[Wellness] Wins – Back to the Gym Edition

It’s been a long minute since I’ve shared my Wellness Wins, huh? But that doesn’t mean there haven’t been any, more so that I’m behind on posting and life in general. What’s new?
The truth is there have been a lot of ups and downs in the weight loss party lately, but I’m still moving forward. Let’s get into it.

Healthy Recipes I’ve Been Loving

The whole eating thing is and always will be the hardest part of healthy living for me. It’s not that I don’t love healthy foods. I love them very much. So much so that even when I have the best of intentions in cooking a delicious and wholesome recipe, I don’t quite know when to stop eating it. That, and the hours between around 8 p.m. and bedtime when my stomach decides that it wants to eat every morsel of food in the house. It’s something that I’m really trying to work on, with varying degrees of success.
I know there’s no magic secret to finding self control, you just have to want it more than you want a cheeseburger. And, well, often… I don’t. But I am trying to make more conscious choices and remind myself that I will live if I say no to my favorite food once or twice.
I mean, I hope I will.
I will… right?
Anyway, on to the fun stuff. Here are some of the healthy recipes I’ve tried and loved lately!
Skinny Taste is one of my favorite recipe blogs. A coworker recommended it to me years ago and it’s still the place I turn if I’m looking for a healthier version of one of my favorite meals. This Brussels sprouts carbonara was so good! We used local Brussels from a roadside stand, which made it even more fun.
I always look for dinners that will make good leftovers for lunch during the week. Because I’m weird, I can’t stand reheated chicken so I’m always on the hunt for creative non-chicken dinners. While this reheated well, it wasn’t incredibly filling for lunch. Probably because Tom and I both had large dinner portions, resulting in smaller lunch portions. Womp womp.
Two other Skinny Taste recipes proved more successful at the leftover game – this Mini Turkey Meatball Vegetable Soup and these Butternut Squash and Black Bean Enchiladas. Both were as delicious the next day as they were the first time. Highly recommended!
Other great meals include this Sweet Potato Coconut Curry from Life Made Simple, this Quinoa Fried Rice from Gimme Some Oven and this Vegetable Pad Thai from Mother Thyme. If you’re sensing a pattern, yes I will make anything that I can cover with hot sauce or sriracha. The hotter the better!

I Joined a Gym

Towards the end of October, I finally broke down and signed up for a gym membership. I’d been holding out in an effort to save money, but with temps falling and the sun going down before the workday ends it started to get harder and harder to fit in my walks, and at-home workouts were frankly starting to bore me.
I was pretty excited to get back into a gym and a more regular workout schedule, and especially back to my favorite classes. I know a lot of fitness gurus will say that casually attending fitness classes isn’t really a workout program, but it’s a hell of a lot more effective than the complete lack of a fitness regimen I was observing prior to getting back to the gym.
For now, it’s working for me and I’m seeing positive changes on the scale and in the mirror (tiny, minor ones, but hey). My favorite classes are Zumba and another more choreography-focused dance class that my gym offers. I also really enjoy Soul Cycle-type classes (they’re called something else at my gym) and Barre. Once or twice a week I force myself (FORCE myself) to go to a Body Pump class to lift a little heavier, but I dread it every time. Weight training is far from my fave, but I know it’s necessary.

But I’m Still Sweating Outdoors

The gym is a great fitness solution during the week, but on the weekends I love to get out into the fresh air as long as the sun is shining. We walked all over the Arboretum two weeks ago, which certainly wasn’t exercise but was still a nice way to be active and bring joy into my soul.
It was so much fun that when I woke up to a sunny day this past Sunday, I knew I had to get out there. Tom and I decided to head to Rock Creek Park for a gorgeous 4-ish mile hike.
I’m savoring these last remnants of pretty Fall colors and warmer temps. The past couple of days have been gloomy and drizzly and terrible, but I have these memories to look back on, which makes it oh so much easier.
This was actually my first time at Rock Creek Park, which is simply criminal. I hope this was only the first of many visits, for both my health and my happiness.
While I may not have lost ten pounds since I started writing these Wellness posts, I’ve started to really focus on the fact that it’s my choice whether a day is healthy or not, whether my approach to life is positive or negative. I don’t win every time, but I keep going.

What is your workout schedule like? Does it change with the seasons?