June 2016 Goals

Happy June everyone! It has been a while since I've posted personal goals here on the blog. I did monthly goals when I first started this blog back in 2013 (wow!) and I switched to semester-ly goals when I started grad school, but I gave myself a break over the last year to just be present and enjoy my life outside of school and my first year as an honest-to-goodness full-time professional adult-type person. Now that we've had about a month to take a breather from the craziness of the school year, I thought it would be a good way to structure my slower summer life a bit by setting some new goals and sharing them here!

Keep a vegan/vegetarian diet Monday-Friday

If you've been reading along with my blog or watching my vlogs through 2016, you'll know I've been more conscious about what I'm eating when it comes to meat and dairy products. It's mostly for health reasons, but also for moral reasons as well. I'm generally a pretty tired person and it's so annoying to me when I want to get 100 things done but all I have energy for is to zone out in front of some Netflix. Your body does have to work harder to break down meat and dairy products, expending more energy that you can be using to do other things! I decided I'm going to take a crack at cutting out meat during the week to see how I feel. Hopefully it does bring me more energy and better health!

Read at least 3 books

I'm in the middle of two reading challenges (which I'll be giving you all an update on later this month!) and I have some more spare time to sit down and read during the summer so I need to embrace it! I just asked for some recommendations for books to listen to on my runs and my lovely Facebook friends gave me a bunch of titles to check out. If you have any books to recommend, please leave the titles in the comments! I would love to check them out.

At least 5,000 steps a day

This goal doesn't really have any rhyme or reason other than making sure I get my body moving every day. I spend a lot of time on my butt and as I mentioned in my first goal, I can generally be a very tired person. Hopefully setting this goal will make me feel more energized an motivated to move around every day. I am training for an October marathon for the 4th year in a row so I'm hoping that 5,000 won't be too tough to attain, especially on days where I actually have a training run scheduled. I just need to make sure I'm still moving on my off days!

Join a local running group

Danielle, my friend from work, and I are both training for an October marathon ad have decided to be long-run buddies once our training runs get up into the double-digits for mileage (honestly it makes all the difference to have someone you can run with!). I'm super pumped about that, but I also want to find a group in the area that consistently meets and runs for fun. This is something I've been wanting to do for months now, but now that I have some more free time during the week to commit to a group I felt like this was perfect time to try a few groups out. I've already scoped a few out on MeetUp so I'm planning on attending a few of those events and maybe making some new running friends!

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I have a lot coming up in June that I'm very excited about! Brett will be officially done with grad school by the 18th which of course calls for a big celebration, and I also will be moving back in with him at the end of the month after a year and a half of living apart! We are so excited to start another new chapter of our lives and see where the journey takes us from here! The summer time is always such a wonderful time for us - we're both a lot less busy, are able to spend more time together, and are generally far happier because of it. Add in these two milestones and it makes for a wonderful season ahead! :)

I will be giving you an update on my goals at the beginning of July to keep myself accountable. 

I hope everyone has a wonderful June and that you've just as excited about summer as I am! <3

Considering a Diet Change

For a little while now I've been interested in researching different diet regimens. I've looked into paleo diets, raw diets, and even vegan diets, and I have to say that the prospect of changing my lifestyle to something a bit simpler really interests and excites me. At this point in time I don't think I could 100% commit to a full lifestyle change (i.e. going 100% cold-turkey vegan... no pun intended) but focusing more on a plant-based diet, weening my dairy and red meat intake, and trying to live more in accordance to a high-carb, high fruit, vegetable, and nut diet is something I feel like I can do.

I've been watching a lot of Freelee the Banana Girl (Warning: A lot of her videos feature graphic photos and videos of animal abuse in the meat and dairy industries and can be very hard to watch, but I applaud her for being courageous enough to speak out about the truth.) and she talks in length about living a high-carb vegan lifestyle and the health and fitness benefits that the lifestyle can bring you. She is very unapologetic and upfront, and a lot of people are put off by her in-your-face approach to her opinion on the importance of veganism, but she is speaking the truth throughout her videos and you can't blame someone for being real, even if it makes you uncomfortable.

Again, I caution you to tread carefully on this YouTube channel if you don't want to see the graphic images of animal abuse, but her videos are fascinating and she does a good job about suggesting awesome recipes and ways to approach a vegan diet. Here a couple of her videos regarding veganism that I find very interesting and a peak into what she does on YouTube. *Don't worry - I've watched all of these all the way through and there are no graphic images or videos of abuse! There is footage of a roadkill snake in the last video, but other than that, you're good.*







Again, I don't see myself going full vegan or even full vegetarian at this point in my life, and I'm not sure I ever will. There are some things about the vegan lifestyle that I don't 100% agree with (i.e. not eating honey because that's harmful to bees) but transitioning my focus to having a more plant-based diet is really appealing to me. I don't think I'm going to stop eating fish or completely stopping eating meat, but I'm open to cutting down on poultry and red meat. I'm probably not going to completely stop eating cheese (I mean.... c'mon. Cheese.), but I am open to springing more for almond/soy milk over dairy milk (I already do this occasionally). 
I know that changing your lifestyle can be challenging, but I'm looking forward to experimenting and finding a diet that works for me and is healthier overall. I'm curious to see how this goes and I know there will be slip ups along the way, but right now I'm feeling inspired to make a positive change!
Have any of you tried an alternative diet like veganism, paleo, or a raw food diet?  Please let me know in the comments! I would love to hear about your experiences!