Hows your health? I want to live a healthier lifestyle

During my first year of marraige I gained at least 15 pounds. It snuck up on me slowly and I didn't realize it until one day I looked in the mirror and realized my clothes no longer fit and my body and face had lost their definition. When I was in high school I was in amazing shape. I ran every day and did weight training a few times a week. But I never really ate well. I was pretty healthy, but with unhealthy habits. Fast forward into marriage, abandoning my daily exercise routine, and continuing to eat poorly and its no wonder I gained the weight.

Once I realized how it happened, I started watching what and how much I ate and made sure that I exercised somewhat regularly. It helped, I lost the extra weight and felt better. But I still had unhealthy habits that I hadn't broken, and for a few years I yo-yo'd between eating really healthy and eating very poorly.

A couple months ago I decided it was time to really focus on living healthier. I'm not overweight and don't have a specific goal weight in mind. But I could feel that my body was weighed down, sluggish, and not where it should be. Additionally, a number of bad health things run in my family (like heart disease, breast cancer, osteoperosis, high blood pressure, etc). I set a goal to live healthier. I figured I can do my best to improve my chances of not having serious health problems by eating right and exercising. Plus it comes with the benefit of feeling better, being alert, and having more energy on a day-to-day basis.

The two main parts of my goal are to eat better and exercise regularly. Everyone knows that we should try to do these things, but we have so many excuses and its easy to ignore.

Food: I've been focusing on eating more veggies and fruits each day, and cutting back on the amount of carbs and sweets I eat (because I was eating almost completely carbs). My biggest motivator is reminding myself that food is fuel and trying to pick things that will fuel my body in a good way.

Exercise: I used to run all the time, but I injured my knee this past year and it hasn't fully recovered yet. Instead, I've been doing interval and circuit training at the gym. It was easy for me to fit into my schedule because Jeff normally goes to the gym after work, so I started going after work as well. And I've been consistent! I even made the top 10 users list for June!!

Progress so far: After almost 2-3 months of eating healthier and exercising consistently, I feel great - physically and mentally. I'm determined to keep it up. I've been roping friends into it so that I'm not alone in my quest to be healthier ;] I'm not on a diet or a exercise fad. I'm working towards a healthier lifestyle. One that is maintainable and enjoyable.

I would love for you to join me!

If you have any recipes you want to share or ideas on how to prevent giving up on your goals, please share them in the comments below! What are your biggest challenge related to food and exercise?


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Workouts, dreams, and postcards

I feel complexly out of it this morning.

Yesterday I pushed myself really hard in my workout. I played tennis with a friend in the morning, and then headed to the gym in the afternoon. I split a 2.5-mile run around a Core Building class. It was a hard workout, and I was tired and achy everywhere yesterday evening. This morning, I feel like I got hit by a bus. Every muscle on my body aches (except for maybe my fingers), but really everything else hurts.

Last night I had weird dreams – kind of inception based, but then also about college, video games, hostage situations, and the end of the world. To make it more interesting I heard a song by India Arie yesterday, and so the song, along with her name were interlaced throughout my entire dream, and the song was playing in my head when I woke up this morning.

To make this morning even more complex, today is my one day off of work this week – which means intense cleaning and photo business work. And Jeff decided to call in. He came home for a half day yesterday, and then this morning decided he wasn’t feeling well enough to go back to work yet. So rather than getting up at 7 and getting moving, I slept in with my hubby. Until 9:30. Ugh.

And even 9:30 was a hard wake up. You know how you feel after you take a long nap in the middle of the day? A nap that should have lasted 30 minutes but ended up being 3 hours? Where you feel even more drowsy and tired than you did before you went to sleep and your body is completely sluggish? That’s what happened at 9:30 this morning.

But now I’m up and went straight to it. (yes I’m blogging, but I’m multitasking so its okay!) I’m printing postcards for a wedding this Saturday, hoping my dandy little printer doesn’t run out of ink before I print enough of these cards! (It has been saying Ink is low for the last couple days, but I’ve printed over ten full page, double sided color prints and it isn’t empty yet!). I can’t wait to share these postcards with you and all the guests at Saturday’s wedding! Now off to work around the house!