Nutrition

eating goals this week

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After four months of working with my holistic guru, I have grown in my ideas of nutrition and eating choices. I have learned to embrace non-dairy milks, kale, and diverse grains. My awareness of eating behaviors and consumption has increased and helped me to change both physically and mentally. It has been a great experience.

This week, I’m going to need major accountability for my action steps. The second one in particular….

  1. incorporate more naturally sweet foods into your daily diet (this is to try to curb cravings for bad sweet treats)
  2. refocus on water intake, work up to half your body weight in ounces (that is 80 oz….yes, you do the math to figure out my body weight, no I’m not proud but not ashamed either.)

I love drinking water but I love beverages in general. Coffee, coke, juice, etc. I am rarely without some kind of beverage nearby. As I type there is a large nalgene of water and a cup of joe to my right. (Funny enough, it is the same nalgene as from my desk last spring when I admitted my “drinking problem” to Facebook.) I need to focus more on the water element and perhaps let go of some of the other liquid choices. Holistic Guru suggested adding lemon and maple syrup to the water (not exactly like the Master Cleanse but similar) and I tried that yesterday. Delicious, natural lemonade enhanced H2O! Awesome.

As for the first action step, this means fruit galore! Curb that desire for crappy sweets with yummy, natural treats from the earth. I started this morning with a whole grain, raw, sweet breakfast inspired by Chef Katelyn. Her “cookie dough in a bowl” breakfast is interesting and fairly tasty. DBF loved his so much his bowl was clean. I adapted the recipe just slightly to accommodate the ingredients we had in our pantry.

Sarah’s Adaptation of Chef Katelyn’s Cookie Dough Bowl Breakfast

  • 1/3 c Bob’s Red Mill Oat Bran cereal
  • 1 scoop Roots Market spirulina vanilla protein powder
  • 1 tbsp Hemp Pro dark chocolate protein powder
  • splashes of non-dairy milk (I used coconut for me, almond for DBF)
    • Mix all together as Katelyn suggests and cover overnight in fridge
    • In AM, I added:
      • 3/4 cup of defrosted froz strawberries w/ juice
      • DBF added a big scoop of Jif Natural PB

Result?? Yummy breakfast that was naturally sweet and filling. Goal #1 started off right!

So as I sit watching Le Tour with a giant smile and big cheers for Team RadioShack with a full belly and a big water goal right next to me. Time to drink up!

 

 

New awareness

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Life is super crazy these days. Life changes galore including new job, saying goodbye to old job, performing in Chicago, family changes, packing and moving etc. This has raised my stress level to def-con 5. I find that I am eating a lot of crap in response, not all bad, but definitely out of balance. I know intellectually that if I ate better, more greens and no diary, that I would feel better. But from an emotional outlet perspective I am completely aware that my bad eating is a way to provide control in a world of turmoil. It is completely conscious. I am fully aware of my choices and I think this is a good first step.

I am such a big picture person that so much of what I see is in extremes, black and white. As I grow older and weather big storms I’m slowly starting to learn that short term responses do not always mean life long destruction. As long as there is a clear awareness and understanding that these short term fixes will not enact long term change. Sometimes there is need for short term relief and sometimes it is more appropriate to focus on the big picture changes. Both foci have validity in a well lived life.

The same thing has been true with my running and training in the last two years since IM. I am now starting to see the long term effects of not training and that was the wake up call I needed to restart the engine. Again a long process of change begins. But I am aware now that in the scheme of life that there is a time for things to be out of balance a bit for the clear path to be laid straight.

It is with this new awareness does not mean automatic change but rather an acknowledgement of life as a process. Life truly is a winding journey and not a series of absolutes. Oh blessed life.