A Life Of Gymspiration

Here's a fun fact about me. I hate change. I mean hate it. I am EXTREMELY routine based and when the smallest thing is different, it throws everything off. You think I'm joking. Example #1: If the morning DJ (on-air personality? what's the PC term these days?) isn't on (sick/vacation/whatever), my ENTIRE day is thrown off. Seriously, I know that sounds crazy, but it's true. I do NOT deal well with change. I just don't. Mix that with the fact that I'm what I call a "late bloomer" and I stay in situations FOREVER. I didn't move away to college until 2 years after high school. I am a very shy girl. When I lived in the dorms I think it was a month before I came out of my shell and made friends. (Except for one guy-- my dear friend Joven who didn't care about the walls I'd built and burst through them, even if he did refer to me as "that girl that always sleeps") Knowing all of this, I'm sure you can imagine how shocked every...

Hey look, yet another non-fitness related post! Apparently my life isn't 100% fitness... deal with it. :) Today marks the 12 year anniversary of my near-fatal car accident. Not gonna go into details about that one. Mainly because I've done that a million times and don't particuarly feel like going through it YET AGAIN. If you don't know and want to, go  here . Every year since my accident I've found some way to "celebrate". Celebrate that I was given a second chance. That I didn't die. Celebrate life. With the death of my friend Cassandra ( The Loss Of A Friend ) and a ton of other events that have happened since the beginning of 2014 that have had my in a major slump, I didn't really feel like celebrating this year. Why celebrate my life when there's so many people hurting at the loss of loved ones? Everyone has always told me "you surivived for a reason." I have yet to figure out what my "reason" is but when my friend ...

The month of January has been rough to say the least. Back around Thanksgiving my friend and co-worker was put in the hospital and has been there ever since. My heart has been with her and her family the whole time. When I was home over Christmas I had a dream about her. Nothing major, just that we were back at work together. When I have dreams like that I tend to freak out as I fear it means the worst. When I returned to work I'd heard she'd been moved to Denver. I was going to go visit her while I was down there for work this weekend. Thursday night I had another dream about her. I walked in  to work and she was standing in our classroom and I ran up to her and gave her a big hug-- so happy to see her back. Yesterday we had a work conference and at the beginning was when we got word that things were not going well and her time was limited. I did my best to get through the conference with my emotions locked up- let them slip a little bit but for the most part I did a pretty ...

I originally got this recipe from my aunt who got it from my "cousin" whose wife makes them for him.... mostly because they taste like candy and are a delicious snack. I was a little hesitant to try them. But holy moley.... these things are DELICIOUS. If you're like me and have the world's biggest sweet tooth and an unnatural obsession with peanut butter... well these are the snack for you! They are super easy to make. I take some to work with me and store them in the fridge there and eat a couple on my way out the door so I have energy for the gym. NO BAKE ENERGY BITES 1 C. Old-Fashioned Oats 2/3 C. Toasted Coconut Flakes 1/2 C. Peanut Butter 1/2 C. Flaxseed or Wheat Germ 1/2 C. Chocolate Chips 1/3 C. Honey 1 tsp. Vanilla Extract Stir all ingredients together in a medium bowl until throughly mixed. Let Chill in fridge 1/2 hour. Once chilled, roll into balls of whatever size you like. Store in airtight container and keep ...

I participated in Elf 4 Health this year. When I first read about it, I knew it was something I had to do. The basic premise is this. It's a 4 week program broken up into 2 rounds (2 weeks each). Every day has a different challenge. Challenges are fitness, nutrition, or just working on you, etc. Each round you are paired up with another "elf" who you go through the challenges with, discuss challenges, successes, etc. So here's my recap! Challenges ROUND 1 Round 1 I was matched up with Sarah, a senior studying nutrition and dietetics at Arizona State University. LUCKY ME! She had such great ideas as far as food was concerned and was so nice to share them with me! Day 1: Go Meatless So I am an avid food prepper. But for some reason I chose not to look ahead at my challenges when I was prepping for the week. So late Sunday night I looked and panicked as the food I prepped for the week had meat in it. What was I going to have that was still healthy and woul...

During our first service in church we had a component called "What Christmas Means To Me". Throughout the service we had 3 people (a child, a teenager, and a grandma) tell of what Christmas was like in their homes and what Christmas meant to them. As I sat there and listened to them tell their stories, it got me thinking. CHRISTMAS MEMORIES Spending Christmas in Florence. All the cousins slept on the floor in Grandpa's Study. The boys would wake me up really early and have me go look at what Santa brought us, and come back and report. And I did it. Also, all of us going to Grandpa's church and sitting in the front row. :-)  Going to Utah for Christmas one year.  Going to see the lights on the City and County building after church. And having my cousin be VERY upset because he'd rather be home playing video games. (He shall remain nameless but we all know who he is haha)  That wretched video recording of us singing 12 Days Of Christmas and showing not only ...

Some of you may know I've been participating in a program called Elf 4 Health. It's a 4 week program where we are matched up with another "elf" and have a challenge every day. We are in our last week and at the end I will be blogging about the whole experience.  Today's challenge is to "Share Your Expertise". When I first read that I thought "expertise? I don't have an expertise" so as with most important decisions, I took to Facebook. I asked for ideas of what to write and I decided to write about all of them.  Here was what I got in return:  "Um, I think I heard somewhere that you TEACH kids. And you know about getting healthy. Need I go on?" "So much! You know how to believe in yourself to do something, tenacity, ability to go to the gym when EVERY cell in your body wants to watch desperate housewives. You know how to deal with extreme tragedy and survive to see another day! You are a DAMN expert!!"  "P...