Vegan Epicurean

31 Days to Better Health - Day 30

2012-01-30T18:21:00.000-05:00

Happy Mondayeveryone! I hope you had a fantasticweekend. We had a wonderful weekendwhich included: spending time withfriends, time by ourselves to connect, healthy food and plenty of rest (just like Masi pictured above having a nap). Generally it was a very good weekend and onethat allowed us to relax and recharge for the week ahead.

To remindeveryone of what we have accomplished so far here is a recap of the first 29days of January:

Day 1 –Defined Success and What is/was Holding Us Back
Day 2 –Determined our Purpose and Looked at Passion
Day 3 –Listed Our Goals for January
Day 4 –Listed the Things We Have Needed to Work on for a While
Day 5 –Looked at Optimism vs. Pessimism and Fear vs. Intuition
Day 6 –Practiced Conscious Eating
Day 7 – HaraHachi Bu
Day 8 –Taking the Stress Out of Meal Time
Day 9 –Acknowledgments
Day 10 – NoExcuses, Do it Anyway
Day 11 – Isit True?
Day 12 –Have You Really Connected With Someone Today?
Day 13 –Motivation is a Decision
Day 14 -Successfully Navigating Dinner at an Unfamiliar Restaurant
Day 15 -What Do You Want, Have You Asked?
Day 16 –Treating Others as You Wish to be Treated
Day 17 –Food as a Budget
Day 18 –Silence Your Inner Critic
Day 19 –Replace I Have to With I Want to
Day 20 –Identifying Your Rituals
Day 21 –Face Your Fears
Day 22 –Give Up the Diet Mentality
Day 23 – TheMeaning and/or Purpose of Food
Day 24 –Trigger Foods/Situations/People
Day 25 –Words Have Meaning
Day 26 –Lose All-Or-Nothing Thinking
Day 27- Decide to live as if ……
Day 28 – Two-BiteTest
Day 29- Vision Board

What did youthink of the idea of a vision board? When you saw mine did it make sense givenwhat you know about my life from the blog? I hope that seeing my board helped you to visualize how to turn your ideasinto pictures. If there is anything that you would like to me explaindifferently about this or anything else just let me know.

Are You Hiding Behind Excuses?:

This can bea difficult question to ask yourself but it is critical if you are havingtrouble reaching your goals. Everyonehas excuses for why they can’t do something. The reason that some people thrive and others don’t is that those whosucceed know when to push through their excuses. I have definitely been on both sides of thefence on this issue which means that I understand what is like to wantsomething and yet it doesn’t happen. Ican now look back and see that I struggled because I allowed the excuses tostop me. I want to teach you what I havelearned during the process so that you too can improve your health.

The firstthing to remember is that other people have accomplished whatever it is youwant. It is always great when we canlearn by other people’s successes and mistakes because that can save ustime. There are people out there whohave tackled everything that you are trying to do and they succeeded. The trickto your success is finding those people and learning from them. For examplethere are people who have gotten healthy at almost 50 years old (ValerieBertinelli), survived cancer (Lance Armstrong), lost hundreds of pounds,reversed diabetes with lifestyle, really anything that you can imagine. There are hundreds of people who haveovercome obstacles bigger than the ones we are facing now. If you want to succeed you can do so more quicklyby learning from these winners. What dothey have that you don’t? Most likelythe biggest difference is their attitude. They didn’t let excuses get in theirway.

The secondthing to remember is that human beings don’t like change. We naturallygravitate toward our habits; we cling to them in fact. When these habits are healthy like brushingour teeth they are great. However if thehabits are things like plopping on the sofa every night after dinner andwatching TV than the habits are not healthy and they need to be changed. Pay attention to your habits. Remember you can’t change what you don’tknow. I am willing to bet the totality ofyour habits is what got you to where you are today. I know that was true of me. However you can change your habits and thatwill have a ripple effect that will begin to change everything in yourlife. The condition that anyone is incurrently is nothing more than the result of our recent few thousanddecisions. The impact of each healthydecision is cumulative and when as those positive decisions begin to outnumberand overwhelm the unhealthy decisions your health will begin to improverapidly. Don’t let an excuse like, myspouse expects to watch TV every night impact your health. There is alwaysanother choice that you can make. It maysound silly but you can exercise while watching TV. I know because I have been known to do this. This way Dan and I were doing somethingtogether, but I was also active.

The thirditem to keep in mind is that when you plan to do something outside the norms ofsociety you will meet with resistance. People are pack animals and they like tobe part of a group, to be included. Whenever someone wants to differ from thegroup (example becoming a little “too granola”) the other members of the groupfeel threatened. This took me a long time to figure out. I couldn’t wrap my head around why peoplewould say things to me like, “it’s just a little parmesan, olive oil, salt,prosciutto, etc.” Why were these peopleso vested in what I ate? Then I figured it out. By my not eating the way they ate I was making them feel uncomfortable.It was inadvertently saying to them that their diet wasn’t healthy. Of course it wasn’t my intention to criticizetheir diet though in retrospect I can see how they would interpret my actionsthat way. If I were being completelyhonest I did feel that their diet wasn’t healthy enough for us and that theywould be better off if they ate like we did. No wonder people were reacting to our dietary changes as though it waspersonal because for them it was. However I did not allow these reactions toturn into an excuse for eating in a way was not the healthiest possible. Here is the bottom line, what other people doand say only has an impact on your if you allow it to. If your husband, friends, or family want to eatmeat and cheese that is their decision. Their dietary patterns should have no impact on your health. If you are allowing their habits to affectyou I would say you are hiding behind an excuse.

The fourthitem to keep in mind is that if you aren’t happy with your health, or the rateof change in the improvement of your health than something you are doing isn’t working foryou at the moment. This is a toughconcept for people. Remember my friendwho lost 50 pounds but now the weight isn’t coming off? Clinging to the idea that practicingmoderation will lead to the goal is extremely unlikely since the pounds havestopped coming off. In this case the excuse is “moderation works”. Really? I would say the truth is that moderation worked for the first 50 poundsand now something else is required to get the pounds moving again. Maybe when 6 additional months have elapsedwithout additional weight loss my friend will be willing to let go of thisexcuse. *fingers crossed* We all need to be willing to hold ourselvesaccountable. When the changes we havemade aren’t getting the results that we want that just means that we need to dosomething different. Don’t get locked into a pattern that no longer serves yourbest interest.

The fifthitem to keep in mind is that sometimes drastic action is required when theproblem is big enough. We all seearticles every day that tell us that if we swap multigrain noodles for whiteflour noodles we have made a recipe healthy. While this is an improvement it is only a very tiny improvement and notone that is going to make a big change in anyone’s health. If you are battling a chronic disease(cancer, heart disease, diabetes, auto-immune conditions, or have a lot ofweight to loss) the changes you need to make will need to be much bigger thanjust simple swaps of whole grain for refined grain. I hear lots of people say things like “but Iread that if I do……, then that is enough.” The bottom line is that most of us believe what we want to believe notwhat is actually in our best interest. People want to believe that moderation is enough, but very often that isnot the case. If you have made changesbut aren’t getting the results you want then bigger changes are required. Don’t use things you read in the popularpress as excuses. If what you are doing isn’t working then you need to dosomething different and most likely something more drastic.

What I hopeyou got from this is that we all tell ourselves stories. By believing our own stories we are makingexcuses. The problem is that we are onlylying to ourselves. No one ever improvedanything by staying stuck in a rut that wasn’t moving them forward. Don’t get me wrong if you rut is working (youare happy, a healthy weight, your lab results are good) then it means that youare in a good rut and you need to stay there. However most Americans are in an unhealthy rut where they weigh toomuch, their blood pressure is elevated, and their blood sugar and cholesterol aretoo high. These are the people who need to step up their actions. Remember our health is nothing more than aresult of the accumulated decisions and actions in life. The more healthy actions you take thehealthier you will become. Once the vast majority of your decisions and actionsare healthy you will be on the road to lifelong health. People try to make “dieting” difficult butreally is couldn’t be easier. Eat as muchwhole natural plant food as you can, make these whole foods the bulk of yourintake, be active every day and your health will take care of itself.

Likeeverything that I have written if this isn’t clear I would like you to let meknow. I am happy to explain in a different way if that will help it make moresense.

Progress on my goals:

1. Newsletters– Sunday was just as busy as Saturday for me. This meant the newsletters didn’t get workedon. I will be happy when January is overand I have more time to get things done.

2. Body Bugg– I continue to wear my bugg and I have gotten back into using it the way I hadintended when I purchased it. Gome! J

3. Date withDan – Dan and I had another quasi date, this one was dinner with Lauren asour chaperone. ;-)

4. Measuring calorie dense food – I ammaking progress adding nuts and seeds to our food. I

5. Workingon my business – My schedule got in the way of working on the businesstoday. Sunday I was not able to fit in any time to work on the business, or todo laundry for that matter. Once January is over and I have more free time Iwill jump on this again. I remember thatI promised you the link to my second website on February 10^th and Ireally, really don’t want to miss that deadline. *eek* Nothing like self imposed pressure. ;-)

How are youfeeling about your progress so far? Ihope you feel like you have made a few lasting changes this month. J

Random Thoughts:

I want togive you plenty of warning that I will be taking a few days off at thebeginning of February. I have a ton of things to get caught up on in my life including:

· Homework for the Robbins-Madanes Trainingprogram

· Filling my house with fresh produce (in otherwords stops at multiple grocery stores are in my future)

· Working on my second website which I plan tounveil on February 10^th assuming that I can stay on track

· Cleaning my house since that was as the bottomof my list during most of January

· Spending some me time in the kitchen working onrecipes

· Organizing the to-do list for the boat to gether ready for spring sailing

· Taking the fur children to the doctor for theirannual physicals

· Getting back to the gym for morning workouts ratherthan exercising at home

Lots ofthings in my life went to the end of the list with the trip to the hospital andthe added time writing the blog posts. Ineed a little time to myself to get caught up so that I don’t feel as stressedout. I really don’t do my best work whenI am under pressure. I know lots of people do but I am not one of them.

Acknowledgements:

Have youmade any progress writing acknowledgements? I hope you are working on this exercise and enjoying it. I find that ithelps me stay positive and recognize the things that I do every day. Here are my acknowledgements:

· I am very proud of myself for sticking to mydaily posts this month. When we had the unexpected week long trip to thehospital I thought for sure I was not going to make it happen. However I am happy that I exceeded my expectationsfor myself.

· Sunday evening I was able to wear a pair ofpants that were too tight only a few weeks ago. It is nice to have most of those 4 pounds I gained when Dan was in thehospital gone. Have you ever noticed howthe pounds go on much easier than the come off? Life is just not fair. ;-)

· Lauren told me that a conversation we had withSamantha while at the hospital made an impression since she asked her about soyprotein isolates after we were gone. Don’tyou just love it when you can talk with someone and make a difference? J

· I was very happy to have connected Michael withLauren on Sunday. Mike is a new grad andI know he appreciated hearing about the nursing profession from someone who hasbeen in a little while.

· One thing that really struck me this weekend washow much everyone at the restaurant cares about us. They were so concerned about our trip to the hospitalearlier this month. It was very nice toknow how much they all care but I also felt bad since we made them worry. Lauren commented that we were all at the hospitaltalking about food, nutrition and recipes and other people were worried. I need to remember to keep them in the loopthe next time so there is no unnecessary worry.

Sunday:

Sunday was a good day, a little busy, a little laid back,time with friends and time to relax. Iwas happy to get the vision board post finished since I knew that one wouldtake a long time not only to write but to put together a board that would makesense to all of you. I wanted to createsomething that you would see that would immediately make sense given our life.I hope that I was able to show you how to translate what you want to achieveinto pictures.

Both Dan and I had quinoa oat blueberry bars forbreakfast. There are now only 2 leftwhich means it is almost time to start a second batch so that I can work on therecipe. Healthy baking definitely takesmore time to perfect than healthy cooking. However I am determined to get this recipe right. We had these for breakfast because we hadn’theard from Lauren yet so we wanted something light just in case we ended up atJesse Wong’s for lunch which was our back up plan. Fortunately she saw heremail and we were able to coordinate dinner instead but that didn’t happenuntil a little after noon.

Lunch for both of us was chocolate, cherry, kale smoothiesbecause they are quick, filling and healthy. I had ½ of one and Dan and 1 ½ which is how we usually do it. This smoothie is very calorie dense due tothe nuts so I try not to eat too much particularly when I know we are going outfor dinner.

Here is the Vitamix stuffed before blending.

After blending it becomes two glasses like this.

Dinner was courtesy of Ian and you know that meant it wasdelicious. We met our new friend Lauren for a healthy meal. She was very excited to get healthy food outsince that can be difficult in this town. But now she knows our secret….Ian. ;-)

We all started with the vegan soup which has the kale,white beans and sweet potatoes.

Next we asked the kitchen to make a vegan version ofantipasti plate. I am sure this looks familiarbecause we order it all the time because we love it. I neglected my photographic responsibilities and recycled a prior photo. Lauren enjoyed the dill on the artichokes,which I also loved and the flavor intensity of the house-made pickles.

Dan and Lauren split a samosa. You know Lauren must rate since Dan usuallyeats one of these all by himself. LOL

Then the three of us split an order of the Thai vegetablesin peanut sauce over quinoa which I am happy to say has made it to the regular menu. We had this dish on New Year’s Eve and lovedit and told Ian to keep some of the sauce in the freezer for us. Clearly he figured out that we liked the dishsince it is now available all the time. ;-) The spicy peanut sauce definitelymakes this dish IMO.

There were afew pots of green tea as well as baskets of whole grain ciabatta and “redstuff” (sun-dried tomato and golden raisin spread). You can see my healthier version of Ian’s redstuff recipe here.

Dinner withLauren was a blast. We chatted for hours, nibbled on food and chattedmore. Lauren spent a lot of time talkingwith Michael (the 6’7” recent nursing graduate who we lovingly refer to asShorty) about nursing opportunities where she works. I know he appreciated talking to Lauren andthat she was going to set him up with some of her contacts at Hopkins. We also got a couple of local veg take outsuggestions that we are going to follow up on. I have high hopes since the guys at the restaurant know good food andhow we eat. *fingers crossed* We will definitely be making plans to gettogether with Lauren again soon. Shedefinitely fit right in with everyone at the restaurant. J

Happy thoughts:

Have yougotten into the habit of writing your happy thoughts? I find it helpful to remind myself how oftenthings go well and that I shouldn’t take these things for granted. As always there are so many things to bethankful for that I almost don’t know where to start. Here are my happythoughts:

· Dinner with Lauren was great. We chatted foralmost 4 hours while eating dinner, European style. Lauren met a lot the staff and made friendswith one of the new nursing grads at the restaurant. Overall it was a very nice night and we willbe doing it again soon. Isn’t it crazyhow you meet someone under less than ideal circumstances (like an emergent tripto the hospital) and you get a new friend out of it? I just love how life works sometimes. There really is good to found everywhere,even when it isn’t obvious. J

· Finished my latest vision board which took lesstime than I had planned since I had taken care of the compiling a lot of imagesages ago. For those of you who want todo multiple boards keep images in files by category and that way you can putboards together quickly. My next visionboard will be focused on exercise. I want to change my exercise routine andonce I have the specifics well defined I will be making another board. Let meknow if you want to see that one.

· It was a beautiful day weather-wise on Sunday. Additionally I am thankful for the mildwinter we have experienced to date. Weare both looking forward to the upcoming temperatures in the mid 60s predictedfor Tuesday and Wednesday week. This is not the typical January in theMid-Atlantic but one that I definitely prefer to our normal weather.

Signing Out:

Can youbelieve there is only one day left in January? I am shocked that the month isalmost over. As much as I have enjoyedwriting this series and I am also glad that it over. I really need somedowntime so that I can get caught up on my life. However I would love to hear about yourfavorite posts from the month. If one ortwo of them stood out to you please let me know what they were and why. It will help me to know what to write aboutgoing forward.

Monday was atiny bit less hectic than most of the month has been as that was a very goodthing. I was actually able to do a littlehomework for the new training and I signed up for which was good. It would stink to be behind after only oneweek. ;-)

I also tooka little time to make a pot of curried red lentil and tomato soup today. Notonly did it make the house smell wonderful but it was nice knowing that it ishealthy (turmeric), filling and we have enough for a few meals. Love that!

I hope yourweek has started off well and that you are looking forward to the start of anew month. February is just around thecorner which means Valentine’s Day, the anniversary of the day Dan and I metand the ramp up to sailing season. J I am looking forward to February.

Now it is timefor me to enjoy the beautiful orange sunset and then make something for Dan andme for dinner. Talk with you all again tomorrow.

31 Days to Better Health - Day 29

2012-01-29T13:04:00.000-05:00

HappySunday! I hope you are having a greatweekend. We have been enjoying time withfriends, relaxing and just goofing off. It has definitely been a great way to spend the weekend since this monthhas been so hectic for both of us. Weboth believe that reducing stress and enjoying life are just as important aseating healthy and staying active. Don’t forget that getting adequate rest isalso part of the health equation as is having good relationships. J

Here is the recapof what we have accomplished so far to remind us all of how much we havecovered during the first 28 days of January:

Day 1 –Defined Success and What is/was Holding Us Back
Day 2 –Determined our Purpose and Looked at Passion
Day 3 –Listed Our Goals for January
Day 4 –Listed the Things We Have Needed to Work on for a While
Day 5 –Looked at Optimism vs. Pessimism and Fear vs. Intuition
Day 6 –Practiced Conscious Eating
Day 7 – HaraHachi Bu
Day 8 –Taking the Stress Out of Meal Time
Day 9 – Acknowledgments
Day 10 – NoExcuses, Do it Anyway
Day 11 – Isit True?
Day 12 –Have You Really Connected With Someone Today?
Day 13 –Motivation is a Decision
Day 14 -Successfully Navigating Dinner at an Unfamiliar Restaurant
Day 15 -What Do You Want, Have You Asked?
Day 16 –Treating Others as You Wish to be Treated
Day 17 –Food as a Budget
Day 18 –Silence Your Inner Critic
Day 19 –Replace I Have to With I Want to
Day 20 –Identifying Your Rituals
Day 21 –Face Your Fears
Day 22 –Give Up the Diet Mentality
Day 23 – TheMeaning and/or Purpose of Food
Day 24 –Trigger Foods/Situations/People
Day 25 –Words Have Meaning
Day 26 –Lose All-Or-Nothing Thinking
Day 27- Decide to live as if ……
Day 28 – Two-BiteTest

What did youthink of the two-bite test? Did Iexplain it in a way that made sense? Ithink the most important parts of that concept to remember are: 1) Life is too short, if you are going toindulge make it by eating the best example of whatever delight you are cravingand, 2) It is important to remember that you need to burn everything you eat. It also helps me to remember that dessert isalways available. Just because it is there doesn’t mean that I “have to” eatit. ;-) If there is anything that you would like to me explain about this or anythingelse just let me know.

Vision Board:

Using thelife you described two days ago now we are going to create a vision board. Forthose of you who are unfamiliar with vision boards I will explain what they are. Basically a vision board is a pictorialrepresentation of your goals. It meansthat you need to take images that represent the life you described two days agoand create a collage. Think of all thosemoment by moment decisions that will add up to your “perfect life” and findpictures which represent those activities.

You cancreate a vision board the old fashioned way but cutting images or phrases frommagazines or you can do it electronically. The purpose of putting your vision into pictures is to give you anotherway to embody and experience your goals. People have very different ways of learning. Some people need to learnby doing. Others learn visually. Stillothers need to develop habits instead of thinking about each decision. The bottom line is that the more ways you canembody your goal the better your chance of succeeding.

Items you will need tocreate your vision board:

· Poster board, which I found at our local Rite Aid(drug store). Alternately you can use acork board which will allow you to change the images regularly and this is what I prefer.

· A big stack of different magazines you are willingto cut up. You can get old magazines from libraries, hair salons, dentistoffices, or your doctor’s office. Another resource is online photographs. I like to use Google Images.

· Glue, rubber cement or a glue stick. Alternately if you are using a cork board youwill need pins.

Before you begin yourvision board:

The most important thing to remember when creating a visionboard is the goal, your vision. The images on the board need to represent theimage you are trying to create. Beforeyou start gathering images go back to the vision you created in the exerciseson day 27. Reread your responses to thequestions on day 27. Get a vivid mentalimage of how your life will be different when you embody this goal. Now it is time to create your vision board.

The Steps to Create aVision Board:

1. Go through your magazines and cut out images that represent theactions you need to take to reach your goal. With your clear desire in mind, search for images which portray yourvision. Go through magazines and pullout pictures, words or phrases that seem to fit your goal. Make a big pile ofimages, phrases and words.

2. Sort the images by category. My categories were: health, family, happiness and love but yours couldbe completely different.

3. Go through the images and begin to lay your favorites on theboard. Selection the images which best represent your goal and the leave theremainder for another board. As youplace the pictures on the board you may find yourself grouping them like lovein one corner, health in the center, etc. or you may want the images to go allover the place. As you start to lay out the images you may decide that you wantto create a vision book or journal and that is fine too. Alternately you may want to do both a boardand a journal.

4. Glue everything onto the board. Add any of the phrases that youcut out. Alternately if you can’t findthe phrases you need you can print them out instead.

5. Some people like to include pictures of themselves on their boards. If you have a picture of yourself where youare happy or where life matched your current goal either of those pictureswould be fantastic to include on your board.

6. Hang your vision board in a place where you will see itoften. I put mine in my family roomsince that is where I spend most of my time.

Make a Vision Journal

Another option is touse these same principles in a blank journal or an artist’s sketch book. Byusing a book you can keep an on-going vision journal. This is helpful if youare trying to make a lot of changes in your life.

Things to remember when creatingyour vision board:

1. Chooseimages that represent what you want to feel, be, or accomplish.

2. Allowyourself the freedom to select any image or phrase that feel right to you.

3. Lookonline for examples of vision boards for ideas.

4. Onceit's finished set it up somewhere that you will see it daily. You may want to photograph it or scan it anduse it a screen saver or save the picture on your phone.

5. Starttaking meaningful actions towards your goals daily based on the exercise we didon the 25^th and 27^thof January. The board itself isn’t what creates change itis taking action.

6. Youcan create additional vision boards about more specific goals if your desire.

Creating avision board can take days. I have worked on vision board for more than a weekin the past so don’t feel rushed to get yours done in a day. Keep working on it until you like it. I always start by laying images out and thenmove them around until I like the placement. If you are artistic you can alsoadd art to your board. The bottom lineis to enjoy the process but come away with something that reminds you to takeactions which will help you reach your goal.

Here aresome close up shots of the board I put together today. This one is about eatinghealthy, enjoying loved ones and remembering that you can get healthy at any age(Valerie Bertinelli) and be a cancer thriver (Lance Armstrong).

Likeeverything that I have written if this isn’t clear I would like you to let meknow. I am happy to explain in a different way if that will help it make moresense.

Progress on my goals:

1. Newsletters– Saturday we were out of the house as much as we were home. This meant thenewsletters didn’t get worked on.

2. Body Bugg– I continue to wear my bugg and I have gotten back into using it the way I hadintended when I purchased it. Gome! J

3. Date withDan – Dan and I had a quasi lunch date with Louis as our chaperone. ;-)

4. Measuring calorie dense food – I ammaking progress adding nuts and seeds to our food. I was proud of myself forasking for nuts on our lunch salad when we were out with Louis.

5. Workingon my business – My schedule got in the way of working on the businesstoday. Saturday it seemed more important to relax. Once January is over and Ihave more free time I will jump on this again. I remember that I promised you the link to my second website on February10^th and I really, really don’t want to miss that deadline. *eek* Nothing like self imposed pressure. ;-)

How are youfeeling about your progress so far? Ihope you feel like you have made a few lasting changes this month. J

Random Thoughts:

I read anarticle online yesterday (Time or NYT I think) about fraudulent online 5 starreviews. All I could think of when Iread this article was what is the world coming to? For the life of me I don’t understand whysomeone would be willing to lie. The article explained that in many cases theitems were given away in return for reviews. This is exactly why I don’t acceptfree products for reviews like most bloggers do. I never wanted to be in theposition where I felt like I needed to be “nice” when it wasn’t deserved.

Dan, Louisand I were talking about the noticeable reduction in civility that seems to becommonplace these days. People allow their cell phones to ring loudly inrestaurants, and worse yet they answer them in a louder than conversation toneof voice. Why? We also talked about the general trend ofrudeness in email. He was telling us howone of the people he works with (a woman, which shocked me) point blank toldpeople not to thank her for finishing projects because she doesn’t want heremail box filling up. My first questionwas “is she young” and when he said no I admit I was a bit surprised. What happened to treating other people theway you want to be treated? Clearly I amliving in another time. However I findthe entire situation to be more than a little disappointing.

Acknowledgements:

Have youmade any progress writing acknowledgements? I hope you are working on this exercise and enjoying it. I find that ithelps me stay positive and recognize the things that I do every day. Here are my acknowledgements:

· Since I had eaten lightly for breakfast andlunch I was hungry before dinner. Theold me would have grabbed something easy like a handful of nuts or maybe somedinner leftover for a snack. However yesterday I opted to have a healthy snackthat was nutrition packed and it felt good knowing that I consistently makegood decisions now. Who said people atmy age aren’t capable of change? ;-)

· Saturday night I broke out of my comfort zoneand spent an hour working on an electronic vision board so that I could tellyou about it. In the end I wasn’t crazyabout it, didn’t like the image selection and preferred to go back to theold-fashioned paper and scissors route. However at least I tried, and now Iknow what I like from experience.

· Dan and I were talking about lunch and we bothcommented about how healthy it was from a nutrition perspective. We had beans(fiber and protein), leafy greens, mushrooms, sweet potatoes, kale and nuts onour salad so we were better able to absorb the fat soluble vitamins. We washedour lunch down with green tea. It reallyis impressive how healthy you can eat when you are out if you want to. Years ago I would not have thought this waspossible but I hope you see that it is since we ate all this at a typicalAmerican restaurant where most of the dishes contain meat, cheese or butter.

Saturday:

Our food on Saturday was a little different because we wereout part of the day. Knowing that we were meeting Louis for lunch Iintentionally made us both less for breakfast. Dan started his morning with half a serving of wild blueberry and gojiberry oatmeal with raw sunflower, pumpkin and hempseeds.

Breakfast for me was one of the quinoa, oat and blueberrybreakfast bars that I am working on. Theflavor and nutrition is good but I need to work on the texture. I am sure I will get it right eventually. Perfection takes time, and lots of recipetweaking particularly when it comes to healthy baking.

Lunch was courtesy of Ian. Dan started with a bowl of Ian’s new healthy soup and I had a cup. The soup is white bean, sweet potato and kalewith a broth that I am fairly sure has white miso. Louis ordered a cup too and we all enjoyedit. I need to remember to ask Ian if thebase was veg stock plus white miso so I can make something similar for you.

Next Dan and I split one of the special sandwiches whichIan makes us to order. This one included hummus, spicy chickpeas, roasted artichokes,fresh arugula, crispy green beans, and roasted tomato. It came with roastedrosemary sweet potatoes on the side. Idon’t have to tell you that it was delicious do I?

We also shared a salad of mixed baby greens, roasted portabellas,sun-dried tomatoes and toasted almonds that was dressed with a littlebalsamic. I am always surprised how easyit is for us to get vegan food when we are out.

Since Dan and I shared lunch around 5pm I was gettinghungry but I didn’t want dinner that early. I knew that I had some of thespinach and artichokes soup in the refrigerator that I decided to use for saladdressing. I made myself a small salad of baby arugula, the leftover soup, pinenuts, sun-dried tomato bits and no-salt seasoning. This was just enough to give my stomachsomething to work on but not too many calories. Not to mention it wasnutritious and delicious so I was happy all the way around.

Dinner was a simple meal of quinoa that was topped withgrilled veggies that were tossed in sherry vinegar and topped with the leftoverspinach and artichoke soup (which is a great dressing BTW), hulled hempseeds(for omega 3s) sun-dried tomato bits and no-salt seasoning.

Happy thoughts:

Have yougotten into the habit of writing your happy thoughts? I find it helpful to remind myself how oftenthings go well and that I shouldn’t take these things for granted. As always there are so many things to bethankful for that I almost don’t know where to start. Here are my happythoughts:

· We were greeted at the restaurant with two hugsfrom Aimee when we walked in the door. We had no idea she was so worried about the trip to the hospital earlierthis month. We tried to make certainthat she knew not to worry in the future and just to call or text. Are you starting to see why we always saythat we would adopt her in a minute? She is such a sweet girl and we are verylucky to have her in our lives.

· It wasgreat to see Louis for lunch and have a chance to catch up. We did a lot of talking, some of it importantbut most of it just little things friends talk about it. We have known Louis so long that he ispractically a member of the family, only the type of family that you want tohave (if you know what I mean). ;-)

· I noticed Saturday evening at 5:56pm we stillhad an orange horizon. The days are getting longer every day! *woo hoo* It is going to be spring before we know it. *happy dance*

· We had a very laid back Saturday and both tooktime to relax and enjoy each other’s company. Like always Dan and I spent a lotof time talking. I am always a littlesurprised that we never run out of things to talk about given how long we havebeen together.

Signing Out:

Sunday wasfairly laid-back and that was a good thing. Both Dan and I needed time to relaxand recharge. January has been a heck ofa month with the trip to the hospital at the beginning. It is very nice to be getting back to a morenormal routine that is for sure.

Sundaymorning I spent some time finishing this post and putting together a new visionboard to show you. That is the one that you saw many pictures of today. This one was all about food, health andlife. The next board I will be doing ison exercise since there wasn’t room for that on this board. If you would like to see that one let me knowand I will share it with you when it is finished.

We hadplanned to see Lauren for lunch but the city was doing some work that requiredshutting off the water Sunday morning and that meant the restaurant wasn’t goingto be open for lunch, and even opening for dinner was iffy at best. I had sent Lauren an email as soon as we gotback from lunch on Saturday to let her know what was going on and fortunatelyshe saw the email before lunch so we changed our plans to dinner instead. This was great because it meant that I hadtime to get this post finished before going out which translated into beingmore relaxed.

I hope thatyou had a wonderful weekend and are ready to start your week relaxed andrefreshed. Talk with you again tomorrow. J

31 Days to Better Health - Day 28

2012-01-28T16:03:00.000-05:00

Don’t youjust love weekends? I hope everyone ishaving a wonderful Saturday. I am veryhappy to tell you that I managed to write a lot of this post on Friday whichmeant more time with my sweetie over the weekend. *woo hoo* Today we are getting together withour friend Louis and tomorrow we are seeing Lauren (the nearly vegan nurse wemeant at Hopkins). I am not sure whatelse we will be doing this weekend but we will definitely being havingfun. J

I couldn’thelp but notice that you guys have gotten quiet on me again. Does this mean that you haven’t enjoyed thelast few posts? If you have any feedbackplease share it with me. My goal is towrite things that are helpful to you but I don’t know what that is if you don’ttell me. Please remember that I haven’tgotten my certification in mind reading yet. ;-)

I havereceived a few emails asking me if I learned what I have been writing aboutthis month at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition and the answer is no. Thethings that I have been writing about this month are a combination of things Ilearned: managing people, takingmanagement and organization behavior classes in college and graduate school,and trying to figure out what would work for me. The ideas that I have written about thismonth are some of my favorites but there are many more where these camefrom.

For those ofyou who are just joining us here is the recap of what we have accomplished sofar to remind us all of how much we have covered during the first 27 days ofJanuary:

Day 1 –Defined Success and What is/was Holding Us Back
Day 2 –Determined our Purpose and Looked at Passion
Day 3 –Listed Our Goals for January
Day 4 –Listed the Things We Have Needed to Work on for a While
Day 5 – Lookedat Optimism vs. Pessimism and Fear vs. Intuition
Day 6 – PracticedConscious Eating
Day 7 – HaraHachi Bu
Day 8 –Taking the Stress Out of Meal Time
Day 9 –Acknowledgments
Day 10 – NoExcuses, Do it Anyway
Day 11 – Isit True?
Day 12 –Have You Really Connected With Someone Today?
Day 13 –Motivation is a Decision
Day 14 -Successfully Navigating Dinner at an Unfamiliar Restaurant
Day 15 -What Do You Want, Have You Asked?
Day 16 –Treating Others as You Wish to be Treated
Day 17 –Food as a Budget
Day 18 –Silence Your Inner Critic
Day 19 –Replace I Have to With I Want to
Day 20 –Identifying Your Rituals
Day 21 –Face Your Fears
Day 22 –Give Up the Diet Mentality
Day 23 – TheMeaning and/or Purpose of Food
Day 24 –Trigger Foods/Situations/People
Day 25 –Words Have Meaning
Day 26 –Lose All-Or-Nothing Thinking
Day 27- Decide to live as if ……

Two-BiteTest:

Yesterday’spost required a lot of homework so I wanted to write a short and sweet oneentry today to give everyone a break. This is something that I read about years ago and once I put it intopractice I realized how valuable it is and I think you will agree once you tryit.

The two-biterule applies to indulgent food. Thepremise is that when you want to eat something that is decadent (by yourstandards), eat the food slowly and consciously like we talked about during day6. But now we are going to add another aspect to the process. Now I want you tobe very discerning about the food. Letme explain what I mean using cheesecake as an example.

You are outto dinner and see your favorite dessert, cheesecake, on the menu. You know the pastry chef was trained in Parisand is known for her desserts. Cheesecake has always been your favorite andthis one is a bruleed version with a calvados, apple and walnut topping so youorder it. The cake arrives and it isgorgeous and you can’t wait to dive in. This is where it is critical to slow down and take your time before youtake the first bite. We are going tolook at this example two ways to help demonstrate this rule.

Option1: You take your spoon to crack thebrulee top and it doesn’t snap. Bad signnumber one. Then you put the cheesecakein your mouth and the texture is much denser than what you like a cheesecake tobe. Bad sing number two. Just in case you have overreacted you slowlyand consciously try a second bite this time with the calvados, apple and walnuttopping and the cake. The apple toppingis too sweet and the second bite doesn’t get any better than the first. Three strikes … this dessert is out. You stop eating the dessert knowing that whatyou eat you have to burn and this isn’t worth the effort that it will take youto burn off.

Option 2: When you crack the brulee top on thecheesecake with the spoon and it snaps. Nice! The texture of thecheesecake is soft and it has a light lemon flavor in the base. Now you have asecond bite this time with the apple topping and that makes it evenbetter. Delicious! This indulgence has passed the two-bitetest. Now the only question you have toanswer is whether it is worth burning off and only you decide that. Given yesterday you may also want to askyourself if the “healthy you” would be eating this? Maybe healthy you would have this if it werea special occasion. Only you know theanswer to that question.

The otherway to think of this is life is too short to waste it eating subpar food. You can use this rule with any food itdoesn’t just apply to dessert. I followthis rule whenever I am eating anything that I consider indulgent. If I am going to eat something that isoutside my usual food then it has to be delicious. I always remind myself that I am what I eatand that helps me to make better choices. Additionally I tell myself thatrestaurant food always contains more calories and fat than my food and that ifI eat I have to burn it off. These ideasmake it much easier to only eat “the best” example of whatever it is I amhaving.

One reasonthat I wanted to talk about the two-bite test is something that saw online longago that I have never forgotten. At a different blog someone had baked adessert (a cake I think it was) and they continued to eat it every day (for aleast a week) until it was gone. All Icould think of was that by day three that cake had to be dried out and not verygood and yet they continued to photograph it and eat it another 4 days. By the end the cake even looked dried out inthe pictures. I was so surprised thatsomeone would waste calories on old dried out cake and knew that I needed towrite about that some time. That dried out cake would never have passed thetwo-bite rule and would have gone into the trash at our house. I hope thisexplains the two-bite test.

Today’sexercise:

1. The next time you have something that youconsider decadent employ the two-bite test and see what happens. Write down your experience in yourjournal. Try to answer the followingquestions:

· Does the food taste different when you takeyour time and really try to experience it?

· When you consciously think about the fact thatyou will need to burn off what you are about to eat does that cause you tonaturally eat less?

· Realizing that you deserve to enjoy the best,most delicious example of food you want (cheesecake, etc.) does that change howyou view the food in front of you?

I think ofthis as life is too short not to eat “the best”. If I am going to deviate from my eating planthen I expect that calorie investment (think food as a bank account) to beworth it to me. I hope this makes sense.

Progress onmy goals:

1. Newsletters - Friday was hectic since I was busywriting the bulk of thee posts so there was no work on the newsletters thatday.

2. Body Bugg – I continue to wear my bugg and Ihave gotten back into using it the way I had intended when I purchased it. Go me! J

3. Date with Dan – Dan and I have been going for awalk each night after dinner. We areplanning to go on a date this weekend. *woo hoo*

4. Measuringcalorie dense food – I am making a little progress on this but I really need tofocus on it with every veggie meal to help my body absorb the fat solublevitamins.

5. Working on my business – My schedule got in the way of working on thebusiness today. I am hoping that Dan and I will have some time to work on thistogether over the weekend. I value Dan’s opinions and would love to get hisinput. If we don’t have time to do thatthis may have to wait until February. *sigh*

How are youfeeling about your progress so far? Ihope you feel like you have made a few lasting changes this month. J

RandomThoughts:

Eveningwalks have definitely become a habit for us. We both enjoy getting out latewhen the neighborhood is quiet and peaceful. It is wonderful to spend time outside each evening and spending timetogether.

I get a lotof questions by email about why a particular blog has been included on my blogroll. Usually this would be because itis either not vegan or not healthy. Manyof the blogs on my blog rolls were added years ago and I haven’t looked at themin years. I am going through the list now and eliminating many that I no longerread. Expect my blog rolls to continue to change as I get time to review thelist and add and delete items. Also ifyou know of any blogs that I should add please let me know. My goal is to develop a list of blogs thatrepresent either: healthy recipes,healthy veganism, health and nutrition in general, humor or artistic chefs wholook at food in an unusual way.

Acknowledgements:

· I am very proud of myself for getting so muchwriting done on Friday to free up my weekend. It is nice when you know what youwant to do and can make it happen. J Since I had a little extra free time I wasable to enjoy a leisurely morning and lunch with friends.

· Thursday I decided to work on a very differentrecipe, the quinoa and blueberry breakfast bars. It is definitely good to break out of mycomfort zone in terms of cooking. Ithink this recipe has promise and I am looking forward to perfecting it so thatall of us have a healthy portable breakfast option.

Friday:

My food on Friday was again fast things that I could graband go. I knew that I didn’t have much time since I was busy trying to writethe bulk of three posts so that I could enjoy my weekend. Here is my food from Friday.

Breakfastfor me was two of the quinoa, oat, blueberry and nuts bars that I am workingon. The flavor of these is good but I need to work on the texture. I hope to have this recipe finalized nextmonth.

I also had agrapefruit for a mid-morning snack.

Lunch wasleftover kale and veggie stir-fry over black rice. What would I do without my intentionalleftovers? ;-)

Dinner wasvery late and definitely made on the fly. My brain was fried after spending the day writing and trying to becreative. I literally had no idea what Iwas going to cook at 9pm. Dan suggestedsmoothies but I wasn’t really in the mood for that. However a hot soup from the Vitamix soundedappealing. In the Vitamix I combined rawcashews, frozen spinach, frozen artichokes, onion, garlic, nutritional yeastand no-salt seasoning.

Happythoughts:

· I am thrilled to have gotten so much writingaccomplished on Friday. Knowing that Iwould have more time with my husband and friends this weekend was a wonderfulfeeling.

· We both love spending time with friends and wehad a nice time with our buddy Louis on Saturday. Our sweet Aimee was also working on Saturdayso we were able to spend some her too. Icouldn’t think of much nicer way to spend the afternoon than with friends.

· It was great to see everyone at the restaurantsince this was the first time that saw them since going to hospital. They wereall concerned and it was very sweet. Iam really not kidding when I say the restaurant is like “Cheers” for us. I ducked into the kitchen before we left tocatch up with Ian and he was prepping a vegan Thai vegetable dish for tonight.We may have to go back for dinner. ;-)

· Tomorrow we are planning to get together withLauren, the nearly vegan nurse that we met at Hopkins earlier this month. Sheis the one who also lives nearby for those of you who don’t remember thestory. It will be nice to see heroutside the hospital. I already warnedIan that I am introducing a new vegan to mix; he took it better than Iexpected.

· Ian has added a healthy soup to the menu whichwe had for the first time today. It was vegan and had kale, white beans, sweetpotatoes and I am fairly sure there was yellow miso in the broth. I will makeit a point to ask him the details when we go in again so I can make my ownversion of it for all of you soon. Dan,Louis and I all got the soup and it was very good.

Signing Out:

I spent mostof Sunday writing for the blog and the business. By the end of the day on Friday I wasmentally exhausted. However I was also very happy to have a jump on my work forthe weekend. However it was all worth inon Saturday when I was able to take the morning and afternoon off. We had a very nice lunch with our friendLouis and had time to fill in Aimee, Ian and the gang about our recentadventures. I have no idea what we aregoing to do with our evening but I am looking forward to spending time withoutmy computer.

Whatever youare doing this weekend I hope that you are enjoying yourself. Tomorrow we will be working on vision boardsin case you were wondering what the next post is about. After that we only have two more health poststo go and we will return to our regularly scheduled programming. ;-) Talk with you all again tomorrow.

31 Days to Better Health - Day 27

2012-01-27T21:07:00.000-05:00

Happy Fridayeveryone! The weekend is here! *woohoo* I am very much looking forward to 48 hourswith my hubby. My plan is to try towrite as much of the posts for today, Saturday and Sunday’s as I can before Dancomes home from work tonight. Sincethese January posts have been taking me most of the day to write I am not surehow much I can get done today but I am going to try to write most of the nextthree. Wish me luck, since I know that Iam going to need it.

What did youthink of yesterday’s post? Until Istarted talking to people and their food choices and diets I didn’t realize howcommon it was for people to stick rigidly to particular diets. While it wasnice to not be alone, it was also sad since I had broken out of the trap butmany others had not. I hope somethingthat I wrote helped you to look at food choices differently. For those of you who are just joining us hereis the recap of what we have accomplished so far to remind us all of how muchwe have covered during the first 26 days of January:

Day 1 –Defined Success and What is/was Holding Us Back

Day 2 –Determined our Purpose and Looked at Passion
Day 3 –Listed Our Goals for January
Day 4 –Listed the Things We Have Needed to Work on for a While
Day 5 – Lookedat Optimism vs. Pessimism and Fear vs. Intuition
Day 6 – PracticedConscious Eating
Day 7 – HaraHachi Bu
Day 8 –Taking the Stress Out of Meal Time
Day 9 –Acknowledgments
Day 10 – NoExcuses, Do it Anyway
Day 11 – Isit True?
Day 12 –Have You Really Connected With Someone Today?
Day 13 –Motivation is a Decision
Day 14 -Successfully Navigating Dinner at an Unfamiliar Restaurant
Day 15 -What Do You Want, Have You Asked?
Day 16 –Treating Others as You Wish to be Treated
Day 17 –Food as a Budget
Day 18 –Silence Your Inner Critic
Day 19 –Replace I Have to With I Want to
Day 20 –Identifying Your Rituals
Day 21 –Face Your Fears
Day 22 –Give Up the Diet Mentality
Day 23 – TheMeaning and/or Purpose of Food
Day 24 –Trigger Foods/Situations/People
Day 25 –Words Have Meaning
Day 26 –Lose All-Or-Nothing Thinking

Decide tolive as if:

This is oneof my favorite topics as well as being one of the most powerful exercises interms of making changes. Once youunderstand what I mean by “deciding to live as if” I think you will agree withme. I hope that you are willing to give it a try to see what happens for you.

People oftensay that they will do something once they get motivated. I wrote about this earlier in January,specifically on day 13 with my “motivation is a decision” post. However as weremember from that prior post you have to decide what you want and then putthings into action which is why motivation is a decision. Today’s post is also about decision,specifically about deciding to live as if your life is already exactly as youwant it to be. This means that we needto know precisely what we want first, and then the rest follows naturally.Since we will be putting together a vision board this weekend I thought thispost was a great lead in to that.

A few daysago (day 25) we began thinking about what we wanted our lives to look like. Weare going to take that idea even further today. Go back to what you wrote in your journal about what you wanted yourlife to look like. For those who didn’t do those exercises I am going toreiterate them here:

Visualizeyour life as you want it to be. Theimportant thing is that you picture all the details of your new life. Below are a series of question to help yousee the details:

· What do you look like in your perfect life?Are you slimmer or more fit? Do you dress the same? Do you carry yourselfdifferently with this new confidence?

· How do you feel in your new life? What is your attitude toward challenges now?

· What type of things do you do now? Have your leisure time activitieschanged? Are you home less often? Maybe you are going to the Caribbean for awinter vacation since you are comfortable showing ore skin. Really think about how life would change ifyou were truly happy with who you were.

· Do you have the same job or career? Maybe you don’t like your current job butdon’t feel confident to change it. Whatwould you be doing if you loved yourself?

· What do your relationships look like now? With this new confidence is your love lifebetter?

This isthe fun part; we get to write our personal slogan. This can be anything positive the sky is thelimit. Here are some examples ofempowering personal slogans:

· I can do anything that I set my mind to.

· I will make good choices for my health everyday.

· Life is a learning experience and I plan toabsorb everything that comes my way.

· Every day brings a new opportunity to grow andchange.

Now that youhave a mental picture of your life I want you to take it even farther. This is where we are going to live as if weare already that person which we pictured. If you were living that life now what would change about your day-to-daylife? If you have never lived that lifebefore then I want you to picture a healthy friend and imagine what they woulddo. Really think about the details ofyour life and get specific. Here aresome questions to help you out:

· How does healthy you start the morning? Are you getting up and doing yoga, Pilates orgoing to the gym? Maybe you have a morning date with a friend in theneighborhood to cover a few miles and then get a plain tea at the local coffeeshop. Possibly you have a friend thatyou meet the gym for a morning exercise class or swim. Imagine all the possibilities and write themdown.

· What does this new healthier you have frombreakfast? I am sure this person isn’tskipping breakfast or having a Danish, but what are they eating?

· Now it is lunch time for healthier you, what areyou having? Do you routinely pack your lunch so that you have control over thequality of your food and the ingredients or do you know all the healthy optionsnear your office?

· Are you getting outside with part of your lunchbreak to get in extra steps into your day?

· Speaking of steps are you taking the stairsinstead of the elevator? Healthier youwould do that right?

· Do you pick up the phone to talk to a colleagueor do you walk to their office to discuss the topic at hand? Maybe you suggest a walking meeting todiscuss the latest project you are working on instead of being stuck in theoffice or in a conference room.

· Are you working late or are you heading out ofthe office early enough to go to the gym, jog around the harbor, do somegardening, or some other healthy activity? Healthy you wouldn't go home and sit on the couch watching TV everynight do they?

· What types of food will you be having fordinner? Do you eat at a specific time ordo you wait until you are hungry? Do you have your meals planned for the weekor do you stop at the farmers’ market or grocery store on your way home to pickup what is local and in season that cook what looked good that day? When you cook are you making intentionalleftovers for lunch the next day?

· After dinner what will you be doing? Maybe you do a little yoga to wind down, oryou could be meditating. Are you readinga book, going for a walk, or catching up with a friend?

· Are you getting 8 hours of sleep now that youare healthy? Does this mean that youneed to get into bed earlier than normal? This may be required if you are nowgoing to the gym or exercising before work.

· What are your weekends like now? Do you make plans with friends to stayactive? What specific activities do you take regularly engage in?

Did myquestions give you an idea of what you need to think about? The goal is to think about every facet ofyour life and how it will change when you are living the life that you want. Ihope you understand the level of detail that you need in order to make thiswork. Please take time to answer the questions with as much detail as youcan. Really get into this exercise. If it helps imagine that you are an actor playinga role and try to get into this new healthy person’s skin. If you answer the questions with greatspecificity it will be much easier to put these things into practicetomorrow. Okay I just heard thecollective groans when I said “put these things into practice tomorrow.” You didn’t think we were going to stop atthinking about it did you? Thinkingabout this stuff won’t help you if you aren’t willing to do the work. Sorry,but life really doesn’t work that way though it would be if it did.

Today’sexercise which you will start today but will continue for at least a week andhopefully will become permanent:

1. Write the answers to all the questions abovein your journal. Add as much detail as you possibly can to make it easier foryou to follow through with the actions. It may take you a few days or a week to get all the details down onpaper, but it will be time well spent. The act of thinking about how you would live differently and thenwriting it down will help crystallize the actions in your mind. It will also help you with the upcomingvision board exercise.

2. Now start to “live as if” you life were alwaysas you want it to be. The only cautionthat I will give you is if you new life includes a lot of exercise and you arecurrently sedentary that you start slowly. If you are over 40 years old, or have more than 30 pounds to lose go tothe doctor for a physical to make certain that you are healthy enough to startexercising. However even if you are over40 or have more than 30 pounds to lose you can move more. Start with easy activities like walkingmore. You can start immediately makingdietary changes.

3. Before you do anything ask yourself what the“healthy you” would be doing? The ideais that you need to put healthy habits into place before you will gethealthy. There is nothing magical aboutbeing healthy it is the state that naturally results as an effect of a manyhealthy decisions and resulting actions. Did you notice that we are back to the law of cause and effect again? When you do healthy things you will becomehealthy. If you don’t like your healthas it is now that is a sign that you need to make some changes and only youknow how drastic those changes need to be based on your current physicalcondition.

I hope thatthis exercise caused you to get out of your comfort zone. The entire idea isthat everyone’s health (current condition) is nothing more than the result oftheir recent decisions. All of us havethe power to change our condition but to do that we have to be willing to makedifferent choices. You can make smallchanges or you can make big changes. The results that you get will be in directrelation to the amount of change you make. This is why I keep pushing you tomake big changes. The benefit of bigchanges is that you see results faster and that encourages most people to staythe course. Please know that gettinghealthy is very simple. All you need todo is consistently make good choices and before you know it life will start tochange. I know you can do it! J

Progress onmy goals:

1. Newsletters - Thursday was also hectic but I didget in 30 minutes working on the newsletters. Not as much time as I wanted but better than nothing. L

2. Body Bugg – I continue to wear my bugg and Ihave gotten back into using it the way I had intended when I purchased it. Go me! J

3. Date with Dan – Dan and I have been going for awalk each night after dinner. Thursdaywe extended our walk and added a trip to the grocery store to the outing.

4. Measuringcalorie dense food – I am making a little progress on this but I really need tofocus on it with every veggie meal to help my body absorb the fat solublevitamins.

5. Working on my business – I spent an hourattending a webinar Thursday evening. Itis always good to see what the competition is up to.

How are youfeeling about your progress so far? Ihope you feel like you have made a few lasting changes this month. J

RandomThoughts:

I just saw acommercial that caught my attention. The commercial was for Special K and theyare trying to tell people that you can lose up to 6 pounds in 2 weeks. Really? Let’s do the math on that shallwe. To lose one pound by diet alone youhave to reduce your intake by 3,500 calories which means 6 pounds equals 21,000calories. If you are going to lose 6pounds of fat in 14 days that would mean that you need to reduce your calorieintake by 1,500 calories per day. Unlessas a woman you are eating approximately double the amount of calories that youneed the math on this just doesn’t work from diet alone. Commercials like this annoy me because theyare misleading. *ugh*

Why is itthat time passes so slowly when we are younger but seems to speed by the olderthat we get? Does this happen toeveryone or is it just me?

Did you taketime to hug the people who you love today? I try to remember than I never know when or if I will be seeing peopleagain and that I want them to know how much they mean to me. I always hug people when I leave and I makecertain that they know how much I care.

If todaywere the last day of your life what would you do? When you look at life this way most of thethings on our to-do list would melt away. In my mind the only thing that matters are the important people andrelationships in our life. With this inmind I try to give something to others every day.

Acknowledgements:

· We had a delicious dinner Thursday night thatwas also fast to prepare. It always makes me very happy that I can make healthyfood that my husband loves and it is even better when I can do it quickly.

· Even though today was busy I took the time tocheck on my parents and take in trash cans for one of my neighbors. None of us should ever be too busy to do alittle something for others. Life isalways better when we take time to be kind.

· I somehow managed to write almost three poststoday by staying focused on the task at hand. It is amazing what you can do when you put your mind to something.

Thursday:

My food on Thursday was not terribly exciting. I started my morning with a greensmoothie. There is nothing like rawkale in your breakfast to give you a jolt of energy.

I had grapefruit for a snack

Lunch was a bowl of mushroom barley soup which I pouredover raw baby spinach. I flavored thissoup with lemon and smoked paprika to give it a Spanish flavor.

Dinner was a quick “stir fry” (no oil) of red onion,garlic, minced ginger, vegetarian oyster sauce (which is basically mushroomsauce), a splash of mirin (Japanese rice wine vinegar) and touch of stevia,straw mushrooms, baby corn and shredded kale. I served this over black rice andtopped it with sesame seeds.

Happythoughts:

· Our weather on Friday was magnificent. It was 63degrees here by noon. I am amazed by thewinter we are having weather wise. It isdefinitely starting to feel like spring here. Last night at 10pm it was still 49 degrees. Is it really January in Baltimore? A girl could definitely get used to thisweather.

· Dan has been getting home from work a littleearlier all week. I think he has beenhome before 7:30 the entire week and that is a minor miracle at our house.

· You may not remember but I told you weeks agothat Dan bought me a new laptop earlier this month because my other one waslocking up when I had Dragon open. Yesterdaythe headphone adaptor arrived so that I can start using Dragon again. I am verymuch looking forward to less typing in my future.

· I received these great photos today from one ofmy friends at the marina. I love thephoto of the harbor in the morning fog at the top of the post. This photo is our boat taken from our friend’s powerboat.Since we haven’t been to the marina in a while it was very nice to see ourgirl.

· Today is one of those days when I am very happythat I overcame my frugal ways and bought the Vitamix. When dinner time arrived I had no idea whatto make but soon decided that a vegan crème soup was in order. Less than 5 minutes later we had a hot bowlof Crème of Spinach and Artichoke Soup. It is days like this when my Vitamix is priceless.

Signing Out:

Friday wasan extremely productive day and that felt really good. I didn’t get all three posts written but Idid get a lot Saturday written and part of Sunday so that was excellent. Ichatted with my buddy Louis for quite a while and we are going to try tocoordinate getting together tomorrow which will be great. Since Louis lives in Delaware we don’t seehim as much as we would like to.

I am so happy that the weekend has started. While I have no idea what we will be doing Iam looking forward to time with my hubby and seeing my buddy Louis. I hope youhave some fun planned for your weekend. Talk with you again tomorrow. J

31 Days to Better Health - Day 26

2012-01-26T23:15:00.003-05:00

HappyThursday! *woo hoo* We are getting very close to the weekendnow. Have you noticed that I loveweekends yet? LOL ;-) Are you as happy about the approaching weekend as I am?

FortunatelyThursday wasn’t overbooked like most of my week. I am very happy to have had a reasonably lowkey Thursday. The only must do on myschedule today was webinar in the evening. *yay* Unfortunately today wascool, grey and rainy. However you knowme, I didn’t let the weather dampen my spirit.

What did youthink of yesterday’s post? I hope that somethingthat I wrote caused you to reflect on the negative self talk that doesn’t serveyou well. I truly believe that the wordsthat we use make a huge difference in how we process what happens each day. For those of you who are just joining us hereis the recap of what we have accomplished so far to remind us all of how muchwe have covered during the first 25 days of January:

Day 1 –Defined Success and What is/was Holding Us Back
Day 2 –Determined our Purpose and Looked at Passion
Day 3 –Listed Our Goals for January
Day 4 –Listed the Things We Have Needed to Work on for a While
Day 5 – Lookedat Optimism vs. Pessimism and Fear vs. Intuition
Day 6 – PracticedConscious Eating
Day 7 – HaraHachi Bu
Day 8 –Taking the Stress Out of Meal Time
Day 9 –Acknowledgments
Day 10 – NoExcuses, Do it Anyway
Day 11 – Isit True?
Day 12 –Have You Really Connected With Someone Today?
Day 13 –Motivation is a Decision
Day 14 -Successfully Navigating Dinner at an Unfamiliar Restaurant
Day 15 -What Do You Want, Have You Asked?
Day 16 –Treating Others as You Wish to be Treated
Day 17 –Food as a Budget
Day 18 –Silence Your Inner Critic
Day 19 –Replace I Have to With I Want to
Day 20 –Identifying Your Rituals
Day 21 –Face Your Fears
Day 22 –Give Up the Diet Mentality
Day 23 – TheMeaning and/or Purpose of Food
Day 24 –Trigger Foods/Situations/People
Day 25 –Words Have Meaning

What did youthink of yesterday’s post about words have meaning? Did you enjoy the exercises? If you came up with a powerful personalslogan please share it with us. I am sure that I am not the only one who wouldlove to read it.

LoseAll-Or-Nothing Thinking:

This is atopic that is very meaningful for me because it used to describe how Iapproached most things in life including diet. I would be very gung ho and follow rules to the letter, no deviation.Then when I did something “off plan” (which I considered wrong) I would throwin the towel, blow my “diet” and say I would start again the next day, nextweek, etc. Needless to say this not thehealthiest approach. For years I thoughtI was the only one who did this. However based on the people whom I have talkedwith about food it is also very common which is why I wanted to address it onthe blog.

Why wouldany of us ever think that we needed to follow a program exactly? Where does this come from and why is it socommon? I blame diet books that demonizeother diets for the dogmatic way that most people follow a new plan orprogram. Life is not meant to be that rigidin my opinion. It would be wonderful ifwe could all eat perfectly all the time but that isn’t real life. Not to mention sometimes everyone needs alittle splurge to make life worth living. ;-) To understand how we got hereI am going to briefly review recent diet history in this country.

During thelow-fat diet phase everyone avoided eating fats which were considered “bad”. In response to this idea that “fats are bad”the food manufacturers developed fat-free baked good. Does anyone rememberSnackwell cookies? In the early 90’sthose cookies sold like wild fire and when you read the nutrition panel theyhad similar calories to cookies with fat the difference was they had moresugar. While this trend was bad therewas merit to some of it. Saturated fat is not healthy and oil provides nothingbut fat without any of the fiber or micronutrients which are present in wholefoods.

Fast forwardto the late 90’s and now we had the low-carb craze. Suddenly fats were fine and sugar wasbad. Now we had people eating steak,bacon, and eggs and staying away from fruit and tomatoes. The Snackwell cookies were replaced with onesthat were high in fat. These new cookieswere made with copious amounts of fat, nut flours, sugar alcohols rather thanwheat flour and sugar. Like the low-fatphase this one also had valid points. Consuming refined foods and foods which contain a lot of sugar is alsobad for you. However consuming wholefruit is not unhealthy. As I mentionedto one of my friends who was following a low-carb diet and was worried aboutfruit, no one ever got fat eating a piece of fruit.

Today wehave people who believe that raw food is the way to go. Now people think they can eat anything aslong as it is raw. This means that saturated fat, in the form of coconut oil,is fine as long as it is “raw”. In thisregime there is no concern about carbs in the form of produce. Like the other two plans this one also hassome merit. Most people don’t eat enoughraw produce. Since some nutrients areheath sensitive eating part of your produce raw is important. However it isalso important to remember that some nutrients are better absorbed when foodhas been cooked.

What do allof these ideas have in common? They look at nutrition from a narrow perspectiveand set up a distinction between good and bad. You can eat sugar but fats are bad. No, fat is fine but sugar is bad. Wait, raw is fine but cooked is bad. STOP the diet merry-go-round I am getting off! I am picturing some of you saying, “but waita minute you have rules”. Yes I absolutelydo have rules, but mine are based on a ton of research and that research wascombined using old-fashioned common sense. Additionally I also leave room for bending (but not breaking) thoserules from time to time which I will explain below.

When wechanged our diet and lifestyle the reason was to improve our health. Losing weight for us was a side effect ofimproved health but it wasn’t the reason we changed how we ate. When I followed the science it because clearto me what we should concentrate on consuming more: vegetables, fruits, beans, seeds, nuts andwhole grains. Things that weredetrimental for our health: meat, dairy,oil, sugar and salt were moved out of our food. Then we had the grey area which included processed foods like flour (yeseven whole wheat). When we are eating athome it is easy to avoid those things which are detrimental (and by that I meanthey are generally inflammatory) and include only healthy (anti-inflammatory)foods. However when you are eating outthis becomes nearly impossible even when you have a chef friend. We recognize that when we eat out we aregetting a little oil, some salt and sugar and that is okay as long as it is anoccasional indulgence. I now believethat your overall dietary pattern is what matters not any one specificmeal.

Since I amsure some of you are wondering I will explain the things that I try to rememberwhen I making food decisions, these are:

· Produce is always good, and I try to eat atleast half of it raw (or lightly cooked) and half of it cooked. Some nutrients are more easily absorbed incooked food, and some are destroyed by heat. By having some produce cooked and some raw you are covering yourbases. If you don’t like raw producecook part of it very lightly to minimize nutrition loss.

· Beans are a fantastic source of plant protein.They fill you up, contain a lot of fiber which binds to cholesterol in your GIsystem, and they are versatile. I try to include beans in our food every day. This won’t work for everyone since somepeople have trouble digesting beans. If this is you one approach is to cookthem very well (think super soft) and add them to your diet a little at a time. Your digestive system may do fine with themafter a little “bean training”.

· Mushrooms are another food that we try to eateach day. They help boost the immunesystem and have been studied for their ability to fight cancer. Not to mention I love the taste and textureof mushrooms which is a bonus. Mushroomsare a great whole food way to mimic meat which is nice.

· All foods in the alium family (onions, garlic, shallots,and leeks) have also been shown to fight cancer. They add a lot of flavor to food and work inevery savory dish that I can think of. We also eat these each day. Whenyou are going to cook them be certain to chop them and allow them to sit for 10minutes before cooking so that the chemical reaction has time to take place. If you are going to eat them they might aswell be as nutritious as possible. I always cut my alliums set a kitchen timerfor 10 minutes and come back when it beeps. This has become a habit and I don’t even think about it now.

· Add leafy green vegetables anywhere that youcan. I add raw kale to my savoryoatmeal, shredded kale goes into salad, straight raw kales goes into the Vitamixto be included in our morning smoothies. Basically if I can get a raw leafy green in I do. Cooked kale is also good, but some of thenutrition is destroyed by heat so I try to eat this raw or lightly cookedwhenever possible.

· Quinoa is a wonderful substitute for pasta orrice. I love that is cooks quickly. Additionally it is a complete plant protein(contains all 8 of the essential amino acids). Quinoa is something that I always keep in the house. If you of a friend belong to Costco they sell3 pound bags of organic quinoa for $9.99 and I always pick one up when I amthere.

· I know that I need to add nuts and seeds to myveggie meals to increase the absorption of the fat soluble vitamins and this somethingthat I am working on. We are all a work in process when it comes to nutrition. ;-)

I hope thathelps to give you some ideas of what I try to include in our meals. Our diet is essentially a whole food diet. You won’t see us eating things like soy hotdogs, commercial faux meat, and commercial faux dairy because these itemsalmost always contain soy protein isolates which we do not consume. Additionally we stay away from high fructosecorn syrup and agave since fructose is hard to digest. As I think of other things that I think youshould know I will include it in future posts but this gives you a good idea ofhow I make food decisions.

Today’sexercise is:

1. Go back to your food journal that you starteda few days ago and review what you have been eating. Does anything stand out assomething that needs to be changed? Ifit does make a note of it and put a plan into place to change what you aredoing.

When I looked at my food journal I can easilysee that I am eating too many grains and I am still not getting enough seedsand nuts. Additionally I know that I need to be eating more leafy greens andraw fruit. This is why it helps to have what you are doing on paper. I am going to make it a point to have a saladfor either lunch or dinner and to include seeds and nuts on that. Also since it is citrus season I plan to havea piece of citrus every day. These two changesshould crowd out the grains. If will reexaminemy eating habits in a week and if I am still having too many grains I will makeanother change then.

Progress onmy goals:

1. Newsletters - Wednesday was also hectic and thenewsletters didn’t get any time. L

2. Body Bugg – I continue to wear my bugg and Ihave gotten back into using it the way I had intended when I purchased it. Go me! J

3. Date with Dan – Dan and I have been going for awalk each night after dinner. We are using this time to get away and talk aswell as to add some movement and fresh air to our day. One of our neighbors was out late thisevening and mentioned that we were making a habit of walking. J

4. Measuringcalorie dense food – I am making a little progress on this but I really need tofocus on it with every veggie meal to help my body absorb the fat solublevitamins.

5. Working on my business – My schedule got in theway of this too. However, knowing that Iwill be sharing it with you on February 10^th has definitely moved itup on my priority list. I will beworking on this over the weekend. Accountabilityworks for all of us, including me. ;-)

How are youfeeling about your progress so far? Ihope you feel like you have made a few lasting changes this month. J

RandomThoughts:

Theinformation continues to come out about the resveratrol research fraud. I wonder if everyone who claims to be drinkingred wine for their health will now stop consuming it? Somehow I doubt that will happen. Worse yet it appears the problem goes beyond the first group. I still don’t understand why the researchersfelt the need to commit fraud. The onlything that I can think of is the research funding but it still doesn’t make anysense to me. I guess I am just not wiredthat way. *shakes head*

Dan and Iare continuing to go for out evening walk and talk through the neighborhood. Wealso stopped at the grocery store this evening and picked up kale, bananas,frozen cherries and arugula. The peopleat the grocery store only ever see us buy produce and tofu. They still must be tryingto figure out why we are “so granola” as Ian puts it. It is good to keep people guessing isn’tit? LOL ;-)

While wewere out walking I couldn’t help but notice our neighbors recycling whichincluded Whole Foods bags and organic packaging. I always find that odd since she also gets ChemLawn every few weeks from Spring thru Fall because I close up my house on thatside the days when they come to spray. Why doesn’t she make the connection that chemicals on your lawn is not agood idea since you kids and dog roll in the grass. Some people really aren’tgood at connecting the dots. *rollseyes*

Acknowledgements:

· I spent a few hours listening to RMT lecturesand taking notes. I am definitely a little out of my element but in achallenging way. At this time there is nothought of asking for my money back during the 30-day guarantee window. I lovea good challenge in case you hadn’t noticed. ;-)

· Dan is enjoying having tofu lasagna in his lunchthis week. It is so nice to see him sohappy about lunch. I need to make tofulasagna for his lunch more often since he loves it so much.

· I have been getting a little better at addingseeds and nuts to veggie meals. I am still not perfect but I am improving. J

Wednesday:

My food on Wednesday was stuff that I could make quicklysince I didn’t have much time. Everything that I ate you have seen before. Given my time constraints Irecycled pictures to save myself some time.

Breakfast for me was Italian savory oatmeal which is quick andnutritious. Love that!

Lunch was pizza veggies which is another favorite of mine. This isanother super fast meal. I use frozenveggies, top with red sauce, Italian seasonings, nutritional yeast and hulledhempseeds (or you could use pine nuts). You can use any frozen veggies that you have on hand.

Dinner soba noodles with veggies in black bean sauce. I cooked the soba noodles in a broth thatconsisted of dried mushrooms, thinly sliced red onion, sliced garlic, mincedfresh ginger and a little fermented black bean sauce. When the soba noodles were cooked I addedshredded kale and thinly sliced celery for about 30 seconds. I used tongs and aspider to remove the noodles and veggies to a bowl and topped the dish withsesame seeds. If you aren’t a fan ofblack bean sauce you could also use miso, vegetarian oyster sauce or a littlechili oil instead. This is one of thoseuse what you have on hand meals.

Happy thoughts:

· I am really enjoying RMT (Robbins-MadanesTraining) so far. It has definitelypulled me out of my comfort zone but in a very good way. I can’t wait to sharesome of the things I am learning with you. I love to share. J

· Both last night and this evening I may quick andhealthy dinners which Dan really enjoyed. It makes me smile just to think that Dan and I both have embracedhealthy food. I still am amazed by howfar we have come in our transition. Ifwe can do this anyone can.

· We are both still going for our evening afterdinner walks together and we use that time to talk, reconnect after being apartall day and get our heart rate up. It isgreat to spend some time outside after dinner. This evening it was still 49 degrees at almost 10pm. We are enjoying the nicest weather; it doesn’tfeel like winter at all.

· Yesterday we had a beautiful day with blue skiesand I even saw some spring flowers blooming. It was one of those gorgeous days where it just great to be alive. J

Signing Out:

Thursday wasanother busy day but it was also productive. I had appointments and quite a bitof study time. I love staying busy so itwas a good day.

Sorry thispost went up so late. I had a webinar from 8-9pm, then dinner, followed by along walk and a trip to the grocery store. After all that I had to finish thispost. I definitely waited until the lastminute to finalize this post. I hope tohave tomorrow’s post up much earlier in the evening.

Tomorrow isFriday! *happy dance* I am so happy that the weekend is almosthere. We don’t have any particular plansbut I am just looking forward to 48 hours of time with my hubby. I hope you are also looking forward to yourweekend. Talk with you again tomorrow. J

31 Days to Better Health - Day 25

2012-01-25T18:50:00.000-05:00

HappyWednesday everyone! Our morning startedoff much more peaceful than yesterday. There was no broken glass, smoothies on the floor or wet cat tails thismorning. After yesterday morning I appreciatedthe relative peace and calm of this morning much more. Gee, I wonder why. LOL

When we gotup this morning we knew that there was a lot to do today and the best approachto get it all accomplished was to divide and conquer. Dan and I had our “specificduties” today which made each of our respective days more manageable. We are both planning to find a little time torelax tonight before the day is over.

For those ofyou who are just joining us here is the recap of what we have accomplished sofar to remind us all of how much we have covered during the first 24 days ofJanuary:

Day 1 –Defined Success and What is/was Holding Us Back

What did youthink of yesterday’s post about trigger foods, situations and people? Did you learn anything about yourself throughthe exercises? Remember once you haveidentified your problem areas then you can develop strategies to manage them. However none of us can change what we don’tknow. It is important for everyone todetermine the areas that they need to be mindful of.

Words HaveMeaning:

Today’stopic was inspired by a conversation that I had with a friend. That interchange has been rolling around in myhead for days and I think it is very important which is why I wanted to writeabout it in this post. Have you evertalked to someone and knew immediately that they had a “black cloud” followingthem? Frequently these people see everythingas a battle or a struggle rather than a puzzle which is similar yet verydifferent. Everything we think andeverything we say has meaning not just to others but more importantly toourselves. We each choose how we viewthe world. We can see life as an adventure, something to be enjoyed, or a fight. There are many other options but I think youget the idea.

What we tellourselves about the nature of life matters. My friend sees most things in life as a hardship. Work is difficult, soand so is a jerk, the stylist is incompetent look at what she did to myhair. When you look at the world and arewaiting for a fight your attitude will be very different than if you seeapproach life as if it a challenge that you can and will overcome.

This samemindset applies to how you view your health. We had a choice after the cancer diagnosis. Most people allow the doctors to take controland they become passive in their care. We decided that we wanted to play anactive role in the process. When we makedaily food and lifestyle choices it is with the idea in mind that what we domakes a difference in our overall health. One way to look at it is to say our personal slogan is that “lifestylematters and we will consistently make decisions that our in our best interest.” Interestingly you can have cancer and be muchhappier than someone whose only “real complaint” is that they don’t like theirjob. It boggles the mind what humans do thesethings to themselves doesn’t it?

This sameattitudinal approach also works with how you view your weight. If you tellyourself that have always been overweight and there is nothing you can do tochange that you are probably going to remain overweight. Words have meaning for everyone. What we tellourselves impacts what we do and how we behave. Let me show you what I mean by this. I am going to use weight loss as an example but this could apply to anychange that someone is trying to make. I could have written about giving upalcohol, cigarettes or an abusive boyfriend just as easily. Weight seems to be most pertinent to thisblog given the food tie in.

We all knowpeople you have difficulty losing or controlling their weight. When you listen topeople who are struggling with their weight you will find that they similarattitudes about their situation. Hereare some of the common things I have heard or noticed.

· They say things like “everyone in my family isoverweight, or being heavy is genetic it runs in my family” are common phrasesyou will hear.

· The list of things/changes they can’t do (oraren’t willing to do) is longer than what they are willing to do.

· More than a few people have told me thatdiabetes runs in their family and they are destined to get it eventually.

· The phrase I have heard more times that I canremember is “I have tried everything to lose weight and nothing ever works forme, I am a hopeless case.”

· The idea that frightens me the most is whensomeone says “I know a person who had weight loss surgery and lost a lot ofweight quickly, maybe I need to do that too.” They say this as though surgery is less drastic than a strict diet.

When peopleare constantly telling themselves that they can’t do something (or that theyare stuck with something) they are setting themselves up failure. How can anyone expect to lose weight withdefeatist thoughts ingrained into their brain? Think of it this way, if you tell a child long enough that he can’tsucceed he will eventually stop trying. If you put up enough roadblocks (I won’t or can’t give up……) you makethe problem impossible to solve. Let’sflip that on its head and tell ourselves the opposite. We can do anything that we set our mind to ifwe want it enough!

In orderachieve lasting success you need two things:

1. You have to believe (really believe) that youcan and will improve your situation.

2. Be willing to make long term changes if you wantlong term results.

Once we arewilling to believe that we have some amount of control over a situation andthat we are committed to making changes possibilities begin to open up.

The firstthing to reflect on is what do you want? What is your goal? I want you to really think about this. How do you want your life to be? Picture everything about how you look, howyou feel, what you will do. Get as manydetails in your mind as you can. Whatsort of things will do you when you are happy with your physical condition? Maybe you want to be confident wearing abathing suit and going on vacation to the tropics. Possibly you will ask the person out who youhave been afraid to approach. Beinghappy with you appearance may give you the confidence to ask for a raise or putin for a promotion. Whatever you have beenavoiding due to your feelings of inadequacy now is the time to get those onpaper.

Now let’slook at how we talk to ourselves about making changes. I have a good friend who is “desperate” tolose weight. He has been diligently workingat it and has lost a lot of weight, at least 50 pounds and feels tons better.However his weight loss has stalled and he “doesn’t know why”. He asked me what he could do and when Isuggested eating more vegetables and few animal products the response was “Icould never give up cheese or even a good steak every once in a while.” Okay, I didn’t say you had to give up cheeseor steak just because I have but since you brought it up do you think theremight be a problem here? He went on totell me that he “couldn’t possibly cook without oil or give up salt”. Then came the “you don’t understand my wifecooks junk because my kids will only eat pizza, fried chicken, burgers,etc.” Now I realize you weren’t here forthe conversation but I bet you already see the problem? While he wants to loseweight all I heard were all the reasons why he couldn’t do this or couldn’t dothat. Do you think he is going tocontinue to drop pounds with that attitude?

What happens when we want to make changes but we tell ourselvesall the reasons why we can’t do this or we can’t do that? Are we empowering ourselves to make thechanges that we need? NO! We are giving ourselves excuses why we aregoing to fail. I call this “evidencebuilding” and it doesn’t do anyone any good. Sure all of us have reasons whysomething is difficult for us to do. If we rely on those reasons as our excuseswe will never move forward. Instead ofcoming up with all the things you can’t do why not focus on what you will do. In my friends case I was trying to get him toeat more produce, beans and whole grains and less meat, dairy, oil andsalt. Instead of focusing on what hecould do he focused on what he couldn’t do.

I really hope that I am wrong about this, but I suspect thatmy friend isn’t as committed to losing weight and getting healthy as he saysthinks. I would say that he is moreinterested than committed. He is stillat the stage where he thinks that practicing “moderation” will get him where hewants to be. Losing 50 pounds was enoughto convince him that consuming smaller portions of pizza, burgers and steakworks. However my friend still has more to lose and it isn’t coming offnow. Instead of being willing to try tomake additional changes he is clinging to what has worked so far even though ithas now stopped working. I don’t knowabout you but when something I am doing stops working I look for something elseto try. I believe that life is too shortto be stuck in a place (or physical condition) where you aren’t happy and don’tfeel good.

Whenever we have a problem to resolve we need to approach itas if it has a solution. If we think something can’t be solved (my weight isgenetic, I have tried everything, my husband or wife won’t go along with it, thehouse is full of junk food for the kids, etc.) then guess what, the problemcan’t be solved. I know that I keeptalking about this in different ways but it is because I see or hear it everyday. People seem to be desperate to improve their health or their weight butthey don’t want to give up anything they “love” and they already know why theirchanges won’t work (their genetics, etc.).

Let’s look at a different situation to see if that helpsthis to make more sense. Imagine thatyou are looking for a new job. You havebeen diligently sending out resumes but you aren’t feeling very hopeful. When you do get an interview you tellyourself that this will be like all the other interviews and that you won’t getthe job. Do you think you will do your best in the interview with that thoughtin your mind? Our thoughts are powerful,they can help us or they can hurt us. Now imagine the same interview but the person goes in knowing that theyhave all the skills and experience required to do the job. Can you see how that interview will go verydifferently? Since thoughts arepowerful doesn’t it make more sense to use our thoughts to help us to attainour goals?

Now you should have an image in your mind of what you wantyour health and weight to look like. Youcan see yourself living life as that new person. If you can stop and spend sometime thinking about it so that it becomes real for you. We will use this imagine next weekend when wework on our vision boards. I want you tocome up with a personal slogan that you can use to direct your behavior. This slogan can be anything the onlyrequirement is that it is positive and makes you feel good. I will give you more ideas in the exercisesbelow.

I hope that you now see how you view the world and yourability to make a difference in your life is very important. I have found that by focusing on what I cando gives me hope and pushes me to be the best that I can every day.

Today’sexercises are:

1. As you go about your day pay attention to yourinner thoughts. Each day are you upbeat,optimistic and ready to conquer the world? If you are CONGRATULATIONS! However if you have an inner voice that isundermining you write down the negative thoughts as you have them.

The negative thought that always comes up forme is “what if I fail?” Being perfectwas drilled into me as a child. Eventhough I know being perfect isn’t possible it is still my knee jerk reaction toany new situation or problem. But we allknow that demanding perfection causes fear and pushes people not to try. However now I also know this about myself soI have built in responses for my inner voice that go like this: What if I do fail? Failure isn’t the end of the world. Failureis a learning experience and it will teach me what to do differently in thefuture. Ultimately I will only fail whenI stop trying.

Do you see how I try to turn the negativevoice into a positive reaction? Can you do the same thing with your negativethoughts? Try to turn your negativethoughts around. Write down your answers in your journal and refer to them whenyou need to.

As more negative thoughts come up for youwrite those down in your journal and find responses to turn them into positivestoo. After you have done this for awhile it becomes automatic and you don’t even think about doing it, it seems tohappen without any conscious action on your part. Love that!

2. Visualize your life as you want it to be. You can stay with the weight example that wetalked about today or you can focus on any other aspect of life. The important thing is that you picture allthe details of your new life. Below area series of question to help you see the details:

· What do you look like in your perfect life?Are you slimmer or maybe you are more fit? Do you dress the same? Do you carryyourself differently with this new confidence?

· How do you feel in your new life? What is your attitude toward challenges now?

· Do you have the same job or career? Maybe you don’t like your current job but don’tfeel confident to change it. What wouldyou be doing if you loved yourself?

· What do your relationships look like now? With this new confidence is your love life better?

3. This is the fun part; we get to write ourpersonal slogan. This can be anythingpositive the sky is the limit. Here aresome examples of empowering personal slogans:

· I can do anything that I set my mind to.

· I will make good choices for my health everyday.

· Life is a learning experience and I plan toabsorb everything that comes my way.

· Every day brings a new opportunity to grow andchange.

I hope thatyou were able to identify the thoughts that have been holding you back. Once you see them clearly then you can turnthem around and use them to your advantage. Picturing how you want your life to be is very helpful. I call this “living as if” and we will have aday devoted to that before the month is over. Did you come up with a great personal slogan? If you came up with agreat slogan and want to share it I would love to read it. J

Progress onmy goals:

1. Newsletters - Tuesday was a little hectic withappointments that had to be rescheduled so I didn’t work on the newsletterstoday.

2. Body Bugg – I continue to wear my bugg and Ihave gotten back into using it the way I had intended when I purchased it. Go me! J

3. Date with Dan – Dan and I have been going for awalk each night after dinner. We are using this time to get away and talk aswell as to add some movement and fresh air to our day. Dan wants to get a little caught up at workbut then we will be getting back to our date plan during the week.

4. Measuringcalorie dense food – I am making a little progress on this but I really need tofocus on it with every veggie meal to help my body absorb the fat solublevitamins.

5. Working on my business – Monday spent some timeworking on my other website. Knowingthat I will be sharing it with you on February 10^th has definitely movedit up on my priority list. Accountability works for all of us, including me. ;-)

How are youfeeling about your progress so far? Ihope you feel like you have made a few lasting changes this month. J

RandomThoughts:

Dan and Iare still going for our evening walks after dinner which is a great way toconnect after being apart all day. Thebenefit of walking is there is no television, phones or felines to distractus. While we walked we talked about mynew business and what I need to work on in the next 30 days. Dan is a fantasticsupport system and I have no idea what I would do without him. He is great at calling me out when I need toalter my focus and sometimes I need that and appreciate his insight since I knowit comes from a loving place.

Is ongoing learningsomething that is important to you? Asyou have probably noticed I am a big believer in lifelong learning. If you have any books, courses or webinarsthat you would enjoyed I would love to hear about them. Please feel free to share either bycommenting or emailing.

Acknowledgements:

· Tuesday I was not in the mood to work on theblog. It was very difficult to stayfocused and get it done. I used every excuse in the book to avoid thecomputer. However I managed to get itwritten and it felt good to live up to my commitments. Some days I just need topush through and not let my “excuses” get the better of me.

· Even though I was extremely busy I still managedto accomplish all my critical tasks today and that was an accomplishment.

· I love that as busy as our Tuesday was that Danand I still made time to go for a walk and to talk about our day and our plansfor the following day. I know so many couples who come home and turn on the televisionand don’t talk. I love that even aftermore than two decades Dan and I still want to connection with each other everyday. Go us! J

· It was tough for me earlier this week when Danwent back to work. I was worried that something would happen and that I wouldn’tbe there to help. I tend worry about myhubby a little more than I need to. However I am happy to report that everything has been fine and that Iwas concerned for no reason. I love tobe wrong in situations like this.

Tuesday:

My food on Tuesday was not the least bit exciting. Everything that I ate you have seen beforeand most of it was leftovers. Given my time constraints I recycled pictures tosave myself some time.

Breakfast for me was savory oatmeal.

Lunch was leftover French market bean soup.

Dinner was tofu lasagna.

Happy thoughts:

· Sometimes I love being busy and other times Iwant to be a slug. I was so busy onTuesday that I didn’t have time to think about much of anything. However once I sat down to reflect on my dayI realized that being busy means that I was productive and that is a very good thing.

· The weather was gorgeous on Tuesday and weactually reached 59 degrees. Who wouldbelieve this is January weather? Springreally is starting to feel like it is just around the corner.

· I spent a few hours on the Robbins-MadanesTraining so far and it is definitely taking me out of my comfort zone but in agood way. I am definitely enjoying thechallenge of looking at life differently.

· I think it is so cute that my cats come to tellme when the electric blanket in the bedroom turns itself off. My fur children really are littlegeniuses. As Dan would say they reallyhave me trained don’t they? LOL

· Speaking of fur children it was nice of mine don’tto create morning chaos two days in a row. Also one of the benefits of experiencing chaos is that when there ispeace you appreciate it so much more. Gee, I wonder why? ;-)

Signing Out:

Wednesdaywas another busy day. I think I spent about 5 hours learning/studying which wasin addition to my normal activities. Ilove to learn so this was a great day for me. However it does mean that quite a few tasks moved to the back burner.Clearly I will need to work on my time management skills soon so that I don’tburn out.

As soon as Iget this posted I must get into the kitchen and do some cooking. The closest Ihave come to cooking today is reheating and making tea. Clearly that is not going to work for dinner.I hope you spent a little more time in the kitchen today than I did.

Wow can youbelieve the week is already more than half way over? Time really flies when you are busy doesn’tit? I hope your week is going well and thatyou are finding some time to relax and enjoy yourself. J Talk with you again soon!

31 Days to Better Health - Day 24

2012-01-24T18:26:00.000-05:00

HappyTuesday, I hope the week is still going well for you. We managed to get through Monday without anydrama or crisis which was extremely nice. I could use a little dullness in my life for a while so that I can relaxand recharge. In fact I used my downtime to get in a little meditation time. It was a very relaxing way to spend acold, dreary and often rainy Monday.

(Luca looking innocent)

HoweverTuesday morning was not smooth sailing at my house. Sometimes I think if itweren’t for my cats I would have nothing to do. Luca was in the kitchen with me this morning when I was making Dan’ssmoothie. I headed to the freezer to stash his smoothies and just as walked byshe swished her tail. I didn’t want to step on her and lost my balance droppingone the glasses of chocolate smoothie which smashed on the floor. She stoodthere looking at me indigently like “why did you do that”. Then Luca decided that she wanted to leavethe kitchen and go through the broken glass and chocolate. *ugh* I got the cat out of the kitchen without getting any chocolate on herand had to close all three cats in a room while I cleaned up the mess. Poor Dan only got half his normal breakfastthis morning and now my slippers are covered in chocolate. By the time Dan had finished getting readyfor work and had come downstairs for breakfast all evidence of the chaos hadbeen removed.

(Nicco....under that white fuzz is a little brat, but we love him)

After I gothis lunch packed I decided that a nice bath was in order to chill out. I had planned on relaxing but Binky jumped upon the edge of the tub and slipped into the bath with me. His back feet got wet as did the end of histail. When I called for Dan Binky dripping wet tail and all ran out of thebathroom and met Dan in the hallway. Dan had to corner him and dry him off withone of my towels. Yes this is what lifeis like at my house in the morning. Whosaid life is calm and peaceful when you don’t have children in house? Fortunately Masi was sound asleep in our bedbecause we had turned on the electric blanket for him. At least one of our catswasn’t a problem this morning. ;-) It definitely pays to have a sense of humorat our house.

Now that youhave a vivid picture of morning at my house let’s get back to the work ofimproving our health. For those of you who are just joining us here is therecap of what we have accomplished so far to remind us all of how much we have coveredduring the first 22 days of January:

Day 1 –Defined Success and What is/was Holding Us Back

What did youthink of yesterday’s post about the meaning and/or purpose of food? Did you learn anything about yourself throughthe exercises? If you don’t like how youview food and want to change it but don’t know how let me know either byposting a comment on the prior post or by sending me an email. I changed how I view food and I know you cantoo. Once you begin to view food as fueleverything else is easy. J

TriggerFoods/Situations/People:

This ideawas inspired by Christy’s comment about not being able to stop eatingchocolate. I remembered her commentyesterday when I was writing about my addiction to Italian comfort foods(bread, pasta and pizza). However forsome people it goes beyond specific foods and triggers also include particularsituations and sometimes people. I thinkmost us have foods that we find difficult to control ourselves around. Do you know what those foods are for you? Do you know if you also have situations andpeople who are problematic for you? Doyou have strategies to handle these foods, situations and people? That is what we are going to talk abouttoday.

I am going toassume that you don’t know what foods you crave because I didn’t always knowwhat those foods were for me. However there are some easy ways to figure it outbut you will need to use the food journal that we set up yesterday. Look at your journal and see if there wereany foods that you ate when you weren’t hungry. If there were foods that youate even though you had a hunger level of 0 it is a good bet those are yourtrigger foods. If there were no foodsthat you ate yesterday when your hunger level was 0 either this isn’t an issuefor you, or it shows up differently. Werethere any foods that you over ate while you were keeping the journals. Thesewould have showed up as items you ate that resulted in your being full on thescale of 2 or 3. Reaching the 2 scalemay mean that you need to eat more consciously and slowly or it could be theresult of consuming trigger foods. Ifyou reached a level 3 on the fullness scale I would say you have found yourtrigger foods.

The nextquestion is do you have a problem one food or more than one? My trigger foods all involve high carb itemsthat are savory in nature. I can easilypass up cookies or desserts but fresh baked bread is a killer for me. I also have difficulty with pasta, pizza,potatoes, anything starchy as you can see.

Now that wehave identified the foods that trigger us to over eat what do we do aboutit? For me the answer was very simple Itake the easy way out and keep those items out of my house. However I also know that I can have them in moderationwhen we are out and that is enough to satisfy me. The problem comes when Dan wants pizza orbread. Since I know that I have nearly zeroself control around these things, but I don’t want him to be deprived due to myissue I make certain that he is home when I make them. I know myself wellenough that I wouldn’t even consider preparing these during the week when hewas at work. Fortunately Dan and I talkabout everything so he knows my weaknesses and understands that I need hishelp. Can you do something similar withyour trigger foods? Maybe your familycan have them when they go out, or they can be a special weekend meals instead.

I alluded tothe situation that I have difficulty with above. I am much more likely to eatsomething that isn’t in my best interest when I am alone. I think this is because being around peopleholds me accountable to myself. Myhusband knows me as well and sometimes better than I know myself. We talk about everything and he is alwaysthere to give me a gentle nudge when I need it. Having a built in support system works very well for me. What about you, do you know what types ofsituations are problematic for you? Ihave talked to many people who have the same issue that I do eating things theyshouldn’t when they are alone. However I have also heard from people who havedifficult in the opposite situation. They are extremely disciplined when theyare alone but you put them in a group and they feel like they need to fitin. Other people have problems when theyare eating where there is a buffet; parties are a common danger spot forpeople. I have also talked to a fewpeople who have difficulties staying on track when they go out to a bar.Apparently having alcohol reduces their discipline. As varied as these situations all they allhave solutions. The important thing is to identify what your specific issue isso that you can do something about it.

For exampleif being alone is a problem then keeping the trigger foods out of your houseworks well. If you know that you havedifficulty sticking to your plan when you go out due to peer pressure then youneed develop phrases and strategies that you can use. You could eat before you go so that you canhonestly say you aren’t that hungry and salad is enough. Alternately you couldexplain that you are watching your weight (or are concerned about yourcholesterol) and you need to stick with a salad. In this situation all that is required isthat you have thought about how you will handle things so you areprepared. If you have difficulty withbuffets at a party I have a few suggestions. You can do what I do and scan the buffet before picking up a plate. This way I know what looks healthy and whatdoesn’t. Another tip that works well forme is to eat before these events so that I am not hungry when I arrive. I alsolike to carry a drink (usually club soda with lime) so that I don’t have a freehand. Most people are too busy doing their own thing to notice that you aren’teating. The last suggestion I have forbuffets at parties is to go in telling yourself that you won’t get somethinguntil a certain time (near the end). This way you have delayed eating and even if you get something thatisn’t in your best interest there won’t be much of it. If you problem is eating the wrong items whenyou are at a bar (or are drinking) this one is a little more tricky. I could give you the obvious answer of don’tdrink because it isn’t good for you but that probably isn’t what you want tohear. The only thing I could think of forthis was to eat before you go out. This will do two things, a full stomach willkeep the alcohol from be absorbed as rapidly and that should help you makebetter choices. Also a full stomach will mean you have less room for unhealthybar food. If you have any othersuggestions for this situation please share I would love to hear them.

The finalarea where I have heard people have difficulty with being around specific people. I was surprised the first time I talked withsomeone and they told me that they make healthy choices all the time exceptwhen they are out with a specific person. However after I heard this a few times I realized this was much morecommon than I expected. The commonalityin what people told me was that they had a specific friend where food was theirbond. They would go out and eat unhealthy items like pizza, maybe they would gothe bar and have beer and wings, or meet at Starbuck’s cappuccinos. If you have this issue I have somesuggestions. You can find a restaurantthat has both the healthy fare you want and things your friend will enjoy. Our chef friend Ian fills this needbeautifully for us. I am sure there areplaces near you that can do the same. Alternately you could get together at your home instead and that way youhad complete control over the food. Whatabout meeting for a picnic and you both bring your own food? My favorite idea is to get together for anon-food activity. You could meet an exercise class, a run or a walk. What about a movie, or a concert? There are many options here to get away fromunhealthy food gatherings with this particular friend. If they are a close friend you can confide inthem that you are watching what you eat and ask them for their help. Most people want to help and when you sharesomething that you are struggling with usually they are more than happy to dowhat they can to be of assistance.

Today’sexercises are:

1. We are going to return to the food journal thatwe started yesterday to identify the problem foods, situations and people. You will need to keep track for a littlewhile in order to identify the areas that you need to be aware of. For some people a week may be enough time andothers may need a month. After you have collected at least a week of datareview your results. Does anything stand out as being a problem? The important thing is to identify the thingsthat are problems for you so that you can develop strategies to deal withthem. If nothing jumps out as a problemcontinue to keep the journal and come back to it in another week and lookagain.

2. Once you have identified your problem foods,situations or people now it is time to brainstorm how you will handle thesesituations. Write down as many possiblesolutions as you can think of. Put theseideas into practice at each opportunity to determine which ones work best foryou.

Were youable to identify the situations that are problematic for you? I hope that you were. Knowing what the problem is in 90% of thebattle. Remember that everyone hasthings that they struggle with, you are not alone. Now that you know what youneed to work on the rest is easy. J Like always ifanything that I wrote is unclear or you think that it requires clarificationplease don’t hesitate to let me know either by commenting or sending me an email.

Progress onmy goals:

1. Newsletters – Monday I took the day off to get afew other things accomplished.

2. Body Bugg – I continue to wear my bugg and Ihave gotten back into using it the way I had intended when I purchased it. Go me! J

3. Date with Dan – Dan and I have been going for awalk each night after dinner. We are using this time to get away and talk aswell as to add some movement and fresh air to our day. Dan wants to get a little caught up at workbut then we will be getting back to our date plan during the week.

4. Measuringcalorie dense food – I am making a little progress on this but I really need tofocus on it with every veggie meal to help my body absorb the fat solublevitamins.

5. Working on my business – Monday I took the dayoff from working on the business. TheJanuary posts are taking me many more hours to write than usual. As much as Ilove these posts I will be happy to see February arrive since I really need alittle time back to work on other things, the business being one of them.

How are youfeeling about your progress so far? Ihope you feel like you have made a few lasting changes this month. J

RandomThoughts:

When we wentfor our evening walk last night we got on the topic of meditation. I told Danhow much I have been enjoying the meditation course from The Great Courses andhow surprised I am that I feel somehow connected to Buddhism. It is very strange for me since I was neverinterested in Asian religions in the past. If you have read any books on Buddhism that you would recommend pleaseshare. I would appreciate anysuggestions you wish to share.

Anothertopic that we discussed during our walk was not sweating the small stuff. It always surprises me how often someone willtell me about seeing one of my recipes on someone else’s site without anycredit back to me. The funny thing isthat I could really care less about this. I know that anything that I put on the web basically fair game forplagiarism. I share my recipes freely to help others to cook more healthfullywith the hope that they will be able to improve their health. Is it annoying that people will blatantly ripoff my work? Of course it is. However in the larger scheme of life it isnot significant. If they can live withthe idea that they stole there is nothing that my anger will do to them. This is something else that I have learnedfrom meditation. The only thing that anyof us can change is our behavior. We can give othersinformation but in the end they are the ones that need to want to change. Inthe case of someone blatantly stealing they are obviously not concerned withwhat other people think. There is no reason to waste my time being upset. Is there anything that upsets you that maybeyou need to let go of?

Speaking ofrecipes I noticed this weekend that my vegan mayo has over well over 10,000hits now. You have no idea how much thisbothers me. When I figured out how to make this I was very pleased and wantedto share it with everyone. About 6months later I stopped using oil and haven’t made it since. I really wish that people weren’t going to thisso often because it makes me feel like I am contributing to theirunhealthiness. I considered taking it down for that reason but decided that Ishouldn’t since it is a least a tiny bit better than regular mayo. I have aquestion for you; if I can come up with something similar without oil would yoube interested? How many of you still usemayo with oil but would like a no-oil product? I haven’t used mayo is so long that I don’t miss it but if there is aneed for a healthy product I would be happy to work on a recipe. Just let me know what you think by commentinghere or emailing.

How many ofyou were surprised by some of the things we used to eat? I thought twice about writing that butrealized that most people haven’t been vegan their entire life and it is partof who I am. There are many things thatI have consumed in my past that I wish I could undo. However I choose to view those as learningexperiences rather than mistakes. I hope that you are starting to understandmore about the experiences that shaped who I am. As I have told you many times before I havenot been healthy all my life, or even most of my life. I truly believe that if I can get healthyanyone can do it.

Acknowledgements:

Have youmade any progress writing acknowledgements? I hope you are working on this exercise. I find that it helps me staypositive and recognize the things that I do every day. Here are my acknowledgements:

· It was nice to spend a little time in thekitchen on Monday. It felt good knowingthat I had a jar of bean soup in the refrigerator for lunches. I love having cooked beans in the housebecause I feel so much healthier when I eat them every day.

· Monday was a little busy and I almost didn’tmake a batch of lasagna for Dan. Howeversince he hardly ever asks for anything I stopped studying and got the lasagnaprepped and into the oven at about 6pm. When Dan was enjoying his lasagna I was very happy that I make it forhim. He liked it so much that he had oneand half servings. When I see himenjoying it that much I am reminded that one of the reason I like to cook isthat it makes Dan happy to eat. It iswonderful knowing that I can make healthy food that he loves enough to have anextra helping.

· It felt wonderful to have a little time tolisten to another two lessons on the meditation DVDs. So far this is definitely my favorite DVDfrom The Great Courses.

Monday:

There was no exciting food on Monday, sorry to disappointyou. I had my Asian savory oatmeal for breakfast. You have seen it so manytimes that I didn’t bother to photograph it. The picture above is one of my prior ones.

My lunch was what was leftover of the kale and walnutsauce. It was still delicious even as aleftover.

Dinner was Dan’s favorite lasagna the one that I posted here.

I also made a big pot of the French market bean soup whichI documented here. The version I made today did not include any seitan sausage.

Happythoughts:

· I get excited each time we add a new follower tothe blog. Since January 1 when we started the 31 Days to Better Health serieswe have picked up 24 new followers in 23 days. *woo hoo* Thank you to all of you who take the time toread. If you ever have any questions orsuggestions please let me know. I amhappy to share any tips or tricks I have learned with you and I love it whenyou share your tips with me. It is mygoal that we all change our health for the better. I want all of us to end 2012 healthier thanit started. Each of us is strongertogether than we are alone. J

· It is 5:20pm as I am writing this and the sun isjust staring to set, and it is still 54 degrees I might add. *woo hoo* I can remember not long ago when it was completely dark before 5pm. I love that the days are getting longer. Comeon spring, hurry up and get here I have a sailboat calling my name.

· Tomorrow is the first teleclass for RMT whichshould be fun. I am looking forward togetting started with the next round of training. Thankfully I can do trainingthrough my smart phone since the class ends just about the time we are due at adoctor appointment. Isn’t technologywonderful? What did we do before we hadmobile technology? Sadly I am old enoughto remember life without PCs if you can imagine. LOL

· Our weather has been lovely today. Thetemperatures were back up in the mid-50s, the rain disappeared last night andall the snow from the weekend is gone. It definitely felt and looked a lot more like spring today. The weather people are predicting this warmspell will stick around through at least Saturday. Nice!

· I got a nice email from Lauren at Hopkins earlythis morning. We are going to try to gettogether next week. We thought lunch would be nice and I want to introduce herto Ian. He will want to kill me I am sure since he claims he doesn’t dovegan. Oh well he will get over beingmad I am sure, well at least I think he will. Wish me luck, I may need it. Youknow how temperamental artistic people can be. LOL

Signing Out:

Tuesday was another busy day for me. I still marvel at how many things I have onmy to-do list given that I don’t work “outside” the home. How did we ever get things accomplished whenI did? *scratches head*

The emailsabout IIN continue to come in daily. Icertainly had no idea so many of you had even heard about the program let alonethat you were interested. If you havespecific questions email at veganepicurean@gmail.complease don’t be shy I promise that I don’t mind answering any questions thatyou have.

I hope yourweek started well and that you have some nice things to look forward to thisweek. At the very least take time toenjoy the little things in life. J Talk with you again soon!

31 Days to Better Health - Day 23

2012-01-23T16:15:00.000-05:00

HappyMonday, assuming there is such a thing as a happy Monday that is. I hope the week has started off well at yourplace. As always I wish it were stillthe weekend, but I am trying to make the best of it. While it has warmed up here it has beenraining and/or dreary all day. There isnothing like a yucky grey day to keep me inside where it is warm and dry. ;-) Onthe bright side I have gotten a lot done because I wasn’t able to spend as muchtime outside as I would like. As Ialways say there is an upside to everything in life if you just look for it.

Don’t youjust love that the days are getting longer? *woo hoo* It will be spring and then summer before we know it. *happy dance* I am seriously looking forward to spending spring, summer and fall onthe boat. There is nothing more relaxingto me than hanging out on the boat. Ican feel the boat gently bobbing now. ;-) Come on spring! I would rather be looking at the scenery in the picture above then at the cold, dreary rain that is outside now.

I am happythat you guys are starting to speak up a little even though most of thecomments and questions are coming by email. Thanks to everyone who wrote. Itis much easier for me to know what to write each day when I know a little aboutwhat you are interested in, what you are trying to accomplish and where you arein making healthy changes. For those ofyou who are just joining us here is the recap of what we have accomplished sofar to remind us all of how much we have covered during the first 22 days ofJanuary:

Day 1 – DefinedSuccess and What is/was Holding Us Back

Day 2 –Determined our Purpose and Looked at Passion
Day 3 –Listed Our Goals for January
Day 4 –Listed the Things We Have Needed to Work on for a While
Day 5 – Lookedat Optimism vs. Pessimism and Fear vs. Intuition
Day 6 – PracticedConscious Eating
Day 7 – HaraHachi Bu
Day 8 –Taking the Stress Out of Meal Time
Day 9 –Acknowledgments
Day 10 – NoExcuses, Do it Anyway
Day 11 – Isit True?
Day 12 –Have You Really Connected With Someone Today?
Day 13 –Motivation is a Decision
Day 14 -Successfully Navigating Dinner at an Unfamiliar Restaurant
Day 15 -What Do You Want, Have You Asked?
Day 16 –Treating Others as You Wish to be Treated
Day 17 –Food as a Budget
Day 18 –Silence Your Inner Critic
Day 19 –Replace I Have to With I Want to
Day 20 –Identifying Your Rituals
Day 21 –Face Your Fears
Day 22 –Give Up the Diet Mentality

What did youthink of yesterday’s post about ditching the diet mentality? Do you think that there is any validity to mycomments? Was there something in that post which you are going to try to applyto your life? I really would like tohear your thoughts if you aren’t too shy to comment.

The Meaningand/or Purpose of Food:

It came tome this morning that what food means to any of us is the crux of what happensin terms of health. What does food tomean to you? Why do you eat? What need are you trying to satisfy with food? Sounds like simple questions right? However I can almost guarantee that there aremany answers to this question because I would have answered this differently atvarious stages of my life.

What do youthink, what does food mean to you? Atthis stage in my life food is the fuel that I use to nourish my body. Food is what I use to provide my body withall the macro and micronutrients that it needs to be as healthy as possiblegiven my life conditions. I know thatthe food which I eat is broken down into the building blocks that become me. Literally this means I believe that I am whatI eat. This is why I am able to decideto eat savory oatmeal, green smoothies or seaweed. It is also why I reach for green tea insteadof coffee, or fresh vegetable juice instead of a V8. I know that my body needs as much nutrition asI can possibly cram into it to hopefully eventually offset the horrible ways Itreated my body in the past.

In the pastfood had many different meanings, none of which were good (healthy) and I willshare those now in case your see yourself in any of these examples.

Food can beseen as entertainment. In the past Danand I loved to get together with friends and go out to dinner. We would order the wildest thing on the menubecause we wanted the experience. Someof the things we have eaten in the past were “way out there” to say theleast. We have had things like vanillacotton candy wrapped smoked eel, and grilled baby octopus with bacon air. As you can see I wasn’t kidding when I said wewanted to be entertained and experience life to the fullest. Given that we both loved fancy restaurantfood you can guess the rest I imagine. We ate too many calories and we bothcarried too much weight. Viewing food as entertainment is not good for anyone’shealth and we were a testament to that. The funny thing is that we thought wewere happy, right up the crisis that is.

Food canalso be used to numb feelings. This issomething that I hear a lot when I talk to people. They tell me that they eat when they are sad,angry or just about any other feeling. In the past when I was sad or upset I would also reach for “comfortfood” which in my case was anything made with flour like pasta, warm bread outof the oven, pizza, etc. I equatedItalian carbs with love and when I felt sad or upset I instinctively reachedfor those foods. I still do this but nowI recognize what is happening so that I can stop myself before I eat too muchwhole wheat pasta, vegan pizza or hot warm bread. It isn’t that my cravings for these foodsdisappeared but rather that now I understand why I am craving them and that makesit much easier to not over do.

Food can beused to celebrate. When I was growing upwe went out to dinner to celebrate birthdays, holidays, graduations, etc. Foodwas the way that we communicated as a family. I am not sure if this is an Italian thing but all festivities revolvedaround food. We had the feast of the seven fishes for Christmas Eve, cassatacake on New Years, panettone for Christmas and Easter, you get the idea. Ifthere was a holiday we had a food (or more than one food) that we used tocelebrate it. Everyone got to choosewhere we went out to dinner to celebrate their birthday. Food was an integralpart of our family life, mind you most of this food was eaten out of the house,but food was how we connected as a family.

Food canalso be seen as love. I separated thisfrom the emotions above because I think it is a little different and I didn’twant it to get lost when you were reading. You can see food as love in twoways: either preparing food as a way ofshowing love to others, or as a way to give yourself love that you don’t feelyou are getting enough. I grew up in ahome where my mother did not cook. My mom still hates to cook to this day soshe doesn’t do it. We ate out a lot, myfather picked up food on his way home (lots of reheated restaurant meals), andsometimes my dad would cook. I alwaysfelt that my mom didn’t “love me enough” to cook dinner and this was probablybecause my grandmother was an amazing cook. I loved spending my summers withher and we would shop for food and cook together every day. That always felt like the way the worldshould be to me. When I was about 10 Istarted cooked at home. My father lovedhaving real food in the house and my mother enjoyed not having to think aboutfood. Cooking became the way that Ishowed people that I loved them. Howevergiving food this meaning can be healthy or not healthy depending on how you doit. If you prepare the unhealthy foodsthat your family wants are you really giving them love? I would contend that while they are happy nowthey won’t be later when they suffer from cancer, heart disease or diabetes. I still equate food with love but I usehealthy food to show love now.

Food canalso be seen as a necessity. Thisdescription may sound similar to food as fuel but it was different for me. In the past when my career was my priorityfood during the week was required but I didn’t give much more thought to itthan that. I would grab anything that satisfied my hunger, it could have beenChinese carry out (too much sodium and fat), pizza (bad on so many levels), orburgers. Literally the only functionfood served during this stage of my life was to stop my stomach from growlingand I didn’t think about it any further than that. In retrospect I can’t believe that I everthought this way about food, but I did.

I am surethere are other meanings for food; these are just the ones that it has had forme in the past. Now I am going to askyou to think about what food means to you. I have designed a series of questions to help you to figure it out incase you don’t know immediately.

Today’sexercises are:

1. Do you think you know what food means toyou? If you do write it down in thejournal. We will come back to this later after you have done the exercises.

2. For today write down everything that you eat. This includes things like coffee (even black),candy from the office candy bowl, if you consume right it down. Youdon’t need to measure or weigh the food that doesn’t matter. But I want you towrite down the following information:

· What time you got out of bed

· What were you thinking or feeling before youate?

· Time of day you ate

· How hungry were you before you ate (0-neutralneither hungry nor full, 1-a little hungry, 2-very hungry, 3-starved)

· What you ate (describe the food)

· Who was with you when you ate (were you alone orwith friends)

· Where were you (at home, at work, at therestaurant, etc.)

· What were you thinking as you were eating?

· What were you thinking of feeling immediatelyafter you finished eating?

· How full were you after you ate (0-neturalneither hungry nor full, 1-satisfied, 2-uncomfortably full,3-Thanksgiving fullmiserable)

· What time did you get into bed

3. Look at the list you complied in item two above. Does anything stand out for you? Did you eat immediately upon waking up or waslunch your first meal? Do you wait untilyou are hungry to eat? It is common forpeople to feel sad, angry, frustrated, lonely, bored, happy or tired beforeeating. Does this describe you or wasthere another emotion that was coming up for you? Did you eat all day long, or did you eat mostof your calories at the end of the day? Eating a lot at night often leads to not eating breakfast which then setsup the cycle to eat a lot at night the next day. Just write down anything you notice bylooking at your list. Maybe you werefrustrated at work and grabbed some chips. People who are angry do tend to reach for crunchy food. The benefit of keeping a log for a few daysis that you will start to see the patterns around your eating. Remember wecan’t change what we don’t identify!

4. Now look at your feelings after you ate. Did your feelings change? Did the change lastor was the feeling back before the next meal. Did eating make you feel worseand not better? In the past I felt goodwhen I was eating but after I ate I would feel guilty because I knew that I hadeaten food that I should not haveconsumed. Also how full were you aftereating? If you went further than level 1 (satisfied) you should go back and rereadday 7.

5. After reflecting on what was going on for you aroundfood today do you still agree with what your wrote in item one about what foodmeans to you? Maybe you still don’t knowwhat food means to you. That is okaybecause this is a tough question for a lot of people. Just continue the stepsabove for a few days and see if what comes up for you. I suspect that many of you will need to dothis for a while to figure it out. Ifyou had asked me twenty years ago what food meant to me I would have thoughtthat was a ridiculous question and probably would have said something like“food is food.” Yes, I was in denial fora long time. As I often say, if I can figure this stuff out for me I know youcan do it because I was one tough nut to crack. ;-)

Were youable to figure out what food means to you? Do you like your answer or do you think that you need to change yourrelationship with food now. Did Iexplain this in a way that makes sense? I hope that I did. Like always ifanything that I wrote is unclear or you think that it requires clarificationplease don’t hesitate to let me know either by commenting or sending me anemail.

Progress onmy goals:

1. Newsletters – Sunday I took the day off fromworking on the newsletters. Sometimes we all need a little break from work.

2. Body Bugg – I continue to wear my bugg and Ihave gotten back into using it the way I had intended when I purchased it. Go me! J

3. Date with Dan – The hubby and I have spent a lotof time together this week. With theweather we have stayed fairly close to home but we can have fun anywhere homeor out. ;-)

4. Measuringcalorie dense food – I am making a little progress on this but I really need tofocus on it with every veggie meal to help my body absorb the fat solublevitamins.

5. Working on my business – Sunday I took the dayoff from working on the business. TheJanuary posts are taking me many more hours to write than usual. As much as Ilove these posts I will be happy to see February arrive since I really need alittle time back to work on other things, the business being one of them.

How are youfeeling about your progress so far? Ihope you feel like you have made a few lasting changes this month. J

RandomThoughts:

Writing thismonth about the emotional side of health has definitely been a labor of love me. I believe that anyone who has ever struggledto lose weight knows that there is more to the issue than calories in andcalories out. If the weight lossequation were that simple very few people would struggle as they do to loseweight. Additionally anyone who has evertried to give up cheese knows that there is “something” intoxicating about it. I also know that most men and many womendon’t understand that the problem of eating healthy is more mental thananything else. When I thought about thisseries I realized that there was a chance that many people would think I hadlost my mind. However I also knew that I had to stay true to what I believewithout regard to how people reacted. The funny thing about this is that while I wasn’t sure about writingthis series now I am very glad that I did. It feels wonderful knowing that I stayed true to what I believe in nomatter how people react to it. J

Do you taketime to smell the roses? Of course thisis a figurative question since there are no roses in bloom now but I think youknow what I mean. ;-) There were many years of my life that I wasso busy running between my home and office that I didn’t notice much ofanything that happened around me. Itwasn’t until I left healthcare that I began to actually see things. I do this by slowing down and taking ineverything that happens. I realize nowthat this is the opposite of how I used to live. The funny thing about slowing down is thatyou realize that there is as much joy in seeing the light spark on the icewhich formed on a branch as there ever was in getting a raise or apromotion. There are beautiful thingsaround all of us every day. Please slowdown for at least 5 minutes each day and take time to “smell the roses”.

Acknowledgements:

Have youmade any progress writing acknowledgements? I hope you are working on this exercise. I find that it helps me staypositive and recognize the things that I do every day. Here are my acknowledgements:

· While the house looks empty without the Christmasstuff it was nice to get it all down and put away over the weekend. Typically Iput the stuff up and Dan takes it down but we worked as a team this time andgot it finished much more quickly. Everything goes faster when you work together, a good thing for all ofus to remember.

· We have gotten into the habit of going for awalk after dinner. It reminds me of being in Italy since everyone seems to walkafter dinner; in fact it is so common there is a word for it, la passeggiata. I loved the tradition of it when we were inItaly so I have decided to try to add it to our life at home too. For now Dan is going along with me onthis. Let’s hope he doesn’t startworking too late for this to be an option.

· Some days things just come together and thiswas one of those days. The dinner I madewas out of this world delicious. I loveit when I get just the right combination of ingredients. I have been trying to encourage all of you totrust your instincts and to cook without a recipe which is why you haven’t beenseeing many recipes from me lately. Anyone can follow a recipe but when you learn to cook without a recipethen you can feed yourself no matter what you have in the house. I think thisis going to be an upcoming series on the blog. What do you think of the idea?

Sunday:

Breakfastfor both of us was a cocoa, cherry, banana, kale and walnut smoothie. Thesethings really are like drinking dessert for breakfast. Since I typically only make them for Dan Iforget how much they are like candy. No wonder Mr. Sweet Tooth asks for them sooften. LOL

Betweenbreakfast and lunch we worked on packing up the end of the Christmasdecorations. Binky was a big help dismantling Christmas for anyone who iscurious. That little guy gets into everything at our house. He is a cat after all and he knows that wehave to be supervised otherwise we would never get any job done correctly. It is a good thing that we love that littlefuzzy man because he can be a handful.

Lunch todaywas the end of the split pea soup with smoky ‘shrooms. Since we try to eat beans each day I askedDan what he wanted me to make next. Healmost never has an opinion but suggested something made with 16 beans. Perfect! French Market Bean soup will be on the menu tomorrow. I have beensoaking my beans overnight with a little baking soda after Dr. Greger confirmedthat this does reduce the raffinose thereby reducing the gassiness. Thanks again for sharing the recipe Sue!

Dinner wassomething that I whipped together and it far exceeded my expectations. Dan toldme to write it down before I forgot what I had done. Of course I didn’t measure but I will explainthe concept. I cooked some quinoa andwhile that got started sliced an onion so it could stand for 10 minutes beforecooking (it enhances the nutrition which you are probably tired of hearing fromme). Then I “water sautéed the onion inwater, a splash of red wine vinegar and pinch of stevia). When the onion was soft I turned it off tofinish once the quinoa was resting. While the quinoa finished I shredded a bunch of kale to add to the onion. The kale only cooked for about two minutes, Ionly wanted it to soften slightly. Theentire meal was: quinoa topped with thesweet and sour wilted kale and onions, smoky ‘shrooms, walnut sauce withsriracha and finished with sesame seeds. Darn was this good! I can assure you that I will be making thisagain and measuring because yes, it was that good. That walnut sauce with sriracha is deliciouson just about anything I have decided. LOL

I also havedried mushrooms and almonds soaking in the refrigerator. I plan to make some flavored mushrooms forsalad and some vegan mozzarella if I can find the time on Monday. *fingers crossed* Dan has asked me to make some of my wholewheat pizza dough since we haven’t had any in probably a year. Sincehe asked so sweetly I couldn’t say no. Now I need to buy flour and yeast so Dan can have pizza at home.

Happythoughts:

· We went for a nice walk Sunday evening. Thesidewalks were icy but the scenery was fantastic. I love to see the street lights shine on theice covered bare branches. I am sorry that I haven’t been able to get any decentpictures for you. The light was dancingon the ice and it was a bit like walking in a fairyland. What a wonderful way to end the day. I never get tired of going for a walk afterdinner. J

· I had the epiphany today about the meaning offood. As soon as it popped into my head I couldn’t believe that it took me solong to look at it that way. How any ofus view food is huge in terms of what it means for our overall health. I am so glad I finally made the connection sothat I could share it with you.

· It was great to have time to watch two episodesof the meditation DVD from The Great Courses. I have almost finished all theDVDS. I want to watch it twice before Ireview it for you. But as you can probably guess I am really enjoying it. These DVDs definitely made me think about myreaction to things and I love that.

· We have bean soup in the refrigerator again. *woo hoo* I know that this wouldn’t make many people happy but I love it. Beans are such a healthy food and I feel somuch better when I eat them every day. If you haven’t tried eating beans daily I hope you will. They don’t agree with everyone’sgastrointestinal system but if they agree with yours you will miss them whenyou don’ teat them.

Signing Out:

Life Mondayreturned to normal at our house. Danreturned to work and I went back to my usual routine. I even managed to find time to get back tothe meditation DVDs from The Great Courses. There was also a little time in the kitchen, though not as much as I hadhoped for. There really never seems tobe enough time in the day to get everything accomplished.

The emailsabout IIN continue to come in. Icertainly had no idea so many of you had even heard about this let alone thatyou were interested. If you havespecific questions email at veganepicurean@gmail.complease don’t be shy I promise that I don’t mind answering any questions thatyou have.

I hope yourweek started well and that you have some nice things to look forward to thisweek. At the very least take time toenjoy the little things in life. J Talk with you again soon!