While we are all about putting the best possible food in our mouths, we are also about working our asses off and working up a sweat like it’s no one’s business. We’re lucky enough to have an amazing trainer, Chris who is not only almost 7 feet of pure awesomeness (we’re serious he’s like 6’7″), but his imagination makes you want to wipe the sleep from your eyes at 6am and get down to sweating it out.

In the spirit of gluttony at it’s finest Christmas, every year he comes up with the “12 days of Christmas” workout. This our friends, is something you can do at home.  If you want to “earn” a couple of extra calories before the Christmas festivites, give this a try*

It’s even better if you try to sing along but by the 7th day you’ll probably want to punch something much like we wanted too this morning!

(begins singing “On the first day of Christmas my trainer gave to me”)

When were finished we had completed 12 tuck jumps, 22 squats, 30 V-ups, 72 mountain climbers (9 each leg, each round), 45 power jacks, 84 leg back bridges (7 each leg each round), 42 burpees, 50 low lunge walks (5 each leg each round), 36 push ups, 60 turkish get ups (3 each side each round), 22 gym lengths of bear crawls and 12 suicide drill runs…

We were spent.

* If you are just starting out with an exercise regimen this may not be the work out for you. At the end of the 40 – 45 minutes it took for both of us to get through this we were pretty wiped out. But don’t let that discourage you. Come up with your own version of the “12 days of Christmas”…

The point is: Move.

Move like your life depends on it because it does. It’s time like these (when we’re inundated with high caloric foods) that we need to be conscious of how much we’re moving (or not moving). Before you carve into the Christmas Ham, carve out some time for yourself and break a sweat. Before you hand out gifts to those you love, hand yourself the best gift of all: the gift of moving, the gift of sweating, the gift of making your muscles work.

~ Meegan and Tara