success.

The thing is....you can set yourself up for failure and for success.  The choice is yours.  

When it comes to exercise, planning works well for me.  Like I always say, "if you bite it-write it!"

At night, I usually lay in bed thinking about the day ahead and when I'll be able to fit in the workout, I write it down and the following day, I make it happen.  Daily goals tend to work well because you focus on what you've accomplished and not how far you have to go!  

Then once it's "set" on my schedule, I won't be tempted to cancel!  

When it comes to food, planning is KEY!

It's all about planning out your daily/weekly eats.  This way you won't fail or fall off track.  If your fridge and pantry are packed full of proteins, veggies and fruits and not a bunch of processed foods, you'll stay on track and focused!  

Honestly, I was happy that today was back to normal eats!  I missed my planned out, six meals a day! 

My day started with 

Meal 1: plain Chobani, blueberries and Kashi!  Yum!

Meal 2: eggs and a string cheese for mid-morning!  I didn't take a pic but it sure was yummy!  

Meal 3: Apple, PB and cinnamon!  This snack is delicious, very filling and tastes like dessert!  Mmm!

  
Meal 4:  Green Smoothie!  Oh how I missed these!!!  This one was packed with almond milk, protein powder, kale, spinach, ice, strawberries and raspberries!  Soooo good!  

And we're meal prepping today too!  Look at all those fruits headed to the freezer for smoothies!  Grapes and lots of banana halves!  These will be perfect to pop into the Ninja for our smoothies!  Since we missed 9 days of the smoothie challenge, we're taking over on our own and continuing the challenge for weeks to come...probably for good!  I guess we've made it a habit and we're sticking with it!

My favorite part about eating super healthy?  Having even more energy to spend with my husband and my boys!  I was asked today at the Little League team meeting, to be Team Mom again!  It's a lot of the same kiddos from our team last year, same coach and I surprisingly know all of the players' families so of course, I SAID YES!  Ha!  I told myself I wouldn't do it again, but here we are again!  I made welcome goodie bags filled with Big League Chew, Cracker Jacks and peanuts!  Ahhh, I love baseball season :)  

As we were driving to the meeting, my son Jake asked me if all families exercise together?  I couldn't believe he understood that and wanted to know if the way we live our lives is the norm!  He asked if all families played basketball together like we do, if they rode bikes together, went camping together and played outside as much as we do.  Very cool that his mind is thinking in terms of what we do as a family and he notices how much we try and be ACTIVE as a family!  It may not seem like much, but it was like a HUGE pat on the back to me as a mother.  I hope my children see me making an effort to keep our family happy and healthy because as I've said before, 
the families that play together, STAY TOGETHER!!!!

I hope in the 9 days I was away, you all kept with your workouts and clean eating!  It's all about patience and staying focused!  You are in charge of YOU.  You have the control and the power to do amazing things.  Living your healthiest life can start today...it can start right now.  Just put your mind to it and do it.  No more saying, tomorrow.  Do it today.  If you wake up and tell yourself you can, you will.  Set yourself up for success not failure!

How do you plan to succeed this week?

for me, I am headed to find some great home gym equipment tomorrow.  We are planning to rearrange our upstairs and turn our fourth bedroom into a home gym!  Woohoo!  We had been planning this for a while now, but on vacation we decided to really come home and make it happen.  Any suggestions and tips on great home gym equipment would be greatly appreciated!  We want lots of free weights, cardio equip of some sort and we have some other ideas that I'll share if we can make it happen :)  fingers crossed!