Cruelty-Free Sandwiches! Yum!

As a kid, I LOVED sandwiches. All the time, anywhere. Picnic foods were my favourite. I don’t know what started it, but it was a love that grew quick.

As a vegan, I don’t indulge in bread too often. I try to eat more whole foods and less processed foods. However, I broke that today.

I did a quick grocery shop with my husband this morning, and I picked up a loaf of Silver Hills bread, some Vegenaise, Symphony lettuce (check it out, so pretty and good!), as well as a few other things. I came home, said goodbye to my husband as he had to head to work, and then got out my knives and my toaster. A sandwich was made!

Yes, that was the finished product. Two slices of toasted Silver Hills bread – The Big 16, with one organic, sliced up tomato, roughly 10 small leaves of Symphony-packed lettuce, and Vegenaise, included in the picture for you to see. Not one animal was harmed in the making of this sandwich! How cool is that? And the taste? Delicious! Yum! In fact, I ended up making another sandwich with a different head of the Symphony-packed lettuce and cucumber instead of tomato. Drool…

For those that are wondering, Silver Hills is a bread company that works out of British Columbia. Their breads contain no dairy or eggs, and have excellent ingredients, primarily being made from sprouted grains. Check them out here: Silver Hills.

Day 11 – Weight Check-In

I haven’t mentioned anything about weight so far because I wanted to see what would happen. After all, I’m used to counting calories, believing in a “Calories-in, calories-out” deficit system which I have not been doing at all. I’ve simply been trying to eat raw until 4, and everything vegan. I eat until I’m full, and that’s about it.

Well, I’m happy to announce that I’m officially 11 pounds under my heaviest (a couple months ago), I don’t have 5 pound variations from day-to-day, and I feel so much better! How exciting is it that I don’t have to feel like I’m starving, and yet I’m losing weight! I have more energy (compared to calorie restricting), and I just all around feel better. It’s amazing. I really don’t know why I didn’t do this sooner.

Upon waking, I had a long drink of water. It’s time to get the body hydrated.

For breakfast, I had a deliciously juicy organic cantaloupe. It was SO good! I also had an organic honeydew that was the juiciest, sweetest honeydew melon I have ever had. Thank you Organic Box!

For lunch yesterday, I had another fresh beet, carrot and apple juice with a veggie wrap. My fail was that I ate a doughnut right before, and regretted eating it while I ate it. I also ate a little too close to my workout and thus felt too full while exercising, but stills was able to punch out a good workout. I did lunges, toe-touch jacks (a new favourite), side planks, push-ups and overhead squats. It was an excellent circuit and built up a good sweat. And where would I be without doing my chiropractor’s exercises. She has bumped me up to another level which are essentially harder versions of the ones I have been doing, so I’m working on conquering those.

After I finished my workout, I laid down to take a nap, after drinking some water of course. I slept for quite awhile. After sundown, my husband and I talked for a very long time, too long in fact. We got ourselves to the point of starving. It’s a known fact when you feel like you’re starving, you make bad choices. And that’s exactly what we did. We ordered in.

I didn’t do as well as last time. In fact, I did awful. I had veggie pizza (with cheese), I had jalapeño poppers and brownies. I felt so unbelievably greasy and yucky. I can’t believe I did this! Ugh.. Need to never do this again!

My Apologies and Resignation

As many of you knew before, I was a Mary Kay representative and very much in love with their products. They have a lot of products that I would still recommend if it weren’t for the reason I’m resigning.

One of the things that was a “make-it-or-break-it” deal when I was deciding whether to join or not was simply whether the products were tested on animals or not. Mary Kay was not testing on animals, and so this was excellent news for me.

I read an article the other day that was talking about secrets behind businesses we all know. Mary Kay was one of them, as well as Avon and another I can’t remember. Without telling their many employees or customers, these companies, who at one time did animal testing and quit are now back to animal testing. How could they do this?

I cannot and refuse to support abuse to animals. It is unnecessary that they be tested with a product that they did not choose for themselves, and that isn’t designed for them anyways. Products should be safe enough that humans could test them should they volunteer. So I have many, many problems with this.

The product I have now is from before the New Year’s, and hopefully before they were animal testing again. I’m no longer placing orders, but simply clearing my stock for 30% off. I, myself, will continue to use the products I have until they are gone, and once they are gone, I will not order again. This is so sad to say for products I really enjoyed.

If you would like any of my leftover products (Canadian customers), please let me know. As I said they are 30% off right now, and hopefully produced before animal testing was brought back in. Help a consultant get out of the business, not to support the abuse behind the scenes.

Week 11 Day 6

I didn’t want to let my husband go to work this morning. The storm continued over night and the snow is well over a foot and a half deep. It’s almost -40 C and I know the road conditions are going to be terrible. But my husband still got up and went off to work.

On the way to work, he took me over to get my car from the school. He shovelled (for as long as the cold would allow him before freezing) to get my car out of the snow, and let it run for a few minutes. I told him to go on ahead to work, but he refused until he saw me drive the car out. Well, let’s just say, my husband is smart. For the first time ever, my car would run for a second and shut off. I would start it again, and it would shut off. My car was absolutely refusing to run in the cold. The poor thing. So, my husband took me back home before going to work, and I rescheduled all of my appointments again. Taxis are not required to have winter tires, and I refuse to either get in an accident or be stuck on the road in a taxi. Everything will have to wait for another day.

My husband ended up coming home early. If they dared to stop, the work van would have been stuck. So they basically did a loop from home to the shop to the site, kept on driving back home. It was so nice to know he wasn’t on the road and he could be home safe and sound.

We only went two places: GNC for some things I needed. Black Friday sales were on and we got an awesome deal on lots of goodies!

We also went to the gym. I did an excellent shoulder workout. My shoulders burned so badly. I didn’t take the time to do cardio though, because even though I had the day off tomorrow, my husband didn’t, at least not yet that we knew of. So I left with a satisfied shoulder burn!

I’m ready to go home and sleep well in a warm house tonight!

Week 8 Day 2

Today was another long day. I can successfully say that after last week of not getting much curriculum taught, we at least hit the books hard today! I think we came up with some well researched answers last week that helped truly answer some of their questions. Now to move forward with that knowledge!

We’ve also started studying the book of Revelation. My students are interested in learning what God warns for the ending of time and what God tells us to do. So I’ve quit my plans for worship, and have taken on this study. I have great hopes and purposes for this study!

I also found out this morning that I have a meeting right after school and that there is another super important meeting tomorrow that I’m going to have to miss and catch up on later as well as a mini-meeting the day after and a long training meeting the day after. Catch my drift on all of these meetings I’m expected to be part of and yet somehow still function as a regular teacher and wife and mother to our animals? I can’t seem to keep up!

Today’s IT meeting did go fairly well. Expectations were laid out which means I have yet more work to do. Somehow, somehow I need to get caught up and stuff done. My life needs to get back in order.

My workout this evening was much anticipated. I needed to get some stress out. It was my first leg workout this week, and although there were a lot of hefty things I hate doing, I looked forward to it tonight. It was an excellent workout and I left very sore.

A new exercise I had to do was called “20s and 2s”. This is basically how it goes:

20 leg extensions, 2 leg curls
18 leg extensions, 4 leg curls
16 leg extensions, 6 leg curls
14 leg extensions, 8 leg curls
12 leg extensions, 10 leg curls
10 leg extensions, 12 leg curls
8 leg extensions, 14 leg curls
6 leg extensions, 16 leg curls
4 leg extensions, 18 leg curls
2 leg extensions, 20 leg curls

Can I say ouch? That’s definitely how I felt at the end! I was so happy to go to bed and rest up my legs tonight!

Week 2 Day 3 : A Hard Day

For the first time EVER, I woke up at 4:30 and went straight to the gym! I completed my circuit training and was able to make it home in time to help my husband get ready for work as well as do some laundry and take care of our animals while still getting ready and making it to work on time! What a morning! I also took delight in cooking and eating my breakfast at home, something that rarely if ever happens.

Of course, once I made it to school, I realized the pit in my stomach. My Jewel was leaving today. I was filled with sadness, anger, and several different emotions. I really am trying to stay positive about my neighbours, but I really have little good to say.

The day turned into an incredibly long day. I was at work from 7:30-6:20 in meetings and not accomplishing half of what I needed to. I estimate there are at least 5-7 hours worth of grading waiting to be done and huge paperwork deadlines for the end of the month that I have not had time to do.

Of course with the longer hours, I did not have enough meals with me to fill that time span and I was extremely hungry and tired.

I then became quickly stressed as I knew we were meeting my dad, my sister, and her boyfriend for her birthday supper and also so that my dad could take my baby. The only bad news is I couldn’t get ahold of my husband who was supposed to be coming with me. It was a couple hours before I could reach him.

I ended up packing up the dogs myself, and drove in my car to the restaurant, noticing along the way that I had forgotten some items Jewel needed for the flight and having to make a pitstop.

I was the last one to arrive, and we put the dogs in my husband’s truck with the windows down as people have a habit on calling Animal Patrol on all people, especially with dogs in the vehicle regardless of how they are prepped. In my husband’s tall truck, it is less likely people will climb it to see in the windows.

Supper was good, the food was excellent. I ordered a salad as you can always pick and choose the toppings: get a good chicken breast for protein, a couple nuts for fat, lots of greens and other veggies, and I also had quinoa on my salad for that extra carby protein. The salad was excellent!

We had a good time, but when it came time to say good-bye, I had a hard time. My baby was leaving and this was it. We took pictures, I went through thorough instructions, and did all that I could to say good-bye.

On the ride home, I went alone. My husband had the dogs with him in his truck, and I wept driving in my car. I began reflecting on life and how it seemed such a mess. I thought about how my husband and I are living in a city that we both don’t like, beside unfortunate neighbours, and things seem to be getting ripped away from us without us having any control. We’re both not happy where we are, as busy as we are, with the rules we have to face. The only thing in my life that seems to be somewhat controlled is my diet and the gym. That honestly is all I have control of. The government restricts my husband from school over a paper they refuse to admit they lost. The government restricts me from my babies that I never planned on having but have adapted and made my own sacrifices in order to keep and take good care of them. Those higher than me in my career control the amount of meetings and extracurricular activities I must do which take up more time than I would like to allow with no financial compensation. My husband’s job is controlled by the journeymen he works with and has to work the hours they set out each day. We are stuck in a city where jobs are more abundant to ensure that our bills can be paid since my husband cannot advance in his career without the government papers and thus needs a company that can take him on for now. Everything about my life seems to be controlled by someone or something else. I’m stuck. I’m a mess. The one thing I have is the gym.

And so even though it was late when we got home, we unloaded the dogs, sat for a minute, and went to the gym. The man at the desk recognized me from earlier that morning when he was ending his night shift and mentioned how shocked he was to see me twice in less than 24 hours. I smiled and continued to walk. The gym is the one thing people cannot take away from me. And so my cardio became complete; 12 minutes of HIIT on the stairclimber. And the day was done.