Wanaka's Fitness Spot

I have to chuckle. A couple recent ‘events’ has me wondering, “Is my nest empty or is it new?”.  All my adult life I’ve been told that I don’t look my age and I especially take pride in that fact since I only seriously started my fitness and health journey at age 50.  I didn’t […]

How many of you have ever had salmon patties?  I love that stuff but did not have any canned salmon here yesterday.  I did however have canned mackerel so I used that instead to make our last meatless Lenten meal I call easy canned mackerel patties. Yum!  A nutritious dish full of protein 🙂 Easy […]

Spring has been deluding us since that groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil showed up however many weeks ago and told us it was right around the corner.  So today when it seemed like it was here, I took my fitness outside – the temperature being a crisp 71 degrees and the sun shining brightly, I went […]

There’s one more week to Lent.  Some of you may know that for us Catholics, one of the things Lent means is that we give up eating meat on Fridays.  I love seafood and I like eggs so I enjoy this season of our Church.  I like the idea of getting closer to God, eating […]

It’s been a bit of a while since I’ve posted anything on my Blog. I know….I’ve been a slacker aka procrastinator – and I admit it. During the month of February, I was dealing with a lot of challenges. I had several family members pass away; I had to work on my taxes cos my […]

Here’s another food post for Asian cuisine lovers like moi involving my favorite – noodles 😀  I’ve always made Pad Thai from the box – where you get the rice noodles, the liquid sauce and then you add your meat, vegetables and nuts.  I decided to go one step further and make it from scratch […]

I was going thru my photos and getting ideas of what I could post about.  I found this photo of my last vegetable garden harvest from December which must have gotten lost in the holiday shuffle.  So I’m calling it my last empty nester harvest. We had a variety of sweet potatoes this year – […]

Healthy eating is always on my mind even if I don’t eat clean 100% of the time.  I look for an alternative way to make dishes I like that I’ve eaten in restaurants or purchased in the store and feel I can make just as well.  Since it’s been winter weather – aka soup weather […]

The last couple weeks of my Holiday Fitness Journey wasn’t anything to write home about.  I gave in to some dang holiday temptations instead of buckling down to eat cleaner. And I paid the price for it! I did not lose any more pounds or inches but instead gained 1.  🙁 Therefore, my total loss […]

So who would have thought that December temperatures would be so mild? I took a couple pictures today while out for a walk.  I choose to stay cooped up inside when it’s so cold outside but needed some fresh air.  This is what I found in my driveway.   Yep, these are dandelions!  Just a […]

I’m back to say that Week 5 and 6 of my Holiday Fitness Journey ended in a 1 lb. loss each week!  Woohoo!  Thankxgiving fell into this time frame and I didn’t work out all 5 days that week, but I’ll take the loss.  Some day I think I want to do a journey and […]

I love healthy eating and now have a new favorite salad I wanted to share with other cucumber and tomato lovers.  I did not grow up liking tomatoes at all.  In fact, I remember when I was 13, my mom bribed me with a pair of dress shoes that I wanted.  But being the bull-headed […]

Week 4 of my Holiday Fitness Journey ended and I’m a bit disappointed in myself.  Yep, it’s getting ugly!  I had a 2 pound GAIN from the week before. Hello! That means I’ve only lost 1 pound in 4 weeks.  But there is good news in the fact that I’ve lost a total of 4 […]

I said I’d come back to post the good, the bad and the ugly.  Well, the good news is that the first week, I lost 3.5 pounds!  Score! The bad news is I had to work my part-time Temp job assignment the next week so didn’t get in a whole lot of workouts and didn’t […]

I started my refocused fitness journey a couple days before I actually came up with the idea to blog about it.  The first day was two days after we got home from our mini road trip.  Since I hadn’t done my regular dvd workouts for 5 days, I was a bit slow moving doing it.  […]

I have been an empty nester for about 15 months and the last trip I took anywhere was 4 years ago.  I flew three times in 2008 and got burnt out then didn’t want to fly anywhere in 2009.  Our daughter announced her engagement in the spring of 2010 and got married in the summer […]

  As I look out my windows and see the tractors, combines, semis and other assorted farm machinery in the cornfields and watch them travel back and forth on our gravel road, it saddens me.  It is harvest time around here and it’s definitely fall.  The trees are turning their beautiful colors of red, orange, […]

Are you a baby boomer or empty nester who does not want to give up your youthful appearance?  Or really someone of any age – a person with unwanted wrinkles that you want GONE?  lol  There are so many (too many!) products on the market telling us how we can get our fountain of youth […]

  The other day a Twitter friend said he was having this healthy dish for dinner.  He called it Broccoli & Shiitake Stir Fry with Black Bean Sauce.  As much as stir fry is one of my (many) favorite dishes, I thought it sounded great and figured I could throw those 3 ingredients together, add […]

In the spring, I posted about my workout at the dentist.  You know, the one where my heart rate rocketed becos of my fear of the dentist?  I go to the Dental College at a local University where I haven’t visited for about eleven years.  I stopped going becos I had completed the work that […]

Are you an empty nester who feels lost, lonely and generally depressed about life now that your home is not blessed with the presence of your children or grandchildren or someone you have been a caregiver for for a long time?  Do you feel you don’t have a focus now and/or your days are boring, […]

If you’ve been reading my blogs, you know that I usually work out to my Beachbody and a few other non Beachbody DVD‘s.  And you might also know that this summer I’ve been taking a bit of a break from them and doing outside activities to get my heart rate up and get my exercise […]

This is the season for zucchini squash, a very healthy vegetable that we have growing in our garden and love to eat.  I’ve been doing a ‘garden workout’ I simply call “harvesting” 🙂 over the last week or so and we have been enjoying the healthful benefits of this summer squash.  Today I am posting […]

This has nothing to do with fitness, health, working out at home, helping others, coaching, making money from home or being an empty nester.  It is just a little tidbit post about my lifestyle.  It’s about cornfields and sunsets in Iowa. I live in the country away from town on a gravel road.  Once a […]

“Gramma, look at me!”  “Hey Gramma, let’s play Hide & Seek.”  “Can the cats come in the house, Gramma?”  These are just a few of the things I heard one weekend when two of my grandsons, aged 9 and 4 came to spend the nite.  We always have a good time…and they expect me to […]