Sitting behind a desk all day can not only be a strain on you health mentally (bad lighting, lack of Vitamin D, closed in by four walls with phones ringing while typing away...) but it can be a strain on your physical health as well. With eight hours or more in a stationary position your back and core muscles suffer as well as your metabolism. Irregular lunch breaks coupled with stress can lead to eating unhealthy foods not only as a convenience but as a form of comfort as well. (When you see legal movies with rooms full of Chinese take out they are not joking.) So to keep my cravings in check I try to keep a few healthy foods in my desk and available at all times to help fill in some of those missing macros I may not get in my other meals throughout the day.

I had been meaning to write this post for a while now, but instead of just doing a quick, one hour type up, I wanted to take the time to really put everything in here, which means I had to wait util I had the actual time to do so. :)

About six months or so ago my cousin contacted me with a crazy idea to enter into a charity ride even in Charlotte known as the 24-Hours of Booty. 24-Hours of booty is a 24-hour bike ride which takes place annually in Charlotte, Columbia, and Indianapolis and raises money for cancer research as part of the Livestrong Foundation. Fifteen years ago a man by the name of Spencer Leuders rode the "booty loop" for 24 hours in an effort to raise money for cancer research. With the support of his family, friends, and neighborhood, the event grew into what it is today. It's a ride for every day people to do extraordinary things.

Over the years I have been building up enough confidence to dabble with writing my own recipes. To the dismay of some, the majority of these recipes involving making my baked goods more healthy, chocked full of veggies, and devoid of the ingredients one usually wants when eating something hot from the over: sugar, sugar, sugar!

The word "natural" is such a loaded word. Essentially everything comes from nature, even the things we don't specifically like and are terribly bad for us. But when we see the word "natural" on our food and clothing and personal care products we believe that these products are as close to their original state as they can possibly be. When I came up for the recipe for these muffins, I made an effort to use foods that were as close to their natural state as I could. With the exception of the whole wheat flour and vanilla extract, all of the ingredients are fresh (and some local). There is also no sugar in these muffins! The sweetness comes from the honey and grated apple.I used this method to substitute using applesauce in the muffins. You can also use real maple syrup instead of honey and the eggs can be replaced to make them vegan.

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This past weekend I/we spent some 24-hours total helping one of our friends "fix up" his brand new house. Lighting, painting, cleaning - you name it and it was going on. In fact, it is still going on. After stopping over on Saturday morning just to drop a few things off, the weekend turned into an excursion back and forth to the Home Depot and up and down a ladder a few hundred times... all this after a little 5 mile run in the AM at the gym!

Chicken is one of the most versatile of proteins out there: you can bake it, fry it, turn it into a soup or stew, steam it, stir fry it - it's pretty much endless. And at 38 gram of protein per cup, very low saturated fat, and is naturally low in sodium, you can't beat this lean meat.

I love smoothies! Who doesn't? I love how quick, tasty, and convenient they are. There are some days I could probably sustain myself solely on fruity smoothie goodness (whether it be my super tight schedule or just because I crave them), but, this is not entirely healthy. In fact, you'd be surprised to find out how unhealthy most smoothies actually are.

Let me explain...

Even though I am going gluten free for Lent, I needed to share this recipe for my Tutorial Tuesday..I mean THURSDAY! I had wanted to make my own whole wheat bread last week to eat with the following day's dinner, but I am not a fan of having to sit and wait...and wait...and wait for my breads to rise. I also wanted to make some whole wheat bread since I had a large opened bag that I needed to start using up and we had been eating so much of the white stuff the past week. I went online and found the 5 Minute Flax Wheat Bread Recipe from momdish.com and decided to give it a try.

I began using My Fitness Pal last year when I started to exercise more - running, weightlifting and the such. It began as a way to monitor mostly my carb intake but U used it to keep track of all of the food I was eating, water I was drinking, as well as monitor my calorie intake and compare it to the approximate number of calories I was burning throughout the day. You never realize just how many calories are in certain foods, but, just as importantly, you never realize sometimes how little calories are in things as well. After a few months of posting I began to notice things about my body that were just feeling "off." I was having headaches and was going through periods of sleeplessness as well as feeling sluggish. I would have periods of off and on energy and sometimes my bowels would completely disagree with me. Coming from a family riddled with autoimmune issues, I know what the effects of food can have on a person. Luckily, keeping track of my food helped me to figure some things out and learn.

A few weeks ago we had some friends over to let our boys have a little "play date" fun. In my 1950's-esq fashion, I needed to have something baking! You should always have something baking when you have company! It's like some ingrained female/maternal instinct I have always had despite the fact that never remember my mother making anything from scratch. I mean, even Cher in the movie Clueless put a stick of cookie dough in the oven when Christian came over for their "date." (Maybe not the best reference since she did, after all, set fire to the oven. But still...)

Now that we are settling into the new year, it's time to talk about resolutions. I'm sure a few of you have already broken that promise you made on December 31st after drinking a little too much champagne. Whether it be to loose weight, quit smoking, or to do more for others, we all have "resolutions" we make in an attempt to transform ourselves into the more perfect "me" we have always wanted to be. Health and fitness are probably the most talked about but least followed through resolutions people make every year. For some, time is the issue: I try to fit in an hour at the gym but my other commitments get in the way; for others it can be a helluva adjustment to transform eating habits from bad to good and fall off the bandwagon shortly in.

Right now Facebook, Twitter and Instrgram are flooded with inspiration of health and wellness. And, like many, I, too, have a health-related goal for this year. My goal for the year is not to start a new fitness class or loose x-number of pounds; this year I will run 1,000 miles.