Fitness and Health Giveaway Link-up 9/18-9/24

An InLinkz Link-up

Wendy's Harvest Salad Review

Wendy's just released their latest salad on their menu and it has an autumn theme. It is called the Harvest salad and I got to sample it on Tuesday.

The harvest salad has lettuce, sliced grilled chicken, diced red and green apples, dried cranberries, feta cheese, brown sugar walnuts, and Applewood smoked bacon and apple cider vinaigrette dressing. 

It is a little similar to their apple pecan salad except the apple pecan salad has blue cheese, pecans, no bacon and it comes with pomegranate vinaigrette. So, there is a slight difference between the two salads but not much.

I usually get their half salads because they are lower in calories. The harvest half salad has 320 calories and the apple pecan salad has 340 calories. The full harvest and apple pecan salad both have about 560-570 respectfully.

Thumbs up or Thumbs down?

I like the new Wendy's Harvest salad but I think the feta cheese doesn't agree with me. I have eaten it twice already and I have gotten a stomach ache from it each time. I have a slight milk allergy and I think that the feta cheese is upsetting my stomach. I don't get that when I eat the apple pecan salad. 

It is definitely a thumbs up. I like the bacon, apples, walnuts and the apple cider vinaigrette. It's a delicious salad and I recommend that you head over to Wendy's to give it a try. Since the salad has an autumn theme, you should get right over there and pick it up before it goes poof. What is your favorite Wendy's salad?

Check out my review of Wendy's Southwest Avocado Chicken 
Salad.

Fitness and Health Giveaway Link-up 9/11-9/18

It is the third week of my fitness and health giveaway link-up and I'm loving it. For you sweepers (those who enter contests as a hobby), I know you are enjoying it too. If you have a fitness, health, or fitness travel giveaway you are sponsoring, make sure you link it here and add the end date and what countries are eligible to enter the contest.

An InLinkz Link-up

30 Day Lower Body Stretching Challenge

I think many of us need to do the challenge because we tend to neglect the flexibility part of our workout.  This workout focuses on the lower part of the body and not the upper body.

Flexibility is part of the five components of exercise.  The five component is what health educators and experts use to determine a well-balanced fitness routine. Flexibility, muscular endurance, muscular strength, cardiovascular endurance, and body composition are the five component of fitness. Your workout plan should incorporate all of the components. Go here to read more about the five components of exercise: The Five Components of Fitness: What You Need To Know.

If you are a runner, walker, suffer from hip and lower back issues or you are just super tight in your lower body, consider taking on the lower body challenge. The 30-day plan is just $6.95 and it is an instant download upon purchase at my Etsy shop.

What's included:
-Why stretch and more information on flexibility
-Flexibility test before and after
-The 30 Day Lower Body Stretching program with illustrations
-30-day accountability chart

Find this interesting, check out my other challenges:

The 30 Day Ab Challenge For Beginners

The 30 Day Squat Challenge For Beginners

The 30 Day Ab Challenge - Intermediate & Advanced Level

Fitness and Health Giveaway Link-up 9/4-9/10

If you are giving away any fitness, health or fitness/health travel products feel free to join the link up and/or if you want to win any of these lovely products, you have to enter to win. Remember to add the final date of the contest and countries of eligibility.

An InLinkz Link-up

The Inverted Triangle Body Shape Workout

Like me, you have broad shoulders, small or medium-sized arms, small to medium breasts, and narrow hips, correct? You want to weight train or change your figure the best you can but you don't know how? Let's try to see if we can work on this together.

I'm an inverted triangle with thin arms, medium size breast, a waist that goes in ever so slightly, and have narrow hips. Luckily, I have a derriere so I have some curves. Since my knees have been giving me trouble due to arthritis, I haven't been training my lower half as hard. I decided after receiving an email to join The Body For Life challenge, I would try to change my shape the best I could.

Granted, I don't think any amount of exercise will give me enough hips to equal my shoulders, however, I decided that I can give my body a more balanced look if I built muscle in my legs, hip, and glutes.

I know there are people like me out there who would love a more comprehensive program than just being told to do squats, lunges and do the elliptical trainer. So, I decided to put together a workout plan that will give you some hope to make some real body changes. I'm not promising that you will be an hourglass after doing this workout but you may feel better about yourself with a more balanced body.

The Plan:

1. Train the lower body twice a week with *heavyweights
2. Do 20-30 minutes of cardio, three days a week
3. Train your upper body once or twice a week with lighter weights
4. Eat a low carb or paleo diet

*You have to find your starting zone. Lifting light weights like 5 lbs, 10 lbs and etc will not get you what you desire, you probably will have to join a gym that has a variety of equipment, unless you have weight machines at home

We will build muscle on the lower body with low reps and heavyweight and train the upper body with lightweight and 15-20 reps. Our diet will be lower in carbs because low carb diets help to reduce visceral fat, a type of fat within the abdominal cavity.   

Monday/Legs - Tuesday/Cardio - Wednesday/Upper Body -Thursday/Cardio - Friday/Legs - Saturday/Cardio and Upper Body - Sunday/Rest

The workout

Leg day workout: You will do 12 reps on your starting weight, wait one minute, add more weight do 10 reps, wait one minute, add weight do 8 reps, wait one minute, and you repeat this until you get to 6 reps. At six reps, you should be lifting your heaviest weight. Then you go back to your first weight at 12 reps repeat it and with another exercise of the same body part you will do 12 reps immediately Look at the example below:

Leg Press Machine

12 reps  75lbs/34kg  one-minute rest

10 reps  85lbs/39kg  one-minute rest

  8 reps  95lbs/43kg  one-minute rest

  6 reps  100lbs/45kg one-minute rest

12 reps  75lbs/34kg and then do 12 leg extensions immediately at a weight that is not too light or too heavy.

  

You will do this for each body part.  

Exercises for the quadriceps: Squats, seated leg extension, leg presses, hack squat

Exercises for the hamstrings: seated leg curl, lying leg curl, deadlift, lunges

Calves: seated or standing calf raises

Inverted triangle hip and gluteal program

On leg day, you will be doing workouts to see if we can build the hip area. Most plans don't have this component but I know this is important to us. This plan will be just 4 sets of 10-12 reps with a minute rest between sets. After doing the above workout, you will then move on to the hip exercises.

1. Side lateral lunge 4 sets of 10 reps each side. Most people do not do this exercise correctly but you want to get it right because it really works the abductors or hip area. Look at the following video to get the form down correctly. I like to do a 2-second pause in the down position. I'm up to a 25-pound dumbbell when performing this exercise. Because of the knees, form and etc, it will be okay to start with a lighter weight when doing the side lateral lunge

2. Standing kickbacks with the cable machine or resistance tubes 4 sets of 10 reps

3. Standing leg or lying leg raises using the resistance band or ankle weights 4 sets of 12 reps

4. Inner thigh with adduction machine drop sets do 4 reps at a heavy weight, drop the weight and do 4 more reps right away, then drop the weight and do four more reps with a total of 12 reps

5. If you don't have access to the inner thigh machine, do any of these exercises instead, 4 sets of 12-15 reps.  Adductor exercises

Upper Body Training

You can choose to train your upper body once a week and if you need exercise toning, you can train you upper body on your Saturday cardio day, it is up to you. 

It will be 3 sets of 15-20 reps on four body parts: Chest, Back, Arms(biceps and triceps). If you want to do shoulders, just do one or two sets of 12 reps. We need to keep them strong but no heavy weights for your shoulders.

You can also do body weight exercises like push-ups, pull-ups to work your upper body or you can use resistance bands to help you tone.

Chest exercises: push-ups, chest press, chest fly, incline chest press

Back exercises: pull-ups, lat pull-downs, back rows

Bicep exercises: bicep curls, hammer curls, preacher curls

Triceps exercises: dips, overhead triceps, triceps press down 

You can skip all that and do a video for toning the upper body. Take a look at the following videos to tone your upper body.

Smart Upper Body Workout. 34 minutes

20 Minutes Upper Body Resistance Band Workout

23 Minute Tabata Upper Body Workout

Low Carb Plan

I have a low carb plan you can purchase. It allows you to have one free day or a free meal a week, The 6 Day Food Challenge. You can also follow the Atkins, South Beach or Keto meal plans, you have to find what works best with you.

If you have any questions about the plan, shoot me an email at sheilafit10@gmail.com

Fitness and Health Giveaway Link-up

This is my first fitness and health giveaway link-up. Feel free to post your blog giveaways every Tuesday morning and please tell your fitness and health blogger friends about the link-up. Remember to add the end date of your giveaway and add if the contest is open in the USA, CAN or worldwide.

An InLinkz Link-up