Tag Archives: Fitness

First week of the New Year

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How are you prepping to go into 2026? My recommendation for health goals is to get a good macro tracking food app and a solid workout tracker. I use macrofactor to track my food and weight loss progress.

MacroFactor will set your macros based on your goals. You log your weight and food intake, and it will adjust during weekly check-ins based on your progress. The food-tracking library is extensive, and you can easily add your own recipes to track your macros.

My favorite workout app is Hevy. There are free and paid versions. I manually input my daily workouts and track right in the app. Hevy lets you export your data to Excel if spreadsheets are your thing.

While the exercise database is pretty extensive, you can also enter custom exercises based on your available equipment or bodyweight. These two apps can set you up for success going into the new year. Let me know in the comments if you try these apps and what you think. If you use something else, let us know!!

2026 Goals

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As we head into the new year, many folks set goals. I myself do the same thing. One technique I use is to make a long list of short-term and long-term goals to work on throughout the next 12 months. I break my list down into personal growth, fitness, and life. Often, we try to hit 3 concerts a year, and we already have one booked for 2026. My fitness goals this year are to log over 140 workouts. 2025 saw a few lulls in my workouts, and I’m determined to exceed them in 2026. I’d also like to work towards completing weighted pull-ups again. It’s been many years since I’ve been able to do this, so I felt it was right to add to my goal list.

I’d also like to post more here. I think this year I’m going to post check-in blogs to evaluate where I am on my goal list and how my progress is going. I’d love to hear from you all. Comment on this post with a goal you have set for 2026, and if you’d like some accountability, subscribe to this blog, and we can crush our goals together in 2026.

Depression and Lifting

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For many, the struggle is real with depression and the desire to be healthy and workout. How do you balance the two? This is something I am still working on. I have borderline personality disorder and bipolar. For about a year now I’ve been doing well. However, one of my therapists just told me she was leaving the clinic for another area of the VA. This was a bomb. I don’t do well when I have to change providers, let alone a therapist. It takes me months to open up to someone and if the vibe isn’t there, therapy is useless.

Because of this news, I haven’t trained in 3 days. I turned to alcohol for a couple days as my only coping method. I know this isn’t productive but I’m still trying to process the news. So, how do we move past it?

We start by just doing. My diet thankfully has stayed healthy as I don’t have junk food in my house, so that was a win. I need to put the alcohol down. I know when I drink I don’t feel like working out the next day. So we start by spreading out when we drink. If we can’t do that, we drink LESS than the day before.

Movement of any kind will help. Whether it’s a walk, a run, pacing your house. Just get up and move. Tomorrow my plan is to set my alarms for 7am. Get up, drink the pre workout and MOVE. Monday I have to work, and can’t allow this news to affect my daily routine. Whether I like it or not, she is leaving and I will have a new therapist in a few weeks. Unfortunately the uncertainty of not knowing who will take over it what bothers me a lot. Can I trust this person? Will they have as much compassion as my last therapist? This all remains to be seen. Until then, I can only do what I know how to do:

Walk the dogs. Get outside. Maintain a healthy diet. Lift weights.

Do you struggle with depression and the desire to be healthy? what works for you? let us know in the comments, we’d love to hear from you!

Workout Tip Thursday: Glute Bridge with Weights

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Like most muscle groups, the glutes need to be worked not only with compound movements like squats and deadlifts, but they should be isolated as well.

Are you trying to get that Kardashian ass the all natural way? Try adding these into your next leg day!

Glute Bridges or Hip Thrusts can be done from the floor or on a workout bench. They can be done with a dumbbell in your lap or a barbell with plates loaded on it depending on your strength. If you work out from home, start with the floor. Place a dumbbell on your lap as shown in the photo. Push your glutes up and send your hips towards the ceiling or sky. Tighten your glutes as you push upwards.

Start with 3 sets of 15-20 reps. Once you are able to graduate to a heavier weight, you can reduce the reps down to 6-12.

I have also included a video on how to perform the exercise with a barbell

Enjoy this post? Want more workout tips? let us know in the comments what you’d like to see in the future!

Mango Strawberry Salsa

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Even though the Polar Vortex has made it’s way down here to sunny South Florida, that’s no reason to not enjoy some flavors of summer with your dinner! I recently made my Broiled Tilapia and decided that instead of the bread crumb topping I usually put on it, I would do a Strawberry Mango salsa instead. Ingredients are simple and the instructions are even easier!!

Ingredients

3/4 Cup Strawberries, finely diced
3/4 Cup Mangos, finely diced
1/4 Cup Red Onion, finely chopped
6 Basil Leaves, finely chopped
1 TBSP Fresh Lemon Juice
1/4 tsp. Sea Salt
1/4 tsp. Black Pepper

Combine all the ingredients together and place in the fridge for a few hours to chill. Use this as a topping for your favorite fish, chicken or even steak, it’s great on everything!!

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Follow along on Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter!

Chicken Salad without Mayo

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Chicken salad is always a great go to for quick sandwiches for both kids and adults. Many recipes though call for the use of mayo in chicken salad. Well the other day I combined my cool avocado cream sauce (link to recipe down below) with the rest of the ingredients for chicken salad and it was amazing!! Here is how I made it:

Ingredients:

  • Chicken breasts or tenderloins, boneless and skinless
  • 1/2 cup chopped cashews or pecans
  • 1/2 dried cranberries or chopped grapes (or both)
  • pinch of salt and pepper
  • Cool Avocado Cream Sauce

Instructions:

  1. Boil chicken in a pot of water until cooked. Once cooked through, strain and shred with fork or hand mixer, or chop into cubes
  2. Mix chicken in a bowl with 1/2 cup of the Cool Avocado Cream sauce, and rest of ingredients.
  3. Chill in refrigerator and enjoy on it’s own or in sandwiches!

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This makes a great quick sandwich especially on some whole wheat bread or a whole wheat pita. I don’t have the nutritional value of a serving of this chicken salad but if enough request it I will figure it out and add it to the post. Thanks so much! As always follow along on Pinterest, Twitter and Instagram

Cool Avocado Cream Sauce

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The other day I was looking for ways to incorporate avocado into my recipes. I don’t normally like avocado, I think it’s more of a texture than a taste issue for me. My husband however, loves it. So I decided to browse Pinterest for ways to include avocado and came across some Avocado Cream Sauce. It was perfect. The consistency came out a little thicker than I thought it would but I think it’s because I used some genetically enhanced avocado because it was HUGE!

Ingredients:

  • 1 avocado chopped into cubes
  • 1/2 cup of no fat greek yogurt
  • juice of one lime
  • salt to taste
  • 1 tbsp. of cilantro, chopped

Instructions:

  1. chop up avocado and put into food processor or blender.
  2. add yogurt and lime juice and blend until smooth.
  3. add cilantro and salt to taste

Here is a photo of mine, but please excuse the pathetic look to it, the bowl was full and in two days it looked like this:

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We used the last bit of this to make a chicken salad last night that has cranberries, pecans and cashews. Stay tuned and happy Monday!

Healthy Peanut Butter Cookies

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Happy new year everyone! I apologize for the lack of posts and vow to make more this year. I took the last two weeks to relax with my husband as he had lots of time off which was wonderful! Because we spent the holidays lounging around, we found ourselves with a craving for sweet treats. I don’t usually buy treats when grocery shopping as we are trying to monitor calories and macros (this will be a post coming soon so stay tuned). I searched the internet and found a recipe for peanut butter cookies that did not include flour! Below are the ingredients and instructions for these cookies that only lasted 2 days:

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup natural peanut butter. I used Crazy Richards chunky which was good but I think just natural Skippy or Jiff would be better.
  • 1 cup sugar. Some of you may not like sugar since it’s not as healthy and Stevia for baking is a great alternative. I used Dominos brown sugar here.
  • 1 large egg, lightly beaten
  • 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
  • 1 teaspoon of baking soda (so your cookies aren’t flat)
  • 2 teaspoons of flax meal (optional but a great source of omega-3 and highly recommended).

Instructions:

  1. Preheat oven to 350*F.
  2. mix all ingredients together in a large bowl.
  3. spoon 1 tbsp of mixture onto cookie sheet.
  4. Push a fork into the dough to get the classic peanut butter cookie look.
  5. cook in oven between 10-15 min until golden brown.
  6. take out of oven and transfer to cooling rack *warning: since there is no flour I found the cookies broke apart a bit when transferring them so either be gentle or wait until they cool before transferring.

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I hope you all enjoy them and as always come follow us on twitter and Instagram

Muscle Group of the Week: Leg Workouts

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First I want to apologize for going so long between posts. I know not too many people read this but it seems my frozen turkey debacle was a big hit on thanksgiving. My find of putting the turkey in a cooler while it thaws was a gem and it worked perfectly. I wish I had saved my pictures of our Thanksgiving meal but I did hang on to the homemade apple pie we had!
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Needless to say the pie did not last long. Eventually I hope to add it to the recipes section on here. I feel those are lacking in quantity and quality.

Now, on to leg workouts. Today I will post a handful of pictures that explain pretty well how to perform these exercises. As always, you should aim to do 3-4 sets with 8-12 reps. Going heavy on leg day is a good idea because they are such a large muscle group. They can be hard to build muscle in so by going heavy you are really creating work for your body.

Sumo Deadlifts
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Sumo Deadlifts are great because they work the quads, hamstring, glutes and your back. Deadlifts in general are a compound exercise that should be in everyone’s arsenal.

Deadlifts
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As you can see in the picture, deadlifts work more than just the legs. If you have never done deadlifts before, be sure to start light and watch some videos on proper form. This is one exercise where if performed incorrectly, you can really do some damage.

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This image shows many other exercises that all should be incorporated into your workout. The front and back squat should be required. They really target the quads and will give nice development to them. Leg press is another great way to fatigue the quads. Again, if you’ve never done these, go light for the first few times. If you can complete 12 reps for 3-4 sets then it’s time to up the weight. Leg extensions and leg curls are a good superset to really fatigue the muscles as well. Try to do 15 reps if you do these towards the end of your workout. You can also pyramid any of these sets. Start light and go 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 1, 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15. It’s guaranteed you’ll have trouble walking the next day!

One group people neglect is the calf muscle. If your gym has sitting or standing calf machine please add these in to your workout.
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Another thing people don’t do is vary the angle of the calf muscle. Just keeping your feet pointed forward only targets the main muscle, the gastrocnemius. Pointing your toes inward and outward will develop the Soleus and Plantaris.
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Please whatever you do, just don’t let this happen to you. Friends don’t let friends not lift legs:
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