Last week my boyfriend, brother and his dog headed up to Nederland, CO to go on what we thought was a medium difficulty hike.  It turned out to be a 12 mile round trip hike right up the side of a waterfall… It was totally worth it though – it was so beautiful!

When I started on my journey of living a clean lifestyle I knew it would be a slow one.  If you are looking to change your lifestyle as opposed to just doing a diet it is much more of a transformation.  I feel like diets have a beginning and an end and you start full throttle into them.  A lifestyle change however is a slow and steady transition with perhaps a blurred beginning but definitely no end.

Part of living clean for me was to get more exercise.  Not only do I not have a ton of extra cash to sign up for a gym or to take yoga/pilates/Pure Barre classes but I have learned – even if I have already paid in advance for classes – that I don’t always keep myself accountable for getting up at 5:30 to drive to a gym to get a workout in.  When you live in Colorado though, you can’t help but be outside during the summer.  Living with B’s brother and his dog has been great motivation to get out and moving during the summer.  We have been working on taking some awesome hikes and when they are as beautiful as the ones that we have been doing with the amazing company I have been doing it with, it definitely doesn’t feel like exercise.  But let me tell you what – my body definitely was thanking me for it!

Exercise doesn’t have to be in a gym or running down a path, it is just focusing on getting up, moving and doing something that makes you happy.  For some people that is running, dancing, or going to the gym at 5:30 – for me it’s being close to nature and I feel so lucky that I am healthy enough and live in an incredible state that I can take hikes almost any day of the summer:)

Here are some more pictures from the hike:

(How could you not love ‘exercise’ when you get to do it with this sweet puppy?)

Look at how beautifully green it was!  It was incredibly dense with tress – amazing!

We were hiking next to these falls almost the whole way up!

The beautiful lake at the top – B and his brother brought all of their fishing gear up to get some fishing in.  I didn’t get a picture of it, but they caught a gorgeous Green Back Cutthroat that had the most amazing colors – they released it back into the lake of course:)

Sleep puppy at the top – it was a long hike for a puppy!

~Happy to live in such a beautiful place~