Gardening is exercise too...and oh the steps it's worth!

Good morning.  Well I realized my "daily" motivation is not daily if I don't write something every day! Duh! 

But Friday and Saturday I didn't do much on my computer....I was busy planting flowers, veggies and fruit in my beautiful gardens.  If you don't know me well, I'm a flower girl and I simply adore gardening. 

Did you know that moderate gardening is worth 116 steps/minute (if you're counting steps).  Yesterday I dug holes, planted flowers and spread mulch for 7 1/2 hours. Well you do the math(that's equal to 52,200 steps!)  That's almost a week's worth of steps if you're trying to get in 10,000 steps a day.  I'm a little sore today, but not near what I thought I'd be.  I'm sure all the time spent at the gym and in fitness classes has paid off and my body must just be thinking "this crazy little gym rat is at it again".

If you're counting steps and working at getting in 10,000 in each day don't forget to count your other activities during the day.  Here's a link to a chart that gives you some of those equivalent steps for daily activities and various exercises.  http://www.stepup.excellusbcbs.com/stepChartPop.jsp

Oh and check out this cool recipe for little apple pies "in the apple". I found it on Pinterest and they came from a website called "The Domestic Dillettante
 http://domesticdilettante.com/2012/01/11/applepie/ 
These little pies sound delicious and you can substitute the regular sugar with some Truvia to cut calories.

I'm always looking at other people's blogs about fitness and found this one to be pretty interesting http://liamrosen.com/fitness.html#part2   From time to time I will put a link to other blogs and fitness websites that you'll look at and think....."Geeze Louise....that girl or guy is like what?....19 years old.....of course she/he can be in great shape!  What are you thinking Peggy?.....I'm over 60!!!"  But I'm here to tell you that age is just a number.  You may not want to be as skinny as some of these young kids ( I know I don't want to be), but some of them have some pretty good thoughts on exercises or yummy healthy recipes. As my trainer says.....Yes you will age, but don't put yourself in an "OLD" box.  You don't slow down because you "get old"....you "get old" because you slow down!

I love this visual (it's from the blog  http://forthesakeofpretty.tumblr.com/page/18


Well those are my thoughts for today.  Have a wonderful day.  Eat healthy, get off the couch and go for a walk....unless you gardened for 7 1/2 hours yesterday....then you're due for a day of rest (your body does need to rest!).....so if that's the case then meet me down by the pool....it's going to be 87 today.  Ahhh it's great to live in Texas!

Ciao Bella