Category: Exercise

2019: The Year of Gratitude

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I spent the weekend reflecting on 2018 and setting goals for 2019. What a year it’s been.

I always love looking at everyone’s “Best Nine” at the end of the year. It’s so fun to go back and look at what consumed your life. Mine was consumed with travel, gardening, Annie Mae and B. Several things happened that I wish hadn’t, but overall I found goodness and a little grace.

I completed my 2019 Powersheets prep work on Saturday morning. This is the first year I’ve tried to set intentional goals at the beginning of the year. Last year, I started with Powersheets around June. I love the prep work because it helps you really nail down what you want to accomplish for the year, and it breaks your main goals down into smaller, easier-to-digest goals to work toward monthly, weekly and daily.

One of my main goals is to establish and maintain healthy eating practices and a true fitness routine. So I wanted to share with you what I will be doing to reach that goal starting tomorrow.

Establish a Meditation Practice

I’ve used the Calm app off and on for a couple of months to see if it is something that will help me. Quieting my mind is basically non-existent. My brain literally never shuts off. It can, at times, be awful. So I did some research about stress management, and guided meditation is one of the best ways to manage stress.

Tomorrow, I will start a daily mediation practice. Whether it’s in the morning or before bed will depend on my mood, but my goal is to mediate in the morning before leaving for work. I will also use the Sleep Stories or sleep mediations to help me fall asleep at night, instead of using the TV. At least, that is a long term goal for this practice. I’m shooting for 5-10 minutes per day, and then maybe longer periods on the weekends, which will lead into the second part of this overall goal.

A Daily Yoga Practice

After lots of research and looking at my daily schedule, yoga seems like the easiest thing to work into my life at this time. Plus, there are added benefits of stress management for combining a mediation and yoga practice. I know it sounds pretty granola, but that’s just where I am right now.

I’ve used Asana Rebel off and on, and I have a BOD account. So the plan is to use them, even if it is only 5 or ten minutes. Just move my body each day. Ideally, I would like this to be 10-20 minutes on the mat with longer sessions on the weekends. And I plan to use the Calm app directly after my yoga practice.

My intention for the new year is centered around gratitude, and my intention for my yoga practice is focused on being awake.

I would love to know what your goals are for 2019. Please share.

Daily Burn Workouts

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Thanks to the Miracle Morning, my workouts have been solid.

I haven’t missed one since I started the new morning routine. So that’s over a seven day workout streak.

I’ve talked about Daily Burn before, but I’ve really enjoyed the Barre Harmony workouts.

They are a combo of barre, ballet, yoga and Pilates. It’s one of the few workouts that I actually enjoy.

But to keep it fresh I mix in Cardio Sculpt and Power Cardio during the week. And I recover with yoga and mobility workouts on the weekends.

If you don’t live close to a gym, Daily Burn is the thing for you. I’ve really enjoyed getting my workouts in at home. And it doesn’t cost much to get started.

I can definitely tell I’ve gotten stronger. The sad tricep push-ups I started out doing have gotten better. And people have said my legs look more toned. That’s the barre classes.

What are your favorite ways to workout? Where do you go?

Barre Harmony with Daily Burn

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I’ve never been a fan of working out in a gym.

The longest, most rewarding exercise for me as been running. But I know building total body strength is important to staying healthy while running. So I try other things, but nothing really ever sticks.

On January 1, 2017, I bought a subscription to Daily Burn because I don’t live anywhere near a gym, but I need to have the motivation and someone telling me what to do when I do strengthening exercises. I can’t make up stuff to hold my attention, but Daily Burn has lots of programs to pick from so you find what works for you.

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After trying lots of stuff, I recently landed on the Barre Harmony program. It’s a mix of ballet, yoga and pilates. The workouts are only 25-35 minutes, and they change it up enough that the workout flies by. I don’t dread doing them, and I feel like they give me a low-impact, effective workout. Isn’t that what we all want?

Every couple of days, I will mix in a kickboxing class or a Cardio Sculpt class to switch it up. But I always come back to Barre Harmony.

I highly recommend Daily Burn.  If you want to work out with me from the comfort of your home, you should definitely try it out.

What are your favorite ways to workout? Any workout-at-home friends out there? What programs do you use?

Adventures to Wellness is Coming

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Things are changing around here. And I’m super excited. The most excited I’ve been in a long time about a personal project.

If you’ve followed me for awhile, you know I’ve had a designated blog space since 2009. It started on Blogger as It’s Always Something… and then evolved into Barefoot ‘N Running, the space I wrote the longest.

But when I quit running regularly, I quit writing there. When I finished grad school and started working full-time, I quit writing for a little while.

Then about two years ago, I create When I Grow Up I Want to be a Chef. I always thought I wanted to be a food blogger. To create recipes and share them. To take food photography.  But I felt pigeon-holed and lacked creativity to share recipes. And to be honest, I’m terrible a writing recipes because I don’t measure anything. My cooking style is intuitive. It’s how it looks and smells and tastes more than it is measurements for people to recreate.

And to be honest, I felt like I failed at When I Grow Up I Want to be a Chef. Because it wasn’t like everyone else.

But in reality it wasn’t me at all.

So here we are. Eight years into having a personal writing space on the web, and I have it no more figured out than when I was 22.

Truth bomb: I’m not ever going to have it figured out.

But what I do know is I need a space to write and share and build community. And if the spaces I developed in the past are no longer serving me, I need to evolve.

So here we are.

Adventures to Wellness is a space to help me find balance. Or share how I’m constantly finding balance in the everyday. It’s about being able to adapt. And finding gratitude. And loving the beautiful, messy life I’ve been given.

It’s an adventure to living my healthiest life.

It’s about sharing food in a way that I want to share food with photos, links to recipes, sharing bloggers I love, recipes, food prep, farmers market shopping, buying local.

It’s about sharing exercise practices, exercise failures, lack of motivation, finding motivation, taking care of myself.

It’s about sharing life with music, movies, love, best practices, worst practices, failures, storytelling and just being a real person that you can relate to.

It’s about figuring it out on the fly. Being open and honest.

Finding balance is an ever-changing, ongoing adventure. Finding my own version of wellness is an ever-changing, ongoing and, ultimately, life-changing adventure that I can’t wait to share with you.

Welcome to my new space.

With love,
Ashten

P.S. Official site launch and new content begins September 1, 2017. I have lots of ideas and things to share with you. Get. Excited.