My Fitness Pal..

How do I do it maintain a "healthy-as-possible" diet? My number one recommendation to anyone is any type of calorie/nutrition tracking app for your phone or PC. This works in the same way as Weight Watchers without the cost of membership.  My pick is My FitnessPal: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/

This online community and app is the BEST and FREE way for holding yourself accountable on what you eat.  Here are the basics of the app:

You log your daily meals and FitPal does the rest.. calculates the calories, carbs, fats and proteins to help maintain a well rounded diet.  The most amazing part of this app is that is has virtually every meal you will eat stored in a nutrition database.  I have been using it for over a year now and yet to enter something that was not in there. 

You will find that using this type of app forces you to eat better and smarter because you will NOT want to add that cheeseburger and french fries and take up your entire calorie allowance for the day! Here is an example of my breakfast:

There is a grand total at the bottom that tracks for the entire day.  I set myself a max of 1200 calories a day and try to stick to that as much as possible.  The beautiful thing about FitnessPal is it also allows for you to track your daily exercise and add those calories to your total!  For example below, I gained extra 287 calories thanks to a workout.

 

Below is the exercise page, it also has every type of exercise you can think of and calculates the amount of calories you burn.  This is my favorite part because I love seeing those calories burned being added to daily allowed calories I can eat. : )

 



Juggling Act

SICK SICK SICK!  That is how I have felt these last two weeks, with no energy, body aches and congestion and it is not fun.  I am toooooo busy to be sick but my body had something else in mind.  Now I finally feel that I am on the mend so I can go back to focusing on living and am even planning to go for a 5 mile run today!

But I have realized one very simple thing while being sick... Life is hectic!  Everyday seems like a new challenge and new adventure as a crazy, busy family of 4.  There so many times that I feel like my life is a juggling act with sooo many important aspects that need my undivided attention which is so much more difficult when I am not feeling 100%:

• working full time and trying to move forward in my career
• being a good mother to my 2 boys
• being a loving wife to my husband
• Everything ELSE!
   

It is really hard to find time for myself which is equally important as everything I mentioned above. If I am not happy with myself, how can I possibly make those around me happy!?!?  I would like to take the time make a vow in this blog post...

I vow to always find time to take care of myself!  At this point in 2013 my goal is to maintain the weight loss and toning I've been able to accomplish with my body,  I vow to continue to run and continue to work out as much as possible.

I've had a few rough weeks that have been very, very hard for me to find that time. No matter what you do in your life we all experience those days that you just have TOO many things to juggle.  But please try to make a similar vow to yourself like I have done.  If you too gone a couple of days/weeks/months without exercising or doing something to make yourself feel better STOP and DO IT.  The end result can only be that you will feel much better about yourself.

Thank you friends and family, these blog posts motivate me in my own personal life more than you know..