September is one of my favorite months. The air is getting crisper, leaves are starting to turn colors of red, orange and brown in New England, and pumpkin season is officially here! With all the things that I love about September, it’s hard to narrow it down to just a few, but here are my four favorite things– September Edition!
Pumpkin Everything
From pumpkin Spiced lattes to pumpkin energy bars, pumpkin is popping up everywhere. I can go on about my favorite pumpkin snacks, but there is one that I am in love with right now — Pumpkin Spiced RXBAR .
RXBAR’s are hands down my favorite energy bar. I take them with me whenever I’m traveling or need a healthy snack. They contain minimal ingredients from whole foods and are sweetened with dates rather than any refined sugars. Add pumpkin to the mix, and it literally tastes like heaven.
You can find them at most grocery stores now or online, but I get mine at Trader Joe’s.
And if you can’t get your hands on a pumpkin flavored one (since they are a limited edition), chocolate is my second favorite flavor.
New Fitness Class
With the season changing and school starting back up, September is a great time to try something new. Whether it be a new class, a new exercise, or a different workout schedule, I like to keep my current workout routine interesting by mixing things up every month.
This month I tried a new class at BSC Lab (BFX) called BFX Endure. This class is a smaller group setting where you break up into teams. With an intimate group setting, there is more incentive to push yourself harder. The class focuses on metabolic conditioning through intervals. The challenging exercises combined with rest periods help to maximize energy storage and burn calories.
If you have a BFX studio nearby and want to try this class, I would recommend having had experience with HIIT or interval training before doing so.
Favorite Granola
I love adding something crunchy to my smoothies so that they feel more like a meal than a drink.
Paleo Pasion Foods’s Maple Cinnamon Granola has been my new obsession lately.
It’s a grainless granola that still has a nice crunch to it. It’s slightly sweetened with maple syrup but not overly sweet so that it doesn’t make you feel guilty after eating it.
Some granolas are packed with sugar. Always be sure to check the label for serving size and grams of sugar. I typically like to stay under 10 grams of sugar per half a cup.
My Wedding Anniversary
September is a special month for me since it’s my wedding month. What’s even more special about writing this post today, is that we got married exactly one year ago. So today being our one year anniversary I decided to share something more personal with you instead of the usual health and fitness stuff.
One thing my husband Matt and I love to do is travel to new places. When we travel, we like to be active and work in some adventure. For our anniversary we are celebrating by hiking Mt. Mansfield in Stowe. We also did a hike on our honeymoon in St Lucia.
In St. Lucia there are two beautiful Pitons. One of the Pitons is only 2,200 ft and 3.2 miles and has a nice hiking path to the top. Since Matt and I have done a few challenging hikes before, and this one wasn’t that high, we decided to hike the Piton.
We were told that we had to travel with a hiking group to get to the top of the Piton. Matt and I figured it would be easy for us to just go on our own but apparently only about 30% of people make it to the top.
We definitely underestimated how challenging the hike actually was. So much so, that we only brought one small bottle of water…to share. By the time we got to the top, we were fighting over the last ounces of water left.
The reason the hike was so challenging was because of how vertical it was and it didn’t help that it was 95 F with 100% humidity. It was so tough that one couple had to turnaround and go back and we hadn’t even gotten to the first quarter of our hike. I’ve never seen a person sweat as much as the guy from the couple who didn’t make it to the top did. One person that did make it with us was some military guy from London that stopped about 4 times to have a cigarette break and he wasn’t even sweating. Oh, and he brought a Piton beer with him and cracked it open at the top.
Here he is ahead of me taking a picture.
Luckily one of us didn’t pass out, although I came close. Seriously. Moral of the story is, always be prepared and make sure you get acclimated before performing physical activity in hot and humid weather.
Speaking of weather, it wasn’t hot on our wedding day nor did I pass out, but it rained, I mean poured. I shed some serious tears leading up to our first look when the rain really came down (coincidentally at the same time that we were about to start our ceremony). It was like it was meant to happen, it was so dramatic. I even have a few pictures to show for it.
Photos Taken by the talented Kelly Dillon Photography.
But the rain actually made our day really special. Really, it did. Imagine if it was sunny and beautiful out? It would have been so boring and less dramatic (jk, I totally wish it was blue skies so that we could have had our ceremony outside). Perks of having a wedding in New England, you never know what the weather is going to be like. But rain is good luck, right? That’s what people tell you to make you feel better.
The most amazing part of our wedding day was that despite all the rain and 30 mph wind, we had the best night of our lives. We trucked it out as soon as the rain let up and got our photos outside.
Here are some of my favorites from our day.
Photos Taken by the talented Kelly Dillon Photography.
Happy Anniversary to my amazing husband who puts up with my crazy healthy eating habits, who is patient with me when I need to take a picture of the food I make before we eat it, and who supports me and shows me love every single day.
