Life is Short Make it Count. #22

Life has been INSANE lately. We are currently in Colorado on our hiking trip. As you probably know, we were supposed to going to Washington and Oregon. Those states are and have been devasted by wildfires and/or wildfire smoke. We made the decision to change our plans since the air quality was so bad. We changed our flights to go to New Hampshire and Maine instead. Since it was so last minute, we were having a hard time finding any affordable lodging in Maine this time of year. There were only a few options near where we wanted to hike and they were way out of our price range. So, we ended up changing our flights again to fly into Denver (really the only place out west we could find that didn't have terrible air quality). We decided we would hike near Aspen and drive up to Wyoming to hike. Now they are calling for quite a bit of snow in Wyoming so we will see if that portion of the trip actually pans out. No matter what happens we will make an adventure out of it!

While all of this was going on, Hurricane Irma was on the way. As you know, it devasted every place that it touched - Georgia included. We live in NE Georgia, about an hour outside of Atlanta. At our house we got a lot of rain and really high winds but no damage, thankfully and we also only lost power for a few hours. We actually had a few of our neighbors over to play games and we ate chili (this recipe) and cookie cake! There are still many people in North Georgia without power! While we didn't experience the devastation that many other states did, a huge tree did fall on my uncle's house. No one was injured as it hit the carport and deck area but it's still heartbreaking. This is the house that my grandparents lived in until they passed and it has been in my family forever. This weather with the wildfires, hurricanes, and flooding lately is frightening! We are so thankful to the first responders, linemen, and others who go into harms way when disasters like this occur. If you have experienced anything from these storms and need any assistance please reach out to us! We donate through charities but would love to help any of our readers who need it, if we can!

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Nutrition

We've been all over the place. Since we were planning on leaving earlier to go on our trip we didn't have any food in our house so we had to eat out more than normal. We went to a place near us called Diablos (similar to Moes and Chipotle). Since a lot of you ask what we order here, we typically order similar to what we do at Moes or Chipotle. You can read about our order here and also some tips when you do order! We also ate at Zoes Kitchen. We forgot how good it was! I was very impressed with my salad (and the salad dressing) and Scott loved his power bowl too!

Zoes Kitchen's Greek Dressing has an impressive lack of ingredients!

Workouts

Can I just say that I am SO EXCITED to start the She Sweats 12-Week Transformation when we get back home?! While it's good to change up your style of workout occasionally, I have discovered that I love (and my body respond the best to) weight lifting workouts. I plan on taking a few days off when we get home and then going into the transformation plan which will take me until the end of the year! I don't think I've ever been so excited to start a workout plan.

On Sunday (the day before the tropical storm hit us) we were going to drive up to North Carolina to hike but we got about an hour from our house and realized both of us forgot our wallets! We wouldn't have enough gas to get back without needing them so we turned around and headed to Blood Mountain, we got almost all the way there and decided we just weren't feeling it. We went home so we could finish planning our trip and decided to go back to Blood Mountain and hike that evening. I'm glad we did because it was beautiful and a great warm-up hike for our trip! Now that I look at my pictures, we've done Blood Mountain twice since I last posted. I guess it's officially our go-to hike!

Home Updates

We made some of our own artwork and one of my friends made some signs for us too! Our house is coming together and taking on a mind of its own with the travel/adventure theme! I'll do a tutorial on these DIY Canvas signs soon!

Below is a picture of all of the signs my friend, Sarah, made us. She did a fantastic job and even Rambo loves them! If you want one of these signs or want her to make a custom one, contact her. She does great work and has a great heart! :) She's on Etsy under lilrusticseastar, here is a link.

Until next week, have a good one! Let us know if you ever have any questions or comments! I've loved hearing from you about the updates! Click here to read all of our updates.

Life is Short Make it Count. #17

Well, these are quickly turning into monthly updates but I'm okay with that because I'm all about not stressing myself out over the small things. :)

I'll try to pick up here I left off in this one...For the July 4th holiday, we just stayed at home. We were going to go to the mountains/lake but the weather wasn't so great so we stayed put. On Saturday Scott's mom, sister, brother in law, niece, and nephew came over for a big fireworks show in our neighborhood. The rain delayed the show a little bit but we still had a great time! Some of Scott's co-workers also came over so we had a full house. Sunday through Tuesday we just got some stuff done around the house and went to the pool for a few hours. We met a lot of people on our street so I'm glad we decided to stay home.

They had food trucks for the fireworks show and we actually ended up eating twice because we were there so long and we were still hungry! I ordered the chicken fajita tacos and Scott ordered BBQ. A few hours later we split an order of BBQ nachos (not pictured but delicious!). We also tried out this canned wine we found at Trader Joes a few weeks ago and it was actaully really good!

We had friends over on Sunday and grilled out. We made the usual: lean mean cheeseburgers (with bison), zesty grilled chicken, sweet-sweet potato cubes, and brussels sprouts (recipe coming soon!).

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We have only been hiking once since our last update (on June 30). It's just toooooo hot down here now. We did Blood Mountain again. We had actually planned to go to the Smokies but we didn't wake up in time. We default to Blood Mountain because it's only an hour from our house and it's the highest peak on the Georgia section of the Appalachian Trail. Fun fact: my dad, who is in his 60s and has had triple bypass heart surgery, hiked over 1,200 miles of the Appalachian Trail!

Hiking Blood Mountain on the Appalachian Trail in Georgia

About a week ago the camera on my phone just quit working. I didn't drop it, get water in it or anything but every time I tried to take a picture it was very blurry and shaky. It worked on selfie mode but I actually hate selfies so I never use that anyway! I was finally able to get it fixed last week. I lost everything on my phone (most of the pictures I was able to save). I'm not the kind of person who freaks out about my phone so it honestly didn't bother me that much. Many of the pictures I was able to save were from our hiking trip last fall and I JUST posted the recap of the first part of our trip...I am just a little late! Here is the link to read more about our hiking adventures in Kootenay and Banff National Parks. I also messed up our He and She Eat Clean email somehow so if you've emailed us and you are waiting on a response, I'm sorry! I combined H&S email with my personal email and it's just a HUGE mess right now!

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Last weekend we were in Florida for a family reunion for Scott's family. We arrived late Thursday night because we left after Scott got off work and we were only there through Sunday. We had an awesome weekend between the resort, beach, pools, the guys playing golf, and just hanging out with family. Full disclosure that Marriott Sawgrass put Scott and me up for free. This was the same resort that we went to last year with his family.

I will do a full trip recap/review soon but below is a picture that I posted a few days ago on Instagram and Facebook, with the same caption I used.

At first I didn't want to post this but it's the only picture we took together. We just got back (at 4 am this morning to be exact) from a very short 2-day trip to the beach for a family reunion. - We didn't do any "extra" workouts just because we were going to the beach. - We didn't live in a box for 4 weeks before and only eat fish & veggies - We didn't spend every moment before going worrying about getting a "beach body"

Have we been leaner? Yes. Could we have "leaned out" for this trip if we wanted? Yes. Could we have "forgotten" our swimsuits so we could avoid the beach altogether? Yes.

But what exactly does that add to our lives? A few pics with abs popping on the beach?! It's not worth it to us. We have a healthy balance of working out & eating a healthy diet. We also skip workouts and eat pizza & ice cream occasionally.

I love the beach because there are so many different body types there. You might be self-conscious but honestly, no one is really paying attention & if they do have a problem with you, it's really a problem they have internally. Don't be the person who wears pants & long sleeves for fear of their body (I know there are some medical reasons one might have to do this). Definitely don't be the one who skips trips completely because you aren't comfortable with your body.

Your life is RIGHT NOW - not next month, year, or next "swimsuit season" when you have the "perfect body". From experience I can say that it doesn't matter how little the number is on your clothing or how small the number is on the scale, you will STILL pick yourself apart. Be free & start living today. 

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Be sure to follow us on the following social media accounts (and snapchat under hesheeatclean) and also sign up for our newsletter so you never miss anything!

Until next week, have a good one! Let us know if you ever have any questions or comments! I've loved hearing from you about the updates! Click here to read all of our updates.

Life is Short Make it Count. #16

SURPRISE! We climbed Blood Mountain again.

We had really nice weather (cooler and low humidity) this week after a very rainy week so we decided to take advantage of it and went on a hike after Scott got off work on Wednesday too. With these long days, we still have time to squeeze in shorter hikes after he gets off! We were actually going to go up to Blood Mountain again but decided to go to Tallulah Gorge instead! It's been years since we visited this state park, mainly because it is very busy on the weekends but we only saw a few other people out there the evening we went! A few years ago me, my sister, and my friend did the Tallulah Gorge floor hike which was AMAZING. It's pretty dangerous and they only allow a certain number of people on it each day (and you have to listen to a safety class first!). There's a sliding rock at the end of the trail that we had fun sliding into a large body of water - it was pretty scary too! You can ready about that hike here.

I posted the picture below on Instagram. The trail we took was 1,099 steps to get this picture! I used to not post as many hiking/adventure pictures as I do now. I'm not really sure why I didn't but I want to show you that not all exercise has to be in a gym and it doesn't even have to feel like exercise. You don't have to run yourself into the ground running multiple miles each day or doing a ton of plyometrics. Find something that you love! We will definitely be back to do the Gorge Floor trail again soon.

Besides our hikes, I took a few yoga/pilates classes and did most of the workouts from the She Sweats Extreme workout plan. I've been having neck problems. I believe they started after we went to Six Flags MONTHS ago, then we moved, and they've just been lingering. I went to the chiropractor and had a few massages, both of which helped a lot but the pain would still come and go. So last week I went and had my neck needled, it was an instant relief. The pain went away completely for a few days and has recently started coming back but from what I understand it could take awhile for it to completely go away. To make a long story short, I've been having to kind of take it easy with some of my moves in order to not strain my neck anymore.

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I TOOK A FOOD PREP PICTURE! I think it has been about six months since I remembered to snap a pic even though we've done food prep pretty much every week.

We made:

• Zesty Grilled Onion
• Lean Mean Cheeseburgers (made with bison from Costco)
• Riced Cauliflower (from Costco)
• Sweet-Sweet Potato Cubes
• Balsamic Grilled Chicken (recipe coming soon!)

And I also remembered to take a picture of our Costco purchases!

Visit this link for our shopping lists and this link for ways to save money grocery shopping.

Until next week, have a good one! Let us know if you ever have any questions or comments! I've loved hearing from you about the updates! Click here to read all of our updates.