Stir fry is one of the easiest dishes to make. It's a great solution for a busy week-night meal and can be tailored for anyone's tastes. You can pack it full of lean protein, veggies, and whole grains and smile as you watch your children (and husband who despises "diet" food) eat it up. This is also a great dish for using up stray vegetables or meats before they go bad. Be creative!
Monday, February 28, 2011
Easy as Stir Fry
Stir fry is one of the easiest dishes to make. It's a great solution for a busy week-night meal and can be tailored for anyone's tastes. You can pack it full of lean protein, veggies, and whole grains and smile as you watch your children (and husband who despises "diet" food) eat it up. This is also a great dish for using up stray vegetables or meats before they go bad. Be creative!
Friday, February 25, 2011
Cookie MONSTERS
Thursday, February 24, 2011
CSN Stores Winner
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
A Comparison
This is not to say that I can't improve myself. I still want to be married, I still want to be thin (and healthy), and I still want enough money to be happy. But when I compare myself to others, I can't improve. I can't move beyond what I see as perfection and compare it myself, which is the definitely not perfect. And it always seems that I compare myself to others when they are at their best and when I am at my worst.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
easing stress (and temptation!) by planning ahead.
in normal days, perhaps we would have chosen takeout or the drive through or even gone to a restaurant to ease that burden. sometimes we still do.
but since i'm 8.5 months pregnant now, these occurrences are more frequent. i would say, on average, there are now three days a week when cooking an entire meal from start to finish is just too exhausting to manage. judge if you must, but some days it's a chore to keep myself hydrated.
but we can't eat out, for financial or health reasons, three times a week. i just can't do it. happily, on those four other days, i am usually bit by the cooking/domestic bug and am excited when i can prepare meals from scratch for my family (or, you know, as close to scratch as possible).
thus, i have begun the EXTRA cooking.
try it next time, especially if you have a small-ish family, by making a double batch of whatever you're making. sometimes it does take some planning ahead, but if you're already making, say, chicken enchiladas (which can be labor intensive on a busy night), it doesn't take much extra time to roll up an extra six or seven enchiladas and put them in the freezer for a night when you can't face the kitchen unless it's going to help you out.
one special bonus of this particular way of cooking, that was unexpected but SO HAPPY, is that, in our house, we end up eating less. because i am dividing a large batch into several portions immediately (i.e. crockpot pulled pork), there's less feeling that we have to eat more because there are SO MANY LEFTOVERS. i bought french bread the other night to make garlic bread for baked pasta (another dish that does well in the freezer), and i cut it into thirds and froze 2/3 of it. we certainly didn't need to eat an entire french bread loaf in one sitting, and i knew there wouldn't be an occasion to use it in the next few days. instead, i'm saving it for the next batch of baked pasta and/or the pulled pork redux (or both!).
it works for lunch stuff too. last week, i wanted to make chocolate chip cookies for my husband's lunch. i try to include a baked good like that each day, but often recipes end up making SO many cookies that, for us, they end up getting stale and hard before they have been used. this time, i doubled the recipe and rolled whole batches into wax paper. i put them in a ziploc bag and have already cracked one out. a wax paper roll that mimics the size of a store-bought roll of cookie dough was as easy to cut and bake as they are and made 24 cookies (the perfect amount for our family at any given time).
if you are finding yourself struggling to know what to make, or wishing that you had a few days off in the kitchen, think about doubling your recipes and halving your efforts--it really does work!
and if you have excellent recipes that freeze beautifully, PLEASE share them. i'm trying to try out new ones and stockpile the good ones for when Baby Girl arrives. i'd love to hear what you all do!
Friday, February 18, 2011
On Staying Mentally and Emotionally Healthy...
So, being a PT I guess I've thought about adding helpful hints to stay healthy physically with exercise and diet.... but recently I've thought about another aspect of health and how some "exercises" have helped me with it-- mental health. Here are a couple of tips that are good to remember, or that have helped me at least.
Pondering:
Last night my husband mentioned the moon was beautiful and we stepped outside to see it shining through the clouds. Whether it be in nature or in your bedroom, taking time to think regularly is something a lot of us forget to do, myself included, but may be just what we need to chill out, gather our thoughts, and tackle that next task.
Unloading:
Another thing that we may need to do to clear our minds is simply unloading our frustrations, fears, and thoughts with someone else. Having someone you feel comfortable talking to and listening without judging you is really a blessing. Especially as women, we just want a good ol' listening ear.
Evaluating:
Evaluating my goals and schedule on a regular basis and putting it down somewhere has been helpful to me. I write them down and check back periodically on any progress that has been made. It helps me feel a sense of accomplishment and renews my energies to keep working at them.
Sleep:
I think we underestimate the importance of this daily necessity. Early to bed and early to rise - now isn't that also something our mother's told us? I am 100% more effective when I feel rested...and far less irritable...
Journaling:
Sometimes I don't really know how I feel until I write it down. And the time it takes to physically write it down incorporates the pondering for sure. For me, documenting my thoughts and feelings is quite cathartic. I like to journal when I'm travelling, then I can chronicle my adventures as well!
Exercise:
And of course, I will continue to preach the gospel of physical activity. Nothing relieves mental stress more than having to focus on self-inflicted physical pain...just kidding...but seriously :) You'll be too busy focusing on your burning muscles than the complicated thoughts in your head! It's a great stress release!
All said, life is about balance, right? I think it goes for our health too--- if we only focus on exercise and diet we may lose weight but if we forget our sanity we might lose our minds!
p.s. I will start using more pictures, I promise!
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Giveaway
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Back to Traveling
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
reining it in: staying on track during pregnancy.
this is a really good question, and one that i have been thinking about for a while. if any pregnant person in my situation were to ask me how to stay in control, i would tell them this:
educate yourself about nutrition, if you haven't already. knowing portion sizes goes hand in with not only understanding calorie content but nutrition facts too. you have to be able to look at a food and evaluate, fairly quickly, whether or not it's a worthwhile use of your caloric budget. and budgeting and money is the best analogy that i can make. sometimes, you feel inclined to splurge, to buy a $400 purse. if you have $400 to spare, that shouldn't or won't be better used on something else, then maybe that's a valid choice. but if you know that maybe, i don't know, the rent should be paid, that's not the best choice you can make. the same is true for food. you have to know what your body needs, how much you have, individually, to "spend," and what the wisest choices are.
this isn't necessarily to make you feel like you can't eat anything. it's also to help you realize how much you CAN eat. i can, for example, eat much more fruit than i think i can. salad and spinach are practically calorie-less, as are celery and carrots. this isn't really surprising, but compared to processed foods, these whole foods are calorie budget bonanzas. they're the sale foods of life, and knowing that helps me to know what i can add to my meals or choose as a snack that will be the wisest choice.
it's genuinely a process, but it's a process that is surprisingly quick. once you begin to educate yourself about portion size, about nutritional content, about vitamins and minerals and whole grains and fiber, you look at food in a whole new way. in pregnancy, this has been especially true for me.
all of this leads to my second tip: vigilantly and honestly record your food.
on days when you just don't want to care, this is hard. however, it's essential. during pregnancy, you just eat more. your body demands it. beginning in the first trimester, i was eating two extra snacks then i was accustomed to, and if i hadn't recorded my food, i would have only a vague idea of where i was at or what i was missing.
in short, ignorance is fatal to your goals.
i had learned, before pregnancy, that if i was not willing to be honest about what i was putting in my mouth, i was not on a road that was healthy. even on the days when i'm starving, when my self-discipline is cracking, when i don't feel like i want to choose wisely, if i am recording what i'm eating (from the cheezits i snack on while making dinner to the valentine's peanut butter egg i can't resist), i am much more likely to make wiser choices the next time.
i don't know why it works, but it works. accountability and education go hand in hand, and you're only accountable to yourself. (unless you're pregnant, and then you are accountable to a vicious, unyielding, unkind scale that never lies and that forces you to pony up every four weeks, then every two weeks, then every week.)
and, finally, something that i think has been key to my success so far: debunking the lies about cravings.
i'm going to be really straight with you. the idea that cravings are this unyielding force that you are a slave to is a lie. but when you're pregnant, it's like the whole world starts solidifying the idea that cravings are real and inescapable. there's an embedded sort of permission in your growing belly, like you are allowed to eat whatever you want because there's a fetus. "you're eating for two," "that's natural," "let yourself have what you want," or "you're supposed to be eating more--you're pregnant!"
the thing that has kept me sane, from the very beginning, is my vigilant belief that none of this is true. i don't deny myself completely (because i know the negative implications of too much denial) and i will absolutely recognize that my particular pregnancy has, perhaps, not really tested this resolve. i have a baby that likes healthy food. HOWEVER, i have not been without some serious desires for fattiness and sugar. but knowing what i know, and having a nutrition budget in mind, makes it very difficult for me to make consistently bad choices.
ice cream? sometimes, but i almost always measure and record it. donuts? rarely, because i can't justify it in my mind. waffles? yes, sometimes, but even better when they have some whole grain. pizza? i've just about given up on it, because it's just not worth it. chocolate? i keep semi-sweet chocolate chips in the house for this precise purpose--adding a few to some yogurt or even just grabbing a handful can satisfy my desire without derailing a whole day's progress. excessive amounts of cheerios? yep, almost every day. but that's a choice i can live with.
so, i guess, the answer to how i've kept my pregnancy weight gain in check is to remember where i came from and do what i did before, with a few tweaks here and there.
i think it's also important to remember, though, that self-discipline doesn't negate the fact that your body is a changing being that will do what it will do. you can do your best, but it doesn't mean that it will all turn out exactly as you think it will. i gained 5 pounds these past two weeks, and i don't think i did enough to warrant that kind of gain. but i hadn't gained any for the six weeks prior, so it all balances out.
ultimately, in pregnancy and in your every day life, you can only do the best that you can do. if you can honestly say that you are, in the vast majority of the choices that you are make, you are healthy.
these are just my tips--those of you who are moms, what advice do you have for pregnant women who are trying to stay healthy?
Monday, February 14, 2011
How to increase your daily intake of fruits and vegetables.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Simple and Effective Exercises
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Add That to the List of Things Mom Was Right About
My mom is one of the most genuinely nice people you’ll ever meet. Honestly, she is probably a little too nice! Even when someone is truly in the wrong, my mom is still trying to see things from their point of view. She always gives the benefit of the doubt. "I bet you misunderstood," or “You don’t know what they are feeling,” she’ll say…statements that can quickly drive me up a wall when (per usual) I feel I’m right and they are wrong.
My favorite random acts of kindness are those that are anonymous. There is just something so special about (possibly) lighting up someone's day when they aren't expecting it. I still remember one of the first times I did something for someone else anonymously and did it "just because" a la my mom. I also still remember the magnificent feeling that came along with that gesture. Being that it's been about 5 years since that random act of kindness and probably that long since I spoken to those involved, I'll lay it out there. I used to have an acquaintance from church who worked as a companion for an adult man with special needs. My acquaintance would spend each day with him, out and about. I would run into them all over the place: the student church building on campus, local bookstores, sipping hot chocolate at coffee shops. Though the man had never spoken to me, I knew his name because I would always stop to greet my acquaintance and I would also greet him. It quickly became apparent how much this man loved puzzles and coloring books. However, I noticed one day how he was always using the same coloring book and it was getting quite full from frequent use. I decided to buy him some new coloring books and puzzles, and I left them in the church building on campus with a card attached for my acquaintance noting who they were for, but not acknowledging who they were from. The delight I felt when I saw them later that week, new gifts in hand, was immeasurable. It's a feeling I regret not having more often.
So for one week, I'm going to put forth a valiant effort to offer more random acts of kindness each day. I recognize that it may appear kind of sad that I have to make this a goal...but I figure practice makes perfect, right?
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Learning...
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
a letter.
i hope you never look at the world through a tinted vision that makes you think that you are anything other than beautiful and wonderful, and i sincerely hope your definition of beautiful has nothing whatsoever to do with a kardashian sister or a digitally modified version of a starving runway model.
i hope you never hear me say anything other than something positive about my body. though i'm sure that i will certainly fail at this (moms are human, too, and yours is definitely still learning), i hope you see from the way that i try to balance that sometimes, healthy is hard work. i hope you see that it's worth it.
i hope that i get to somehow tell you, even if it's just through you reading what i wrote while i was pregnant, that the human body is a magical, wondrous, eternally splendid thing. i hope you come to respect yours the way that you being with me has helped me to love mine even more.
i hope you like vegetables. if you don't, i hope you at least have an adventurous spirit.
i hope you love to run. even if it means i'm chasing after you, wanting to light my own hair on fire, i hope you love to run. i hope you love to dance. i hope you love to sing songs at the top of your voice and talk to imaginary friends and find refuge in the stories you create yourself.
i hope i learn quickly to just let you be you.
i hope i have the courage to always do right by you in all the ways that i want to, from the way i feed you to the way i teach you about the world, even though i might be tired. i'm not always as courageous with myself. i hope you inspire me to be otherwise.
i hope you like football. fall will be long if you don't.
i hope on days that are sunshiney and blue sky-y, we will take walks and look at animals and be outside. i'd like to see the wonder of it, again, through your eyes.
i hope tv is never the friend to you that it was to me.
i hope the road rises up to meet you, that the rain never falls on your head, that friends are always kind to you and that your heart will always be untouched by injustice. i know this won't happen, but i hope you always believe in a world where it could.
i hope i always remember, come what may, that the sum total of all of the experiences that i had before you, all the ones that i thought could never be overcome, all the failures that i thought shouldn't have happened, all of the successes that i didn't understand, shaped me into who i am today and helped us bring you here.
i hope i always tell you what a miracle you are to me. it's a great, beautiful, scary, tumultuous, magical, amazing world. i'm so excited to see you take it by storm.
love,
mommy.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Maximize your function!!
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Oh...this is very exciting to me! Aside from my guest post last month, this is my first time "blogging". And I'd like to say a big THANK YOU to all you girls who are including me in this endeavor!
Thursday, February 3, 2011
CSN Stores Giveaway
Time to "Tri" Training
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Pain (and a giveaway)!
Story 1. Do you ever watch weight loss shows? Like The Biggest Loser (I used to be addicted to The Biggest Loser, but I am kinda over it now)? There is a new show on A&E named Heavy...or there is one on MTV, I Used To Be Fat....
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
vitamin a: what does it do?
i like high fives.
what i've noticed lately is that, for some reason, it's exceptionally easy for me to get high fives for vitamin a. while that's awesome in theory, i wanted to understand why vitamin a is important and why it's apparently so easy for me, in the course of a regular day, to get so much of it.
so i turned to dr. google, and here's what i learned:
- your eyes love it! vitamin a helps the retina to decipher low light. when you don't have enough, you can't see in the dark. so when your mom used to joke around with you that if you eat your carrots (which, once converted by your body, will provide something like 90% of your daily value of vitamin a) you could see in the dark, she was totally right!
image courtesy of world community cookbook |
- it's important in reproduction--gene reproduction, that is! your cells need vitamin a in order to transcribe your genes. while i don't pretend to understand the intricacies of that process, i'm happy to know that the regeneration of the genes within my cells are being helped out by my tendency to eat romaine lettuce (58% of your daily need in a medium-sized salad).
image courtesy of e. coli information--be sure to wash your lettuce! :) |
- the flu and the common cold are putty in its hands! according to some sources, vitamin a helps build your immune system by making white blood cells work more efficiently and to fight viruses more effectively. i don't know about you, but i'm grateful for that knowledge when my poor husband comes home feeling a little under the weather. beefing up your vitamin a stores by throwing some spinach into your diet can only help in cold and flu season (green monster anyone? 1 cup of boiled spinach gives you 377% of your daily value!).
image courtesy of iowagirleats.blogspot.com--with a great recipe! |
what i realized, however, is that some of the substitution choices that i have made to eliminate, for example, white and high glycemic foods from my diet have inadvertently made me a vitamin a junkie. one of my favorite foods right now is the sweet potato. i began roasting sweet potatoes because i had sweet potato fries once upon a time and thought they were the most incredible thing i'd ever had.
(i still think that. if you give me the option, the white potato goes down in a blaze of ignominious infamy every time.
courtesy of melinda hinson neely |
come on. look at them. can you blame me?)
roasting sweet potatoes, by cubing them and drizzling them with olive oil and spices to taste, adds 262% of my daily value. my tendency to add a salad to a meal, as you saw earlier, has definite benefits. even my tendency to cook with basil and oregano (each of which adds 5% of the daily value) works to help my vitamin stores increase.
how can you know if you're getting enough vitamin a in your diet? beyond recording your food (which i highly recommend, for many reasons), you can look to your body for the telltale signs. if you are someone with hyperkeratosis, or a goosebump-like appearance to your skin, you may need to amp up your intake of vitamin a. if you find yourself prone to many viral infections or illnesses, you almost might benefit from the addition of more vitamin a in your diet.
just remember that dietary sources of vitamins are infinitely better than supplements. your body knows what to do with the food you give it--it will take what it needs and provide you, in turn, with a hard-working, well-tuned body that will take you where you need to go and give you the energy you need.
--
some teachergirl updates:
Baby Girl: verdict of today's appointment--we're super healthy. iron levels are "very good" for this stage of pregnancy, my sugar was "perfect" when i took my glucose screening, my blood pressure continues to be insanely good, and i've only gained 0.5 pounds since my increased efforts at watching the composition of my food intake. (that's a total of 20.5 in 30 weeks--i'm over the moon about this, actually.) these are all testaments to how effective small choices can be. i swear i eat more than you can imagine--but it's all about what you eat and how you eat it and how you record it. knowledge is power!
Green Monster: i did it. i tried it. it was GOOD. i must say, though, in fair warning: if you add blackberries to your green monster, it becomes an unfortunate brown color. however, it tastes delicious and it filled me (and my fairly impressive pregnant appetite) up for several hours. and i got lots and lots of dark green boxes! i think the total calorie count of mine, which was at least 20 ounces, was 230. not bad. not bad at all, especially since it contained both milk and yogurt, good sources of protein and calcium. if you haven't tried it, you really need to. i promise, you won't regret it!