PiYo // Week 1 Review

PiYo arrived on my doorstep a couple of weeks ago, and I was excited to tear that box open! I started the program on Monday, July 14th, and I want to share my weekly progress with all of you.

I have to be honest when I say I was a little nervous to jump all in with this program. When I started my fitness journey out two years ago, I did TurboFire, which is a high-intensity cardio program. I had such great results from that program and then moved on to weights. I was just afraid to give that up. However, Chalene Johnson is fantastic and knows what she is doing, so I totally trust her and have decided to commit to this program from start to finish 100%!

My main goal with PiYo is not to lose weight. Instead I am looking to increase my flexibility, strength and my core. For this reason, I am going to be eating for maintenance calories. My plan is to continue using the 21 Day Fix containers for portion control and follow the PiYo eating plan.

To start, I figured out my calorie target. For me, that is about 1200-1300 calories per day. I found the food plan that matches my calorie target, which is plan A. 

For Plan A I am eating: 

4 servings of Primary Vegetables

2 servings Secondary Vegetables & Grains

2 servings Fresh Fruit

4 servings Lean Protein

3 servings Healthy Fats

With this program, it is important to follow the eating plan because you are not burning a high amount of calories with these workouts. I don't have a meal plan to share with you from week one, because we were camping over the weekend and I didn't make a PiYo plan for that. Future weeks, I will be sharing what my meals and snacks are.

Here are my week 1 workouts:

Day 1 is Align: The Fundamentals, which is 40 minutes long. This workout breaks down the most important and effective moves in the program to help you perfect your form and get your best results possible. You will not want to skip this introduction! Chalene guides you through each movement, pose and exercise that you will use the rest of the program.

Day 1 - Learning the moves

Day 2 is Define: Lower Body (25 min.), which really focuses on your lower body. This workout will helps lengthen and strengthen your entire lower body from your flutes and hamstrings to your calves.

Day 2 - After workout Shakeology

Day 3 is Define: Upper Body (35 min). This really is an upper body workout with plenty of tricep push-ups! Hello sexy shoulders!

Day 4 is Sweat (35 min.). This is a traditional PiYo workout that incorporates effective dynamic conditioning, fast-paced cardio yoga-flows, and bodyweight resistance strength training to help sculpt your entire body. And, YES, I was sweating without doing any running or jumping!

Day 5 is a rest day.

Day 6 is Define: Lower Body again.

Day 7 is Define: Upper Body

And, that is week 1! You can follow along on my PiYo journey right here on the blog, as well as on my Facebook Page, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Oil Pulling?

Okay, I am sure you have all been hearing about oil pulling around the news and social media sites. I had never heard of it until last week. My guess is it's one of those fads that people totally get into and before we know it, something else will be taking it's spot in the top news.

But, I, of course, had to look into it, especially since that very week I was on my 3-day fix where I had to drink one teaspoon of coconut oil four times each of those days. I was curious if what I was doing was this "oil pulling" thing.

Turns out it wasn't, but I thought I would share with all of you what I learned about this new sensation. Ready? ;)

Apparently this isn't a new thing. Oil pulling has been around for years.

So what is it? 

It's an age-old remedy used to detoxify and clean teeth and gums using natural substances. You take the oil and swish it around in your mouth anywhere from 5 minutes minimum to 20 minutes maximum, without swallowing it. {I don't know about you, but I definitely don't have time to swish around something in my mouth for 20 minutes, not to mention I about gag at the thought of having something in my mouth that long!} Because of the "stickiness" of the oil, the supposed purpose is to get the bacteria from your mouth stuck in the oil and then dissolve it. "They" say when you spit it out, if it's yellow, it worked.

And why would you consider doing it?

Besides the fact that this would actually be quite inexpensive, I found there were actually many pros to this new fad. This picture has many of them listed here and it's much more eye-appealing than me listing each of them one-by-one, so I thought I would just share it.

{Source}

After going through so many sources, I can't remember where I saw this, but I do remember reading that oil pulling can help reduce the chances of dementia. I thought that was interesting. Whether or not that's true, I don't know. Extensive research has not been done on oil pulling but there have been a handful of studies.

What are the negatives?

I guess I can't imagine there would be anything negative about swishing coconut oil (or if you prefer olive, sunflower or organic sesame oil) around in your mouth, other than the fact that 20 minutes seems like an extremely long time if you chose to do the max., but coconut oil isn't harmful so you could always try. ;)

If you do, or if you have, I would love for you to comment below and share your experience.

If you haven't, what do you think… would you try this?