I'm Back!

Okay, actually I've been back for two weeks. I've just been way too busy living life and trying to get to bed early to do any blogging. I think from now on I'll try to blog about once per week to highlight awesome new recipes, restaurants, and products that I come across. Speaking of which, I finally got a chance to make the Sugar-free Snickers Ice Cream recipe I found! Well, technically I started making it and then my amazingly wonderful boyfriend finished it. It was only after starting the recipe that we realized an ice cream maker was needed. Never fear, there's a way around that. But alas, I could not find my hand mixer so my super fantastic boyfriend whisked the ice cream by hand!! Isn't he the best?

Thankfully the ice cream was totally worth his pain and suffering and I've eaten two bowls today (tiny bowls because I'm too impatient to wait for it to defrost enough to scoop). I must admit that while it is free of added sugar, and free of refined sugar, it still does have sweetener via the chocolate chips. Some might not see that as a problem and obviously it didn't stop me from indulging, but I just wanted to put it out there. Ideally I like to avoid sweeteners altogether since they don't exactly keep me from craving the real deal since my body doesn't care if they're sweetened with evaporated cane juice or refined sugar.

But back to the ice cream, seriously, make it, eat it, thank me later!

Blog Break

Okay, this is Saturday's blog but I'm writing it Sunday. This weekend has been jammed packed! Saturday I went to Shape Magazine's Summer Shape Up with Jillian Michaels and got a serious butt kicking (well Jillian would use another word, that girl has a serious potty mouth!). Then I met up with some new friends for acro yoga play time. It was so much fun, I love finding people to practice with since you need at least one partner so I can't do it on my own. And on top of it these girls are super cool and fun to hang out with!

Sunday (today) I asked Mike to teach me to surf. Again. We tried this at least 5 years ago and had very little success but I wasn't working out hardly at all back then and things are slightly different now so I thought I'd give it another shot. I wasn't terribly successful at actually standing up on a wave but I still felt good that I wasn't nearly as frustrated or tired as the first time I tried. I can't wait to try again!

I'm going to take this week off because I'll be traveling and because I just need a break! Even though I don't leave for a few days I am taking the whole week off so I'm not even going to post a blog for today (Sunday). See ya next week!

Breakfast:

Oatmeal, banana

Snack:

Feel Good Hearty Granola Bar

Lunch:

Speedy Veggie Bowl

Snack:

Banana

Dinner:

Basmati Stuffed Grilled Peppers

Exercise:

Jillian Michaels Body Shred

Acro yoga

I can't

For some reason this week has been filled with inspiring articles and videos about kids and fitness. Everything from an article about how telling kids they can't do something can actually change their ability to be able to do it, to a video of kids talking about how much they like yoga! And then the week culminated with a really amazing video by Always about what it means to do something "like a girl."

These were all very touching for various reasons but I think the biggest one is realizing how much we are held back and how much it affects us as an adult. I know I find myself saying "I'm not strong enough" or "I can't" very often. I am constantly falling back on my lack of background as an athlete to explain why I can't or might never be able to do something and somehow taking comfort in that. Until the next time I am reminded that I really want to do it!

It's actually kind of crazy if you actually make a conscious effort to stop saying "I can't..." You don't realize how much you say it until you try to stop. Like working on 3-position cleans and doing a full squat each time. I kept wanting to say "I can't squat bellow parallel with a flat back due to my tight hip flexors." While it's true that I have issues with my hips and glutes, my coach remarked that sometimes I did it correctly and sometimes I didn't. He was only correcting me when I didn't do it right so I thought I was doing it wrong every time. But when he mentioned that I did it right sometimes it kinda blew my "I can't" out of the water! I think the truth is "It's uncomfortable and takes too long to do it correctly so I'm sacrificing my form." Put like that I realize that it's not that I can't but that I don't want to put in the effort.

That small shift is kind of amazing though. Suddenly you realize you can do anything if you are willing to put in the effort. And sometimes the effort is quite immense, time consuming, and even painful. But knowing that if you are willing to endure it, you CAN do it, well that changes everything!

Breakfast:
oatmeal, strawberries, banana

Snack:
Feel Good Hearty Granola Bar

Lunch:
Speedy Veggie Noodle Bowl

Snack:
Feel Good Hearty Granola Bar
Apple

Dinner:
All Hale Kale Bowl from Yellow Fever

Exercise:
CrossFit
yoga

Portions

I don't post my portions because I don't keep track of them. I try to follow the Blue Zones Project Power 9 mantra "Hara hachi bu"which basically means to stop eating when you are 80% full. Well, that's pretty arbitrary actually because how do you know what 80% feels like until you reach 100%? But I get the idea, basically stop eating before you actually feel full. It makes sense to me because I can think of plenty of occasions where I have eaten until I felt full and then 20 minutes or so later I felt like I was going to explode!

But that also doesn't mean that I eat tiny portions. In fact, it takes a large portion of vegetables to get the same number of calories that are in meat. I usually can't eat that much in one sitting so I snack throughout the day and sometimes break my dinner up into two meals an hour or more apart. And speaking of portions, watch this girl eat 51 bananas in ONE DAY! Watch her stomach grow and then shrink back, it's crazy!!

Breakfast:
oatmeal, strawberries, banana

Snack:
Feel Good Hearty Granola Bar

Lunch:
Veggie Wrap with Hummus from Trader Joe's
Antioxidant Warm Quinoa Bowl

Snack:
Nectarine
Baby Carrots
Almonds
Apple
Feel Good Hearty Granola Bar

Dinner:
Raw Lasagna

Exercise:
much needed rest day

Stress eating

I had a stressful day and I'm very prone to stress eating. Thankfully I had plenty of snacks and because of routine, I wasn't tempted by the office snack table. Late in the day my manager very sweetly tried to cheer me up with chocolate so I had one piece. She tried to get me to take more but I declined.

I didn't feel like working out at all after the day I had but I had told some people from church that I would be there so I made myself go. No one showed up but since I was there I ran a mile and did some yoga on the astroturf field. This is my new favorite workout! The run warms me up nicely for yoga. When I ran out of flows I started practicing inversions and arm balances and gave myself some sweet tricep bruises. By the time I was done I had completely forgotten about my day so I'm really glad I stuck it out.

Day 45

Breakfast:

Oatmeal, strawberries, banana

Snack:

Feel Good Hearty Granola Bar

Lunch:

Grill Pressed Eggplant Wrap with Spicy Tahini Sauce from Trader Joe's

Snack:

Baby carrots

Chocolate covered macadamia nut

Nectarine

Almonds

Dinner:

Speedy Veggie Noodle Bowl
(subbed Bragg Liquid Aminos for coconut aminos and left the sugar out)

Exercise:

1 mile run

Yoga

My yoga journey

So yesterday I realized that I first started practicing yoga about 10 years ago! I used a Denise Austin yoga DVD a couple times a week to try to get in shape after gaining weight at my first desk job. I remember how much I despised Denise and her super peppy personality asking me to do crazy hard things and acting like it was no big deal. I actually still have the DVD! Unfortunately I got bored with it after a while since it was the same thing every time. Over the years since then I took an occasional class here and there probably averaging once a month at best. And I wondered why I never got any better!

Then this past October I found myself with some extra time on my hands and a painful foot injury that wouldn't allow me to run or jump. I decided to try upping my yoga sessions to three times a week. Within a few sessions my foot got better (even though it hadn't improved after five weeks of rest) and I was hooked. I can't always take classes three times a week now but I've gotten to the point where I can pretty much make up my own class, which usually devolves into head/handstand practice.

Speaking of which, I think that was the other thing that really got me pumped on yoga. Once I discovered inversions and arm balances, yoga became fun! I had tried crow pose over the years and failed miserably every time, but that was the only arm balance I had ever been exposed to. Certainly no headstands or handstands!

I know you might be thinking "I'm not flexible enough for yoga." But I have news for you, you are the exact person who should do yoga! Yoga isn't for flexible people (well, they can do it too if they want to), it's for people who want to become flexible. Regular yoga practice will increase flexibility which is great for people who sit all day and/or do workouts that make them tight. In fact, it's my cheater way to get my stretching in after a run or CrossFit since I really don't like stretching. Somehow when you call it yoga it becomes more interesting and I tend to spend more time doing it.

Day 44
Breakfast:
oatmeal, strawberries, banana

Snack:
Feel Good Hearty Granola Bar

Lunch:
Spicy Lentil Wrap with Tahini Sauce from Trader Joe's

Snack:
Feel Good Hearty Granola Bar
baby carrots
almonds

Dinner:
Antioxidant Warm Quinoa Bowl
Raw Lasagna

Exercise:
1 mile run
yoga

The magic number

So many people seem to judge progress by the number on the scale. I don't know how I escaped that desire to know how much I weigh. I was exposed to all the usual things. We had a scale in the house and I would always weigh myself when I went to someone else's house and they had a scale. I also distinctly remember my Barbie scale which showed her weight as 110 lbs when she stood on it. I remember learning various metrics for determining what the ideal weight was. Yet somehow I stopped caring about my weight pretty early on. Well, not my weight, but the actual number. I still struggled with body image like everyone else when I was growing up.

I'm not sure if I was just too cheap to buy my own scale when I moved out on my own but I got used to not knowing exactly how much I weighed. I learned to judge my weight based on how my clothes fit. Now I can't imagine worrying about the number. It seems so arbitrary. Haven't you had that experience where you find out what someone weighs and it's a shock? I know I have. So many factors go into how much your body weighs like bone density and muscle mass.

If you are really looking for results to motivate you I think taking measurements is a much better way to track progress. That's basically what using clothes does, just in a less precise way. I have a pair of jeans that I've owned for at least 10 years. At one point they were so tight on me I could barely button them. That was right around the time I started my first desk job and was sitting for 8 hours a day. I'm glad I still have them so I can continue to monitor my weight!

Day 43
Breakfast:
Oatmeal, banana

Lunch:
Raw Lasagna

Dinner:
Antioxidant Warm Quinoa Bowl

Exercise:
Yoga