Diary I went to bed so late last night. But, I woke up super energetic this morning like usual. However, I think taking all four of those capsules together last night caused me to wake up with some pretty strong … Continue reading
Diary I woke up bright and early this morning, despite having the day off from work. I woke up energetic and ready to go! However, because I’m home for the majority of the day, I got distracted by all the … Continue reading
Diary This morning, to my surprise, I did not feel full! Not like the day before, even though I had eaten so much volume in food! Though my weight went up by a pound, but I’m not doing this for … Continue reading
Journal:
I debated on how to title this post because it was a weird day. Technically, the snack on Day 3 of the Summer Days of Fruitrition was a punnet or more of strawberries, and that’s what I used for my breakfast this morning. I woke up later than planned and had to rush to get ready for church. I chose strawberries because they took the least amount of prep (just washing and going) and I was able to eat them on the way.
I ended up staying for the meal after church and honestly, I was proud of myself. The meal was haystacks. For those of you who don’t know, haystacks are where you start with corn chips, then add beans/chilli and cheese, all kinds of chopped up veggies, and then finish with your sauces, typically including sour cream, salsa, guacamole and ranch (though ketchup seems to be a favourite too). For the first time EVER, I did not get chips! I had no craving for them. My body could feel the high salt and fat from looking at them and I was so pleased with myself. Now, I didn’t avoid all of the cooked foods because I did have a little vegan chilli, and there was a potato/carrot cheese sauce that I really wanted to try (just like nacho cheese people!!), but the bulk of what I ate was the veggies. Man, I have changed from how I used to eat!
After coming home, I decided I needed to just go along and finish my winter day from yesterday, hence the 1b in the title. I missed the snack of persimmons blended with dates and because I didn’t eat all of the persimmons I was supposed to eat in the mono meal, I had a lot of persimmons left to consume. So I got out my beautiful new Vitamix (I am so in love with this thing!) and blended up the rest of the persimmons with some dates. Friends, it came out the EXACT consistency of pudding. I was honestly amazed. I didn’t put any spices in it, yet it reminded me of pumpkin pie filling. So good. I highly recommend!
It took me forever to eat all of this pudding. It honestly did. And at one point, I started feeling really weird, like my food was sitting in my chest. Bad food combining, bad food combining, bad food combining. It actually scared me enough that I had to put the food away for awhile and start walking around to help it go down. I really need to straighten myself up.
Because I still was hungry at my normal evening time, I did make some rice. Simple, low fat food, but not good. Now, I didn’t go to bed until 2:30/3:00 in the morning and was super tired so decision-making was not my strong point. However, the reason why I was up so late was super exciting! My family is willing to try going vegan for a month!!! I’m so pumped!!! I think it all started from my brother, but my family has a host of health problems and I’m so excited for them to see how amazing being vegan is. So I stayed up late making them a first week’s menu. We’ll see how it goes, but I tried to use easier recipes that were cheaper to make and easy to take as leftovers for lunch the next day. I’m hoping it goes well!
Tonight, I watched a few documentaries as I was working on this menu. I watched “Food, Inc.” and “Vegucated.” Vegucated was just an awesome documentary showing the journey of people from different walks of life going vegan and learning along the way. The transitions were amazing and what they learned was life-affecting. But “Food, Inc.” blew me away. The amount of corruption there is in the big food industries is deplorable. I just kept shaking my head throughout the whole movie, disturbed at how people think the whole time. Please educate yourself by watching that documentary. This world hides a lot of things from us, but there are people out there who are willing to suffer to bring us the information. Don’t let their efforts be in vain but instead watch so you’ll know.
Review of Symptoms:
-Acne is still bad.
-Stomach pains in the morning from cooked food.
-Stayed up way too late, but for a good cause.
-Hair is… well, I’m not happy with it. Must be the change in foods.
Weight at the end of the day =Â 167.4 (down 1.6 lbs from yesterday)
Total Calories =Â 1571 (82% carbs, 11% fat, 7% protein… didn’t eat so much today…)
Journal:
I did not wake up when I wanted to today. In fact, I had a huge amount of plans for today and somehow still slept in. I shouldn’t say “somehow” because obviously it wasn’t hard to sleep in. It felt really good to not get up for work today. I was happy to have the day off.
Upon rising, I right away started on my day. I started with typing up my devotional, did my fertility tracking on all four apps that I have, did both brain training sessions I have on my two apps, and began preparing foods for the rest of the day (put dates in a bowl to soak and figs in another bowl to soak). Now, because I had nothing ready to eat in the morning, this did lead me to eat something not raw for breakfast, so that part did not work out the greatest… However, I was set up for the rest of the day!
I did quite a bit of work on the computer while watching some documentaries at the same time. The three I managed to watch today were the following:
Excellent documentaries that I highly recommend watching! There is a lot of good information out there, we just have to look for it!
At 2:00 pm, I had an oil change, so before I went to the dealership, I quickly blended up a Datorade with 15 Deglet Noor dates. Unfortunately, I was really looking forward to it, but I put in too much water. It completed diluted the flavour.
After I returned from my oil change, I went ahead and made a snack from Medjool dates and Romaine lettuce. I always thought Deglet Noor dates were my favourite, but this batch of Medjool dates that I got far surpass my love for Deglet Noor dates. This snack is one of the best and comes highly recommended!
The next thing I tried to eat, following a webinar that I listened to, was some mangoes. The guide suggested 6 mangoes as a mono-meal. However, I only ended up eating 2, one of which burned my lips a little from being unripe. I’m not having good luck with these expensive mangoes…
I got the most exciting package this evening. I ordered it almost two weeks ago, and it just showed up. How excited and thankful I was!
There is going to be a long friendship with this machine. I’m absolutely beside myself that I finally own a Vitamix! Yes, I had an old Vitamix, but it was such a pain to clean and use. This is brand-new, beautiful, and mine. I can’t wait to make amazing recipes with this thing!
So to end the night, I rinsed it out and made the fig pudding using soaked, dehydrated figs, dates, and raw carob powder. It was ok, though I think I could have blended it a little longer. The carob powder was nice.
And that summarized my night. I did a lot of stretching and mobility exercises for my hip flexor pain again. I think it’s doing way better, but I just don’t want it to turn into a serious injury. So taking it slow and steady is the way I am going.
Review of Symptoms:
-Acne is bad.
-Energy is good.
-Hair is so-so.
-Mental focus is good.
-Digestion is ok.
-Productive.
-Feeling hydrated after consuming more water today.
-Hip flexor pain has improved today.
Weight at the end of the day =Â 169 lbs (same as the past two days)
Total Calories =Â 2380 (80% carbs, 9% fat, 11% protein… macros are almost spot-on!)
Journal:
Today was a much better day. I prepared my grapes last night so that they were ready to go today. I had them rinsed, stems removed, and put in a portable container so that all I had to do was pop the container open and eat. 2 lbs of beautiful green grapes were consumed this morning.
It was after the morning snack that I ran into semi-trouble again. I did not have time whatsoever to go make the smoothie for lunch. In fact, I didn’t end up making the smoothie until after I had a meeting, then packed and cleaned up my classroom and finally came home. Seriously, that was way too long to wait to eat and it led me to eat some leftover junk from yesterday. I didn’t eat near as much junk, but some nonetheless. I have to somehow find a way to manage my time a little better.
So of course, as soon as I came home, I made my smoothie out of bananas and Romaine lettuce. This seriously is not my favourite smoothie, even with my bananas ripening properly. After this program, I don’t think I will make this combination again.
I later had to do some errands in town but did not go to the gym. I’m giving my body the rest it was demanding from me today. Tomorrow, I will hit the gym hard again. So instead of going to the gym, I jumped into making the pre-dinner snack which was fresh orange juice blended with kiwis. Now this was an interesting combination. Try it out sometime!
Finally, I made the supper which was a spiralized zucchini dish. Oh my goodness you guys, this sauce was DIVINE. If anything, it actually felt extremely rich and flavourful, almost too rich and flavourful. I actually think it would make a great gravy for a future recipe. It did feel very salty even though my sundried tomatoes were oil and salt free. And because it was so rich, I did not eat all of the sauce. It was too much. I ate lots of zucchini and that was that for the night.
**I did the breakfast and lunch from Day 5 of their diet plan, and the supper from Day 3. Still using their recipes, just making them as things become ripe.
Review of Symptoms:
-Tongue needed minor scraping
-Stomach still not feeling great (gotta stop the junk food!!)
-Digestion is trying to do its job but running into issues (again, no more junk food!)
-Hair still feels dry and easily becomes static. Not enjoying this.
-Acne is bad. Thank you junk food….
Weight at the end of the day =Â 170.4 lbs (down 0.2 lbs form yesterday)
Total Calories =Â 2032 (75% carbs, 14% fat, 11% protein)
Excuse the tear in the oven mitt. I’ve had these oven mitts for years and absolutely love them! Don’t replace something that still works!
So this is a post, different than anything I’ve ever done before. I don’t consider myself a cook or a chef by any means. I normally feel like I just “throw” stuff together or follow/modify recipes sometimes. Unfortunately, I’m much too busy (I know I need to fix this) and faster food just becomes efficient for my time. So here’s a healthy recipe for those in the same boat as I am.
Quick Pasta Ingredients:
2 cups (measure dry) of Eden’s Organic Vegetable Spiral Noodles
3/4 cup of Kirkland Organic Marinara Sauce
1 tsp. of Nutritional Yeast
Boil pasta according to box. Add the sauce and heat up in the same pot. Pour in a bowl and sprinkle with nutritional yeast.
Super yummy, healthy and organic!
Now, as always, I sit back and look at my food and wonder what could be better or what I could have done differently. So here are some swaps below.
Swaps:
1. Create your own marinara sauce if you have the time. This sauce has higher fat than I would prefer, and homemade sauces mean that you are in control of the ingredients!
2. Add some peas, corn, broccoli, etc. The vegetables will add extra nutrients!
Hope you enjoy this recipe! Organic and vegan are two of the most important words you need to find on food. Eat what your body runs optimally on!
Man, my body is still sore! I can’t remember the last time I was this sore from working out! I generally have high pain tolerance, and then mix that with my delayed onset muscle soreness, I hardly EVER feel pain. You know those reps towards the end of your set where your trying for all your worth? I don’t feel sore at that moment, I just feel my body giving up. That’s it. Rarely do I feel like my body will rip apart at those final reps, but more like my body will collapse from not being able to do anymore.
That being said, I’m sore, so sore. But I had to get up and do a bunch of things because my husband is sick and I have to go to work. Work went well (although I got tired quickly), and my students managed to get me off topic for about an hour. An hour is a crazy amount of time to be off topic, I understand. But the choice of topic was one that could not be ignored. I choose to work in a Christian school for the simple fact that I can freely talk about God and show His love to my students. I can strive to prepare them for a world of sin and temptations and teach them to grow their own personal relationships with God. And so when questions arrive about the end of the world, Heaven, and complicated questions such as why God even created humans if He knew we would sin, I know these are important questions that require answers. And this just happened to be such an afternoon; an afternoon my students had questions that I felt deserved the best answers I could give. These are the conversations I will remember.
Following school, I stayed a little longer to help a student with her math, and then headed home to take care of my husband. Tonight was a special night for me. Our gym was hosting a grand opening for Fresh Fit Foods, a clean eating food delivering service. I was so excited to go meet the chef, sample some of the menu, and sign up for a 21-Day pack. Now, I will warn you, it is fairly expensive! This is not something I could probably do all year. But my health is worth my investment and if that means setting myself on the right track by having no excuses for eating good, then I’m going to do it. So I did. And let me tell you, I’m so proud of a company that searches for nothing but the best ingredients, making all their own recipes and finding foods that don’t use any chemicals or additives in their foods. The chef was so wonderful and easy to talk to, and you could tell how proud he was of his clean food. It’s honestly food and a company I would recommend to anyone!
Check them out here.
After signing up, I went around getting the different foods and supplements my husband needed. This took longer than expected, but I was able to find everything he needed. I went home and was able to visit with him for a little before going back to the gym. I ended up working out for 2 1/2 hours, including a 1/2 hour steady state cardio session on the stationary bike. I killed legs again (too many leg days in a row) and could barely get off the bike by the time I was done. I went home and could barely finish the things I needed to do before going to sleep. I was exhausted!
Calm in Christ and Fitness 