“Come Monday it’ll be alright, come Monday I’ll be holding you tight…” recognize those words? They’re from one of my very favorite Jimmy Buffet songs titled Come Monday. I thought that might be a good way to lead into today’s theme with The Blended Blog. So many of us say we’ll start a diet on Monday, we’ll head to the gym on Monday and then Monday comes – do you do it? As we head into fall and the upcoming holiday season I really try to practice all of my best healthy habits so I can avoid feeling sluggish, gaining weight, getting sick, and having skin problems. Today I’ll share what I do to stay healthy and I hope you’ll share what you do too! But before any of that, let me share that 24 years ago today I married my husband! It’s hard to believe it’s been 24 years!
Okay, enough of that! Exercise is paramount for me when I think about staying healthy. Monday through Friday I wake shortly after after 4am to head to the gym. It helps to have an accountability partner like my friend Lorie because I know she’s expecting me. We generally work out for an hour doing a combination of weights and then cardio Monday through Thursday. So we don’t get bored we mix it up often doing HIIT workouts, videos from Youtube and various fitness challenges. On Fridays we meet at a park by 5am and walk for an hour – we do 4 miles. We used to run but we’ve both decided walking is better for us right now, we’ve had back trouble, knee and hip trouble so right now we walk. It’s a great way to start the day!
While exercise is important it is really only about 20% of the equation – the other 80% is nutrition. This is the key for me to avoid sluggishness and weight gain. My weight fluctuates yet my commitment to exercise does not. So I can easily gain 5 pounds just through eating, all the while I’m continuing to work out, isn’t that crazy? It doesn’t seem right but it is. Let me tell you something – when Lorie and I work out we sweat, we do tough work outs that are challenging. I share this just to stress the point that you have to eat well, there’s no avoiding it.
A typical day of eating for me looks like this:
- coffee – black with stevia around 6:30am
- breakfast – spinach, onions, and mushrooms with 1 egg and 3 egg whites; 1 slice of Ezekiel bread toasted
- snack – 1 apple cut up with a handful of lightly salted almonds (I try to eat one almond with each bite of my sweet apple – it’s so yummy!)
- lunch – green salad with cucumbers and cut up chicken breast. I use Skinny Girl salad dressing either poppy seed or balsamic vinaigrette
- snack – 1 scoop of chocolate protein powder mixed with a couple tablespoons of water and I tablespoon of peanut butter. Sounds weird but trust me it’s delicious!
- dinner – some kind of protein and veggies – my favorites are chicken sausage or salmon. I also love protein pasta with chicken meatballs or the veggie pasta I shared here with shrimp.
On the weekends I may eat a little differently if we go our but during the week this works best for me. By eating this way and limiting myself to one or two adult beverages a week I lost 8 pounds and I feel better. I should also stress that I enjoy everything I eat and I am NEVER hungry. I love to eat and I am a volume eater so for me I like to load up on the veggies.
Drinking a gallon of water a day makes a big difference in my skin. When I’m eating poorly like I did over summer and not quite getting enough water my skin looks different. It seems dull and I can tell something is just not right. To make sure I get the whole gallon in I use a one gallon jug. It’s amazing to me how easy it is “to think” you’re getting all the water you need and then when you actually start measuring it you realize you really weren’t. Again, I enjoy drinking water and don’t doctor it up.
Vitamins are important to staying healthy as well. Everyday I take allergy medicine (just another perk of living in FL), and a probiotic. At lunch I take vitamins – a multivitamin, vitamin E, glucosamine and chondroitin, fish oil, and calcium. I started taking a probiotic pill two years ago. Before that I ate Activia yogurt every day. I stopped eating the yogurt because I got tired of it. I ended up getting every cold and eventually strep throat. My doctor finally asked me about probiotics and strongly suggested I use them. Since then, knock on wood, I have been well! They really make a difference for me!
Now let’s talk a little fashion, shall we? You know I love the inspiration I get from fellow bloggers! Today I’m sharing how my sweet friend Kim of Fierce Fashion inspired me to wear this!
Here’s Kim’s look:
I loved her post on What to Wear With a Graphic Tee. As much as I love a graphic tee I am always on the look out for a new way to wear mine! If you haven’t stopped by to say hi to Kim, please do. Her blog is all about refined, edgy style for women over 50! Now doesn’t that sound great?
You can see I used a mustard cardigan over my graphic tee but I wore denim. That’s the way inspiration works! It’s not exact it’s just influenced by someone else’s look!
When we took these pictures – over a month ago – I realized I needed a new leopard belt. The one I’m wearing in these photos had brown leather in the front and leopard on the sides and back so I turned it around so the leopard print would show. Since that time I have ordered a new belt that I’ll share soon.
Sharing this look went along well with what I discussed earlier – eating well. My weight is on the high side, you can see where I carry my weight – my chest and belly.
On Wednesday I’ll share more ways I wear graphic tees as part of The Blended Blog’s Fall Fashion Frenzy so be sure to stop by!
