On the bright side, where I usually ditch clean eating for the whole weekend, here I am on the last day of Week 1 and I started it out with a big bowl of cut up fruit, dates and hemp seed. This has become my go to breakfast with the occasional smoothie.

This week, I have a couple of recipes that are supposed to use sprouted seeds. I didn’t plan very well. I should have bought the seeds last week and started sprouting them by Friday at the latest. Needless to say, I’ll have to do some adjusting with my meals for this week. I ordered my seeds from The Sprout House yesterday. They’re based in New York, so I’m hoping they’ll get here pretty quickly. Of course, then they have to be soaked, rinsed and drained until they sprout and are ready to use. We learn by doing, right?

I’m really looking forward to this week! At least the food is tasty that I anticipate the things I get to eat!

Some of the other meals I made this week are Pad Thai – the sauce for this is so amazingly good! You could use it for a lot of different things! On the menu for today are my Collard Rolls and Banana Ice Cream! Yes! I get to eat ice cream! I’ll let you know how that turns out!

I’m certainly not depriving myself. I eat when I want and how much I want and if I want to eat that date nut torte all day, I will! It’s really rich though and I can’t eat that much of it at one time. It’ll probably last me all week! The food is good, tasty, filling, but for whatever reason, I really want cooked food. It’s popping into my head as “real” or “junk” food. I guess I should look on the bright side, I’m not craving sweets! Guess that’s a positive.

I wish I had someone doing this with me! I could really use the support right now. I need a sponsor!

Just wanted to update you today.

Hm, I just realized I didn’t do any shopping for food for my husband this weekend. After tonight, he doesn’t have any food for dinner. I’ll make a run to the fish market for him tomorrow. Oh, boy. We’ll see if I get over this craving before then, otherwise, we might end up fighting over the fish!

It was totally delicious! Made two servings. I had one for breakfast and the other later as my snack while running errands.

Today is food prep day for the first half of the week. According to the plan, you only prep food 2x a week. The only problem I’m finding with that so far is that I have to keep washing everything after each item I make something. Sure it’s fast to make. You just throw everything in the food processor, which you use a lot – and process until the desired consistency is achieved. So far today, I’ve made my salad dressing for this week (used the blender for that) and my Mock Salmon Pate – quick and easy in the food processor. That can be eaten plain, spread and rolled in greens, on a salad, on dehydrated crackers, etc. So many ways to use it!

I took a break to start writing this and to give my sun-dried tomatoes and dates time to soak for my next two meals. I think I’ll make the Date Nut Torte next and have that ready and right at dinner time, I’ll prep my Fettucine Marinara. It’s supposed to be alfredo sauce, but I don’t like that and, even though it’s made completely differently, it’s supposed to taste very similar, so I’m not brave enough to try that yet! That will be all I prep until Wednesday or Thursday. I’ll play it by ear until I figure out when I’ll need more food for the week.

In addition to the recipes she has you practicing with, you, obviously, need more to eat than just that. You can do so many different things! Breakfast can be juices or smoothies, cut up fruit bowl with nuts and seeds or just a few pieces of fruit if you don’t have time or don’t want to go through the hassle of chopping and cutting fruit. Salads and rolled veggies in leaves, the pates are great for lunch and between-meal snacks. You have a lot of flexibility there as long as it’s raw.

All of these recipes are from Alissa Cohen’s Living on Live Food book. So, if any of you are interested in following along or joining me in this challenge, pick up a copy and let’s go!

So far today, I’ve eaten my 2 smoothies, a handful of raw macadamia nuts and a spinach salad. I’m going to go grab an apple as I’m still hungry. According to this plan, you can eat all you want as often as you’re hungry. After a while, your body adjusts to the better nutrition and you won’t need as much food. There’s no counting calories or macronutrients, no eating at certain times of the day or a certain number of times per day. You eat when you’re hungry and you don’t when you’re not. It’s that simple – supposedly. We shall see!

I’m also starting a 90-Day FIT Challenge on November 1st. Whether you are interested in the raw challenge or not, you can always message me or email me for details about this upcoming Challenge if you’d like to join in! I’m only taking on five people for that and I have one already!

My email is syzygy314@gmail.com

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I’m back! Whew! I can say one thing right now. This prepping several dishes in one day is for the birds. It may not take a lot of time, but I get tired of washing and re-washing the same appliances over and over between meals. Probably for someone who doesn’t work a full-time job, it might work out nicely to spend a whole day in the kitchen prepping. Yes, I’ve made all, but one of my recipes for today and I only spent about 1 1/2 hours in the kitchen (most of that washing). I don’t like it. One day into it and I’m done with that! Since they don’t take that long, I think, for me anyway, it will work out easier to prep one meal per day and depend on my smoothies, fresh fruit and salads for during the day and leftovers of whatever I make the night before. Besides, I’m almost tempted to eat everything I just made right now! lol Not because I’m particularly hungry, but just because it’s there and it all looks good!

That’s it for my Day 1 report. I’ll let you know how dinner comes out tomorrow with that report! See you then!

I was so excited to go! Every blog and article I’ve read about farmer’s markets talks about the variety and great prices you can get. What a disappointment. Guess I’ll have to wait until next summer to get that kind of experience. Here’s what it looked like today:

Oh! There was a gentleman?, guy?, guitarist at one tent just to the left outside of the photo playing. Yes, one of the six tents housed a guitarist.

So, off to Whole Foods I went with my grocery list! Spent longer there than I would at my regular grocery store because I don’t usually go there for a full on shopping run, but only to pick up unusual items I may need for a recipe here and there. Didn’t make out too badly for a full week’s worth of food. No meat, no dairy. Fresh fruits, vegetables, dried fruits and nuts. Done.

I may have touched on what this project is in an earlier post, but I am going raw for 30 full days. Yes, after reading The China Study, I’m ready to make a change in how I eat and, more importantly, what I eat. My original plan was to just go vegan. My husband could do that. I had been hearing a bit here and there about eating raw foods. One of my upline Beachbody coaches does it, not 100%, but she has incorporated it into her already pristine eating habits. I started looking for everything I could find on eating raw and was more and more impressed with the information I was finding. I bought a couple of beginning books on raw foods and started eating a meal and a snack here and there raw over and above the raw fruits and vegetables I already was incorporating into my diet. I like the food, so decided I wanted to try it 100%. I found Alissa Cohen‘s book Living on Live Food.

I read it cover to cover in just a couple of days – minus work hours, of course. I was enthralled and excited! I love that she completely lays out a plan to make the transition easy from simple prep to more involved prep as you work through your first 30 days. It’s completely flexible!  I start tomorrow and am very excited! I’ll be letting you know how things are going. One of my favorite things is that I only have to prep food 2x per week. After that, it’s just a matter of pulling it out of the fridge and eating it! No spending 30 minutes to an hour in the kitchen cooking my dinner after my workout or skipping my workout because dinner is going to take too long to prepare for me to do both!

We’ll see how this goes! I really want to love it!

I received a small bonus from work (our fiscal year-end is September 30). I just wanted to go to the outlet stores for 2 pairs of pants that fit and a couple of light sweaters for the office. I was thinking no more than $100. That’s how often I go clothes shopping! Where can you even buy a pair of nice pants for less than $80? You know, pants that will last, that are good quality and won’t fall apart the first or second time you wear them!

I figured we’d start at Ann Taylor and J Jill. They usually have great sales and prices. Well, sure, it’s summer clothes sale time! All the fall and winter clothes are new and not on sale, but that’s what I really need up here since it’s pretty chilly almost 9 months out of the year and the office is always freezing anyway!

It was really busy and we parked way the heck at the end over by the expensive shops – Saks Fifth Avenue, Brooks Brothers, etc. What happened? We did not go in the direction of the cheaper shops, but my husband led us right into Saks. Of course, I found some nice things! Dresses. Do I need dresses? Well, yes and no. I love dresses! always have since I was little. You couldn’t get me into pants except in the dead of winter when there was 5-6 feet of snow! The dresses I have I can still get away with wearing – most of them anyway and my skirts since the shirts hide the waistline hanging at about my hips.

I won’t say how much we ended up spending. Just that it was way too much and money we really don’t have right now. I just wanted some pants that fit for the colder weather!

Here’s my haul:

2 Dresses

2 Pairs of Pants

1 Skirt

2 Camis (wear them a lot!)

1 Pullover Sweater

1 Shawl Sweater (for when it’s cold in the office – every day)

This ended up being WAY over and above what I went for. I hate shopping. I hate trying on clothes. To be fair, I think the last time I bought any clothes was about 2 years ago anyway. I feel guilty. I know I shouldn’t, but I do.

I could make it a point to start finding ways to make life fun and interesting without money. Why not, right? How many of us are in the same boat these days? Who, besides me, needs to find ways to keep from getting depressed about not being able to travel, buy cool new tech gadgets, keep up with all their friends and just be able to do things on occasion? I will see what I can come up with for this one!

For 2 months, I’ve been up and down, my workouts have suffered, my diet and I’ve gained about 10 lbs.! Ugh. It’s my mental state. I keep changing my rotation/program, what I want to accomplish, getting distracted and paying way too much attention to what everyone else is doing rather than what I should be doing. That’s right – I totally lost my focus. In doing so, I lost my drive to stay active with my blog, my Beachbody business and anything else I wanted for myself.

That is changing! I am going back to basics. I’m going back to what worked for me when I first started my fitness journey. I”m going to run and do my Cathe Friedrich workouts.

My 12-week challenge faltered due to all of these issues, so I wasn’t blogging about that. Why would I write about not doing my workouts for 3-4 days and eating junk food? Sheesh! Done. Over. Back on track.

That means, I’ll back to writing as well.

I’ve found a new focus for my nutrition as well. I’ve been reading The China Study. What an eye-opener! There will be more on that later.

For now, I just want to say that I’m back and I’m back on track!

I had a horrible July. I was lazy and wasn’t working out but once or twice a week and playing golf, then, right when I decided to get back to working out again and get moving, I cut my left pinkie finger on the mandolin slicer! I was down for another week.

During my hiatus, my accountability group on Facebook decided to do a 12-Week Challenge. I decided to do my P90X program since I got great results from it the first time, but, to torture myself just a little bit more, I added Insanity in for a nice, crazy hybrid workout rotation! Well, since I was doing all this already anyway, complete with before and after photos, measurements and the rest, I decided I was going to enter the Beachbody Challenge, too! What the heck! I’m working out anyway, cleaning up my eating, why not try for $100,000 prize, right?  So, I’m doing both with one rotation.

Today was Day 1 – I did P90X Chest & Back and Insanity Cardio Abs. Much to my surprise, I haven’t lost much strength! That was great! Unfortunately, the temps were above 90 again today, so I overheated at the very end of P90X - nausea ensued, ugh. I rested, drank more water, which I drink a lot of already during the day and during my workouts, cooled off over the a/c and popped Cardio Abs in. I had to keep taking breaks. I would get nauseous every few minutes. I did manage to get through to the end – finally.

Tomorrow, is cardio only, so hopefully, I’ll be able to get through the workout without the overheating and nausea.

I’m excited! Oh, I said that already! I really hope to see the improvements I want – more lean muscle and lower body fat!

More to come!

P.S. – If you’re interested in the Beachbody Challenge and what it’s all about, email me, message me, tweet me and I’ll get back to you! Because my blog is a free one, I can’t post any links here to Beachbody. Oh well . . . onward!

It’s pretty and blue – my brand new 12 kg First Place Competition Kettlebell:

I had already done my scheduled workout – Supreme 90 Tabata and Stretch Max #3 by Cathe Friedrich. I was ready to head outside and do some swings.

My plan was just to do a few swings, maybe 10-15 just to work on my form and test the weight and size of my new bell. When it arrived, I was surprised by the size because the 25 lb. kettlebell I was working with at my training session seemed to be a little bit smaller and the handle was just a bit wider.

Well, I got going and it felt good, so I continued to a full 25 two-handed swings. I took a water break briefly and moved on to one-handed swings. I ran into a little bit a of a memory problem here because I couldn’t remember what Colin, my trainer at Punch, had told me about hand position for the one-handed swings. Doh! It took me a little trial and error, but I finally got! I did these, obviously, with both sides, then went back to another 25 two-handed swings.

  The conclusion of this little exercise and test run:

I LOVE MY NEW TOY! I can’t wait to get more comfortable with the swing and practice the other exercises I was taught! I am looking forward to creating workouts and borrowing some from a friend of mine who has already developed a lot of her own mixes!

I am confident that adding this modality of workouts will really help me get rid of the pudge and flab! Please do your best to ignore it!

More to come! Just you wait! lol

So, now that we’re clear, here’s what I had on Saturday night:

This is a bottle of Jonathan Edwards 2006 Sierra Foothills Zinfandel.

Now, I don’t care for White Zinfandel at all. This Zinfandel was a beautiful red! The flavor was very well-balanced and fruity without being sweet. It had a little sweetness, but not too much. Unless I’m drinking a Port with dessert, I don’t like my wines sweet.

It was what I would call, just right!

The finish was lightly blackberry for me and it was absolutely divine! I loved that the wine was spicy on the palate and well-balanced! I think I have developed a love for a Zinfandel so long as it is a Jonathan Edwards Zinfandel!

I would comment as to the price, but since we did not buy this particular bottle, I really couldn’t say exactly, but the other Jonathan Edwards wines run between $19 and $27 per bottle for the majority of their stock.

If you get a chance, find a bottle! I think you would truly enjoy this one!

These treatments have been wonderful! Three weeks in and I am feeling more calm and balance in my life every day! Contradictory you say, because of the “stress” from the floor work? Well, let me tell you, the stress was way less than it ordinarily would have been had I not been self-treating with Reiki. I am a basket-case when it comes to anything that I don’t have control over. I was able to handle the process much better, even when the installer told us it was going to take him an extra day to finish. That would have put me over the edge normally. I was able to take it in stride and just sigh because I wanted my living room back.

Although I have one more week to this particular experiment, I have no intention of stopping when it’s over. I realize that I need these treatments to keep myself at peace internally. Reiki is wonderful for balancing your energy, emotions and your mind.

I’m very pleased with my results so far and look forward to continuing to feel better with my treatments each and every day! Next up, fitting in a full treatment at least once a week.

Reiki Precepts