RV fitness

One of the biggest downfalls I've noticed in the past year is the weight I've gained since we purchased the RV. I love to cook and the weekends that we're camping I was guilty of lazing around by the RV reading magazines and just relaxing.

My goal this year is to get out of that gravity chair and hit the trail! I've got a FitBit and my new rule of thumb is that I don't get to read or relax until I get to 10,000 steps. So far, by following this rule and by eating a lot healthier, I've lost 8 pounds (still need to lose about 15 to be ready for those pools this summer).

Here are some tips for getting exercise while you're camping:

• Get active early in the day so you can have time to veg later in the day around the fire.
• Bring a comfortable pair of walking shoes and some workout clothes and walk around the campground. You'll be amazed at the campsites you're able to scope out as you walk each and every loop. Next time you're at the campground, you'll be an expert in which site you want to reserve!
• Buy a pedometer. It doesn't have to be expensive. Anything that will tell you how many steps you've taken. 10,000 steps is about 4.5 miles for me.
• Get the entire family to have a contest for the most steps in a day. My kids love this and it helps get them out of the RV even on cold days when they'd rather veg and play their DS games.
• Use your campsite to do a bevy of exercises that don't require equipment. Think back to your gym classes in school. Do jumping jacks, push ups, sit ups, lunges, etc.

Exercise is only half the battle. Watching what you barbecue is the other half! We all love s'mores, but those extra calories are waist killers for sure! Those ribs are delicious, but watch your serving sizes and make sure if you're eating more, that you're exercising to burn those extra calories.

Remember to pack healthy and low-calorie food options like fruits and veggies. Peppers and onions are delicious on the grill as are asparagus and red potatoes. Serve these with a boneless chicken breast or a small 3-ounce portion of steak and you have a really easy and low calorie meal option. Roasted brussel sprouts are really easy to do as well!

The only other advice I'm going to follow is to also try to abstain from having more than one glass of wine or bottle of beer as I sit around the campfire. Really, I'm not a big drinker anyway, but every calorie counts and I might as well save them for the s'mores!

Until next time.

Winter Camping Tips

This is our first year of winter camping in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. We're trying to venture out every other weekend, watching weather reports and trying to find the rare bits of sunshine so that we can enjoy the great outdoors while not being cramped up inside with our two young children on the weekends.

There have been some noticeable differences to us as we go out in the cold weather.

• It's cold. Our little electric space heater doesn't make a dent when the high is in the low 30s. We use it to supplement our furnace which warms up our 31-foot Coachmen Freelander quite quickly.

• It's colder at night. We really don't like wasting the propane (because at over $2/gallon, it's like burning dollar bills) when we can bring extra blankets. But we noticed the extra blankets truly didn't make a dent on really cold nights. We found a pretty cozy solution by buying an electric mattress heating pad. It goes underneath the fitted sheet and has dual controls for both his and her side of the bed. Very nice since we both like different temperatures. For the kids, we decided to buy an electric blanket found on sale after the holidays. Tried it out last weekend and wish I would have just bought individual blankets instead of a king-size blanket. You'd think it would be big enough to share, but apparently not... But that's an entirely different blog topic! Buying these blankets is hopefully a one-time expense and with what we're saving by not running our furnace at night, they will pay for themselves in one season.

Winterization

We also had our rig winterized. Quite a few people poo-pawed this idea since it rarely freezes here in the PNW. But when temps dropped to record lows in December, we were feeling pretty wise.

I found an easy solution to washing dishes with no running water or grey tank access: I just have two dish pans that fit in each sink. One I fill with suds, the other with rinse water. It actually isn't a hardship at all to have find some vegetation in an out of the way spot to drain these. We use 'green' dish-washing soap and scrape our dishes really well so to leave as little trace as possible (we could also find a grey dump station if the water was gross). I warm the water on the stove (during our last outing a couple of weekends ago, the faucet was frozen solid at our campsite the last morning there - was very happy I'd filled my water container the night before!) and then split it between the two tubs with a little cold water to cool it down.

I also use paper plates a lot more and try to do as much of the meal prep as possible at home to eliminate the mess that comes with it.

The biggest challenge I find is not having access to the bathroom in the middle of the night. While this isn't terrible, it sure is inconvenient! But it provides a little extra exercise for the entire family and will make us appreciate the convenience so much more once warmer weather rolls in and we're able to use our tanks again.

What are your best winter RVing tips?