I love Christmas..

Christmas is such a great holiday. No offense to anyone out there who doesn't celebrate Christmas in the same, happy times to you too.

Last night was dinner with family and friends. We went to an amazing new restaurant the opened up in Norwell call "the Fours." It was very comfortable and the food was delicious. I'm being more health conscious when picking the proper meal in a restaurant. My choice was the arugula salad with filet and toasted pine nuts.

A better way to eat for a more healthy option would be to eat clean. Eating clean, things like fruits, vegetables, nuts, berries and proteins. My favorite things to eat in following these rules are honey coated cashews with sesame seeds. You are allowed to have a little bit of honey in my rule book. If you want to know more about eating clean, I would check out a book called the "Paleo Diet" which essentially incorporates eating food the way people did before processed, perserved and pesticied things came into play. All of these "P" words cause poor digestion and many terrible diseases. Our health has declined significantly over the last 20 years, and more people are theorizing that lack of proper nutrition could be the cause. (I believe it is)

The reason I believe nutrition is the cause is because I take supplements and essential oils. The supplements help me be free from a horrible disease called "asthma" which I felt imprisoned by my whole life. When I stop taking the supplements, my misery returns. I also take essential oils to help with healing. I have avoided 5 colds and beat the swine flu in 2 days from these remedies. Nothing is more amazing to me than how the stuff God put on this earth to grow, is used to heal us. The stuff man made, well that's a whole other topic of discussion...

Exercise and nutrition go together. We all need to eat healthy and exercise regularly. As a personal trainer, you would think we all follow the rules 100%. I'm one to be honest, the truth of the matter is that when you grow up with bad habits, they die hard. I love pizza, icecream, sweets and especially man made carbs. With a clean diet, I am really understanding how much I love these things. I crave them, and my mouth salivates over something to calm the crave. People say that this too passes, however, I find it extremely challenging to cleanse my body of the things it shouldn't have and rely on the foods it should.

I'm big on rewards based on merit. If you have eaten well 6 days a week, then on the 7th day you should be allowed to eat something that you are really wanting to have. As long as you moderate on your reward, I believe that this method is a solid nutrition routine. I also like to tag an exercise amount on how much I eat. If I want to eat a slice of pizza, then I have to complete 40 push ups for every slice. This way I'm either motivated for the punishment, or deterred by it.

This week is going to be completely busy. I'm so excited for Christmas and looking forward to a mini vacation as well.

my Work out for today:

12 sets of 5 push ups
15 sets of 8 burpees
3 sets of 20 jump squats/20 jump lunges
jump rope 2 sets 2 minutes
lunge 10 yards/bear crawl back 10x

Body weight exercises are a great thing to attempt daily. You don't need equipment, and there are no excuses for getting it done.

Your friend in health,

Sarah A. Servant