Back in the saddle again

I am desperately trying to get myself and my family back on track nutritionally since my husband's two week absence because of work.  I won't kid anyone... working and looking after two small children (3 and 5) is exhausting.  Even after I get home, make dinners and our bedtime routine, my evenings surrounded trying to make my meals/lunches and Lola Grace's lunches and collapsing early into bed, but not really being able to sleep.   I managed to squeeze in only a couple of days in those two weeks to either do my "prison" work out or an hour of yoga. Now that hubby is home, I finally was able to go for a run.  As I was syncing up my Nike app on my iPhone, it was kind enough to tell me that it's been a whole 5 weeks since my last run!  No wonder I was feeling like a giant potatoe sack!

I pushed forward and managed to drag my butt 4.37 Km (downhill one way and all up hill coming back home).   It was awesome!  My legs/hips hated me yesterday and I decided to give them a rest, but today I am amped to go on another run!  What I am finding is that the yoga I have been doing is making me much stronger, flexible, and giving me the endurance I need to run and generally be in good health.   So far running/yoga is working for me!  I did find another version of the "prison" workout that I want to share.  I am going to throw this into my workout routines as well, just because IT WORKS!

What is not working for me is hubby bringing home bad (as in nutritionally) treats for us.   Since he has been home I have gained back almost 5 lbs.  AHHHHHHHHHH!  The pillow effect is coming back!!  I am feeling a lot more bloated, and generally just plain crappy.  I am not sleeping as well as I have when my will power is much stronger,  so I need to concentrate on remembering I am what I eat and keeping my will power strong.   How does it go?  Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels?  Amen to that!  Exercise is SO important on a daily basis.  I just can't stress just how much.  My body is my temple and I need to start making sure I am protecting that and giving it exactly what it needs for peak performance.

My hardest hurdle to cross is trying to make this plant-based/Raw diet work for not only myself, but my family. Working, family, friends, and everything in between makes it very difficult to stay on track.  I want to learn more about it so I can develop a successful routine and make this work for all of us.   After my last post, I realized after talking to a new friend and fellow Raw Chef to be, Aimie Wallace, that my experiences at the Raw Chef course were just that, my own.  After getting to know Aimie and what she does as a trainer I realized just how different everyone's nutritional needs are and what works for me may not be what works for others.  She is a wealth of knowledge from the athletic and nutritional realms.  I can't wait to get to know her better and see how our respective journeys develop.  She is also a catalyst for me to take the Raw Chef course more seriously.  I don't have to be eating Raw 100% of the time and that's ok, but if I want to educate people and help them, then I need to have this knowledge.  I feel a mid-life crisis or shall I say mid-life enlightenment coming on!  I am also thinking about pursuing becoming a Registered Holistic Nutritionist.  I really want myself and my family to be healthy and live long lives.  I want to make these health changes for the betterment of myself and my family and be able to help others.   I know how hard life can be in itself, but adding other stressors and nutritional stress along with it, is a recipe for destruction. 

Here's to your health! 
Cheers (clinking glasses of green smoothies)!

It's been a while since my last post.  Life carried me away for a while, but I am finally back on track.  With company for 3 weeks this summer, a high stress environment, and the lack of time I needed to keep myself on my journey, I found it very difficult to continue with the plant based diet.   I did the best I could.  The trouble I am having is managing the time required to maintain this lifestyle with the prep time needed for each meal.  With only so many hours in the day, I was becoming exhausted trying to make my meals each night.  I wouldn't be eating my dinner until 8pm, while the rest of my family were eating their meals.  My family is in a transition period.  Because we have a 3 and 5 year old, they are not real big veggie eaters and it is difficult finding foods that they approve of.  No matter how hard I try to incorporate veggies into their diet, they can sniff out when veggies are present on their plate and put their nose up in disgust.  Kind of reminds me of when I was a child and my mom would sneak moose meat into our meals and try to trick us saying it was beef!  I always could taste the difference.  With our children, we just take it one day at a time.  Some days they will do really well and try it, and some days they are not so receptive.

Since my last post, I have consistently maintained being a vegetarian, but mostly I have been vegan. I have had some dramatic changes in my overall well being.  Besides becoming vegan with a plant based diet, I have quit drinking coffee as well.  It was to be the most pronounced change my body has undergone.  The first week was hell, I won't lie.  To help alleviate the head aches and overall bitchiness, I started drinking yerba mate and plenty of green tea.  The headaches toned down to a dull ache and my moods started to pick up.  By week two I was really starting to feel fantastic.   I remember waking up one morning thinking how awesome I felt.  WOW! I wasn't tired! I had energy and had no want to drink coffee, or shall I say... "reach for that cup"!   I had started running with my best friend whenever we could, maybe every other night.  I couldn't believe how great my runs were!   I had so much extra energy... sustained energy.  Even when I hit a wall, when I gave my body the rest it needed to recoup, I could still manage to push myself a little further.   That was never how I felt before, especially when I was boxing.   Once I gassed out, that was it.  I was done.

My girlfriend showed me a workout when I first moved down here several months ago.  We dubbed it our "prison" workout because it could be done in a minimal amount of space. Man did you get a good workout in!  It's a series of reps of things like burpees, jumping jacks, push ups, etc.  Each morning I was doing three reps of the whole workout.  I sweated like a pig and I loved it!  I would also try to get as much yoga in as I can.   I also work with bands and am working on getting some weights into the house.  All I have right now are some hand weights, but at this point its all I need. I have now lost a solid 10 pounds.  I still want to loose another 20, but I am not really concerned about that anymore.  What I am more concerned about is optimal nutrition.  Screw counting calories! 

I had done some research about the raw diet and found a place in our area where you could become certified to be a raw food chef.   I went and took the first part of the course with the hopes that maybe I would find direction on how to prepare meals in a timely manner.  All I really got out of it is an awesome spirooli (used to make things like zucchini noodles), and told to make all your meals only twice a week.  Hmm... seemed reasonable enough.  I did get a few other great tidbits of information and some good recipes, but it just wasn't for me.   Never cooking anything seemed a little far off for me.  I still struggle with the term Raw.  Nothing is supposed to be cooked, yet a dehydrator is used at a low temperature heat to aid in the drying process.   Hmmm.. darn this analytical brain of mine.   I did more research and found that the issue surrounds the plant proteins and how they break down in high heat.  When anything is cooked at a low temperature, you are not breaking down those all important proteins. After trying the raw recipes at home, I found that my IBS would get irritated.  I wasn't getting a flare up, but my guts where not exactly happy and I was gassy.   My intestines these days are a good measure of what kind of clean, healthy living I should be doing.  Honestly, I was all ramped up about the Raw thing. I really wanted it to be the direction I would be going in, but I kept getting pulled back to just a plant based diet.  No left winging it here.   

Since going back, my insides are happy once again and for the first time in a long time I have not really felt the "pillow" around me.   I actually was looking at my ankles today thinking how tiny they are looking!  Wow, could a thin person actually be inside me?  AWESOME!  I more than focused on learning more about holistic nutrition, plant based diets, exercise, and incorporating it all into our family life. Today I am going to plan out my meals for the week and tomorrow will be grocery day.  It has been costly to get the stuff I need to make my meals, but both my husband and I have been scoping out grocery stores and specialty stores to see where we can get what we need for reasonable prices.  My biggest find was the Thrifty Foods store just a little off the beaten path not far from where we live.  They carry all the oils I need (hemp, flax and pumpkin), the Vega lineof products,  a large selection of organic produce,  and all the nuts and seeds I need, etc.. I will also still be hitting up Howard Wongs, the farmers market close to me. 

I have to say that moving to this area has been a blessing.  I feel like I was picked up and plunked right in the middle of produce heaven.  My freezer is starting to fill with strawberries and blueberries and the red peppers and tomatoes are to die for! 

So, onward and upward! 

Namaste

So I have now immersed myself fully into the Thrive Diet.   My kitchen appliances have never seen so much action.  My food processor was dangerously close to being sent to the thrift stores because of the cob webs on it!  Now it makes so much noise my neighbours are probably wondering what the heck I am doing.  My first vegan meal was a huge hit in our house.  I made the Almond Flaxseed burgers and both my hubby and kids loved them.  Our 4 1/2 year old had one and a half of them! I found that raw was better than the lightly fried, but the left overs were amazing the next day! 

Great!  Success!  Yay I am on a new positive path!  That was until the following night when I decided to make the sweet potatoe sesame pizza.  Everything was going great until I looked at the clock and realized that my prep time had taken me until 7 that night and we had to be somewhere at 7:30! Great.. the pizza needs to cook for 45 min.  I quickly got the pizza together and instead of the nutritional yeast sauce, I just sprinkled the nutritional yeast, ground sesame mixture on top hoping it would all come together and be esthetically pleasing.  Ya... not so much.  Kids were totally turned off, husband forced it down, I tried it and surprisingly it tasted pretty darn good!  Hubby and I ate it while the kids had left over pasta.

Cooking has taken a new turn for me.  When my kids were small and I was a stay-at-home mom I planned out the meals, prep time wasn't an issue, and I made most things from scratch.   It was what both my grandmother and mother taught me.  Cooking vegan has brought back those memories for me.  It definitely gives new meaning to "hunny we have to be home in time to prepare dinner!".  I have to find my groove and understand that with success also comes failure.   My pantry and fridge have never been so stocked and I am excited to get down to grassroots again.  It makes me miss my childhood on the farm and gardening with my Mom and Grandma.  We grew and canned a lot of vegetables and fruit. 

Changing a family diet to vegan is much more challenging.  I think we will continue as we normally would have done meal-wise, but start incorporating some of the vegan dishes to see if they like it or not.  This goes for my husband as well.  To hard to spend all that time prepping and then them not liking it and having to start a new meal again.  If it was just me.. not a problem.  If anyone has any suggestions for me regarding vegan meals and children.. I would love to hear them! 

Well... I have made it now to almost a week.   My body is definitely loving what I am doing.  My health issues are starting to go away and I am showing no symptoms of my IBS.  I lost 4 lbs in the first few days, but then caught a nasty cold.  Probably from all the change my body is undergone and it doesn't help when this cold is floating around our office.   I have been faithfully taking Natural Factors' Anti-Viral, which is helping and will have some ginger tea at home tonight.  I even had the Pear Ginger smoothie this morning thinking that the ginger will help.

Onwards and upwards!

My new path

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Hi my name is Christine and I am about to embark on a journey that will change my life forever. This story is not about following trends or fads, but rather it’s based off of real health issues and a need to want to feel better, eat better, have more energy, be able to get a good night’s sleep, and be healthy once again. For those of you who know me, you might know of the medical issues I have had over the last 10+ years. I think I have always had health issues starting as a teen and it’s proven that issues runs with the women in my family. Both my Mom and Grandmother had similar issues and the scary part; I am starting to see my daughter show signs. I had issues with my periods, issues with my iron levels because of it, lost my gall bladder, had fibroid tumors on my uterus the size of large grapefruits and had a partial hysterectomy when I was 30. I had a breast cancer scare, issues with cysts on my ovaries. I had my right ovary removed only to have the doctor nick my bowels and three days later had to be rushed in for a second, emergency, surgery. The anesthetist was fighting with my surgeon while I was on the OR table about how much stuff was being pumped out of my stomach and when my surgeon turned his back to talk to one of the nurses setting up , the anesthetist took the canister my tubes were being pumped into and put it on the floor. The moment she did that, it created a super suction that collapsed my stomach and sucked up all my intestines. All I remember is the surgeon screaming repeatedly at the anesthetist to “put her out”. When I woke up in recovery, a nurse was holding my hand and she called another nurse over. They were so happy to see me awake! It was then the nurse explained that I was one lucky lady. I almost died on the OR table that night.

A long year and a half recovery took place after that moment. It took me forever to get my strength back or even be able to work out. Baby steps were all I could do, one day at a time. I made a full recovery to amazement of my doctors. I have always tried to eat well, but I noticed that the weight just kept piling on. I was seriously into boxing and worked out for 2-hour hard-core sessions three times a week for almost a year. I was toning up a bit, but the weight was still there. Or shall I say pudge. I felt, and still continue to feel, like I am carrying around a pillow on body. I feel like someone I don’t even know anymore. Working out still wasn’t helping. Then I turned 39 and I panicked. I wanted to be in the best shape of my life by the time I was 40. I want to live long and enjoy the time I have on this planet, but I can’t do that in my current state. I wanted to box and officially step into the ring with someone, but my body just kept hitting walls. I would gas out, get frustrated that I couldn’t push myself harder, and I felt old and fat.

Frustrated and tired of trying everything with no success, I started my quest to find a way to be in the best shape of my life by the time I was 40. I started listening to my body, look at what I was eating, and I realized that I was under extreme amounts of stress both at home and at work. I was getting a double whammy! I was feeling like I wasn’t coping and on the edge of darkness. I was working out to try to release some of the issues I was going through… trying to find a way to cope, but end up feeling depressed and unhappy. Then everything changed. Our family moved to a new city, I got a new job, and I was working on the issues going on at home and really feeling like I was going to loose my mind.

My doctor told me once when I was a teen that the tension headaches I was getting (since was about 11 or 12 years of age) were caused by my environment. Everyone handles his or her environment differently, and I guess this is how I was handling my stress. Later as an adult, when I had a very stressful episode,  my doctor made a comment about this is how my body was dealing with the stress and BINGO!, the light bulb went off in my head. I realized there was a very strong correlation between the what I was going through externally with stress, and what my body was going through. My doctor was sympathetic and told me that I was very lucky to learn this. He explained that most people never know what kind of damage stress does and I was getting it first hand! That has always stuck with me and I have always tried to be aware. This spurred me to start living my life in a very positive manner.

Before everything changed, I started on my quest to make some positive changes in my life. I have dealt with a lot of alternative medicine, specifically herbs, and have seen a natural health practitioner. I had to! I had to take charge of my healthy when traditional medicine failed. I was in a Nature’s Fare store looking for some acidophilus and passed by their book section. I stopped and took some time to look at the amazing books they had. I was looking at the cookbooks thinking that maybe I just need to change the way I eat. Maybe there was something I was doing wrong, or didn’t have an understanding of what food was doing to my body. I came across this one book that caught my eye; “The Thrive Diet” by Brendan Brazier. Brendan Brazier is a former Ironman Triathlete who developed this diet as a means to provide peak performance. Now I am not into fads or all these diet gimmicks or shakes that make you loose a 100 pounds and cost you a small fortune. What caught my eye was the tag line. “the whole foods way to losing weight, reducing stress, and staying healthy for life”. WOW! Everything I was looking for!! This book even had recipes and fully explained the impact of the foods that you eat. I bought it and began to read it as soon as I got home. So many things hit home for me. Mostly regarding stress. No wonder I have not been able to lose any weight and became the Stay-Puff Marshmallow man! Stress = weight for me and I am sure I am not the only one who is suffering!

Even knowing this and despite my best efforts, I ended up in a high stress environment again and this time for over almost two years. I tried and fought hard to change it with little success. I tried to make the best of my situation, but I was succumbed. Something had to change, and the universe made it happen. I am firm believer that everything happens for a reason and I started paying attention.

I now live in the amazing Fraser Valley where there are farms everywhere! Little corner markets are easily accessible or you can do your shopping right on the farms themselves. The universe picked me up and plunked me in produce heaven. I was finally in a place in my life where I had the control over the amount if stress I was under. Yes I just moved, yes I just started a new job, but that was minimal compared to what I was undergoing previously. I moved and the first thing I did was a cleanse. My first start to clean living! I want to rid my body of toxins and start fresh!

The more I read the book, the more I realized that this is what my body has been screaming so long for! Understanding what everyday and environmental stress does, but also nutritional stress as well. I could go on and on about all the horrible things I have been doing to my body, but the fact of the matter is that you are what you eat. If you are feeling crappy, chances are your nutrition is huge a factor. So now I am starting the steps to change my life, and maybe my family’s too!

The Thrive Diet is a vegan diet. I never thought this little German/French girl would ever say she was a vegan! Over the last few weeks I have been saying goodbye to some of my favorite foods like schnitzel and black jack cherry ice cream. I feel like I did when I quit smoking. I knew when I was going to quit, so I said goodbye to the moments in my smoking life that I cherished, like the first cigarette of the day in the morning and having a coffee and a smoke, etc.. I know I have the willpower to do this… I have to. I so want to be truly healthy again. One of the side effects stemming from my surgeries is that I now have IBS. So many things flare it up and I have been taking a natural product that is starting to heal it, but I need to eat better for it to properly work.

I stopped drinking coffee three days ago and started drinking copious amounts of green tea and yerba mate. I am suffering from withdrawals… the constant headache is present, but I know that this too shall pass. The green tea helps tremendously as there is just enough caffeine to not make you NOT feel the full effect of the withdrawals. Both my husband and I have been doing some research on the items in the shopping list for this diet. Unfortunately there isn’t a good health food store /market close to us. Nature’s Fare is in Langley, which will provide many items, and I still have to check out one other smaller store here in Abbotsford. There are a lot of smaller vitamin places, but not really anyone that carries all the stuff I need. I decided to start my journey on a trek into Vancouver to visit the Whole Foods Market on Cambie. I loaded up on all the unique items I knew I couldn’t get in Abbotsford. The drive down was the start of something new and exciting for me! I do love the smells in a natural foods market, and it turned out to be a whole experience for me. I am going to explore and check out different places locally to see if I can actually find the items I need. Today I will go out to one of the farms and get all the produce I need and go from there. Step 1 is almost done! Step 2 is about to start! Wish me luck! I really hope this is going to work and change my life into the positive direction I want it to go!