Balance.

I truly believe in the power of balance. Especially in the balance of healthy eating, physical and spiritual activity. That’s why I’m not beating myself up for slacking on paleo over the Easter weekend.

Where did I find a balance? Even though my eating habits weren’t on-target with my paleo goals, I did manage to work in quite a bit of exercise over the holiday weekend…tipping the scale back in my favor ever so slightly.

Yard work fun. When I was about 12 years old, my dad decided to redo the landscaping around our entire house. That meant edging/digging out all new flower beds around the entire house, filling those beds in with mulch and topsoil, flowers and shrubs, and spending a lot of time and effort to make it happen.

This past weekend, he managed to make me feel like that 12 year old kid again by asking me and my boyfriend to help him spread fresh mulch around the house for the Spring season. To add to the activity, we also had to do the same thing to my grandparent’s house. It was a lot of exercise and work packed into a short weekend, but I feel great.

The lesson. Landscaping may seem more like a chore than a workout, but my muscles were quite sore by Sunday. I managed to work a bit of everything into a total of about eight hours of work. Back, shoulders, core, biceps, lots of legs…it was well worth the effort! So next time you have an opportunity to do some yard work, I highly suggest it as an alternative (or additional!) workout.

Have you experimented with alternative (non-gym) workouts? If so, I’d love to hear about them in the comments section below.

A crazy little thing called fun.

The weather was amazing yesterday. I’ll take 80-degrees and sunshine any day, especially after the winter we just had. Anyhow…after a morning of running errands (Easter Bunny surprises for the nephew), I couldn’t stand to just sit inside and have a lazy Sunday. And let me tell you, yesterday was anything but lazy.

I started out simply taking a stroll around the neighborhood and talking on the phone, but the sunshine and Spring blooms kept calling my name. So my stroll turned in to a solid 3.5 mile power-walk, immediately after which I picked up my boyfriend and went to the football field.

Yep – the football field. Remember…this blog is half about getting out and playing like a kid again for some legitimate exercise. And that’s exactly what we did. I learned how to punt, kick-off and kick a field goal. Plus, I got even more exercise when Greg decided to break out the soccer ball. The 1.5 hours went a bit like this: Ashley kicked, Greg caught the ball. Greg kicked the ball way over Ashley’s head, she went running after. So I ended up getting some good cardio work out of the deal!

You would probably think we were done after that. But no. We were so energized that we decided to go to open gym for two hours of tumbling action! I wish I had photos to share, but I was too busy having fun to even think about it — just like a kid who’s too busy playing outside with their friends to realize they are late for dinner.

Any thoughts on what my next ‘kid adventure’ should be?