February Challenge: Love Your Body by Eating Clean(er)

A year ago,  February 2014, I challenged myself and all of you to find something you loved every day. I managed to get 25 out of the 28 days with the chalkboard art graphic of something I loved.

This February I am going to kick off another challenge!

February is a shortest month of the year so why not use it as a trial for healthy living!?!

Last year I did a lot of exercise and I'm feeling great. This year I think it's time to challenge myself to make even more changes, specifically in the everyday foods I eat.

Despite all the exercise I've done and my overall daily healthy eating, haven't lost that last 10 pounds of baby weight that I want to get off of me. (Although I know some of that is gaining muscle and losing fat from running and all that kind of thing…)

But after lots of reading and investigation I've come to a realization that I've crossed that threshold into the mid 30 range and it's not just about exercise our calorie consumption (a.k.a. quantity). I really think it has to do a lot with quality. 

I'm really thinking at this point I need to seriously think about metabolism and hormones and overall healthy body balance. 

I've talked before about feeding our kids good food and organic versus healthy versus junk food I think it's time for me to really step up the game and see how much of a difference clean eating makes.

So here's what I'm going to do. I am going to take the month of February and challenge myself to gradually switch my family over to eating high(er)-quality food thought the entire month of February.

Over the next three weeks I'm going to do a series of posts about healthy eating geared towards moms who cook for kids and families. I will also setup a basic framework for the February healthy eating challenge.

I would love to challenge you to join me. No need to jump on the organic or vegan bandwagon, just make some small steps to making your families eating a little more healthy. 

Let's get together, share some tips, recipes, resources, and most importantly encouragement to love your body by eating cleaner and healthy.

Let's make February the eat healthy and love your body month! ❤️

Maragine vs Butter....

Piggy backing on the idea of misleading advertising....
Margarine is often marketed to be better than butter....
However, I only use it when making "real" pie crust (Simply because real butter just doesn't work. Although I do have a great gluten free pie crust recipe that doesn't use margarine.)

We went back to real butter for everything else several years ago!

Look at this picture about the process of manufacturing margarine and maybe do a little research. What do you think?

 

New Workout Plan Needed

The school year has started again and that means I am back to work, no more summer free time. That also means no surplus of time to workout. I really enjoyed my summer workouts and want to continue my health and fitness trend but I now need to find a way to fit it in.

The above picture is shows me walking and below you will see my faithful walking companions. Sometimes this is the only reason that I do get out. These to cute pups need their walk and thats my excuse for leaving the house. 

During the summer I would walk/jog in the mornings, around 8 am or so. Now I am up at 5:30, out of the house by 6:45, I don't get home till 4:30, connect with my daughter and hubby, make dinner, then start the evening routine of packing for the next day and getting my daughter in bed. I try to sneak a quick walk with the dogs but after dinner usually i'm not feeling up to running. 

I'm looking for suggestions to give myself more quality workouts without taking away too much time from my other responsibilities and activities.

My husband purchased Biggest Loser (a workout "game" for Xbox. Im going to give that a try). 

Do you have any other suggestions?  

New favorite app

I have dubbed this summer "My summer of health and happiness". 

My new favorite App that is helping me with the 'health' aspect is the Nike Running app.

 I've had it on my iPhone since I got the phone but never activated it. After some encouragement from my sister-in-law I went on and started playing with it. I have been using it four days now and how can I have ever gone without this!?! It's not just for running, it turns out it also tracks how far you walk, how fast you walk, it shows how many calories you burn.

 Now I can just take that data about the calories and walking and stick it straight into 'My Fitness Pal' app. 

Love it!