Healthy Happy and Free

Summer is full of adventures for a lot of people! It's funny, I'm not in school or a seasonal job but I still find that I do more trips and travel during the summer. One trip that I take annually is to upstate New York to visit family. I also enjoy beach trips, camping trips, etc. I do also, however, like to have a good fitness routine and try for decent nutrition. So how can these things work together? Tip 1 : Relax. Chances are, you are still home more than you are away so chill out. Tip 2 : If you want to workout on your vacation or trip, you can do bodyweight exercises, take resistance bands, or do park workouts at your location. Another great option is to just be active! When I visited NY, we all went hiking as a family, another day several of us went for a walk together and enjoyed good company, and another day we all went swimming! Fitness doesn't always need to be "the grind". The Best Flavor! Tip 3 : Take breaks in long car trips to stre...

I recently had the idea to make Meringue cookies and my curiosity was piqued at the idea of making sugar free meringue cookies. I wondered if it would work!  3 calories a piece?! I'll take 10!  I took to Google, and to my surprise there were recipes with Splenda, erythritol, stevia and beyond! I decided to try my hand at sugar free meringues with an erythritol based sweetener I just purchased recently. The brand is Swerve and I purchased it from Luckyvitamin.com. It claims to have no aftertaste! Meringues can be a bit tricky to set up due to humidity and given that it was a hot August day in North Carolina, I think they turned out pretty well! The texture was good on most of them but a few of them were still a bit soft in the middle.  Factors working against me: I didn't have enough egg whites I didn't have cream of tartar I was attempting sugar free I didn't have parchment paper Humidity You may be thinking, why even bother? Well, I don...

I don't know about you, but I almost always consume some sort of caffeine or energy booster before a run or a workout. I'm sure its 97% placebo effect, but I continue to do it nonetheless. Pre-workouts can be hard to find one that works for you and tastes good. Energy drinks can be full of sugars or artificial ingredients (not to say I don't use these things XD). In comes NeuroGum! It's the #1 Nootropic Energy Gum engineered to give energy, clarity, and focus. It contains caffeine (40mg), L-Theanine - the major amino acid in green tea, vitamin B6 and B12 for a combination that is supposed to give you sharp and focused energy 5 times faster than other methods of energy. It's also Non-GMO, vegan, gluten free, soy free, aspartame free and sugar-free clocking in at 2 calories per piece. So how does it hold up under test by a self-proclaimed caffeine junkie? With only a meager 40 mg of caffeine, can this gum actually do anything for me? I put it to the test first...

from Pinterest.com Endurance. What does it really mean? In the past, when I was in the hospital, my friends and family would tell me I was so strong. I was enduring so much. However, I didn't feel strong or brave. I felt helpless and simply without choices. What could I do? “Endurance: It is the spirit which can bear things, not simply with resignation, but with blazing hope. It is the quality which keeps a man on his feet with his face to the wind. It is the virtue which can transmute the hardest trial into glory because beyond the pain it sees the goal.” ―  Anonymous ,  Come Be My Follower I needed, and often still need to, adjust my perspective.  Yes, right now, things may seem horrible. Things may be horrible. But it is not the end. There is always a hope. I personally find hope in the Bible but no matter who you are or what you believe, every cloud has a silver lining. Change your perspective.  I often think of a small child who drops t...