How I Get My Healthy Living Act Together

Hi there!

Hope that you had a great weekend! After recovering from travel and fighting a cold last week, I’m feeling better rested and more settled. I feel like my blog posting has been a bit more sporadic than usual the last couple of weeks, but this week I should be back to normal scheduling!

As I resume to a better sense of normalcy this week, a top priority of mine is getting back to cleaner living. While I always maintain a healthy lifestyle, lately my healthy living balance has been tipping more into the ‘indulgences’ side of things a little more than I typically strive for. This happens every now and then and it’s certainly not the end of the world. After all, healthy living is a journey, not a destination right?

With that being said, today I’m sharing the ways that I get my clean living act together after a few too many celebratory drinks, simple carbs and desserts. Doing these things helps me to feel my best in many ways, including reducing any bloating  and increasing my energy levels. Let’s get to it!

I amp up my fruit & veggie intake. While I always eat fruits & veggies daily, when I’m focused on eating clean I eat them even more. As I talked about in this post, I usually eat at least a serving of fruits or veggies at every meal.

I use MyFitnessPal app to track my nutrition and calories, including tracking my macros – which means balancing out my carbs, fat and protein to make sure I’m getting the right proportions of each.

I know that some people aren’t into tracking nutrition, and I really think it’s just a matter of figuring of what works best for you. I do it because I like crunching numbers and ensuring that my diet is maximizing my nutrition. Otherwise, my plant-based diet can be too carb-heavy and not have enough protein.

I exercise harder. Over the past month, I’ve worked out an average of four times per week (and I’ll be talking more about my workouts lately on here soon!). While that’s a totally respectable amount of exercise, I kick my sweat sessions up a notch to usually 6 days a week. I love a lot of variety in my exercise routine & hate getting bored with my workouts!

I do morning yoga sessions. While I’ve been incorporating yoga into my workouts lately, I focus more on my practice and commit to daily morning yoga sessions. It doesn’t have to be long – sometimes it’s just 15 or 20 minutes – but starting my days with yoga helps me feel centered and mindful.

I go light on drinking. Wine is something that my hubby and I enjoy drinking and learning about together. I don’t completely nix it out of diet – after all, it’s heart healthy and I love it! – but I do get more particular with my consumption and practice more moderation. I save my wine drinking for the weekends and special occasions and plan it into my diet a bit more.

As all of us drinkers know, sometimes alcohol has a domino effect on our lives. One glass sometimes turns to two and three, and all of a sudden you find yourself at a gelato spot getting dessert, then wind up sleeping in the next morning instead of heading to spin class…. so, I’m just smarter about my alcohol consumption.

Keep sugar intake at bay. It’s no secret that I have a sweet tooth. When given the choice between sweet or savory, 90% of the time I’d choose sweet. But too much sugar can wreak havoc on the body, so I make sure to keep it in check. One trick of mine is eating a chopped apple with sprinkled cinnamon as dessert.

There are also a few things that I strive to do all the time and make sure to continue doing, including…

Get enough rest. I’m definitely one of those people that can’t function properly with not enough sleep, and to add to that, I’m a super light sleeper that wakes up a lot. Being well rested definitely helps me to feel my best, so I pretty much always make sleeping 7-8 hours a night a priority (I can feel all of you parents to young kiddos rolling your eyes while reading that last sentence!).

Drink enough water. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate! Getting enough water has so many benefits – some of which we don’t even realize – so I always drink a ton of water. Simply put, wherever I go, a bottle/glass of water goes.

{Check out some tips to staying hydrated here.}

Walk a lot. I’m a big fan of walking, and with an energetic pup at home, I make daily walks a priority. We usually go for at least 30 minutes of walking a day, with longer beach walks and hikes sprinkled into the week.

Tell me… What things do you commit to when you’re trying to get your healthy living act together?