A Changing Lifestyle: Back to Work!

Welp, looks like I forgot to keep up with my blog posts over the holidays! That's alright though because I maintained a (relatively) healthy lifestyle even though I wasn't blogging. Yesterday, I went skiing with two of my absolute most favorite people in the entire world for about 6 hours. Lightly skiing for 6 hours = 2109 calories burned. WIN.

I have been trying to keep up with some form of exercise every day, whether I'm at the club or just running in my neighborhood. I downloaded this cool app that will play music off your iPhone/iPod that keeps up with the pace that you are running. The only thing is if I start to slow down, so does my music, which I try to use as a motivator. But, there are up/down arrows on the app that you can use to raise the pace, just like on a treadmill. If that's not working for you or you are on a treadmill where your phone sits still, you can just listen to the "Classic Rock Power Workout" Pandora station. It plays the best pump up rocker jams.

As for eating, this is always the most difficult part for me. I would love to be able to just workout every day and have that be the magical solution to all my health and weight concerns. Unfortunately, that's not how it works. My friend introduced me to a new app that I have been using to track my meals using calorie counting. I have done this before and when I keep up with it, it really works! PLUS, it's free which is a bonus over WeightWatchers. You just plug in all the food you ate for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. You also plug in your exercise, which it has divided into cardiovascular and strength, and track your water intake. Any exercise is negative calories taken out of your daily allowance to lose x amount of pounds each week. My favorite part of this is that at the end of the day, you "Complete This Entry" and it tells you how long it would take for you to reach your goal weight if every day was like that day.

Even though I wasn't blogging through the holidays, I was avidly taking pictures on my fabulous iPhone camera so you folks can at least see the meals I was proud of (or thought looked pretty on the plate).