January 2014 - Page 4 of 6 - My Healthy, Happier Life

ashleyd / January 15, 2014

5 Tips for Maintaining Your Healthy Resolutions

Happy Hump Day friends! This week is a bit chaotic as we have over 200 people in from across the world for semi-annual planning meetings which means I’m spending my day leading meetings and then evenings are filled with dinners or cocktails. Instead of getting down on myself for the lack of workouts, I’m focusing on the thing I can control this week: food, hydration and vitamins. As someone who for years thought I could “workout” a bad diet, I now realize that sometimes it’s even more important for me to be in touch with my eating than it is my exercise.

As I was chatting with my gal Theodora via text, I realized that while I am no expert, some of you all may appreciate my tips for maintaining healthy resolutions now that we are two weeks into the new year. I find that these tips work for even the busiest of weeks as they are all about small improvements or focus areas versus perfection.

So without further adieu, here are the tips and tricks I’ve used over the years when I’m trying to maintain or get back to a certain fitness level and keep off the 40 pounds I lost back in 2006!

How about you? What are your tips for maintaining your healthy resolutions in 2014?

Follow:

ashleyd / January 13, 2014

Silverstone Half Marathon Training: Week 2

Happy Monday gang! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. We enjoyed our first ski weekend of 2014 up in Verbier with a group of friends including a few of my old colleagues from the US who are in Geneva this week for meetings. It was an absolutely perfect weekend. The temperature on the slopes was in the high 30s and the sun and blue sky made us feel as if we were sunbathing in Florida! Our weekends tend to consist of skiing all day and then après skiing all night but somehow I found myself feeling rejuvenated instead of exhausted this morning. I think last night’s early bedtime definitely helped. Based on the below activity, especially Saturday and Sunday, it’s quite clear why I woke up this morning more sore than I can remember, even after marathons. Now that Emily and I are able to ski “properly” and challenge ourselves we definitely engage our entire body, especially the legs! I will certainly be sleeping in compression socks again tonight. In fact, does anyone have experience with skiing in compression socks?

Here is my Silverstone Half Marathon training recap from this past week. I’m pleased with my overall activity level but know that I need to focus on logging more miles running this week.

Monday: 20 minutes Yoga for Runners

Tuesday: 2 mile treadmill run followed by abs and leg weight exercises

Wednesday: 5k treadmill run followed by abs and arm weight exercises

Thursday: First morning run with Emily in 2014! I’ve missed our morning runs as they were a great way to catch up and enjoy some much needed company during marathon training. Hopefully we can get back into the habit. Thursday morning’s 5k run with Emily wasn’t easy but I felt great afterwards!

Friday: Rest day

Saturday: I think my Polar Loop almost exploded when it registered 16 hours and 26 minutes of active time on Saturday along with “33,125 steps”. How did I achieve this you ask? Well, I suppose 3 hours of dancing Saturday “morning” along with 7 hours of skiing intermediate runs with Emily and our instructor on Saturday followed by a few walks to and from our flat and Saturday night’s standing apres ski you get 4 hours of sleep, 3 hours of sitting for meals and the rest was standing or movement!

Sunday: Another record day of movement which resulted in 28,237 “steps”and 10 hours of active time! We were dancing into the wee hours of the morning at Farm Club in Verbier and then Emily and I spent 4 hours skiing together, testing our ability without an instructor for the first time this season!

This week my goal is 2 yoga sessions, 4 runs including 1 hill workout and 1 “long” run along with some cross training.

Are you back in the swing of workouts after the holiday break?