MIA

Hellooooo my beautiful people.

It has definitely been a while. Nine and a half months to be exact. I fell off the wagon shortly after I wrote my last post, hard. Since then, life has gotten in the way; I lost a family member, my gym closed, and I had to find a new one. That in itself was quite interesting, but I found a new one and absolutely love it.

Now I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things and wanted to reboot my blog. There are a few changes this time around. Instead of simply counting calories, I'm going to try counting my macros. If you're not familiar with it, there are tons of articles and websites that you can use to get yourself educated.

I'm also using a heart rate monitor to accurately track how many calories I'm burning during my workouts. Sooo expect a blog post about that! I've got a couple new apps to share with you and some new resources as well.

Let's think of this as a whole new beginning. New year, new me and all that jazz. I can't wait to start this journey.

Homemade Popsicles

Can I just start this post off by saying how on earth is it already July?!?!?! Where has 2014 gone? It's like I blinked and BOOM we're already halfway through the year. Cray-cray!

Anyway, I'm coming at you today with a super duper easy peasy delicious and HEALTHY popsicle recipe for you. I figured since the Fourth of July is right around the corner, it'd be the perfect time to whip out my popsicle molds and do some "cooking." The word cooking use lightly, considering these are frozen. lol Anywhoooo, this popsicle recipe is just basically my go-to pre-workout smoothie frozen into a popsicle form.

Here's what you'll need:

• 1 banana
• 5 strawberries
• 1 handful of blueberries
• 1 tsp Chia Seeds
• 1/2 C orange juice
• 1/2 C vanilla Greek yogurt

Place all of your ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth. If you want to leave a few chunks in there for texture, that's totally fine too. Once you've done that, take out your popsicle molds and pour in the mixture to the fill line. With my molds, I can make four and still have about a quarter of the smoothie/mixture left. So I just drink the rest! Place your lids/sticks in the molds and then pop into the freezer for about 4-24 hours or until they reach the consistency you like.

Tada! Super easy. The best part is that each little popsicle only has about 60 calories and it's 100% natural. Pretty sweet, right?

Healthy Brownie in a Mug Recipe

The other night I was craving something chocolate but didn't want to completely undo my day or splurge on a "yolo" snack (I was particularly proud of myself this day on the way I was eating). I knew brownies in a mug were quick & easy and we had enough ingredients for me to throw something together. First I tried a recipe on YouTube that  all of three ingredients and literally cooked for just 50 seconds. While it was tasty, I felt like it was missing something so I decided to tweak it a little and came up with this! It has one extra ingredient, but is still healthy and just as easy. Hope you enjoy!

Ingredients:

2 eggs

2 TBS unsweetened cocoa powder

1 TBS agave nectar

1 TBS almond milk (I used original sweetened)

Mix everything in a mug, place in the microwave for 30 seconds. Once done, take out of the microwave and check it out. Mix it up and place back in the microwave for about 20 more seconds. It should create a nice cake-like consistency and you're done!

Happy Monday everyone! I've got a Motivation Monday post for you for the first time in forveverrrrrrrr. *gasp* I know, I know it's crazy. Today I wanted to share with you a really awesome method you can use to set your fitness/weight-loss goals that's both effective and super easy. The other day I was thinking about how I feel like I've kind of plateaued/fallen off the bandwagon, which I've mentioned in previous posts, and that I'd like to set new goals for myself.  I googled it and came across a ton of articles talking about the "Get Smart" method for setting goals. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, and Timeframe, which when broken down, totally makes sense.

After sifting through the articles, I decided I'd run back to my blog and do a post for MM where I'd walk through my own personal goals while explaining it at the same time. Kill two birds with one stone! Yay for multitasking! If you're curious to see which articles I'm basing my post on, you can check it out here and here.

So here we go!

Instead of music, try books!

Ok. Sooo I have become obsessed with this app called Audible? I don't know, maybe you've heard of it? I joined last year using someone's link on YouTube to get a free book. The book I got? Fifty Shades Freed. I never finished it. As soon as I heard that I'd have to pay for a membership, I cancelled it ASAP. However, something in me wanted to try again. So I did. I got another free credit. This time I downloaded a chicklit book called Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren. It's a twilight-based-fan-fiction-turned-novel except much better. I freaking loved it. Once I got hooked on that book and realized I was almost done, I upgraded my membership (before the trial was over, mind you) and downloaded The Fault in Our Stars. I wanted to "read" the book before I saw the movie. Still haven't seen it, but I finished the audio book in like, two days. lol

Anyway, last week at the gym I had the genius idea of listening to audible on my phone while I pedal away on the stationary bikes. It  keeps my mind off of what I'm doing, so I go further for longer. If you can believe it. I absolutely love doing this. It's such a great way to sneak in some "reading" time and expose myself to new books without really having to take extra time out of the day to do so. That sounds bad, but I'm sure you know what I mean. I can listen at the gym, in the car, in the shower (via a bluetooth speaker), during chores, etc. Super duper nice! I would highly recommend doing something like this.

Oh! and if you don't want to pay for books, I would check to see if your local public library has an online media mall. Mine does and there's an app I can download to use for both reading and listening to books. Since I finished both FIOS and Beautiful Bastard (and I have just under a month until my new credits come in), I decided to start listening to The Maze Runner. Hooked! (I'm even listening to it right now as I type up this post).

I would definitely recommend this if you're a bookworm like me, but don't really have the time to sit down and pick up a book during the day. It really does make the time fly at the gym!

Updated Workout Playlist

I know, I know it's Wednesday and I'm not posting a workout. Since it's been a while  since I posted anything, I figured I'd just share my workout playlist quick with you guys. So the other day I went on a music binge and bought a bunch of songs to update my workout playlist. I've become like, super obsessed with Magic! and rediscovered Italobrothers (remember that song colors of the rainbow?). This playlist has a mix of a little bit of everything. I've got some old school Blink 182, FOB, Sweet, and the Italobrothers just to name a few.

Anywho, I compiled everything onto a spotify playlist. I did the 8tracks thing, and while it's nice, it's a pain to find the actual songs on the site (for me, anyway). So I was extremely happy to find that spotify now has an embed option. Yay!

Without further ado, here's the playlist. Enjoy!

More progress :D

Here it is...more progress pictures, from the back. Hahaha I went to a wedding on Saturday and (obviously) wore the same red dress that I wore out for my friend's birthday in April. It was about a month and a half between the two pictures. Although the picture is dark, you can see that my back/waist is still continuing to slim down. The roll in my back on the left is less prominent (hooray!) and as I was looking at myself in the mirror of the bathroom at the church, I noticed how loose my dress looked from the back. From the front it was looking tighter, but that could be attributed to the bra I was wearing (notice that it isn't the purple one?). Soo yeah. I'm ecstatic. It's so nice to see that I'm still making progress because I feel like I've fallen off the wagon and I'm working to get back on it.

P.S. So sorry for the lack of posts! It's been over a month. Life got crazy and not a whole lot has changed in my fitness journey. I'm still going the same days and generally working on the same things. I think I've got a new workout or two to share with you. I've definitely got new workout gear that I can share. :)