5 Healthy Ways to Enjoy the Fall

1. Get Outside and go for a long walk or hike and enjoy the beautiful scenery and changing leaves.

2. Make a homemade chili and enjoy watching some Sunday football with your significant other or family!

Paleo Lean Beef Chili Recipe

3. Take a day trip to go apple picking. Last Fall Marc and I went when I was pregnant, and I can’t wait to bring Ava this year.

(This picture is from last year when I was 7 months pregnant!!)

4. Make a new healthy Pumpkin recipe. There are tons of great ones out there.

Here ares some of my own quick simple Pumpkin Recipes

Pumpkin Bread

Pumpkin Spice Coffee

Skinny Pumpkin Cookies

Quick Pumpkin Oats

5. Carve Pumpkins with your family and cook the Pumpkin seeds as a treat for later!

What healthy fall traditions do you have? 

Do you like pumpkin flavored everything like me???

Some of the hills were pretty steep and I could tell that I was breathing heavy at some points! Man I was really feeling the extra weight I am carrying around. We hiked for about 45 minutes which was plenty of time, my legs were tired!

This was one of the nice views we had, it was very peaceful and quiet at the park! After our hike we headed back to our hotel to shower and go to dinner.

On Saturday I woke up at 5:30am and decided to let Marc sleep in a bit. Our hotel had a Dunkin Donuts not too far away so I walked over and grabbed this coffee!!

I indulged in a little pumpkin spiced coffee (I got one pump of the pumpkin spice since the syrup can be overly sweet) After Marc woke up we got breakfast and headed to the hotel gym!! It was basically like a private small gym and we got in a good workout. I did a 20-minute Elliptical Interval and then 20 minutes Upper Body Strength Workout for Triceps, Back, and Chest!

This workout was performed as supersets: meaning I performed the exercises for each muscle group back to back with no rest in between. I did however rest in between body parts.

Triceps- Overhead Extensions & Tricep Dips, Back- One arm rows & reverse flies, Chest- Pushups and Incline Chest press, I did 2 rounds of each of these exercises, and I even threw in a set of bicep curls at the end!

APPLE PICKING… was next on the list of things to do for our Fall weekend

Beardsley’s Orchard in Shelton, CT

We arrived at Beardsley’s Cider Mill & Orchard in Shelton, CT around 10am when they opened. We decided to head there early because the weather wasn’t looking promising and we wanted to make sure to pick some apples before it rained! As you can see it was cloudy!

There were 5 different kinds of apples available to pick: Liberty, Macoun, Cortland, Junagold, & Gala

We sampled a few (shhhh) My favorite was the Macoun but they were all quite tasty. My least favorite was the Junagold, it was a little too dry and not as fruity/sweet as the others. We ended up buying close to 13 lbs of apples which we shared with my family. I am looking forward to making a new apple dessert this week! Overall it was a great weekend.

HAPPY FALL!

The weekends are filled with temptation, get togethers, parties, weddings, showers, birthdays, dinner parties, etc. Don’t use the 3 nights this weekend as an excuse to eat whatever you want or as an excuse not to exercise. Even if you add in a short 20-25 minute walk on Saturday and Sunday, that could turn into an extra 200 calories burned. Instead of splurging all weekend long choose something that’s 200 calories and indulge with less guilt. 200 calories could be a small slice of veggie pizza, a glass of wine, or a scoop of your favorite ice cream!

If you are heading out for the night, try and eat a small 100-150 calorie snack before hand to help curb your hunger before happy hour at the bar, or a dinner party at your friends house. You will munch less at your party. Examples of snacks: veggies & hummus, a small apple with string cheese, yogurt, fruit, a small serving of almonds or pistachios, etc.

We all know what can happen when we are running on empty… we make poor decisions and we take in more calories!

On a different note..  I am loving the weather lately. Marc took today off, and after I finish up my morning clients we are driving to the middle of CT to go hiking!! I am very excited to do something different and also to exercise in a setting outside of the gym!

Here is a random picture from this week that made me laugh. Take a look at Cooper and his buddy trying to pull a branch off a tree. They attempted this for about 10 minutes with no success but it was fun to watch Great teamwork.

Quick belly shot picture at work (27 weeks + a few days) getting bigger