5.18.2018

6 WAYS TO PRACTICE SELF CARE WHILE TRAVELING

Staying up all night, eating whatever you want and laying around doing nothing are all part of vacation.  It starts off feeling like total freedom, but then you quickly end up sick and tired.  Traveling isn’t fun when you don’t feel your best.  That’s why self-care, even when you’re not at home, is so important.  Here are six areas that I think really make or break a trip:


1. SLEEP.  You need enough sleep if you are doing the driving on a road trip, but also if you want to simply stay well and have fun!  Try to stick to the same times that you go to bed and wake up at home.

2. EAT.  It’s tempting to go crazy because you’re on vacation, but it’s important that you eat foods that make you feel your best!  It sucks to have an upset stomach or be insanely bloated while you’re trying to walk around a new place.

3. MOVE.  Driving or flying to get to your destination can wreck havoc on your body.  Each time we stop at a rest area, I feel like 93-years-old trying to peel myself out of the car.  And after a flight, I feel all cramped up.  Take time to stretch it out, go for a walk or hit the hotel gym!


4. SCHEDULE.  Just because we can drive 13 hours in one day doesn’t mean you should.  And just because you have time to do five things while site-seeing, doesn’t mean you should.  Take into consideration how you feel now and how you’ll feel later.  It’s not always worth it to do and see it all.

5. THINK.  Don’t turn your mind off.  Use this time away from work to read new books, listen to interesting podcasts, have deep conversations with your friends and family traveling with you.  I love when I come home from a trip feeling inspired and ready to take on the world!

6. REST.  Not to be confused with sleep.  Put away all technology, take a bath, watch the sunset, take a hike, read a book, enjoy a cup of coffee while rocking on a porch, walk on the beach, etc.  Whatever it is, take time to enjoy the quiet.  


What is one self-care practice that you always stick to while traveling?


5.16.2018

9 SECRETS TO TRAVELING WITH YOUR SPOUSE

You've been traveling for days, everyone's exhausted, people are driving you nuts and you can't get away.  Can you relate?  I love going on trips with Nick, but it can feel tense when either of us are hard to be around (spoiler alert, usually I'm the cranky pants).  Here are 9 things that I have found make a huge difference for us.


1. Kick your habits.  There’s nothing worse than being stuck in a car for 12 hours with someone who’s driving you insane.  If you know you have a habit that your spouse can’t stand, then stop.  Seriously.

Northern Ireland 2014

2. Pay attention to what your spouse needs.  Do they need some quiet time?  A back rub after hours on the road?  Some time alone once you get to your destination?  A listening ear?  Are they hungry or need to stop and stretch their legs?

3. Find joint entertainment.  Read a book aloud.  Listen to a podcast.  Find a good radio station.  Whatever it is, make sure you both are enjoying it.  Otherwise find something else to do for a while or use headphones.

4. Take time apart.  When we get to a hotel, I love to fill up a bath, take my kindle and disappear for about an hour.  While I do this, Nick will often do bodyweight exercises in the room.  Once we’ve both had some downtime, we are ready to come back together and hang out some more.

Mount Rushmore today!

5. Be flexible.  You have things you want to do, see and eat while traveling.  So does your spouse.  Hopefully, you both want the same things most of the time.  But when you don’t, make sure you take turns so that no one feels like their wants or needs don’t matter.

6. Have designated roles.  I usually plan the big things on the trip, like the major highlights and Bucket List items we will cross off.  But, Nick will come in at the last minute and choose the actual stops and book hotels.  Decide who will do what so that the responsibilities are shared.

7. Get enough sleep.  You’ll be tempted to skimp on this.  We get excited to have cable in our hotel room, since we don’t have it at home.  Or we will stay up late hanging out with friends and family.  But, we are much nicer when we sleep enough.

Faroe Islands 2012

8. Say thank you.  Most likely, your spouse is doing a lot to make this trip fun for you.  Recognize the things they do to take care of you and thank them for it.


9. Remember to have fun.  Travel can often be stressful because of all of the unknowns around you.  Take things slow, be patient, go with the flow and don’t get upset when things don’t go as planned.  

Do you and your spouse travel together well?  Please share your words of wisdom with me!


5.10.2018

BEGINNERS GUIDE: 22 SIMPLE FOODS AND RECIPES FOR VEGANS

Since going vegan, we get asked these two questions almost weekly:

  1. Where do you get your protein?
  2. If you don’t eat meat and dairy, what do you eat?

To which we reply:

  1. Plants!
  2. Everything else!

Sounds so simple right?  But, if you’ve always eaten meat and dairy, cutting them out can seem confusing and overwhelming.  I get that!  Over the years, I have gone through seasons where I felt stuck in a rut with food.  That’s why I think it’s important to have some tried and true favorites that are easy to whip up and enjoy.


Here are some of our favorite go-to’s…

Breakfast:
Homemade Granola - I make this about every two weeks and Nick eats it with (rice, coconut, cashew or almond) milk.
Pancakes - Nick loves when I add chocolate chips to his, but bananas and blueberries are good too.  Top with maple syrup or peanut butter or both!
Cinnamon Rolls - The best Saturday morning treat!
Juice - For those mornings when we want something light or need to detox a bit from a heavy dinner.

Lunch:
Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich - Nick’s fav (with toasted bread)
Salad - Start with greens and add in your favorite fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds and berries.  Skip the dressing, make your own or just add olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper.
Guac/Salsa and Chips - This is our latest obsession.  2 avocados, a handful of cherry tomatoes, 1/4 a red onion, salt, pepper and Young Living Lime Vitality oil…your welcome 
Smoothie - Start with a milk (like almond milk), add in fruits, leafy greens, chia seeds and a plant based protein powder if you want (I love Young Living’s Slique…it helped me drop some stubborn weight last year).

Loaded Baked Potatoes - Start with baked potatoes, including sweet potatoes.  Top them with sautéed veggies (like garlic, onion and mushroom), throw on some leafy greens and add some black beans if you want more protein.
Vegetable Soup - Put together whatever veggies you're craving...my recent obsession is onions, butternut squash or sweet potatoes, broccoli, milk (coconut, rice, cashew or almond) and then salt, pepper and spices!
Rice/Quinoa Bowl - Basically start with rice or quinoa and then top it with whatever you want!
Tacos - We LOVEEEEEEE these!  Just leave out the store bought taco seasoning and make your own!

Snack:
Nuts
Seeds
Fruit
Veggies


Dark Chocolate Bar

Drink:
Wine
Kombucha
Herbal Tea

There are so many options and we eat so well.  If you're trying to go vegan, don't dwell on what you can't have, but focus on all that you can!  Anytime I need inspiration, I just go to Pinterest and type in "vegan recipes" in the search bar.  Do it and see what you can find...I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised.  What's your favorite vegan recipe you've tried so far?  Please share in the comments below.  I'm always looking to try new flavors!


5.07.2018

4 EASY WAYS TO EXERCISE WHILE TRAVELING

I'm basically writing this post to myself.  I love traveling, but it almost always throws me out of my work-out groove.  When I’m home, I have my gym, workout buddies, classes, rail trail and neighborhood to keep up my routine.  But, once I’m on the road, I’m full of excuses.  

You can find about a million free workouts online!

Here are my most used.  
-I don’t have enough space in the room.  
-The hotel doesn’t have a good gym.  
-It’s too hot outside.  
-It’s too cold outside.  
-There are no walking trails and I don’t know the area.  
-I’m tired from being in the car all day.  
-I don’t have exercise enough outfits for every day of the trip, so I just won’t work out at all.

I can think of just about anything to get out of exercise when I’m not at home (when I am home too, if we're being honest).  But I always feel better when I work up a sweat, even for as little as 10 minutes.

Site seeing on foot is a great workout.  Many cities
even have beautiful outdoor trails to enjoy!

On Saturday we are headed out on our 7 week road trip, so I’ve been working on a plan.  My goal will be to do some type of movement daily, depending on time, space, where we are and what's available to me.  Here are my planned go-tos:

1. Walking.  Much of our road trip will be site seeing.  When possible, we will do it on foot!

2. Yoga.  Every hotel room has enough floor space (and bed space) to get in some stretching.  This is perfect at the end of a long day in the car!

3. BodyWeight Exercises.  This can be as simple as squats, pushups and crunches.  But, when I have wifi, I love the Betty Rocker 30 Day Challenge.  No equipment, it's HIIT and I’m done in 15 minutes!  I also love Tone It Up’s Daily Moves.  Each day, there 5 moves and a complimentary video workout.  Some of their moves require light weights or bands, but I often modify to some type of bodyweight option so it’s less to pack.

4. Gym.  Every now and then, we’ll get a hotel with a good gym.  It feels amazing to go in to do 30 minutes of hard cardio and get our hearts pumping!

I took my first hot yoga class while visiting a friend in Chicago!

Now, the downside of working out on the road is the stinky clothes.  I’m planning to take 2-5 complete outfits (I can’t make up my mind) and do hand washing in the sink.  It's annoying and my clothes are never as clean as when I wash and dry them at home, but it’s really the only option!  

If you’re a traveler and you exercise on the road, please send your tips my way!  Especially the stinky work out clothes issue…HELP!




5.03.2018

SIX REASONS WHY GOING VEGAN HAS BEEN AMAZING

There are many reasons why people go vegan, but usually it comes down to health or ethics.  From the time I met Nick, he was heavily into juicing carrots and skipping out on the animal products as much as possible.  I was never a huge meat eater, so it wasn't a big deal to me.  Plus, we were poor, young, married, college students and didn't have enough money to afford it!  For our first year of marriage, we survived on $50 a week for all our food, toiletries and cleaning supplies...so we ate tons of cheap food like grits, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and pasta.  I still remember the random Chick-Fil-A date nights would cost a little over $11.  We would have $38 left for grocery shopping for the week and often felt like we totally blew our budget.

We were super excited to find that Holland America
Cruise Line has a variety of vegan options!

Anyway, I'm getting off track here.  Back to being vegan.  So, Nick's choice to skip animal products was because he believed it was healthier.  Mine was simply because that's what Nick wanted to eat and it was cheaper.  However, over the years, I've become like a mini-Nick and I'm now 100% onboard.  Just like Nick, I believe that eating a plant-based diet is healthier for us.  It didn't start out as an ethical decision, but as I've read and watched things, I'm more and more upset by how badly animals are treated to get us the products in demand.

Just wanted to give you a tiny bit of background.  So, moving on.  Until last summer, we ate mostly vegan at home (we liked cheese though).  Then, when we ate outside of the home, we would eat whatever was provided...and that's usually meat.  The downside was that each time we did this, we'd come home super bloated and feeling like crap.  Last June, we watched "What the Health" and that was it.  I could never look at cheese the same way again.  We had a few bumps in the road during a July roadtrip, falling off the bandwagon to try certain foods in certain cities (like lobster in Maine).  But, felt didn't feel well and decided that we were going to go 100% vegan and no going back.

At home it's been easy.  The hard part has been when we are with others.  We don't want to ever hurt people's feelings or be an inconvenience, so it's taken some practice to get it right.  It's worth it though.

PC: Emily Lynn Photography

Here's why:

1.  My life no longer revolves around food.  I don't know about you, but I used to plan everything around food.  Getting together with a friend almost always involved breakfast, lunch, dinner or coffee.  Now, I've found ways to spend time with people that's not centered around meals, snacks and drinks.  My sister and I have gotten together more often to watch movies and do crafts.  It's been so fun!

2.  I make better choices when traveling.  When we used to travel, I would end up not feeling well and have to take a few recovery days when we got home.  My digestion has always been sensitive and traveling can still be harder on my body, but eating fresh foods has made such a difference.  I enjoy our trips so much more now that I'm not concerned about my stomach flipping out!

3.  It feels good to feel good.  Eating 100% vegan used to sound impossible to me.  I would eat whatever Nick ate because I didn't want him to judge me (even though he wouldn't), but behind closed doors, I would make bad food choices.  Then, I wouldn't feel well.  But I did that so often, feeling bad actually felt normal.  I didn't even realize that I felt bad, or what it was like to feel good.  Now that I know, I'm hooked and make better food choices because I want to, not because I feel pressured to.  I have more energy than I've had in years, better skin, improved digestion and have been able to lose some stubborn weight!

When traveling, we often look for juice and smoothies bars!

4.  I'm beginning to enjoy planning, shopping and cooking.  Instead of feeling like I have no options, taking meat and dairy out of the picture helped me feel a lot less overwhelmed when cooking.  It's so simple to shop for fresh fruits and veggies, nuts and seeds, and to create tasty meals from a few ingredients.  I've also learned much more about nutrition and where certain vitamins and minerals come from, which helps me decide what produce I want us to eat.  I used to wish I could eat out all the time so that someone else was cooking and cleaning up.  But, now that I am learning so much about what tastes good and feels good, I find myself wanting to prepare my own food and be on top of what's going into my system!  Who am I?

5.  Nick and I enjoy doing this together.  We read books and talk about what we've learned.  When a new documentary comes out, we watch it together.  While on the road, we listen to podcasts we love and then discuss the interesting parts.  We browse Pinterest, choose something we want for dinner, run to the store together to grab the ingredients and come home to throw it all together while we listen to our favorite music.  It's our hobby and it gives us something to enjoy doing together!

6.  I worry less.  With so many people suffering through all sorts of disease and cancer, I'm often anxious with each passing year (especially since I turned 30).  I'm not saying that going vegan solved all my problems and I'm no longer concerned, but it has given me some peace of mind.  I'm not perfect, but I'm trying to be careful of what goes into my body and onto my skin, even what I breathe in.  If I still become sick in the future, I want to feel confident that I did my best with what I had!

Going vegan has been a learning experience.  Learning about real food, what it means to truly feel good, how to eat vegan while not at home and eating with non-vegan friends and family.  As we've learned more and more, we've slowly made changes along the way.  There's been sacrifices, but the benefits far outweigh anything that's felt difficult.  It's our health journey and we're loving it!

Have you taken time to listen to your body and learn what foods help you feel your best?  If so, please comment below and share your favorites!