Fit with FitBit

A couple of weeks ago I posted about my fun little purchase of the FitBit--we'll I've been using it for a little over 2 months now and it's really eye opening how much you walk throughout the day without even trying!

Studies say that 10,000 steps a day is necessary for "good health" approx 5 miles a day...so that's where my "goal" has been set since I started tracking things.  Here's last weeks progress report-I like getting the little updates on my "progress"

Loving the fact that steps and distance and calories burned are up from last week....

Not so much loving that the sleep duration is down but I guess that will happen as long as I am getting at least 7 hours that will work for me!

How active are you throughout the day? Do you make an effort to walk around the office regularly? Walk down the hall rather than emailing or calling a colleague or taking the stairs?

What I'm Loving

So I'm a bit "off" this week and completely forgot my Wednesday Loving Post...so here it is, better late than never!

I’m loving….that I am only 2 more Starbucks trips away from “gold card”status! that means a free coffee for every 15 purchases! And personalized coupons...I love my coffee!

I’m loving….that I am only 3 weeks away from Spring Break-yeah it’s not much and there’s no big trip like in undergrad but a week of no school work is always nice.

I’m loving…that it’s starting to stay a little lighter later in the day-6:30 last night when I was driving home wasn't pitch black!

I’m loving…that my work trip to Orlando is officially booked-yes it’s work but it’s nice to not be in the office-and of course it’s a plus that the boss is letting me say the weekend and Rene came come hang out at the hotel with me too. Coronado Springs here we come!

I’m loving….that the weather man is calling for temps in the 60’s over the next week-spring is slowly coming, at least I hope so!

Seeing Red

I'm wearing my red today for Valentine's day are you?  Here's wishing you a very Happy Valentines Day.

The Mr. and I will be enjoying a nice quite dinner at home tonight - together!  That's super exciting since we've been only seeing each other a little in the morning and then right before bed.  Yes, we'll still be working on work and school stuff but at least we can enjoy each others company.

What I'm Loving Wednesday!

It's been a little while since my last what I'm loving post, so here goes!

I'm loving--that it's Wednesday!  That means half way done with the week!

I'm loving--The fact that Rene and I have a date day/night planned this Sunday!  It gives me motivation to get all of my school stuff done...we're heading to Grapevine for the Valentine's Wine Trail and then dinner at Simply Fondue! Wine and fondue what could be better?

I'm loving...My APY60 Yoga Program...if you couldn't tell already

I'm loving...that I am halfway through the first mini-semester for the spring!  4 more weeks then "spring break" and another 8 week class then I'm DONE!

and of course I'm loving my wonderful Husband!

APY60 Day 3

I'll admit this morning it was really hard to get out of bed.  I'm not sure why, even my Fitbit said that I slept better last night than the night before (98% efficiency only woke up 5 times).  So this morning I have to admit that I didn't do the full morning blend of stretches.  I know day 3 and already slacking!  I did about half of the stretches from memory to get the blood pumping...a small setback!

Breakfast this morning I had a healthy porridge from the little recipe book that came along with the DVDs...Yum!

The "porridge" is actually a whole apple and 4 strawberries just quickly blended to a porridge like consistency with a little almond milk (unsweetened) and a dash of cinnamon.  I threw it in the microwave for about 45 seconds (could have heated it up a little more) and then topped with raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, pecans and a little chia seeds for some protein.

It was quick and simple and got me moving and heading out the door for work.

Tonight more power yoga and a tasty smoothie since Rene is working late before I hit the gym for some cardio....Happy Tuesday!

Chinese New Year

Did you realize that yesterday was the Chinese New Year?

  I was wearing red for good luck, were you?

One of my colleagues families celebrate the Chinese New Year, so she and I checked out what my horoscope had in store.

I was born in the year of the rat..."Chinese horoscope 2012 predicts that people born in rat year will be energetic and demonstrate high endurance and withstand in the adverse circumstances. However, all the rats are prone to stress and full of stress sometimes due to illogical reasons"--I guess we will see what the new year brings!

FitBit Sleep Tracker-Day 2 APY60

So apparently even though I feel like I wake up a million and one times at night it's not that much!  Per the FitBit I actually only woke up 6 times last night, and had a 97% sleep efficiency...who knew! 

Now today will be the first day of tracking all of my steps--the goal that you should strive toward to 10,000 per day!  I'm going to go ahead and say with sitting at a desk for 9+ hours a day that's going to be hard but we shall see.

Day 2 of APY60 going well!  Rene even got up and did the morning blend of stretches with me.  Now it's off to start the day!

Challenges today...

• No sugar
• No judgment - try not to label things good or bad but just accept them as they are
• 100 oz of water
• Daily Yoga Class

APY60 Day1

Last week my APY60 finally arrived. Today I started the program...60 day to a healthier me! 

Each day starts out with about 10 minutes of stretching and warming up your muscles to get you started for the day.  After which I had a veggies & eggs for breakfast.  The program doesn't give you a full meal plan but does give you some ideas and changes out and challenges you to eliminate things from your diet. 

I am really looking forward to how it works!

Here are the key things that I was to do today!

• Eat breakfast 1 hour after waking up
• No eating 3 hours before bed
• Daily morning stretches
• Clean out the pantry (get rid of the processed stuff! ) - we didn't have any of the "no" foods! Yay for us!
• Today's elimination challenge: Refined sugar - super easy since we don't eat it really anyhow.
• The goal is to drink 100 oz of water- I'm at at 30 right now at 2pm...I've got a bit more to drink before the end of the day.
• Blue Dots
• Daily Yoga

The program also came with some little blue stickers that you are to put around your home and office.  These are to remind you to breathe deep, and soon the goal is to associate blue with breathing deep, simple enough right?

And of course this evening (after Rene finishes watching the Pats game) I have a 60 minute power yoga video to work through. 

I also plan on keeping up at least 30 minutes of additional cardio each day.

Let's see how things shape up over the next 30 days!

I also got a new little gaget today - called the Fitbit!

 It's about the size of a flash drive and it keeps track of how far you walk, time of inactivity, stairs climbed, and the main reason I got it - it tracks your sleep!  I feel like 9 out of 10 days I wake up a million and one times so I plan to use this to figure out when I sleep the best (ie no TV 1 hour before bed) and when I sleep worst (ie after we've been drinking). 

Here's to a healthy 2012! And knocking one of my goals off the new years list --1 day down 59 to go!

First week at 27

Well I've just about lived through the full first week of 27...yep I feel old!  Anyhow I figured I would give a quick recap of the birthday festivities...what can I say Rene and I are pretty boring...no big blow out parties for us...

The birthday weekend started out pretty good though, Thursday I got home and opened the mail and found a card from mom and dad waiting in the mailbox.  Plus a Seen It-Twilight for the Wii...yes Rene is super excited to play that, and a Starbucks gift card -- YUM!  You can bet I stopped for a Venti Latte on my way to work Friday morning!

Friday I also go these beauties delivered to my office!

 

The white arrangement was from my team of recruiters and the roses (though the picture cut them off) were from Rene of course!

Saturday we did a bit of errand running and stopped by Sprinkles to pick up some birthday treats!  I love the cupcakes from Sprinkles and have a new fave for the month of January--S'mores!

We even made some birthday cake cocktails while we watched some of our backlogged DVR TV shows....

You must try these yum!

2 parts whipped cream vodka

1/2 part amaretto

1/2 part cream(or milk)

1 part godiva white chocolate liqueur

While I would like to say the night was nice and quiet one of my recruiters decided that 27 wasn't too old to take shots for your birthday-- so arrived at my apartment with another recruiter from my office with a bottle of Goldschläger in hand and decided shots were needed.  It was all in all a pretty quiet night, though Rene was feeling a little "under the weather" Sunday morning.

But wait the celebration wasn't over just yet....

Monday morning (after having to move my cubical due to us expanding) I arrived to this....

Lots of decorations from my recruiters...they know me so well (notice the Disney theme?).

All in all it was a pretty good birthday this year, lets hope that 27 has some good things to come!

Having the hard conversations

No matter where you are in your life, there are certain conversations that are always harder than others.  The conversations that people steer away from...some of the conversations we have with ourselves, others are with friends or family, co-workers or our bosses.

Today was the day that I had to have one of those hard conversations with my boss.  Today was my annual review at work.  It's been a hard year for me (2011), I didn't hit the work related goals that I had set for myself and overall it was my third straight year of rebuilding my line of business.

After almost a 3 hour conversation I've gotten a lot off my chest and I'm hoping that now I can officially put 2011 behind me and hit 2012 full force.

My thought of the day is that no matter how hard that conversation is to have--have it sooner rather than later, you may not get the exact outcome that you want but at least you've put your thoughts, feelings and concerns out there...

Return of Green Juice

I switched things up a little bit today after having a bit of smoothie overload to a green juice mixture to start off the morning on the right foot!

Ginger

3 small handfuls of spinach

2 granny smith apples

fresh pineapple

This is I think my fave mix of the greens (lots of spinach but you can't taste it) and it was the perfect way to start off my Wednesday.  Rene of course has to be the over achiever and head to the gym in the early morning while I grabbed an extra 30 minutes of sleep or at least rolling around trying to sleep.  Here's hoping today shapes up to be better than that last 2 days--I'm staying positive!

Happy Wednesday!  

No good very bad day...

Here's hoping that yesterday was not a taste of what's to come this week! As you can tell from this post title yesterday was pretty much the worst!

Not only did I wake of a cold and rainy weather, but a stack of things on my desk that pretty much have nothing to do with me, a doctor who was irate all weekend was blowing up my desk phone the moment I got into the office, and add to that I have to come up with a buisness plan by Wednesday at 3pm which was dropped on me yesterday morning as well....not the best start to the week.

Add to that by the time I got out of the office I was mentally drained and had no desire to do anything, couldn't go to the gym and accepted the fact that I was going to end up breaking my rule (that I had been doing quite well with) of not eating after 7pm.

Rene on the other hand has been quite motivated jumping out of bed and running in the morning this week *he's a morning person to the fullest* I was going to try to get myself up and do yoga at the very least but that didn't happen yesterday or today because I was exhausted....

This birthday week clearly isn't shaping up as I would have liked it to-lets just hope that today turns around a bit.  Regardless of what time I get out of the office today I will be going to the gym and following it up with some yoga---we'll just call yesterday's no workout a small slip up in the routine.

Here's hoping you have a great Tuesday!

One week down!

We're officially into the 2nd week of January and I'm already onto book #3 of 52 for the year!  

It's a good thing I'm a tiny bit ahead of my 1 book per week this year goal too because with my first 8 weeks of the semester coming up soon it looks like lots of work--a 75 page case analysis does not sound fun at all!

Reading Now.....

Summer and the City: A Carrie Diaries Novel

 

Finished books thus far....

Alibi in High Heels

Undercover in High Heels

Break in the Detox

Friday & Saturday morning I allowed myself to take a small break from my detox of veggies and changed things up breakfast.  I skipped the hot detox tea (though I will more than likly drink it midday today) and had a fruit smoothie instead.  

I still kept with the detox salad for lunch on Friday but splurged and got a buffalo chicken wrap and sweet potato fries at the little cafe last night before we went grocery shopping (everything in moderation).

This morning I whipped up a nice blueberry, raspberry and peach smoothie to start the day but plan on getting back to my green juice and some detox tea a little later in the day and of course a healthy dinner.

Rene and I both noticed that we don't feel hungry or full really throughout the day and also that my stomach -- which occasionally gets upset very easily (sometimes because of dairy sometimes just randomly throughout the day) hasn't been acting up at all this week with the swap in what I've been eating...which is somewhat leading me to wonder if what a couple of friends have said before is true and I may have a bit of an allergy to gluten (it hasn't been in my diet really since the pizza bites).....nothing life or death related but I'm feeling good and healthy and that's what I was going for!

Of course it doesn't hurt that I may have gained between 5-6 pounds of holiday goodness which has since disappeared thanks to us getting back into our "normal routine"...

Next week I'll be alternating juices and smoothies for breakfast and also some fresh hummus and crudites with miso soup for lunches to start getting a bit more protein into my diet since this week it was pretty minimal.

Out with Old...

So remember a little less than a year ago when I added this little kitchen accessory to the apartment?

Well lets just say that Rene is yet again proving he is absolutely amazing!  And this will be donated to my office kitchen and has been replaced by a far superior version!

Rene saw my post about his "great present" he had for me and gave me a nicely wrapped big box a week early for my birthday! *he's a keeper for sure*

What was inside?

The best blender/mixer/puree machine out there!

He got me a Vitamix!

OK so yes "technically" it's a blender and maybe you think I am far to overly excited...however this thing does it all!  It can take whole fruit and make it into juice, make a nice salsa, puree a soup or sauce, and even knead dough quick and easy. 

I mean it's one of the quintessential tools for Iron Chef America, need say more? Rene did a WONDERFUL job on my gift it is way more than I would have ever expected!  Yes, we spurge on gifts for each other every now and then but we typically stick to pretty small birthday gifts.

He knew I was thinking of spending my bonus from work or whatever tax return I had left after paying bills to look into getting one but beat me to the punch.  

The downfall is now is that I want to go out and buy everything in the store I can imagine to make soups, sauces, and smoothies! I can't wait to break it in this weekend!

Happy early birthday to me and a big thank you to this guy! Love you!

What I'm Loving

It's Wednesday and better late than never....so without further adieu what am I loving today?

.... that the weather in Dallas looks like it's going to be in the 70's later this week!

....that there are only 10 more days til my Birthday and Rene say's he's got a great present for me.

....I'm almost done with my recruiter evaluations for the past year (5 is alot!)
...the gym wasn't crazy packed again today which was nice and stress free

Purchased!

Well yesterday I broke down and dropped some hard earned cash on a new iPod...I went with the nano and though it's small and I feel like if I even drop it on the table softly it's going to break, I think it was money well spent!

Not only is it an iPod it also has a pedometer and connects to the radio which I think are both pretty cool little additions!  The one downfall is that I couldn't find an arm band for the gym made for the nano at Target, instead I went with this from Belkin $19.99-- it makes the iPod into a watch more or less.....not the most fashionable, but definitely functional!

Today this little purchase makes it's way to the gym with me.  I did take it on a little test run last night walking Stitch, it keeps track of the steps via the pedometer pretty well, next step will be to see how it works with a little jog on the treadmill!

Time for an upgrade

I am sad to say that after about 6 years my iPod has officially died!  Just as I started listening to it again at the gym and poof - it's officially d-o-n-e.

It still works but only plays for about and hour each time it's charged.  Rene has told me it's time to get a new one....I mean I guess it's time since technically my iPod is known now as the "classic" 

(that makes me feel old)

Now this weekend I guess it's off to find a new one.  While I wish that I could get the old iPod nano like Rene has they don't make it anymore...so I guess I'll be getting the new model...not sure how I feel about the touch screen but I guess it's my only choice....

I've also looked at getting the iPod Touch because it does more than just music and really isn't that much more cost wise at Target and Walmart.

I also like that it's a little bit bigger...

Why is it that they keep making evening small and with touch screens?  I am not a huge fan of the full touch screen on anything really-my fingers get cold and don't register on the screen...but I guess I don't have much of a choice in the matter....any suggestions?  I really don't use my iPod for much more than the gym anyhow so is it worth the extra?

2012-Resolution/Goal List

It's that time of the year again and I've started thinking about the New Year and things I want to accomplish/change for 2012. Somewhat a list of must do or to-do items rather than resolutions because lets be honest resolutions last about a month for most people before they give up.  Setting a to-do list or list of goals makes it easy to check back and check things off the list throughout the next 365 days!

  Here's "the list" 

Read 52 books - that's right 1 per week!

Finish the wedding scrapbook that I’ve been saying I’ll finish every year (before our 3^rd anniversary)

Take a cooking class

Pay off debt (at least 2 of my credit cards)

Start learning another language (Rosetta Stone here I come! French or Italian)

APY60! Program – 60 days of American Power Yoga - already ordered now just waiting to actually start it!

1 week a month eat like a vegetarian- all veggies no meat doctors say its a good "break" for your GI track

What are your goals or resolutions for 2012?

Time to get back on track!

After the holidays (Thanksgiving to Christmas) Rene and I both decided we needed a bit of a healthy detox from all the sugar and delish (though quite unhealthy) meals from the past few weeks...and since I've been thinking about getting a juicer for some time now we figured now was as good a time as any.

So lots of fresh veggie and fruit juices for breakfast and snacks will be getting made over the next couple of weeks as we do a semi-detox...and get back to healthy meals.  Time to start the new year off on a healthy foot!

Adding to that I got a great deal on Groupon  for an American Power Yoga DVD set called APY60!. 

 For $49 I got 10 DVDs of yoga routines which will be great since starting next week the gym will be packed full of people getting fit for their New Year's Resolutions.  It's 60 days of yoga (kind of like P-90X but just yoga) that is supposed to strengthen and tone--we'll see how it works, it will take up just enough time for everyone to stop working on their resolutions and I can get back to the gym and not have to stand in line for an elliptical!