Full and Still not Satisfied

Today was one of those where I never felt satisfied with what I ate.  I felt full.  Why wasn’t I sated? It is a weird combo to have, not hungry but not satisfied.  It makes me want to keep eating until I do feel satisfied and who knows when or what will sate. One hears eat until almost full and then stop and it sounds so simple, so easy.  But sometimes it isn’t.  Today’s dissatisfaction started with a salad that originally sounded good, but had been shoved in back of the fridge and some of it had froze.  The pork and bread stick were fine, but what was the bulk of my lunch was meh.

No longer forbidden.

Dissatisfaction and being full rarely happens for me anymore. I make a point of listening to what my body is telling me to eat.  Doing this has helped me create a healthy relationship with food.  There were times when I had the dos and don’ts list of foods that I should or shouldn’t eat. This would end in full on binges or I’d end up full and not satisfied which lead to overeating.  In the long run if I should have just ate the grilled cheese sandwich or the cake, I would have ate less.

Eat food that you love and eat it because you love it not because you should or it is healthy.  You do not build a manner of eating that you can live with if that is your mindset. Find your healthy, try new things, retry old things and most of all enjoy what you eat.

Basic Marinara Sauce Recipe

 

Almost ready.

This basic sauce is a staple in my home.  I make huge batches of it and it is easy to scale up or down.  I like to portion out into quarts and freeze it.  This recipe will make about 5 to 6 quarts of sauce. This is a great base sauce you can add in whatever you want when you reheat it.  Some of our favorites are mushrooms, spinach, ground meat, or just plain.  I use it for chicken florentine or parmesan, baked pasta dishes, and meatballs. Pour it over stuffed zucchini or eggplant and anything else you can think of.. Tons of uses for it and a family favorite, no one gets bored with it.

The veg before adding the tomatoes.

It is a fluid recipe if you don’t have fresh parsley leave it out.  No fresh basil use dried or use both.  Sometimes I toss in a sprig of rosemary.  I use whatever wine is open I like what it adds to the end product, no wine no big deal. I give a range for garlic as some love it to the extreme and some people do not.  This is a recipe I tend to under salt and adjust when I reheat. Don’t worry about having perfect chopping it is getting blitzed up in the blender. Blending it creates a nice emulsion.

The blending makes a lovely emulsion.  You can leave it chunky if you want to,.

 Basic Marinara

olive oil, to coat the bottom

1 to 2 onions chopped

2 to 8 cloves chopped garlic

2 cups chopped celery

4 cups chopped carrots

1/2  wine

basil fresh or dried to taste

fresh parsley chopped

2 bay leaves

12 cups tomatoes or or roughly 6 pounds (I buy the big cans of crushed tomatoes)

salt and pepper to taste

Chop it all up and sautee in big pot.  I add as I go. Let is simmer for one hour to three hours on low or as low as you can go and still have a simmer.  You want the veg to be soft enough to blitz in the blender.  Once sauce is cool blend and in gallon bags, freeze. Making this one day and blending the next makes it easier for me. If you have any questions leave a comment and I will answer them.  

Ready to freeze.

What do you do to relax?

What do you do to relax? Is the question I innocently asked a client and her answer blew me away. She told me she uses social media to relax.  It came down to the fact that while she likes connecting with people, but social media was not helping her relax and de-stress.  Social media is not a relaxation technique and all too often it is a source of stress.  

Yoga mat #3

 First I think we need to define what relaxing means to you.  For me it can vary anything from reading a book, gardening, baking, nutrition, and yoga.  Sometimes just sitting down and reading chapter can shift me into a better place or taking the time to make some really good bread can be very meditative.  All the activities make me feel better, calmer, and help me clear my mind.

I love to garden and find it enjoyable to get outside and dig in the dirt and grow some of my own food.  It is soothing and I can think or not think depending on what I am doing that day.  For me it is an active form of meditation.

Eating food that is nutritious helps make one more resilient. Do you feel terrific on a diet of junk food and overly processed foods?  I know I don’t.  I also notice that I do not deal with problems as well and my workouts start to suffer when skipping food with real nutrients. Put the  focus on what you eat and it will help improve your mood.

Yoga, yoga, yoga, how I love you.  One one thing I have learned from years of yoga is to recognize how I am breathing.  Short and shallow breaths are a signal to your body to flee and panic and once you know you are breathing that way you can change it to long deep breathing.  Long deep breathing will take you out of panic mode and bring to a place where you can deal with the issue at hand in a healthy manner.  It can also help you get to sleep at night. Long deep breathing is easy to do and is always available.

The gist of it is hitting the refresh button on the computer to get new updates is not a form of relaxing.  Find something that is, it can be simple and short as taking a few deep inhales and long exhales.  What do you do to relax?

The Superb Saturday Five

Usually they are everywhere but they got camera shy.  That shadow behind the feeder is a hummingbird.

Celebrating the things I found to be superb or interesting in my week.

My Superb Saturday five are..........

1. Spring rainstorms they smell so good!

2. Lettuce popped up this week. Now it just needs to grow faster so I can eat it.

3. Back squatting 99 pounds for five reps. So insanely psyched about this. Last time I was lifting heavy a 100 pounds was my 1 rep max. *happy dances*

4. Hummingbirds showing up.  Its like Star Wars with them whizzing about out there.

5. Learning. Project Eve is a website for women entrepreneurs. Today I was reading  

Hey Girl, Here's Your Digital to do list Which is giving me the boot in the bum to wade into Google+ and Linkedin. It is nice  to know why you should do yet another online thing-a-ma-jamie.

“4. Claim your Google+ business page.

Speaking of Google, you’ll also want to create a Google+ business page. At first I found Google+ to be a bit of an enigma. In fact, I asked Caimon Jones aka “Genius Startups” to write the article Why You Need To Like Google+ (Even If You Hate It) because I really didn’t get it . You’ll get exposure on this more technically minded social network, but more importantly your customers will see a well-organized summary of your company (one you control) at the top of search results.”

I fall into the really don’t get it category.  I am going to give Google+ and Linkedin a try

Celebrate your superbness, what was superb in your week?

Let's Talk About Food

Youtube uploaded today. Wahoo! It didn't want to last Friday.  Ever feel confused about what to eat, you are not alone.

Chia Seed Pudding recipe

 

Chia seed pudding

Chia seed pudding is one of my favorite summer breakfasts.  You put it in a jar, shake, and put it in the fridge.  Tada! it is done and will be ready for you in the morning.  I find myself singing the commercial jingle every time I make it and yes it is the same thing.

Breakfast

 Salvia hispanica or chia seeds is a member of the mint family and was was cultivated by the Aztecs. They have a good dose of omega-3s, calcium, and fiber.  It also has a tapioca pudding like texture.  Here is the chia seed recipe I use.  

Chia Seed Pudding

1 cup soy milk, almond milk, or milk

1/3 cup chia seeds

1 tablespoon maple syrup or honey

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

cinnamon

Put it all a jar and shake it up well. Put in refrigerator.  It is ready in about ten minutes but I like to make it the night before for an easy breakfast the next morning.  I find the chia seeds tend to settle on the bottom after your first shaking so I like to shake it about 5 minutes after.

Exercise and Keeping an Open Mind.

Much of exercising is finding what you like to do and continuing to be open to new ideas and workouts.  I spent my first two years doing workouts out of magazines and continually being disappointed in the results.  I started running and doing HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) which looking back on it were way beyond my fitness level.  

Post NROLW.  I lost a ton of fat on the ribcage and had to buy new bras.

Running and yoga were my two things for years.  It seemed like no matter what I did with diet and doing more cardio, nothing was changing. It was disheartening.  At this point I knew what I enjoyed and what I did not enjoy and  that was strength training

What I discovered is I don’t hate strength training, its isolation moves I’m not a fan of (bicep curls for example.) A huge part of starting to enjoy lifting weights was finding a good solid program that did something.  I tried New Rules of Lifting for Women (NROLW) and saw some huge changes in my body without changing my diet.

I still run and yoga. I enjoy those activities and they are not being dropped.  But I do tend to change it up seasonally.  Winter tends to be weights and yoga focused.  Summer is running and yoga with two days of lifting. The most important thing about these three activities is I enjoy them.  If you hate what you are doing you will not stick with it.  So find you fun activities and do them with relish.

Home Cooking

How many of your meals are cooked by you in your home?  Cooking at home is the best way to know what you are actually eating.  Food that is prepared in restaurants or in factories does not give you control of what you are really eating.  Remember the pink slime controversy?  Good example of what you might not want to be eating and never knew you were.

Home cooked meal: lamb chops, pumpkin risotto, and roasted brussel sprouts.

Preparing food at home let’s us control what ingredients are used.  You decide how much salt is used or if you need to modify recipes for food allergies or intolerances.  One thing that helps me cook at home is having a plan.  I plan weekly dinner menus.  Dinner menus get me through the week.  

Menu planning helps you know what you need to buy and also is a way to use up food that needs to be used up.  Even working from home I find that without a plan for dinner we end up eating a lot of pre-prepared food and spaghetti.  It is one strategy I can’t live without. Here is my menu for this week.

Monday - Sausage, zucchini, orzo soup

Tuesday - Spaghetti, garlic bread

Wednesday - Asian sloppy joes, zucchini

Thursday - Chicken, veg, quinoa

Friday - Easy night : burgers and oven fries.

Saturday - Pork shoulder, polenta, veg.

Homemade Sports Drink

I pulled this off an IIN blog last summer as an alternative to commercial sports drinks. The small amount of potassium and sodium they provide is not worth the sugar for me. Plus some of them have brominated oils which contain bromine which is used in flame retardants. My beverage of choice is water but I hit a point when working out that I want something flavoured.

It has orange in it.

A quarter teaspoon of salt doesn’t look like much salt but but if you goof up and put in a half teaspoon you will notice. The original recipe used lemon juice for the flavour, I use what I have on hand or sounds good.  Two of my favorites are cranberry and tamarind.

Homemade Sports Drink

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons honey

4 cups water

flavouring of choice.

Heat 2 cups of water and dissolve salt and honey in it.  Pour over fruit and let cool.  Add the other two cups of water.  Chill. Makes 1 quart.

Flavours I have used

orange juice, fresh squeezed

mixed berries

cherries

citrus juice/s

cranberries, squashed

cucumber

tamarind paste

Anything else you can think of.

5 Simple Lifestyle Changes

All too often we can have an all or nothing attitude when we decide to get healthy, exercise, or lose weight.  There is the urge to dive in and change it all and for some that will work for them.  For me and many others it doesn’t.  It is much harder flub up on a few small changes at a time.

Chia seeds!

Keep in mind long term changes do not  happen overnight so if you forget, flub it up, forget, the game is not over, it just restarts right than.  Restart whenever you need to, don’t wait for the next day or week.  

5 Simple Lifestyle Changes
 

1. Drink water.  So simple and sometimes so hard to do.  

2. Eat your veggies! Add an extra serving to your day or play the how many servings of veg. in a day game.

3. Try something new.  Learn how to cook a new whole grain or vegetable.

4. Get moving.  Start simple by going for a walk, try something new, or do something you love.

5. Swap a take out meal for a homemade one.

Superb Saturday Five: What was superb in my week.

It seems so easy to focus on what is not going right in one’s life and harder to see the good.  I decided I needed an outlet for the good thus the Saturday 5 were idea came into my head.  What five superb things that happened to me this week?  

Russian Walnut Muffins. Walnuts have omega-3s

1) Made all my reps on dumbbell bench press.  I’ve been stuck at 32.5 pounds for a couple weeks.

2) Sunny days.  Got to go play in the garden.

3) Connecting with a colleague this week.  She is awesome!

4) Russian Walnut Muffins  I love them!

5) The health of my family.

Not necessarily in any particular order but there they are my Superb Saturday 5.  What are yours?

Workout Logs

Finding My Healthy: Part 1

There was a time in my life when my disordered eating habits finally caught up with me.  I would avoid eating until two in the afternoon and then as little food as I could manage. I worked nights so waking up mid-morning was normal. It was coffee, diet coke, and water to keep me full. It didn’t feel like disorder.  I basked in the complements of how thin and skinny I was.  

Me 6 years ago, before I started lifting. Not at my heaviest but close to it.

Fast forward a few years later.  I couldn't keep up with the not eating and starving myself.  I started eating and I didn’t really know how anymore. There were binges, being so full and miserable, and the attempts to restrict that failed more and more often at this point.  So I took to skipping real food, these were the nights when I would eat half a bag of candy for dinner.  We are talking family sized not small bags.

Few more years later and in the midst of a bad break up.  I just ate and ate and ate.  How do you cope with emotions.  I eat.  I am an emo eater, always will be.  There was weight gain, there were freakouts about the weight gain, and there were some big choices that needed to be made. It was time to put an end to the disorder and create something new.  The something new has taken years but it has been worth it.