So far this semester, I have been doing my best to exercise regularly and stay active. My Nike Fuel Band has been helping to regulate how many steps I take and how many calories I burn per day. On days that I walk to class, I walk so much that it is easy for me to hit my goal for the day (which is 10,000 steps). But on the weekends, when I don’t have to walk as much, I have to make a conscious effort to get outside and do something active. I am making sure to go to the gym or go for runs this week whenever I can find the time. But next week is going to be another story. Next week begins spring break for the University of Florida. I will be in Key West with ten of my friends and although I am very excited, I decided to take some precautionary steps to make sure that I don’t get too far off track in my steps to be more healthy and active. Vacation can be a very hard time for people to exercise and eat healthy. I have experienced this firsthand. It is easy to make excuses like “I’m on vacation! I’ll exercise when I get back to the real world”. Next week, I am not letting myself make excuses like that. I am setting goals for myself so that I can make sure to hit my fitness goal every day of spring break. In the Keys it will be so warm and beautiful outside so I will be taking a short walk on the beach everyday of spring break. I will walk either in the morning when I wake up or in the evening as the sun is setting. I have put reminders in my phone so that I will be sure not to forget my goals. My friends and I have also signed up for some cool activities to do during the week. One of them is a bike ride around downtown Key West. We found an awesome bike rental place where you can rent bikes for the whole day for only $10. The other activity is a cool snorkeling experience at a coral reef. We booked the snorkeling trip through Sunset Watersports. I know that both of these activities will help me to stay active and moving during the day instead of just lounging around by the pool. These are just a few of the precautionary steps I’m taking to ensure I don’t deviate from my exercise plans! Of course eating healthy can go a long way too. Vacation is a good time to spend lots of money on unhealthy foods. But, I have decided to kill two birds with one stone by packing some healthy snacks for our trip. I have encouraged my friends to do the same! I am packing a cooler full of fruits, veggies, lunchmeat, and cheese to make sandwiches. I am bringing Gatorades, bottled water, power bars, and trail mix. This way, when we are at the hotel and start to get hungry, we have healthy snacks waiting for us. I think this will save my friends and me a lot of money so we don’t have to go out to eat as much. I hope these ideas will help me this spring break to keep my healthy promise in mind! I know it might be tough, but setting these goals aside will definitely help. Who knows? I might end up doing one of my favorite abs exercises, too! But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves!

How To Lose Arm Fat

My sister and I came across another workout video and we had to try it. We both agreed that our arms could use a little toning. Being a soccer player my whole life, I am used to running, cardio, and leg exercise. I have never had to work out my arms though, so they are pretty weak. We found some weights in our garage and started up the video. My arms were not used to lifting weights at all and they are still sore today! I will definitely be doing this workout again soon!

10 Min Abs Workout -- At Home Abdominal and Oblique Exercises

This weekend, I was home for the weekend and decided to be creative with my workouts. I found a couple at-home workouts that I did with my sister. One thing we worked on was abs. After trying a couple different exercise videos we finally found this 10 minute long video with a huge variety of ab exercises that work out abdominals, obliques, and much more.

For class this week, I had the opportunity to read Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think. As soon as I started reading Don’t Make Me Think I was immediately hooked. The writing style was so candid and humorous. The way that Steve Krug writes is so conversational and I could tell why his books have been popular. I agree with him in many aspects of the book. One recurring theme that Krug uses is the theme of keeping things simple. I agree that simplicity is very important for creating a good website. Often when I am online looking for something, I find myself getting discouraged if the specific part of the website that I am looking for is hard to find. When it comes to the Internet, convenience is better. I don’t like looking around for something. It should just be there when I need it. Krug definitely goes along with this. He even named his book after it, with the clever title, “Don’t Make Me Think”. There are some new things I learned about creating websites from this book, though. One thing I thought was particularly interesting was the idea of eliminating “happy talk”. Krug wrote about happy talk saying that it doesn’t convey any useful information and instead it focuses on saying how great the website is as opposed to explaining what makes the website great. Krug goes on about how important it is to omit needless words in general. Grabbing the attention of the reader is the most important and often they skim over big paragraphs of excessive information. Krug uses examples like comparing page names on websites to L.A. street signs. He says the page numbers need to be big and in the right place like street signs or else people could overlook them. As I have learned from this book, people don’t read pages… they scan them. I know I am personally guilty of doing this as well. Reading this book has made me aware of this fact and I now know that when creating a website I will make sure to highlight important parts of the websites in big letters and bold colors. That way, if users are on a mission they can easily access the info that they need and also the info that I want them to see. Another very important piece of advice that I have taken away from reading this book is the necessity of getting the message across with a good tagline, blurb, learn more section, etc. In my opinion, the best way to portray your message is in a catchy and informative tagline. According to the book, “A tagline is a pithy phrase that characterizes the whole enterprise, summing up what it is and what makes it great”. I learned that good taglines are six to eight words, an amount that is long enough to convey a full thought and also short enough for readers to easily absorb. An example that the book uses as a good tagline is from a breakfast blog. The tagline reads “In search of the best eggs in town”. The tagline is clever and lively. It also makes me think that my blogs are on the right track to having catchy taglines. I made a blog last semester about food and the tagline I used was “the search to find the best Mexican food in Gainesville”. In the future, I will continue to use clever and personable taglines because it is apparent that they are essential to creating a face for a website. From reading this book, I have learned a lot about the basics of web design and creating a user-friendly and easy-to-operate website. Simplicity and usability are key in the process.

Yesterday was such a great day. I finally had the opportunity to run the 5k benefiting Childrens' Miracle Network Hospitals. I ran the race with my friends Lauren, and Aubrey. We finished in just under 30 mins and it was a perfect start to the day. I have decided that I am going to make it a habit to wake up early on Sundays and be active. It starts the day off on a good foot and makes me so much more productive. by 9:30 A.M. I had already started my day and run over 3 miles. On a normal Sunday I would still be sleeping at that time. Here's to more productive and active weekends!

I have been wearing my awesome Nike Fuel Band everyday since I got it. I honestly think that a Nike Fuel Band is an awesome investment for people like me. Although, they are about $100, it has made me so much more active. It inspires me to reach my goal of 2,000 fuel points per day. I take the stairs instead of the elevator and I work out more in order to reach my daily goal. Below is an image of my fuel points from last week.

I just registered for a 5k run this weekend! The run will be Sunday morning around campus and it benefits the local Children's Miracle Network Hospital, Shands Health. I have been running a few miles a day in preparation for the run.