This post is brought to you by Live Well 360, who kindly sent me their Tote gym bag. It's a great bag with lots of organization in the inside including a fleece-lined pocket for my phone (see below).

Welcome to the first Workout Wednesday in a while. Between the travel and focusing on the YogaByCandace book, I’ve skipped the past few so I thought today was a good day for an update.

As you know, a while back I started working with a trainer and nutritionist to try to meet my goals for the main photoshoot for the book in December. The photoshoot was moved to January which I was happy about, as it gave me a little more time to meet my goals. We’re now about six weeks out or so and I am feeling really good.

My goals were to lean out (I'm starting to see results, yay!) and continue to build more strength overall, but especially in the upper body (which I totally feel like I've done!). I also wanted to refine my olympic lifts. I felt like I had a good foundation but that there were tweaks that could be made to improve.

The trainer has been working with me three times per week. We focus on olympic lifting (either lifting heavy or working on technique - my snatch lift has gotten SO much better!) for about twenty minutes or so, and then spend the rest of the hour doing a crossfit style hiit workout. He also told me I need to start doing sprints for about twenty minutes twice a week, woof.

Thinking I'll start posting my workouts here since it's more behind the scenes getting ready for our book's main photoshoot in January. Goals: to build strength and continue to get more lean. Today's workout: snatch work focusing on technique. Then, 3 rounds of this: 10 box jumps, five ring push ups, 8 ring rows, sled pull w 2 45lbs plates, sprint down and back, another sled pull, sprint down and back. Woof. But also yum? #workout #Yogabycandace #instagood #fitfam #ybcyogis -Candace

A video posted by @ybcsneakpeek on Nov 18, 2015 at 4:41pm PST

I loathe cardio like no other, especially after not doing it for ages, but sprints aren’t terrible because I tell myself I’m not actually having to run for that long. So my sprint training just started and it’s one minute on and two minutes off for twenty minutes. Not awful, but not what I would call enjoyable. :)

Today's workout: deadlift work (seen on @yogabycandace) then: Max assisted pull ups, 15 burpees, 15 med ball slams, 15 hanging L raises. 4 rounds. #workout #instagood #fitfam #workout #ybcyogis

A video posted by @ybcsneakpeek on Nov 21, 2015 at 6:03am PST

As far as diet, it’s been going okay. Thanksgiving and a bridal shower I went to kind of threw things off (#mmmmmpie) but I really just let it go and didn’t get stressed about it. If there is one thing I’ve learned this year it’s that stress has an incredibly profound impact on the body. Stressing about falling off the bandwagon wasn’t going to do anything productive, so I just enjoyed my pie and got back on the horse at the next chance.

The hardest part of all of this for me is that when I’m doing this much physical activity combined with walking the dog twice a day for an hour each time, as well as working and going about my day, I feel like everything needs to be in alignment or I come crashing down. There’s so much involved - working out, prepping food so I can easily get the food in me, eating enough so I can have energy for a great workout and give it my all, sleeping enough so I can recover, taking rest days when I want to work out, staying as stress-free as possible…. if any one of those things is off, it throws everything else off.

I really love the process, and figuring out a way to keep everything in balance, but I will be happy once this shoot is over. :)

I'd love to hear how your fitness goals are coming along!