Taking the plunge!

Ok! I’ve done it!  I’ve made the commitment!

No…. I’m not getting married!  I’ve committed to the Nerd Fitness 6 Week Challenge!

What this means is for the next six weeks – starting September 24th – I’ll be working towards four specific fitness and life related goals.  Three will be fitness or health related, and the fourth is a “life goal”.

For example, here’s what I wrote down for my goals (copied from my thread on Nerd Fitness):

Goal 1 – NF’s Beginner Workout x3 a week - Right now I’m sedentary, and really need to get my ass in gear. The beginner workout is probably as good a place to start as any. Hopefully I’ll be able to work myself past it? [ +3 STR, +2 STA ]

Goal 2 – Yoga x2 a week. I was doing Yoga steadily for a while, but fell out of the habit months ago. I felt really good while I was doing it, so I think it’s a practice I need to get back into. [ +2 STA, +1 CON ]

Goal 3 – Learn to eat Paleo up to 80% - That’s really what brought me here. I’m excited to change my eating habits to something that, to me, just the thought of it feels healthier. With a small vacation coming up at the end of September, this will be a difficult starting point, but I’m up for the challenge. [ +3 CON ]

Goal 4 – Life Goal - Start steps towards getting into grad school. First steps would be getting tour of the University, meet with the Advisors about my undergraduate grades (which weren’t so great :/ ) and getting my Transcripts sent. [ +2 WIS, +2 CHA ]

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention – NF treats fitness goals like a role playing game, with stats for your Strength, Charisma, Constitution, Wisdom, Stamina and Dexterity.  You can increase your stats by achieving your goals.  It sounds kinda fun, so why not try it out, right?  Anything that can make fitness that little bit more fun is all good to me.

The first steps on this Challenge are going to be hard, as I’ll be out of state next weekend, so it will be harder to control when I get to work out, or where I get to eat.  I’ll do my best to keep up with things though!  I’m an Advenurer!  GRRR!!

Sugar, part deux

It’s been a while since I posted, most likely because I haven’t had much to post about.  My diet has shrunk some.  Medication that I’ve recently been switched to gives me nausea and thus reduces my appetite.  I eat about half as much as I used to.  Because of this, I lost ten pounds.

However, I have been continuing with my low sugar diet.  I take truvia in my tea, and still drink artificial sweeteners in my Crystal Light.  I’ve discovered, that because of this, my body is developing some manner of intolerance for real sugar.

Full sugar sodas, sweet candies, desserts – things that have a high sugar content – are making me feel ill.  For example, I may drink an energy drink twice a month (when my gaming group meets).  As of late, I’ve been drinking the Rockstar Recovery, which is their low-calorie lemonade sweetened with sucralose.

Last night, for a change, I decided to get the fruit punch flavour, which is one of their regular, full sugar varieties.  I drank it, and shortly after, I felt ill.  Nausea, fuzziness, I thought I was going to throw up.

I feel the same way if I drink too much soda, or combine soda and a candy bar.  I recognise this feeling, and know that I shouldn’t have sugar if I feel this way.  Too much sugar, with me not having had a lot of sugar, just has a negative effect.

While this is most likely a good thing, in order to cut down on processed sweets, I do sometimes forget that it’s just a bad idea, and swamp myself with chocolate goodies and cola.  I regret it later.  My body gets it’s revenge on me.

I think, yet again, I need to be more aware of what I’m consuming, not just for my weight, but for how my body feels in general.  You need to listen to the cues that your body gives, sometimes, it knows more than you do.

New Toys And A New Grocery Trip!

This week I got a surprise.  In an effort to help me meet my diet goals, Baron picked up a new toy.  He bought a Jack LaLanne Power Juicer Express!  Now we can buy fruits and vegetables and make fresh juice – yummy!  Also, we replaced our blender, which was leaky and dying, so yay for more smoothies!

While driving home tonight, we decided to stop by a store we’d never gone into before – The Fresh Market.  It reminds me of a Whole Foods, but a little smaller.  They had an excellent supply of produce, lots of natural fruits, nuts and candies, coffee beans, hard to find oils and vinegars, tons of cheese – it was a really nice little place!  It said on the sign out front that they sell Sushi too, but we didn’t see the sign until we were on our way out.

We picked up some great looking produce – Honeycrisp apples that are freaking HUGE, a bag of seedless red grapes and a bundle of kale.  I’ve really been wanting to try kale.  We also finally – FINALLY – found a jar of tahini!  It only took forever.  Also, we found some really tasty sodas, with sugar instead of HFCS in them.  One of them was Zevia, a soda that contains stevia instead of sugar, which I’ve been dying to try.  I picked the Ginger Root Beer flavour.  Baron picked out some of the coffee beans for himself.

I like the fact that The Fresh Market is a lot closer to my apartment than Whole Foods – a twenty minute ride instead of a forty five minute drive.  It’s smaller, with less of a selection, but I’m hoping to at least make a monthly trip out there for some staple items.  Like most specialty stores of it’s kind, the prices are higher than your average supermarket, but you can find a lot of stuff there that you can’t find anywhere else.  Looking forward to my next trip out there!

Accursed Sweet Tooth!

This week’s most-likely-far-too-long post is about Sugar and Artificial Sweeteners.  I have a bit of a sweet tooth.  I’m not usually very big into cakes and candy, but sugary drinks are pretty much my downfall.  I love sodas and juices.  I’ve been thinking a bit on this lately.

I’ve read quite a bit on ye olde innerwebs about sugar and why we consume so much of it.  A lot of it has to do with how readily available it is.  I mean, look on the label of nearly anything and you’ll find it’s probably loaded with High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS).  You might be lucky enough to find something with Sugar or Cane Sugar in it, but that’s fast becoming a rarity.

It makes me think, though, are our diets training us to crave sweets?  Is it just because of the availability?  Does it have to do with our insulin production?  Are people turning to Artificial Sweeteners (aspartame, sucralose, saccharine) in an effort to shake the habit, but only making themselves worse off in the long run?

There’s a lot of research out there about the negative impact of Artificial Sweeteners on our bodies.  Drinking and eating a science experiment can’t be good for us.  Some studies claim they cause cancer.  Another claims they contribute to obesity and overeating.  All in all, if you’re eating clean, it’s definitely something you want to avoid.  For a sucker with a sweet tooth, however, it usually ends up being the lesser of two evils.  I am one of those suckers.

I started label watching a little over a year ago, after seeing all the negative press regarding HFCS.  I try my best to avoid it in food and drinks.  This week, I went to buy some 100% Whole Wheat Bread, and looking at labels, kept finding ones with HFCS in it.  In the end, the loaf I went with had plain Sugar in it instead.  Again, the lesser of two evils I suppose.  I’ve cut nearly all of the soda out of my diet, but replaced it with flavoured carbonated water or the occasional diet soda.  It’s not just the sweetness I want, but the carbonation.  I really love those bubbles!  I also make a pitcher of Crystal Light to keep in my fridge for the times where bubbles aren’t a high priority.

Here’s the breakdown of Artificial Sweeteners in my diet.  Consider it a confession at the alter of the Internets.  I’m not condoning the comsumption of Artificial Sweeteners.  I’m just saying they’re out there, and sugar junkies like me are still addicted to them.

Aspartame

I consume this more often than any other sweetener.  Crystal Light, Walmart’s Great Value Flavoured Water, Diet Dr. Pepper Cherry – all zero calorie and sweetened with Aspartame.  It took me a while to get accustomed to the aftertaste, and anyone who tells you there isn’t an aftertaste is a liar.  This one seems to be the most common Artificial Sweetener, but I think it’s fast being overtaken by other forms of sweeteners.  Not my favourite.

Sucralose

Another one popular with flavoured waters, like Fruit2O and Sparkling Ice.  At least Sparkling Ice also sweetens with fruit juice, other fruit flavours and green tea.  I prefer this to Aspartame, as it doesn’t have the nasty aftertaste.  It’s a little harder to find though.

Truvia

Not as much of an Artificial Sweetener, as a product of the Stevia plant.  It’s not pure Stevia, it’s mixed with a few other things.  I only use this in my tea.  You only need half as much Truvia as you need regular granulated Sugar.  It’s got a sweet flavour, but in my experience it has what I can only describe as a “cold” taste to it.  It’s something I got used to.

Alternative Natural Sweeteners

Most of these are non-sugarcane sweeteners.  I’ve been dying to try them, but don’t have ready access to them.  Things like Agave Syrup, Pure Maple Syrup (not the pancake kind!), and Brown Rice Sugar.  Sugars like Agave are known to have a lower glycemic index, which means they don’t cause your blood sugar to spike when you eat them.

Well, those are my experiences with Sugar and Artificial sweeteners.  I know my Sugar Tooth battle is far from over, and to reach my fitness and diet goals I’m going to eventually have to beat back this demon.  Mixing juice with water to cut the water’s blandness was one option I’ve considered.  I can’t stand water plain, so some creativity will be in order.  Crossing my fingers that I can come up with something palatable!

I Love Food! I Hate Exercising!

Sorry folks, this one is going to be a long one.

I love food!

This is kind of a recent realization to me.  It never occurred to me until now that this was the case.  In the last few years, I’ve become somewhat of a foodie, and I eat out way too much.  I consider this the result of living a more prosperous lifestyle than I have in the past.  We’re not well-off.  We’re only maybe lower middle class.  But I’m eating much better than I did years ago.

Four and a half years ago, I left my home state of Connecticut to live in more inexpensive pastures.  While I was living in Connecticut, I had no car, so I walked or bussed everywhere I needed to go.  Our budget was extremely tight.  Early on, it was a “ramen three times a day” budget.  Later on, we could afford better than ramen, but not much.  Many days I only ate one meal a day.  I weighed in at about 165lbs on my 5’7″ frame – about twenty pounds higher than my pre-pregnancy weight, which to me, wasn’t bad at all.  I wasn’t terribly unhappy with my weight at the time.  I know it wasn’t the healthiest of situations, but it was what it was.

Fast forward to four and a half years ago.  I moved and ended up in a better financial situation.  Three meals a day!  Wow!  A year later I moved again, and in with Baron, a self-professed butter addict.  There were three meals a day, junk food and dinners out.  My weight shot up from 165 to 205 in just over the first year.  I was floored.

Now I’m trying to make dietary changes, and having such a hard time with it.  Last night I had two and a half bowls of pasta slathered in ricotta cheese.  TWO AND A HALF BOWLS!  It tasted so good I couldn’t stop.  I gave myself a tummyache.  Sadface.  I know I want to eat better, and eat less, I just can’t get myself away from stuff that tastes just so damned good!  I don’t know if this means I have food addiction, or some kind of eating problem or what.

I’m not sure where to go next.  I really need some control in what I eat, and to get over my lack of willpower.  How do I reign in my out of control appetite?

I hate exercising!

I really, REALLY do.  Like I said before, back when I lived in Connecticut, I walked everywhere, and while I had difficulty sometimes (my fibromyalgia sometimes made walking difficult, I’d use a cane when things got too painful), it still got me where I needed to go.  Now, here in Florida, the city I live in is too spacious, and nothing I need is really within walking distance.  I have a car, and the convenience I think has adversely affected my activity level.  I know it has.

I would love to get more exercise into my routine, but I’ve had the damnedest time trying to find something that doesn’t bore me within a week’s time.  I can’t afford a gym membership, I don’t own a bike, and home exercise machines are out of my budget.  I tried doing some at home exercising – like yoga and pilates videos – but again, I got bored.  I was trying to walk every other day – two miles or more – but alas, bored again.

Why can’t I find the right exercise for me?  Is there such a thing?  Am I supposed to just push through it and do it anyways, no matter how bored or unenjoyable it is?  I’m jealous of all the blogs and posts I read about people thrilled about how many miles they’ve done on the treadmill or how many hills they’ve done on the exercise bike.  I want to feel that kind of pride in my accomplishments, too.

I guess that’s where I’m stuck at the moment.  Too much of one thing (food) and not enough of the other (exercise).  I need to figure out how to turn myself around and overcome these obstacles.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!  Do any of you out there run into the same problems I do?  Please share!

Pizza Surprise!

The other day I wasn’t feeling so great and my back was hurting from the yoga I’ve been attempting with limited success.  I decided to lie down for a nap with my kitty cats.  Baron got home, came in and said “I’ve got a surprise for dinner, keep sleeping, I’ll let you know when to get up.”  Uh.  Ok.  *starts to worry*

I was really surprised when he woke me up and greeted me with this:

Yummy Vegetarian Pizza!

Mr. Omnivore himself made me a yummy vegetarian pizza!  Instead of tomato sauce, it had a tasty pesto base, with chopped tomatoes, mushrooms, spinach, onion, orange peppers and mozzarella cheese.  The crust was packaged and the pesto was from a mix, but I didn’t care.  Damn, was it tasty!

Would you like a slice? Yes, please!

I was already starving, so funny if I nearly ate the whole pie!  He was surprised at it’s deliciousness as well, and even had a piece or two for himself!  I still have a couple leftover slices in the fridge to heat up for a quick snack.  I’d call this little experiment of his a resounding success, and I hope I get surprises like this more often!

Quick Blog: New Beginnings

It’s Monday, and if I’m going to try something new, I try to do it on Mondays.  I don’t know, maybe somewhere in the back of my brain, it’s the first day of… something… so that’s where beginnings should be.

Last night Baron and I did some late evening grocery shopping to try and get some eats to hold us over til we could do more concrete grocery shopping on this upcoming Saturday.  We got a few things that are good for you, a few things that are maybe not so good, and did a ton of label reading.  We’ve been trying to keep an eye on things like fat content, calories, sodium and high fructose corn syrup and other sweeteners.  We’re not always successful, but at least we’re making the attempt.

My first step to Monday wellness was getting up at a reasonable hour, about 8am.  As someone who regularly sleeps until noon or beyond, it’s a bit jarring.  I waited my half an hour after taking my thyroid medication, and had a nice breakfast that consisted of peach yogurt, a banana, 1/4 cup of sunflower seeds and a glass of orange juice.  I even measured out the single serving size of sunflower seeds – go me!  The breakfast seemed healthy-ish, though sugar-heavy-ish.

The other thing I’m trying (after I get my living room cleaned up) is Yoga Journal’s 21-Day Yoga Challenge.  It started today, and (obviously) runs 21 days, with a new video each day.  They also have recommendations for eating at least one vegetarian meal a day, and an audio meditatinon as well.  I’ve needed to get back on the exercise bandwagon for a while now, so I figured this would be a good start.  Hopefully I’ll keep up with it. *crosses fingers*

Just a short blog post this time.  Hopefully I’ll keep up with these “resolutions” this time.  Wish me luck!

Recipe: Easy Garlic Miso Noodles!

Hello All!  This week I’ve been sorely shy on vegetables, and still won’t be able to do any grocery shopping until tomorrow.  This makes me terribly sadface, because I’m dying for some spinach!  Because of that, I kind of had to finagle a lunch this week using what I had on hand.  After searching Food Pair looking for a recipe that involves two ingredients I did have in my kitchen – miso and udon noodles – I finally came up with a recipe that was somewhat of a success.  I’d like to share it with you!

Garlic Miso Noodles

Serving size: 1

2 oz. udon noodles or spaghetti if you don’t have udon. (the udon comes in individual bundles, each a serving size, and each is 2 oz. in size)

2-3 garlic cloves, minced

Approximately 1/8 cup sesame oil (my measurement wasn’t exact on this, so it might be a little less)

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1/2 tablespoon miso (careful with this, miso is potent stuff, and very salty)

Cook udon in boiling water according to directions, which in my case was 3 minutes.  Drain.

Heat the sesame oil and garlic in a small skillet until the garlic is starting to brown a bit.  Add the soy sauce VERY CAREFULLY – it might spatter a bit.  Then add the miso and stir until all the lumps are out.  Add to the noodles.  Voila!  Done!

Really not a difficult lunch, and it leaves itself open to the possibility of adding plenty of vegetables later on, just increase the amount of sauce a bit to coat the vegetables too.  I’m dying to try this with some spinach and mushrooms (my two favourite veggies!).  I hope you like this quick little recipe.  I know it’s not all fancy shmancy, but I’m still a beginner cook, and I was quite pleased with myself that it didn’t completely suck.

I’ve got plans in mind for my next post – this one will be about sugar and our dependence on it – hopefully that’ll come out in the next day or two.  Until then, break out the noodles.  It’s noshing time!

Looking forward to the New Year

Well, the Holidays are now behind us, and with it I just celebrated my birthday as well.  Forward lies the New Year, and with it talk of resolutions and life changes.  I know the last few months I haven’t been seeing the success I’ve aimed for in my diet and health goals, so hopefully with a new “starting point”, maybe I’ll be able to refocus and get my butt in gear.

I think right now the hardest thing I’m looking at is trying to make exercise a part of my daily life.  To me, it’s boring and repetitive.  There’s just nothing that I’ve been able to find that’s enjoyable enough for me to want to do it over and over again.  I’ve always been fascinated with Yoga, but my balance has always sucked.  High Intensity Interval Training interests me, but boy does that wipe me out!  It’s hard!  That’s the whole point of it, I guess?  I know exercise is important, both for physical well-being as well as mental health.  It’s something I need as an important part of my life.  I just need to find out what’s the best course of action for me to get the fitness that I need in my life.  Le sigh.

On my personal wishlist I have the Wii and Wii Fit.  Discussing it with Baron, we’ve decided that we’ll pick it up when we can afford it, which will most likely be around income tax time.  I’ve heard good things from friends of mine about the exercises on them, the Yoga options, and the balance board which also doubles as a scale.  I also love some of the other Wii Sports games, like bowling and tennis.  I think it’d be a fun way to get me off the couch or away from my computer, and get a little bit of physical activity into me.

I’ve also signed up for Fitocracy, this really neat site that lets you track not only your fitness goals, but what exercises you’ve done.  It issues you points for the exercises that you’ve done, and you level yourself up based on the points you accrue, kind of like a video game.  You can also unlock achievements for specific sets of fitness goals completed.  There’s also forums and groups.   I’m looking forward to trying out more of the site once I’m exercising regularly and able to post my progress on the site.

Also in the coming year I’ll be focusing more on my diet.  For the Holiday, I was gifted with two vegetarian cook books, so I have plenty of recipes to play with.  I’m looking forward to increasing my fruit and veggie intake on a daily basis, and decreasing my animal proteins substantially.

All in all I’m trying to approach the new year with a positive outlook.  Hopefully I’ll succeed this year where I’ve previously failed.  If I can just change my habits from negative ones to positive ones, I’ll be on the right track.  Happy New Year, everyone.

Fun At The Asian Market!

First, let me apologize for the lack of updates.  I’ve been sick since the day after Thanksgiving with some kind of mutant plague I caught off one of the other guests (Thanks ever so much, you know who you are!) and I think I’m just about recovered from it.  My throat still hurts when I swallow and I’m still a bit hoarse, but I’m not sure if that’s from the plague or my thyroid.  Who knows?

Today we took a trip to our local Asian market – MD Oriental Market – on Fowler Ave. here in Tampa.  It’s not far from where we live and they tend to have a pretty good assortment of Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, and Indian items at fairly reasonable prices.  From soy sauces and oils to curries and fresh fish, they’ve got a bit of everything.  Today when Baron and I browsed the store, we discovered they had recently expanded to include another room in addition to the main store.  From the looks of things, they had expanded their produce and frozen section to this new room, moved all the noodles as well, and added in a ready-made hot foods and pastry counter as well!

Today’s trip kind of had a goal.  Baron wanted me to pick up some things specifically for me to cook and eat on my own while trying to keep with a vegetarian-friendly menu.  We were also cautious to label check as much as we could for high sodium levels and high fructose corn syrup.

Even though upon walking through the door, you’re met with boxes upon boxes of cookies, candies and snackies, we beelined straight for Aisle 1 – produce!  There were a lot of really tasty looking fruit, but we passed on it for the time being.  In hindsight, I should have picked up a few pears.  They were huge!  We skipped on over to the vegetables, and found plenty to choose from.  I first picked up a package of brussels sprouts.  The price was better than the supermarket, and they looked a lot more uniform in size as well.  I really liked my recent attempts at making roasted brussels sprouts with balsamic vinegar, and look forward to trying that again.  We also picked up some orange bell peppers (the price was excellent!), snow peas and a bundle of nine bok choy heads.  I’m not sure how I’ll use a whole nine bok choy, but hopefully I can come up with something.  There were tons of mushrooms to choose from – and I love mushrooms – but we still have half a container of white mushrooms at home, so we passed for the time being.

Next we browsed the frozen items, and decided to come back at the end of our shopping trip (to avoid thawing of course!), and instead browsed the noodles.  We picked up a box of udon since I’ve been out of it forever and I love the thickness of the noodles.  These are really good with a quick stirfry or a peanut sauce.  I also picked up a bottle of furikake (rice seasoning) from an endcap.  After that, we figured we’d come back later, and proceeded to refrigerated goods.  Like we often do, we browsed the section, considering different things, with designs to come back later in our trip.

The next aisle was full of oils and sauces.  We needed to pick up a few things from this aisle, like sesame oil (again, much better prices than the grocery store!), low sodium soy sauce and some lime ponzu sauce.  I was looking for some generic “stir fry sauce” but only found one, and it was oyster flavoured, so I skipped on it.  Baron found green curry paste, and picked up a small tub of that for experimentation purposes.

Next we found ourselves in the cookies and candy aisle.  I pretty much tried to ignore the candy side of the aisle, as I’ve been trying to behave myself with my consumption of sugar.  This was hard, considering that they had those awesome fruit jelly candies that I have loved for years upon years (especially the kiwi flavour with the little seeds in it? OMG NOM!).  I found a couple things, some lemon sandwich cookies and some onion crackers I plan on trying with my hummus.  Hopefully they taste good.

We perused the tea, spices and rice aisle, but didn’t really get much except for a bottle of cumin.  We also found the dofu on this aisle as well, so I picked up the almond and strawberry flavours.  I haven’t tried the almond flavour, so I’m looking forward to that.  We also picked up “peanut meal”, which looked essentially like ground up peanuts, and we’re going to try some experiments with that one too.  Also found some cookies with plum filling and added those to the cart as well.

Now that we’ve reached the end of the store’s aisles, we backtrack to Aisle 1 again, and go back to the noodles.  While browsing amongst the prepackaged ramen  ickyness, we found some interesting stuff.  A spinach ramen noodle and a mushroom ramen noodle in packages of four.  They looked interesting, as I’ve never seen flavoured ramen noodles before, so we decided to pick them up.  We also picked up a few other varieties of flavoured noodle so we were fairly noodled out by the time we left the new room off Aisle 1.  We checked the noodle section’s chest freezers for vegetarian gyoza (dumplings), but only found one small package despite the huge variety of flavoures.  We picked up that, and a chicken and vegetable gyoza in a larger bag.

Lastly we hit the refrigerated section again, which leads right to the checkout aisle.  We picked up a container of red miso (again, for experimentation purposes!), and a few drinks for ourselves – thai coffee for Baron and thai tea for me – yum!  No ramune this time – maybe next time.

In all we spent about $80, which was exactly what Baron had guessed we would.  We still have to do more mainstream grocery shopping at our local grocery store.  Hopefully when my cooking skills expand, we can shop a bit better.  Thankfully we have a pretty good idea at this point what vegetables, fruits and groceries this particular store offers, and where we can get the best deals.  Personally I love the variety of having an Asian market local to us.  I look forward to using this resource even more as my dietary needs progress.