This is sponsored content from BlogHer and Crystal Light Pure Fitness.
Summer is a great time to lighten up. From switching T's to tanks and simplifying daily schedules, I'm all about toning it down and cooling it down. The cooling down part is the best: frozen drinks, ice cream, popsicles (Saw's favorite), limeades. Okay, so I'm a little food-obsessed.
While I do love a ton of sugary things, one of the best and sweetest treats for summer is totally stripped down: fruits. Being a bargain hunter, this means that I can get great pirces on things like blackberries, blueberries, pineapples, raspberries, strawberries--YUM! Fresh veggies are great too, but in the heat, cool fruit is super refreshing. It's also wonderful to know that I'm not consuming extraneous "stuff." Saw loves it too, and I'm always happy to have my kid eating real fruit v. fruit snacks.
As far as drinks go, I'm a little diet-soda addicted, mostly because I like something cool and sweet-tasting without getting all my calories from a drink. If we're talking about stripping it down, drinking something light and low-calorie but made with actual growing things trumps chemically-created confections. Crystal Light Pure Fitness gets its low-calorie sweetness from an all-natural sweetener.
Remember that I am doing a $100 giveaway sponsored by Crystal Light and Blogher, so every comment you leave on my Crystal Light posts is an entry. (Click here for the official rules.) For this week's entry, what are your favorite sweet treats of summer?
Please visit the roundup page so that you can read what more bloggers are saying and enter for more moneys!
And the winner is...DEANNA G!! If you haven't already been contacted by me, please shoot me an email so I can get you the info about receiving your gift certificate to CSN.
Thanks everyone for entering, and look below for another Crystal Light sponsored post. There will be four this month, and every one you comment on gives you another chance to win $100 at the end of the month!
This is sponsored content from BlogHer and Crystal Light Pure Fitness.
There are three main reasons that I want to get back in shape post-baby. Two of them are probably the most common for anyone wanting to be in shape:
1. to be healthy and fit
2. to achieve maximum hotness
Okay, so you might word that second one a little differently. The reality is that most people love the way they look better when they are in their best shape. Being healthy is a fabulous goal, but fitting into my old jeans and being able to feel somewhat decent in a bathing suit are important to me too.
This month I'm getting back to my focus on pre-baby shape now that most of my traveling and crazy times have ended. This means hitting the gym five to six times a week, eating well, replacing any sugary drinks with water and low-cal alternatives like Crystal Light Pure Fitness, and--my favorite--DERBY. My third goal (which is definitely not a mainstream one) is to kill it next season skating with Houston Roller Derby. Right now I'm heavier than I normally am, and this slows me down. Since I typically skate the position of the jammer who scores points for my team, being slower means that I am a weaker jammer. Being a weaker jammer means that I'm not helping out my team the way I need to be, and the last thing I want is to be slowing down my whole team because I'm not in the shape I need to be. For sure I want to be healthy and get back in my pre-pregnancy pants, but what really motivates me is knowing I have a team of people I don't want to let down.
Whether that's a trainer by your side in the gym, a good friend, a sports figure you look up to, or in my case, a whole team of amazing people skating beside you, that encouragement can be the extra boost to meet that fitness goal. You can see the fire in my eyes here that comes from skating alongside my teammates. (I swear it's fire and not just red-eye from my cheap camera.) I am not pushing myself to be my best for me--I am pushing myself to be my best for US.
For another chance to win that $100, who inspires you to be fit? Leave a comment here, and then visit the roundup of fellow bloggers for more chances to win cash. If you want to peek at the rules, click here.
Hands in, everybody, for working together to achieve fitness goals!
Here's another great giveaway from CSN, a fabulous internet shopping source with over 200 stores selling things far and wide: from twin beds to stilettos. That's a comprehensive shopping site!
Here's how to enter and up your chances at winning a $60 credit to shop your heart out:
-leave a comment here (with your contact info, please)
-post a link to this blog or my main blog on your facebook page, twitter, or blog and leave a comment for each of these extras
This giveaway will be open until Sunday, July 10th at 11:59pm. I will announce a winner on Monday! Per my new rules, if you do not claim your prize by responding to my post or email, I will draw another winner.
So I wanted to go ahead and put a few rules down for my giveaways on this blog, since I hadn't. I'll probably make this a permanent page as well for down the road. Here are some ground rules and other logistical things.
-The drawings are random! I do not pick friends, and I do not pick strangers. It is RANDOM.
-Please read how you can enter. Sometimes it's just a comment, and sometimes you'll have chances to win by posting via facebook, twitter and blog. You'll need to email me a link or post in comments so I can see your posts. If you don't tell me, I won't know.
-Check back to see if you won! This sounds simple, but often I don't hear back and have companies waiting for addresses and such to send prizes. You can subscribe or follow or just check back. The best thing really would be to LEAVE A FORM OF CONTACT IN YOUR COMMENT so I can contact you.
-If you won and I don't have contact info for you and don't hear back in seven days, I will be forced to do another drawing. Not because I'm impatient, but often because I have people waiting on me and need to be efficient.
Thanks! And get ready for another great giveaway...
This is sponsored content from BlogHer and Crystal Light Pure Fitness.
It’s summer in Houston—let’s all get outdoors and exercise!! Don’t all of you get up at once.
If you happen to live in a city that’s hot in the summer, like oh, say, HOUSTON, then you’re nodding when I say that you may have to use tricks in the summer to stay active. While winter has that lovely hibernation quality, slowing you down into a funk of sweat pants and warm beverages and television, summer can lull you into the same spot on the couch with a tank top and a frozen drink and trashy summer TV.
As much as I do love being outdoors, to stay active in the summer, the trick is staying INSIDE. Usually this is not my house, because I tend to let dust collect on all my good-intentioned workout DVDs. My gym is five minutes away and has childcare (not yet for Lincoln, sadly), so that’s my number one go-to. If I plan just right, I can also catch up on my trashy TV like E! News. Though I’m sweating, I don’t feel like I’m breathing wet carpet, which is how it feels outside, and I am refreshed instead of like dying at the end of an hour or so.
But if I had my choice, though, I’d just do derby every day. While I'm benched due to C-section, I only skate like once or maybe twice a week, but it's time I cherish. I am pushing myself HARD right alongside other fun and diverse women. It's a workout and a social event and a little breather from being a mommy. Did I mention that we skate inside? Sawyer also gets inspired by my safety-conscious helmet-wearing.
The thing to keep in mind whenever you're working out especially in the summer is hydration. I'm honestly not sure how I did not shrivel up and die for the first 30 years of my life because I did not drink water. Period. energy drinks, sodas, diet drinks, coffee--but no water. I hated it. Please don't ask me why, since water has no taste.
Until I got pregnant with Sawyer and my midwife required it, I did NOT drink water. Then I discovered that water, too, needs a trick. In my case, that's ice. And lots of it. Now I would say that I drink something like 64 ounces a day of icy water and feel parched if I fall short of that.
Crystal Light is another great trick to get people drinking water. Studies have found that people who drink Crystal Light drink 20% more water. How about that! Even if you don't need tricks, Crystal Light Pure Fitness is fabulous for replenishing electrolytes and keeping you hydrated without tons of calories or artificial junk. Great for athletes or even just for normal people trying not to dry up in the summer heat.
What tricks do you use to stay fit or keep hydrated during the summer?? Leave a comment on this or any of the three more weekly posts sponsored by Crystal Light this month for a chance to win $100. (If you don't do math, that's FOUR total chances to win on my blog.)
Here are my three winners for Snikiddy Snacks Baked Fries samples:
Ginny
Lisa
Sarah Rothell
Please shoot me an email with your addresses and I can get your snacks shipped! And everyone get ready, because we have a new month-long running giveaway starting Monday where you can win $100!
Perspectives on pregnancy and motherhood by a roller-derbying, cloth-diapering, couponing, baby-wearing, home-birth-attempting, God-fearing new Mom trying to figure it all out. And no matter what people say about pregnancy, I still hate pickles.
Questions? Comments?
istillhatepickles@gmail.com
