but thank God for muscle memory and the knowledge that next week at this time, I will do the same workout in half the time. Here is the Dajti Diva's workout of the day (WOD) for upper body:

Warm-up:
50 Jumping Jacks
4 laps of spider crawl (my terrace is 31 feet one way, so 124 feet)
50 Jump ropes

20 Bicep curls (using 10 lb band)
10 push-ups
20 triceps extensions (using 10 lb band)
20 front raises (using 10 lb band)
10 push-ups
10 dips (using my fridge see earlier blog post)

Rest two minutes. Repeat warm up. Repeat tricep, bicep, shoulder, and chest series two more times. Have fun. Play great music. Get dirty! Do it again and again and again until you look like Chastity from today's Cross Fit WOD.