Fitness {& health} Friday

It’s Friday and time to check in with my updates on the health goals that I’ve been working towards.

Let’s start with the good {smile}…the getting more sleep goal has been easy.  The lights are not off every night by 10:30 (usually closer to 11 or 11:30) but I have been getting 7 or more hours of sleep most nights.  Of course, this is easy during the summer because I’m not as pressed to get up early in the mornings.  Once school kicks off again, I will have to be more diligent about getting in bed and lights off by 10:30.

So that goal has been easy to work on.

Now for the not so good…exercise this week was just lacking.  And I’m not going to make any excuses.  I was just lazy and unmotivated in the exercise department.  I did exercise…one day.  Sad, isn’t it?  I am planning on getting in some heavy duty garden work tonight though.  I do count that as exercise because working in the garden really does get my heart rate up.  (Particularly the kind of work we’ll be doing tonight – raking, pulling up plants, cultivating – all of those activities are pretty rigorous.)  So it’s been a bad week for exercise.  I really didn’t want to tell y’all how badly I’d failed in the exercise department this week but it feels good to have that off of my chest.  {smile}

Goals for this week

• EXERCISE!  {smile}
• Get seven to eight hours of sleep a night
• Drink only one soda a day (with the ultimate goal of eliminating them for good…baby steps)

Eating well

I believe that exercise is important in order to have a healthy body.  However, I believe what we put into our bodies is just as important to our health.  For our family, I try to limit the amount of processed food we eat.  Our family’s biggest processed enemy is sugar.  Most of my sugar is from soda (hence my new goal above).  We are trying to make changes here and there along the way to steer our family towards a real food diet. 

I’ve been researching some “diets” that focus on eating real food.  I’m going to give you some links that I’ve been reading.  If you happen to know about these diets or eat this way (or would simply like to discuss the info), I’d love to hear your thoughts and input.

• Paleo diet  (I almost didn’t link to this because it contains some coarse language but the information is good.  Please read with discretion.  Here is another link to a visual representation of the Paleo diet.)
• Beyond diet (I watched most of the video.  It is long but informative.)
• Eating clean
• 100 days of real food

Next week I hope to discuss more of how we are incorporating real foods into our large family of picky eaters.

Some apps and links to help you in your quest to healthiness

There is so much out there in the tech world to help us as we try to get healthy.  I wanted to share a few that I use.

• Couch to 5K site
• Couch to 5K app (I have the C25K Lite (Android) which is free.  It beeps to let me know when it is time to change from running to walking and vice versa.  It was very helpful.  Here is an app for iphone.)
• Fit for My King (book about the author’s weight loss and maintenance using a real foods way of eating and devotions to use as you eat this way)
• Cardio Trainer app
• My Pinterest health page (links to many different exercises – good for the days that you don’t have much time but still want to do some exercise as well as other links)
• My Fitness Pal
• My Fitness Pal Android app

How about you?  How are you doing on your journey to a healthier you?