Leida

As usual, winter became summer in Calgary in the space of few days. There was nothing subtle about it. Last week it snowed, this week it’s green and balmy. We’ve crossed the barrier. It’s officially road construction season.

Oh, mine, summer!

Ouch, shorts. Yes, I was the only person in the crowded park yesterday still sporting a pair of long sweats when I ran. And it did feel a bit hot. (But I’ve got the second wind yesterday - AWSOME experience. A digression, I know, but I am still smiling when I think about it. V. pleasent indeed.)

But shorts? If you’ve read any of my posts, you’ve most likely come across my mentioning my thunderous thighs. That’s the last part of my body I would like to showcase in public. I hoped they would be decent with all the weight I lost, but they still look pretty darn heavy and unsightly. I was running behind one girl for a while yesterday, and I was ready to drool, I envied her her thighs so much!

I’ve never owned a pair of shorts I was comfortable in. Or liked.  Or felt like I looked good in. I have a major short aversion.

 So, what I am going to do, is to put one of those shorts my mom keeps giving me on (because she is my mother, why else would anyone give you clothes you repeatedly expressed a dislike of?), and I am going run and excersise till I can put a pair on, and don’t think about them, thunderous thighs. It’s them or shorts! The battle is on!

Food Log

Exercise Log

I can’t live without a good plan. So, after pocking around for a while, I discovered that I settled into my current weight of 118-119 pounds around April 14 (weight tracker is awsome!) I also know that at the moment I can’t go any lower without feeling ill.

 So, my new gameplan is to:

-Keep up with my monthly measurments, hoping to reduce the thunder thighs by excersise.

-Maintain the weight  for at least 6 month (to October 14th), and then, if the siad thighs are still thunderously annoying, see if I can take another weight reduction to 114-116 pounds if my body adjusted to the new weight and can take it.

All right, our Chinese/Asian inspired week came to a close! My husband picked 2 lbs - don’t know if it’s salt in the soy sauce, or my magnificent talent… but he still managed to hang on to 1 lbs loss from last week. But, jokes aside, we both love asian style cooking and agree that it lends itself perfectly to the healthy lifestyle!

So, the week started with a deviation from Asian food! I decided to finally use up the last of the apples from our apple trees, and made them in a compot with a bit of frozen berries, a touch of sugar. I served them with creps as Sunday branch. Lol, been fighting that extra pound ever since! Hope to see it gone by Tuesday!

But then we got right on track with the noodle salad my husband was asking me to make for a while. Yellow peppers, carrots, peas, a bit of ham, seasame oil, red pepper flakes and a bit of soy sauce… Yam!

Here, we have some vegeterian fried rice (nothing deep fried or egg-related). Basically, just a nice stir-fry of veggies and mushrooms with brown rice. Hubby had it with the left-over vindaloo, and I just ate it by itself:

Next day I did some ginger-honey broiled salmon to go with the rice, with a zuccini and red pepper side. I liked the combination, but my husband thinks that my regular broiled salmon (lemon-juice, red flakes, freshly ground pepper and oregano) is better.

Deviation #2! My dear toddler asked for macaroni and cheese in a midst of a tantrumus night. I have no idea how to make them, so I had to pull the recipe from the Cook Healthy Today cookbook. Here we go, a healthy baked macaroni and cheese with Swiss cheese and light cheddar/mozzarella for one toddler. Of course she took one bite, and said : yaki! Then another bite and said yami… but still husband had to finish the plate (another clue to the mistery of those 2 lbs gain!)

Something we were eating for a few days: Sweet and sour chicken. I basically marinated the whole cut up organic chicken and made it into one long-lasting dish. We both liked it - I have a weakness for sweet and sour:

A busy night cheat: Russian pelmenis pretend to be Chinese dumplings. Really, the dfference is insignificant, and we still have some of our home-made pile of pelmenis left, so… we decided to call them dumplings, and give me a night out! The filling is all extra-lean meats, beef, pork and lamb. Italian sausage meat is the only non-lean inclusion there.

Finally, tofu and spinach in a ginger-peanut butter sauce. A lovely recipe, really, but tofu is tofu. I find it difficult to cook and present well. I am always on the look-out for okay tofu recipes, and this is one of them.

Next week: Mexican! I will start my report with telling all about me cooking ~80 portions of 3 different chilis for my Run for Cure charity sale, and let you know if we will be eating chili for the rest of the month, or if I managed to sell some!!!

Yep, I got my Firefly DVDs back from someone I lended them to… and I just laughed, because the most inspirational quote from these outstanding (dare I say the best ever made?) TV series came to my mind, very applicable for my situation yesteday. And today.

 The quote goes like this: “If you can’t run, you walk.  If you can’t walk, you crawl. If ypu can’t crawl, you find someone to carry you.”

Well, I am not quite to crawling point just yet!!! I was at the walking point yesterday, and this morning, because I pulled yet another muscule in the Core and Back Conditioning class, while doing relly wiiiide lunges. Bad news for my running program, but I will try again at lunch, and if I still can’t run I will… yep, you guessed it - I will walk.

And if I can’t walk, you bet I’ll crawl! Because moving is life!

P.S: If you haven’t watched Firefly, do rent it, folks, it’s honestly one of the rare TV shows that are not dumb.

Have anyone had a bad weigh-in? I had one this morning. A little bit of latent eating, and taking three rest days from the intensive excerisise - yep, that would do it.

 But, that really doesn’t matter.

What matters is that instead of staying in bed with my odd back pain that showed up yesterday afternoon, I went and did some yoga stretching from a DVD and went to work. What matters is that I took those 3 rest days because I felt downright worn down.

In short, what matters is that I am mustering the inner workings of a healthy animal. I play when I feel well, running instead of walking; I stretch when I feel sore; I lay down my head on my paws and rest when my body won’t go. I am hoping that the eating when I am hungry, and stopping before I am completely full will follow, and I will be able to achieve that balance, turning into that effortlessly healthy energetic human being (slender hips and thighs won’t hurt either) that I want to be.

Have a wonderful Tuesday, folks!

I set myself a small challenge to cook food from a different country every week in a healthy way with the aid of various healthy cooking books and websites. This was our Indian week. 

Week #2 Cooking Indian Food (May 10-May 16, 2009)

Overoll, my husband and me agreed that Indian cuisine might not be the best suited for the healthy versions. Most of the recipes I tried came from the book featured on the first photo, Heartsmart Flavours of India by Krishna Jamal. Or, perhaps, my inexperience with this cuisine was the problem here?

My favorite aspects of cooking Indian food though was working with spices (I made my own Meat Masala blend following Krishna’s recipe!) and the Indian approach to eating fruits for dessert - sweets are not a big thing in india according to the book’s author.

I didn’t get to baking or buying Naan bread. We stuck to rice. It was DEFINETLY very healthy though - my husband lost 3 pounds eating Indian foods! Must be all the cinnamon and cardamon, LOL!

So, here are the dishes we tried:

Broccoli and cauliflower Indian spiced Soup: Not bad, but I like Vietnamese versions more.

Fish Tikka: Oh, mama mia! We used halibut as per recommendation, and did our house smelled fishy-tikki for 3 days after… Definetly the least favorite dish! Lemon rice and raita served on the side though were pretty neat:

Chickpea stew: As I was chopping stuff up for it I realized that about the only bean I do NOT have in the house are chickpeas! Talk about luck… the house is now restocked with the chickpeas, and the stew is made with white beans. I am sure many Indian ladies did a similar thing in the similar circumstances!

Beef Curry: I added cauliflower and peas instead of second potato asked for in a recipe, since I find potato alone pretty boring. My husband was kind of dissapointed by a mild flavor. That’s why I made vindaloo next.

Beef Vindaloo: I think this was the closest to the ‘restaurant’ food that I managed from this book. Hubby commented that I can go easier on ginger on that one, but I actually didn’t mind, and I dislike ginger. I think the thing for me is that I dislike the powdered dry ginger, but the fresh grated one works better!

No picture because it would look too boring. I made Indian inspired chicken salad sandwiches for our picnick today. Basically, a raita dressing with a bit of Meat Masala added in, fresh chives, coriander and boiled chicken breast (yep, I snack in Vietnamese chicken soup from my weekly pot of fresh stock on one of the nights, because I had no time to make a more complex dish).

Well, it’s China next week, and hope this report was not too irritating!

This nonsensical article made me laugh my head off, while rolling my eyes. Another reason why we shouldn’t be obsessessed with the wonder foods too too much. Yeah, oatmeal helps cholesterol problems, too bad they decided to put it on a box, not in a book!

 http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/health_us_food_medicine

The endless prompoting of quinoia annoys me. Why? Because I instinctevly mistrust the claims that the most expensive and ‘fashionable’ item on the shelf is what’s best for you. Sure, it has some nutritional advantages, but it’s NOT like you can’t get fibre and protein somewhere else. This world has plenty of whole grains to offer - and so does your bulk section in the supermarket. Thanks goodness for it!

Look, eggs are the eternal flip-flop where the healthy foods are concerned, from the source of evil cholesterol to the wholesome wonder of nature (since nobody managed to prove the link between egg consumption and high blood cholesterol levels). Lately, the balance swung all the way to the wonder food. I’ve been eating eggs -yes, with yolks! can’t stand waste- in the meantime and I love them.

In all honesty, everything that is natural and fresh is good for you - you simply can’t go wrong, be it the 90 cents per 100 g quinoia or 16 cents per 100 g barley. I chose barley because I am a sole provider for my family of 3.

Sooner or later some research shows up to prove that this or that food is the Grail of Dieting. Yesterday it was cabbage fights cancer, day before yesterday - blueberries are the nature’s own Viagra, tomorrow… well, we’ll see why else something that we instinctevly knew to be good is good for us.

Even potatoes are starting to get defenders now among the nutritionists. I can’t wait till someone ‘discovers’ buckwheat.

It’s difficult for me not to be a bit of a cynic when it comes to the “top tens” and ‘wonder foods” of the day. What I know is that natural, wholesome foods is not what makes people fat. They are what makes you energetic, get your body to perform at your best and help you control your appetite to a reasonable degree. Processed crap and indulgence do the opposite.

How to manage to stay motivated, when the going gets tough?

 My answer is: by not calling on the will power as much as humanly possible. I use will power sparingly: to decline that donut from the lunch table, to sit out a hunger spell in the afternoon or similar dire emergency situations.

The rest I try to make as effortless and pleasant as possible. I spend a lot of time researching and cooking healthy and super tasty food that tickles my imagination. I switch my workouts on the fly and try new activities.

If I don’t feel like doing an intensive workout in the morning, heck I will do beginner pilates! If I don’t want to do a run, I will do a walk instead or work in the garden or go shopping for one item by foot or take a long bath.

We all have a very limited capacity for will power, but an unlimited desire to have fun. So, do what’s fun AND healthy, and weight-loss becomes not half as intimidating! There are many, many, many more ways to have fun than eating burgers or cookies, watching TV or doing nothing. Identify them and have fun! Human nature strives on both routine and variety.

Thanks goodness for that!

I look at the weather, and I think the time has finally come for the first family trip to the beautiful Rocky Mountains this weekend! Our little one is not yet 3 y.o., so we just go to a provincial park with a lovely long biking pathway which can accomodate a stroller for a tired tot. Not a sternouse climb, but it’s mountains, and it’s a healthy and yammi picnic, and it’s SPRING! Are you going on an outing this weekend? Where will it take you?