Get 10K Steps A Day (Even During Self-Isolation)

A few years ago, my husband  surprised me with a Fitbit for my birthday. While the competitive spirit in our house escalated a tad (all in good fun, mind you!), it definitely made me aware of my movement every day. I wore it to school every day, and it seemed that every time one of my students came to school after having a birthday, they were also sporting a Fitbit and we checked in on each other during the day to see where we were at. They sure motivated me, and I even started walking laps around them at recess! Such fun. 

Now, I don’t wear it nearly as much as I used to, but the habits it helped me to create have stayed. I realized how active (or how inactive, really) I was and I want to stay healthy. Movement is part of that!

I was always active and involved in sports and always absolutely love running (and went faithfully every morning!), but since getting a full-time job, my movement has decreased quite a bit. When I was in school, I’d be either playing sports, at the gym or running all the time, and got at least 5 days a week of activity. I do still try to exercise for myself at least 5 times a week but now I’m much more aware of how much time I spend unnecessarily sitting throughout the day. 

To be honest, this post has been sitting in my drafts for quite some time! Now that so many of you are working from home and maybe not getting as much movement as you are used to (or should be getting), I thought I would finally finish off this post. 

I’ve read that sitting and inactivity has been coined worse than smoking. Even the Mayo Clinic has quite a bit to say about it. 

I’m no step master, and a lot of my activity doesn’t even involve steps, but I decided to share some easy ideas for you to try and get closer to ten thousand steps a day.

Set a timer for every thirty minutes and get up and move!

Walk around the room while you’re reading, but maybe make sure it’s a clear space or look up once in a while, okay?

Walk around when on the phone. Kill two birds with one stone by calling up those you care about who are also stuck in their homes. Have a great, fulfilling conversation and check-in while wearing a track in your carpet! You can also do this outside.

Tidy your house. You’d be surprised how many steps you can get tidying your house or doing chores. I score large when I do laundry; going up and down the two flights of stairs really adds up when there are several loads to do!

Join a challenge. Fitbit is one easy way to do it if you’re using one to track your steps already, and there are so many apps out there that are social! Add some friends and set up a challenge! It’s easy AND fun! 

Walk or run in place during commercials if you’re watching TV. Just get up during commercials and get the blood flowing. Do a lap around the room or get some pushups in (not really steps, but movement!). 

Use a different bathroom. Maybe opt to use the powder room on the main floor if you’re working upstairs in your office or vice versa!

Perhaps you could even drink more water so that your trips to the bathroom are more frequent!

Speaking of the home office, think about a standing desk or even a treadmill desk! 

Park in the far end of the parking lot, if you need groceries, but don’t be unsafe. Make sure it’s well lit if it’s dark out and be vigilant as you are walking - even better if someone is with you. But practice social distancing!

Just go. Instead of asking someone to bring you something while you’re lounging, go and get it yourself!

Go for a Walk. Or a run. I left this for last since it’s so obvious! Get outside and get moving! Not only will your body thank you for it, your mind will as well.

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How have you been getting in your steps lately?

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Bible Verses for When You Feel Afraid

With all of the craziness that is going on in our world in the last few months, I just thought I’d drop in and share a few of my favorite verses to meditate upon and to pray when fear creeps and lurks at the edges of my life. They remind me that I am not in control - which is a good thing, because my God has everything in His hands. I won’t say much more and let Him speak instead.

I sought the Lord, and he answered me

    and delivered me from all my fears.

Those who look to him are radiant,

    and their faces shall never be ashamed. (Psalm 34:4-5, ESV)

Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. (Isaiah 41:10, ESV)

When I am afraid,

    I put my trust in you.

In God, whose word I praise,

    in God I trust; I shall not be afraid.

    What can flesh do to me? (Psalm 56:3-4, ESV)

Say to those who have an anxious heart,

    “Be strong; fear not!

Behold, your God

    will come with vengeance,

with the recompense of God.

    He will come and save you.” (Isaiah 35:4, ESV)

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9, ESV)

God is our refuge and strength,

    a very present help in trouble. (Psalm 46:1, ESV)

Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.” (Deuteronomy 31:6, ESV)

And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you.

 “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (Luke 12:22-34, ESV)

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. (1 Peter 5:6-7, ESV)

for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. (2 Timothy 1:7, ESV)

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High

    will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress,

    my God, in whom I trust.”

For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler

    and from the deadly pestilence.

He will cover you with his pinions,

    and under his wings you will find refuge;

    his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.

You will not fear the terror of the night,

    nor the arrow that flies by day,

nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness,

    nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.

A thousand may fall at your side,

    ten thousand at your right hand,

    but it will not come near you.

You will only look with your eyes

    and see the recompense of the wicked.

Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place—

    the Most High, who is my refuge—

no evil shall be allowed to befall you,

    no plague come near your tent.

For he will command his angels concerning you

    to guard you in all your ways.

On their hands they will bear you up,

    lest you strike your foot against a stone.

You will tread on the lion and the adder;

    the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot.

“Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him;

    I will protect him, because he knows my name.

When he calls to me, I will answer him;

    I will be with him in trouble;

    I will rescue him and honor him.

With long life I will satisfy him

    and show him my salvation.” (Psalm 91, ESV)

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. (Matthew 6:34, ESV)

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

    I will fear no evil,

for you are with me;

    your rod and your staff,

    they comfort me. (Psalm 23:4, ESV)

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we can confidently say,

“The Lord is my helper;

    I will not fear;

what can man do to me?” (Hebrews 13:5-6, ESV)

The Lord is my light and my salvation;

    whom shall I fear?

The Lord is the stronghold of my life;

    of whom shall I be afraid? (Psalm 27:1, ESV)

God is our refuge and strength,

    a very present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,

    though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,

though its waters roar and foam,

    though the mountains tremble at its swelling. (Psalm 46:1-3, ESV)

You came near when I called on you; you said, ‘Do not fear!’ (Lamentations 3:57, ESV)

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. (John 14:27, ESV)

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. (1 John 4:18, ESV)

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;

    and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;

when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,

    and the flame shall not consume you.

For I am the Lord your God,

    the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

I give Egypt as your ransom,

    Cush and Seba in exchange for you.

Because you are precious in my eyes,

    and honored, and I love you,

I give men in return for you,

    peoples in exchange for your life.

Fear not, for I am with you;

    I will bring your offspring from the east,

    and from the west I will gather you. (Isaiah 43:2-5, ESV)

But whoever listens to me will dwell secure and will be at ease, without dread of disaster.” (Proverbs 1:33, ESV)

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? (Matthew 6:25, ESV)

And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.” (Acts 18:9-10, ESV)

He said, “Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Then Elisha prayed and said, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. (2 Kings 6:16-17, ESV)

...Jesus said...“Do not fear, only believe.” (Mark 5:36, ESV)

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. (Philippians 4:6, ESV)

The Lord your God is in your midst,

    a mighty one who will save;

he will rejoice over you with gladness;

    he will quiet you by his love;

he will exult over you with loud singing. (Zephaniah 3:17, ESV)

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What Bible texts bring you comfort when you are feeling afraid? Let me know below!

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“Are you feeling afraid today? Here are some Bible verses to meditate on when facing fear.”

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Potato Chickpea Curry (Great for Meal Prep: Instant Pot Recipe + Stovetop Instructions)

I’m one of those kinds of people who always has to think thoroughly through every decision I make about larger purchases. I spend months, sometimes years, researching things before I invest. The Instant Pot (Get one on Amazon here) was no exception to this. I was hesitant at first, and took years looking up the pros and cons and finally took the plunge. Now I’m wondering how I ever lived without this magical pot! Meal prep is a dream come true now. I think my favorite part of the InstantPot is the cleanup - which is virtually zero!

It took a little while to get used to all the buttons and beeps, but once I did, I started getting more creative with the things I made in it. I now use my Instant Pot several times a week!

I took a poll in Instagram a few weeks ago, and you all wanted some more Instant Pot recipes and now I can finally share one with you - a simple potato chickpea curry that will keep you fed all week!

This post uses affiliate links

This potato curry is so great for a quick meal prep. I love putting it over wild rice and it lasts a week in the fridge. A week of lunch with little effort (and money!) sounds great to me. 

What’s in the curry:

Potatoes, carrots, onion, ginger, spices, tomatoes (canned for convenience) and...chickpeas (also known as garbanzo beans)! Everything is quickly chopped up, put in the pressure cooker, and cooked up! Set it and forget it (who remembers that commercial?)!

Note on the garbanzo beans: you can use canned, but I use dried beans that I’ve cooked previously. The Instant Pot is great for that. Find a tutorial here. You can freeze them to use whenever you like (I freeze them in 3 cup increments; a can is about 1 and a half cups).

I love curries because they are so easy to put together, nutritious, and versatile!

Potato Chickpea Curry

What You Need:

• 1 tbsp olive oil

• 4 potatoes, chopped

• 2 small carrots, chopped

• 1 medium onion, chopped

• 3 cloves garlic, minced

• Ginger, 1 inch minced

• 1 tsp each: Salt, Cumin, garam masala, curry, turmeric, chili powder, 

• 1 cup water (or plant based milk - I like coconut)

• Can of crushed tomatoes (Or stewed or diced, blended)

• 3 cups garbanzo beans (two cans if using canned)

• 1 tbsp fresh parsley (optional)

What to Do (Instant Pot):

1. Turn on your pot to Sauté setting.

2. Add olive oil and wait to heat.

3. Add onions and cook 3 minutes.

4. Add garlic and ginger and cook another minute.

5. Add carrots and potatoes and spices and mix together.

6. Turn off pot and add the water, tomatoes, and garbanzo beans.

7. Manually set the pot on high for 7 minutes, making sure to seal.

8. Once timer goes off, manually release the pressure

9. Adjust to taste and serve. You can serve this with rice or even naan.

What to Do (Stovetop):

1. Add olive oil to skillet and sauté onions until translucent. Add garlic and ginger and cook until fragrant.

2. Add carrots, potatoes and spices and cook until the vegetables are a little soft.

3. Pour in the water (or milk), tomatoes, and garbanzo beans.

4. Allow the mixture to simmer for 15 minutes, until the potatoes are cooked.

5. Top with fresh parsley and serve with rice

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What are some of your favorite meal prep meals?

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How we paid off $92,170.21 of student loans in 4 years

We are finally debt-free! Well, not entirely. We do have a mortgage, but it doesn’t seem like debt since we would be paying rent if we didn’t have one. But anyway. I’m talking about student-loan free! I actually had a goal to have it completely paid off by the time I was 30, and I made it with over a year to spare! 

I had student debt of $92,170.21 CAD (about $70,600.00 USD) in loans. I didn’t really want to make this a “how-to post.” Instead, it’s a “how-we” post. I’m just sharing how we were able to get $92K plus interest (yikes...so.much.interest) paid off in 4 years and one month (on small incomes!). I don’t think we celebrate these things enough, nor talk about them nearly enough. I feel like this was an accomplishment in my life - finally paying for the education I got, so hence the post. 

A little bit of background: I would have never taken so many loans had I been educated on them. They told us about credit card debt in school, but never about student loans. Anyway, you already know I took them out. When that six month grace period was over and we needed to start paying loans back, I was not able to work. Because we were living out of the country, I was not allowed to submit that I was unable to work to hold off the interest incurring. That was a huge bummer, but we sucked it up, and started making payments - freshly married and living on one small income. Exceeeeept, they weren’t really payments. We were only able to afford barely above minimum payments, which meant we didn’t get any principal paid off. Year two rolled around, and I was finally able to work, however, I was barely making enough for groceries, so not much changed in the paying back area. I finally got a full-time job after that, and we knocked them out in 2 years after that.

So what did we do?

Well,

We faced the numbers

I feel like student loans are made complicated when it comes to paying them back. I mean, I could not get a straight number on the statements they were sending. Setting up a login so that I could see everything in depth and even making a few phone calls to the loan agents made life so much easier easier. Sure, it wasn’t pleasant seeing that huge number on the computer screen, but once we knew exactly what it was and what the numbers broke down into (principal, interest, etc.), we could come up with a solid plan. Using a loan calculator helped us make a goal and set how much we would need to pay off each month in order to succeed. That also was a little scary considering the salaries of a private school teacher and a pastor are already tiny, but we buckled down and accepted it.

We paid well above the minimum

Minimum payments are kind of a cruel thing. You basically pay the interest and don’t really end up paying anything off after months and months - even though you swear money is going in some kind of pot. Unless you are paying above the minimum, you are really not paying off the loan. My student debt was actually broken between 3 separate entities and during our repayment time, we always paid above the minimum for all three loans. How? Well, 

We lived off one income

Once I finally started working, about 85% of what I made (after tithe and charitable donations) went into paying off loans. On top of that, a percentage of what the husband made also went towards loans. So nice of him, considering he had zero student debt. That meant that we continued living as we always did - on one very small income. And it meant that we were putting almost $3,000 into our loans each month. I’m so glad we had this opportunity - it definitely gave us a leg up.

We Used the Debt Avalanche Method

As I mentioned, my student debt was from 3 parties. We took an evening to do some intense math and decided to pay off the one with the highest interest first, while still putting some into the other two. It just happened to be the largest one. Sure, it took a while, but after that, it was easy to knock out the other two in that descending order as well. We had also looked into the snowball effect, but for us, doing the opposite was better, since we were determined anyway. Plus, we hated that we were paying so much interest and wanted to minimize it as soon as possible.

We budgeted

A budget was key to paying off loans quickly. With two full-time incomes, it was tempting to put the extra money toward something else instead, but we both knew we wanted freedom from the debt that was just getting larger the longer we took to pay. There was one point that we started paying a little bit less in order to save up for a downpayment on our house, but we maintained paying over the minimum payments, and by that time, the largest $40K loan had already been paid off. A budget that allowed us to save a bit was necessary. We had to get creative sometimes to stay within budget, but that’s another post for another time. 

We did not incur more debt

Aside from the mortgage we got in year four, we refused to take on more unnecessary debt (of course, the mortgage was not unnecessary but more on that in a different post). For example, instead of buying a car from the lot with a payment plan during that time, we saved up for one year and purchased a used vehicle with cash instead. This saved us a lot and our car has served us well! Another thing we used was a credit card with cashback. We have never paid interest on our credit card because we never spend more than we actually have. As a result, cashback really is cashback, and we took advantage of that.

We took advantage of bonuses and gifts

Christmas bonus? Loan. Birthday cash? Loan. You get the idea. The extra amounts earned or given we were able to put in helped speed up the process of knocking the loans out. 

We celebrated wins

You had better believe there was dancing involved when we hit milestones in our repayment journey. We pumped ourselves up and celebrated - because how dang exciting is getting closer (and actually seeing that you’re getting closer) to your goals!? Extremely.

We gave

We are fully of the opinion (and I think fact) that God takes care of us when we are faithful. We decided from the very beginning to be faithful and return a 10% tithe on everything we earned. There were so many times the numbers in our bank account didn’t make sense; it seemed like we had more than we should many times. And it still is that way. Jesus’ math doesn’t make sense sometimes, but I am grateful!

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Did you take out a student loan? How did you approach paying it off when the time came to do so?

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Spring Bucket List

As I know I’ve mentioned before, I love Spring. Really, I love both of the “in-between” seasons (Fall and Spring), but I have a special spot in my heart for the Spring. Maybe it’s because I was born during this season, or maybe I’ve only happy memories from it. Either way, I really enjoy Spring. Last Summer, I sent out a season bucket list to those of you who subscribe to the Good Intentions Guide, but this time, I’ve decided to publish my own Spring Bucket List right here on the blog! If you have any more suggestions for me, leave them in the comments below!

1. Fly a kite

2. Go on a picnic

3. See the cherry blossoms

4. Surprise someone

5. Have a tea party

6. Enjoy the rain

7. Find a Farmer’s Market

8. Do some Spring Cleaning

9. Plant an herb garden

10. Do Pilates outside 

11. Walk along the beach

12. Climb a tree

13. Learn to identify a new type of bird

14. Learn to identify a new type of tree

15. Keep fresh flowers

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What kinds of things are you including on your Spring bucket list this year? Are any of these on your list?

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