The Road to Be Fit...

Happy Friday everyone! I hope your week has been awesome!!!

This week has been a pretty amazing week for me in that I have some new adventures that I'm excited about starting in my own life!

For starters, I again want to thank you all for the support of reading my blog and reaching out to me letting me know you are reading and gaining some form of knowledge or inspiration! Over the past two weeks, I've had a few people reach out and have inquired about things they can do in their own lives to live a more healthier lifestyle. One of my goals is to inspire and help others! However, I have to remember that some of the things I'm doing, might not be feasible for someone else to just jump into and be successful in this journey to being fit for life.  With that being said, I have changed my perspective on how I solicit fitness and nutrition advice to friends who reach out to me.

I had to realize that I haven't always been a clean eater. In fact, I will confess that in October, I was arguing my case with a sorority sister about how I should be able to get fries from McDonald's and it should be nothing wrong with it as she discouraged me from doing it.  Well...I had a Monopoly piece to redeem a free medium fry and I was getting my free fry!! Oh and please believe, against her admonishment, I got it, ate it, and enjoyed it! In the beginning of January, my sister offered me a Healthy Choice frozen dish to eat before I got on the plane to head back to Virginia, and I turned it down to accept a 2 piece fried chicken meal at Popeye's in the Memphis airport.

I also remember times when I tried to eat something healthy, and the taste was bland or just straight gross!  Or I just "knew" in my own mind that I wouldn't like something, yet I had never even tried it before. There were also other foods that in my mind, I saw them as healthy, but a seasoned health fanatic would have told me "actually Ashley, that packaged oatmeal really isn't as healthy as you think it is"! I also refused to embrace the whole 80/20 rule believing my way of putting in hours upon hours at the gym would yield me great results as I felt good about working out on a consistent basis and still enjoyed all the foods that I wanted to eat.

I was also the one who would work out really hard with a specific event in mind that I wanted to look physically good for (i.e. a vacation, wedding I was in, high school reunion, birthday, etc.)  Then after the event was over, I'd fall off the bandwagon and go right back to my old ways. I wasn't consistent at all.

So everyone starts from somewhere and everyone finally decides they are going to do what it takes to get serious about getting healthy and fit for life. With that being said, I am truly encouraged to help others so I have decided that I will meet people where they are and we can work together from there! I have a friend who just e-mailed me about help, and I asked her first "where are you in life when it comes to eating healthy and working out"? Do you enjoy healthy foods or do you not know what a good healthy dish is? How often do you work out? Knowing where someone is will help them more than telling them what I do because I might be at a different place than they are. Everyone has to go at their own pace and gradually get to where they want to be! Consistency is key and progress is slow, but it all pays off when you just keep going! Take it one day at a time and embrace this as a lifestyle and not preparation for just a specific event in your life!

If you have any questions or need some help, I'm more than willing to help! I am not an expert, but I know a little something and we can do this together!! I find it highly effective when you have someone encouraging or motivating you along the way! E-mail me at road2bfit@gmail.com!

Have an awesome and safe weekend!!

"Clean eating"...I don't even know what that means...

...no one knows what it means....it's provocative...it gets the bloggers GOING!!

Just kidding!!!  A little Saturday morning humor for you :)

Lately I've been asked what exactly is clean eating and what does it entail? I'm glad you guys are giving me feed back by asking questions.  Questions means I need to clarify a little more! Also, asking me questions is great for me too because I might not know the answer, but research is becoming my best friend so I'm up for the challenge of finding out! Knowledge truly is power in this thing. This whole eating clean and working out healthy lifestyle can seem overwhelming, but taking it one day at a time and gathering information as you go definitely makes it easier to comprehend.  

So you might be thinking clean eating looks like this...

or maybe you're thinking more like this and only this...

Well that is part of it.....wait no...just eating lettuce is ridiculous and people that joke about that's how they are eating aren't funny.  You can't sustain life on just lettuce! Eating clean does not mean starving.

According to Clean Eating Magazine, clean eating is consuming food in it's most natural state or as close to it as possible. It means eating 5-6 meals a day (remember portion control while doing this), drinking lots of water, reading and understanding ingredient labels (the shorter the list the better....if there are several things in the list that you can't even pronounce, that's not clean), avoiding processed and refined foods, but this does not mean avoiding carbs all together. Complex carbs like whole grains are clean and acceptable. It means eating organic as often as you can (it's expensive to eat all organic, but do what you can).  Meat, eggs, and dairy should be eaten organically if your budget allows. My budget doesn't always allow this, but I do try to eat organic as often as possible.  It means consuming healthy fats (all fats are not bad...olive oil, avocado, nuts, etc are examples of good fats that our bodies need).  

Like I said in the last post, I got my start on understanding all of this after I read Tosca Reno's book The Eat Clean Diet.  Here is a link to it on Amazon if your local library doesn't carry it. The Eat Clean Diet. Now Tosca has several books out, but I would just start with this one to get the basics. If you want to look into reading more of her books, by all means, check her out!

Another very helpful resource that I've used and highly recommend is the Gracious Pantry.  Their website has a segment called Clean Eating 101 that I think you all should check out! It's pretty awesome! I totally think you can find anything you're looking for with this resource! Clean Eating 101

After you start understanding what clean eating is all about, you will soon understand that it looks more like this....

And it's rather delicious and you won't feel like you're missing out or sacrificing taste!! All of these pictures were taken from Instagram pages of people I follow who eat clean and have provided a recipe for the following dishes.  The first 3 pics came from fitmencook and the last one came from bgg2wl.  Check them out on IG!!