A Flying Smoothie Day – Healing Journey Day 28

Journal:
I gotta be honest guys, I didn’t sleep more than 30 minutes throughout the night. You know how you hit that point of tired where you aren’t really concentrating very well resulting in things taking twice as long to do? That was me, resulting in a delayed time even getting to bed. Oh well. I definitely made it to the airport on time.

So I didn’t get a chance to make a mango smoothie before I left, so in order to save the fruit that I still had at home, I had some work to do. For the mangoes, I simply put them in the fridge to slow down the ripening process hoping that they will make it until I get back. For the bananas, I peeled them, chunked them up, and put the in the freezer. Perhaps there shall be some banana nice cream in my future! But of course, since I didn’t have time to make a smoothie, that meant I had to find breakfast at the airport.

Now, I’ve traveled on the national side of the airport often, but I have not traveled on the international side more than once, and that one time was only flying back from the states so I didn’t even get to see what stores and restaurants were on the international side. I honestly didn’t know what to expect. Well, let me just start off by saying that travelling on a smoothie day is not the easiest thing to do. Of the 5 places that serve food on the international side, none made smoothies out of just fruit. But, good ol’ Starbucks had the Odwalla smoothies so I decided to take a look at them. Thankfully, the Mango Tango flavour only has fruit in it. No, Odwalla is not organic and yes it does have additives to help it last longer, but it seriously was the best option I had in this situation. It was either that, or the choice of water fasting today and I’m not feeling a water fast at the moment.

How much did a 450 mL bottle of Odwalla Mango Tango smoothie cost? Well, I bought two and it was over $10. I don’t typically spend this much on a meal, but I’m trying to be dedicated guys! So I did what I had to do. And to be honest, this smoothie actually tasted sweeter than I remembered so tastebud sensitivity is still there. I thoroughly enjoyed them.

I pretty much slept through my first flight. I guess my 20-30 minutes of sleep during the night wasn’t enough… (insert crying/laughing face here)! I had around 2 hours to sit at the second airport and actually found a place that makes all fruit smoothies! However, I have limited US funds on me, and I will be arriving at my final destination at lunch time, so I held off to get something with my husband.

Once I finally landed, I joined my husband and we both went to a juice/smoothie place. I got a what was called a Marathon smoothie which was made from orange juice, frozen bananas and frozen strawberries. It was ok. It actually was missing some flavour because the lady put ice cubes in with it, but I ate it regardless because it was the only smoothie place in town.

Now, later in the night, we wanted to eat again. My husband did not want another smoothie, but instead wanted real food. By the time he would have gotten food and gotten his dessert from the place he wanted, there would have been no time to drive over to the other side of the city to get another smoothie from the same place. And sadly, it was the only smoothie place in this city. So I was left with a decision: I could either continue on with my smoothie thing by drinking the “fake” smoothies  like I had in the morning (fake as in hardly any fibre and seeming more like a thick juice than a full smoothie), or postpone my smoothie days by another day and eat a cooked meal with my husband. Since I am not trying to do fake smoothie days, and didn’t really feel like I was totally completing a smoothie day while using pre-made smoothie drinks with additives in them as a primary source of food, I decided that after a month and a half of not seeing my husband, we could eat together.

My husband listed a bunch of places to go, so we compromised with the healthiest option: Genghis Grill. At Genghis Grill, you get to choose the size of stir fry you want as well as you get to choose what goes in your stir fry. Because I was thinking about how awful my stomach felt after the cooked food last night, I almost backed out of eating there as we went in. But I decided to give it a go and ordered the smallest size I could. I put in mostly veggies and fruit (spinach, bean sprouts, broccoli, pineapple, clementines, baby corn) as well as a tiny bit of tofu. I had it served with some steamed rice and a bit of sweet and sour sauce on top. It tasted pretty good, though I must say, it was way sweeter than I had every remembered it being. The tastebuds are still in full effect.

After supper, we decided to go shopping for some fruit so I can make smoothies the rest of the weekend when we go home. While shopping in Sprouts, I found something I had never seen yet! I saw Let Thy Food’s Chile Con Queso! It’s a vegan chile con queso or Mexican cheese dip. I was actually going to save it and take it back home with me to wait for the day that I can eat stuff like that again, but instead of waiting, my husband and I decided to eat it tonight as a snack. To be honest, it’s been nice to have a date night with my husband and to do things with him again.

If you’re eating junk foods, I highly recommend this cheese sauce. It is so good with a kick. But of course, more than anything, this means I’m back 100% for the next 3 days. I don’t have a scale, but I can guarantee I went up a few pounds again especially considering I had chips with the dip. So here goes the clean-eating again tomorrow.

Review of Symptoms:
-Energy is good
-Tired from not sleeping
-Really not feeling the cooked and junk vegan foods
-Throat actually feels dry from too much salt… needing to drink lots of water.
-Face is not good. Junk food is definitely an acne trigger!

Weight = Don’t have a scale in the hotel so cannot report on the weight until we go back to my mother-in-law’s tomorrow.

Total Calories = approx. 2766 (72% carbs, 20% fat, 8% protein… that was a lot of food!)

Week 12 Day 5

I woke up not feeling so great this morning. I’ve been stressed all night about the meeting, and how I know I’m probably not going to agree with some of the consequences determined. However, when I got to school, it was announced that the meeting will be Monday instead of today due to conflicting schedules, and so I was put at ease for a moment.

My students have been asking me for quite awhile to go to gym class with them. They know I workout and live actively, so gym class only makes sense to them. And after this week’s events, I decided today would be a good day.

It was a fun gym class. I had brought my gym bag so that I was able to change. The students were able to postpone their 12 minute run since I was there, but of course, the gym teacher also knows that I like to workout, and so he made us do burpees in a football players form. I’m not sure if there’s a name for it, but it basically was the wider-spread legs almost vibrating/running in place thing that football players do, and then when he blew the whistle, it was dropping down into push-up stance and back up. Oh boy. Guess I was getting in a workout early today! Then we played a type of basketball. It was a ton of fun. I wish I had more time to join them more often. But it is my only prep time during the day, and so I’ll make my best effort to go at least once every two months if I can. The secretary pulled me aside and told me how excited the kids were on their way to gym that their teacher was coming to gym class, so I know that it made a lot of difference to them. And if that’s what it takes to let them know I care, then that’s what it takes.

The rest of the day went alright, although I hit a huge wave of tiredness early in the afternoon. I think the stress wore me out. So I did something I never do. I told the students that if we got all of our afternoon work done quickly, I’d take them outside for an extra recess. Let’s just say, their work got done quickly! And we were able to get some fresh air. I think we all needed it. Today was an awesome day.

Since I didn’t have my meeting, I was able to go home early. My husband and I relaxed a little, talked about a few important things, and decided to have a date night. We went to a new place that we’ve never gone before: a place by the name of Teriyaki Corner. I ordered a Canadian sushi (with cream cheese, cucumber and smoked salmon) and an egg maki (I forget the official name of it). Oh it was so good!!! Yum! I’m in love with sushi again!

Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to the gym tonight. But that’s ok. I’ve been so stressed, and so not into my workouts lately that my body could use a day of true rest and hopefully I’ll be mentally back in the game tomorrow.