Shaping Up

Let's begin here. With lactose intolerance.

Oh bloggy blog it hasn't been easy being lactose intolerant. When we finally realized a year ago why my stomach hated me so much, I had to give up milk which is - literally - my most favorite food in the whole world. Well, to be honest, milk creates my two favorite foods in the whole world: cereal and ice cream. I tried the other stuff like rice milk, almond milk, and soy, but it just wasn't the same. It's the taste of straight up cow milk that I enjoy so much. And even though I swallow those lactose pills, I still get mild tummy aches. So sadly, my body doesn't feel the same way about milk as I do. But you know what happened right after I stopped drinking dairy? I lost seven pounds. Just like that. It was the easiest diet I didn't know I was on.

And then we lived in Southeast Asia for two months and ate nothing but rice and veggies. No breads, no dairy, only small amounts of fresh chicken for meat. We both dropped 25 pounds between the two of us without even trying. We came home with smaller waists, tiny stomachs, better nights of sleep, and a bunch of energy. Hmmm.... interesting.

But as you can probably guess, ever since we returned those pounds and our former bad habits have been slowly creeping back into our lives, and we've decided to start trying everything we can to nix our slow weight gain and bad health in the bud. For the past couple of months we've been experimenting with some new lifestyle changes that have come out of our recent "ah-ha" moments with our health. Like how walking every day can melt away the pounds. How fresh, raw foods can completely change your entire outlook on life. How small changes as well as big ones can have an enormous impact. And I think it's about time that I begin documenting our journey into a healthier lifestyle here on the bloggy blog.

Are you ready to take this journey with us? I hope so, because we're gonna need all the help we can get!

So what was the first step in our new healthy lifestyle? Well, we were in dire need of new office chairs when we realized our sore backs and horrible postures weren't doing us any favors, but the pricetag for great ergonomic chairs was a bit staggering. Enter Mr. Jacob Willis, a photographer friend of ours who spends hours in front the computer just like we do. We got a tour of his office one day and saw that he's been using a giant exercise ball as his office chair for a long time. I've seen people use them before, but to hear a fellow photographer whole-heartedly recommend one gave us the push we needed to spend the forty bucks on a pair of our own.

So for the past few months we've been bouncing around on our exercise balls while we work. And guess what? They're fantastic! I can feel that my lower back and abs are a bit more toned, I have much better posture while I'm sitting all day, and they're just plain fun to roll around on when I'm doing grunt work here in the office. I know this is small change, but it's just one adjustment out of the many big changes with our new lifestyle here at Casa de Youngren.

Wanna get your own? Check them out here. And you have to get the biggest size possible (75cm). The other ones aren't tall enough for most desks.