Tips and Tricks

So obviously the blogging everyday for the challenge thing did not work out for me.  I became unmotivated to blog and was trying to concentrate on ME for a little while.  I'm still, for some reason, just not in the mood to talk about me too much right now, so I decided to go ahead and share some tips and tricks.  Posting these kind of things are helpful to remind myself what I need to be doing and they keep me motivated.

Before I do that I just want to say (since I never blogged about it), I have been using )02 Gold before my runs the past week and a half and OMG I HAVE BEEN ROCKING THEM!!  I swear they have been some of my best runs EVER.  I have always gotten out of breath before my legs didn't work anymore and now it's the complete opposite.  When my legs start to get tired I am still breathing exactly like I was when I started.  If you aren't a runner, you may not know what I mean by this.  But if you are, you need to go get this stuff immediately.  I am uber impressed with it.  The next thing I want to try is Arginine.  A friend of mine who is a marathon runner swears by taking 02 Gold an hour before you run and mixing Arginine with spark 30 minutes before.  I can't wait to see how far I can push myself!!  Moving on...


1.  If you are not eating boiled egg whites, you're doing it wrong.  I have three boiled egg whites for breakfast.  Boiled eggs for are the perfect snack.  I top my salads off with egg whites.  Three boiled egg whites have only 51 calories, but a whopping 10.8 grams of protein!  They fill me up and keep me full and they are freakin delicious.  ONE whole boiled egg is 70 calories and 6 grams of protein.  I feel I am getting more bang for my buck with just the whites.

2.  A mistake a lot of us probably make (myself included) is overeating healthy foods.  I sometimes get in the mindset of oh it's avacado or olive oil or bananas and just eat that stuff until I want to die!  A whole avacado has 200 calories so watch it.  That delicious dressing recipe I posted is clean and has wonderful ingredients, but two tablespoons of that stuff is about 120 calories so don't just dump it all over your salads.  Measurements and portion control people!!  Common myth:  Fruits have no calories.  I'm kidding, that's not a common myth, but sometimes I eat fruit like they have no calories.  A medium banana has 100 calories.  Not bad at all, but if you eat three of them in one day you have eaten a whole meal in bananas.

3.  Another mistake I am SOO guilting of is eating while standing up.  I will catch myself at the fridge sometimes eating out of a tupperware (some of my favorite foods are 100 times better when they are cold-yea I'm one of those people).  Measure your food...put it on a plate...sit down.  You can do it.  I promise.

4.  I copied this from an article "A salad is one of the healthiest meals you can have, but when you top it with bacon bits, goat cheese, nuts, dried fruits, and ranch dressing, you can double the calorie amount in a flash."  Exactly.  When you go to a restaurant and order the large salad with grilled chicken on it and it has shredded cheddar cheese, croutons, and bacon bits all over it.  Not to mention 10 tablespoons of creamy ranch made with heavy whipping cream, you probably should have just ordered a salad with a cheeseburger on top of it because it would have been a better choice.

 

5.  Eat often.  Eat snacks.  Don't starve yourself.  I know it seems like common sense, but it's not.  It was sooo hard for me to realize I needed to eat.  What I used to do was skip breakfast (because I could have more calories for lunch that way) and then eat a small lunch (because I really wanted a candy bar AFTER dinner! Hellooo!).  It doesn't work out well this way.  It just doesn't trust me.  You end up overeating anyway because you are so hungry and it also slows your metabolism down to a crawl.

 

6.  Another good tip, and something I just did recently, is to make a playlist!  When you aren't feeling motivated to work out the best thing you can do is make a new playlist.  It always motivates me to get out there, because let's face it, I'm FABULOUS at making playlists so of course I want to have a listen.  My playlist rule is I only get to listen to the new awesome one when I am working out.  Never any other time!

 

7.  Something I am HORRIBLE at is that I go home and workout and cook dinner and eat etc. and when it's TV time (because yes I may be into my health, but I also LOVE tv), I sit my ass on the couch and watch and when there is a commercial we fast forward.  And if we are live I play on my phone.  Something I would like to try to start doing whether we are live or not is get a few excercises in while the commercials are on.  I KNOW Jon would be down for this because that boy has unlimited energy so all I need to do is suggest it.  (Jo, if you're reading this hold me to it!)

 

Anywho, that's it for today.  Hope it helped out some.  Also, shout out to MP because he SAYS he reads my blog when I post...but we'll see!