Rule # 18

Don't ingest foods made in places where everyone is required to wear a surgical cap.

Roasted asparagus

1 lb asparagus spears (thick spears are best for roasting)
1-2 Tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
Sea Salt
Freshly grated black pepper
Lemon juice


1 Preheat oven to 400°F. Rinse clean the asparagus. Break the tough ends off of the asparagus and discard.

2 Lay the asparagus spears out in a single layer in a baking dish or a foil-covered roasting pan. Drizzle olive oil over the spears, roll the asparagus back and forth until they are all covered with a thin layer of olive oil. Sprinkle with minced garlic, salt, and pepper. Rub over the asparagus so that they are evenly distributed.

3 Place pan in oven and cook for approximately 8-10 minutes, depending on how thick your asparagus spears are, until lightly browned and tender when pierced with a fork. Drizzle with a little fresh lemon juice before serving.

Couscous stuffed roasted tomatoes

4 large Beefsteak or heirloom tomotoes
1/8 cup breadcrumbs
1-3 cloves of garlic, to taste
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
Salt and pepper, to taste
Extra virgin olive oil
Butter (I use Earth Balance)
2 cups cooked couscous

Pre-heat the oven to 350° F and pre-heat the broiler.

Cut the tomotoes in half horizontally. Scoop out the seeds and the mushy parts.

Set the tomatoes in a baking pan or jelly roll pan and broil until they're a little browned. Allow them to cool.

Meanwhile, in a bowl, combine the cooked couscous, garlic, parsley, salt and pepper with the oil to moisten the mixture.

Fill the cooled tomatoes with the couscous mixture. Sprinkle some breadcrumbs on top. Place a little dab of butter on top of the breadcrumb filling of each tomato.

Bake until the tops of the tomatoes are golden brown.

Rule # 17 - Eat only foods that have been cooked by humans

If you're going to let others cook for you, you're much better off if they are other humans, rather than corporations. In general, corporations cook with too much salt, fat, and sugar, as well as with preservatives, colorings, and other biological novelties. They also aim for immortality in their food products. Note: While it is true that professional chefs are generally humans, they often cook with large amounts of salt, fat, and sugar too, so treat restaurant meals as special occasions.

Food log Wed

Breakfast = green machine
Snack = quinoa with veggies
Snack = granola
Late lunch = Spinach salad with carrots and sunflower seeds
Late dinner = Smashed potatoes with butter and parsley, Teriyaki soba noodles with broccoli, carrots, mushrooms, green onions, siracha, garlic chili sauce, then I sauteed zucchini and squash in EVOO, pepper and garlic powder
Late snack = pumpkin seeds

Klemmer & Associates Champions Workshop

My friend Brie invited me to a Klemmer & Associates Champions workshop that was held last night. I have always loved self-help books and workshops. I had a great time, and I'm really interested in going to the Personal Mastery Weekend within the next year. I know that I have a lot to learn.

http://www.klemmer.com/

They gave us a copy of the book The Compassionate Samurai by Brian Klemmer, and I'm really excited to read it.

in class, they had each person choose a very specific goal that they want to accomplish within the next 90 days, starting today. My goal is I want to lose 20 pounds by October 27th. I know that I have to be dedicated to eating right, working out and healing my body/getting enough rest during the next 90 days. It will be a challenge, but I can do it.

They also said that if we don't reach our goal, then we have to do something that we really don't want to do. For instance, donate $100 to the opposite political party, clean your spouses "area" for a month, stuff like that. Of course, this will hopefully give us the push we might need in order to reach our goals.

I decided that if I don't reach my goal of 20 pounds weight loss by October 27th, that I will donate $100.00 to Simla Frozen Food Locker LLC. They specialize in butchering and processing meats.

http://simlafoods.com/

I CAN DO THIS!!! :)

Tuesday Food Log

Breakfast = 8oz Green Machine
Early lunch = 2 slices of pizza (leftovers)
Snack = Granola
Snack = Quinoa w veggies
Dinner = the last piece of pizza, 1 granny smith apple and a little bit of chips and salsa
Snack = Chex Mix & pumpkin seeds

Rule # 16 - Buy your snacks at the farmers market

You'll find yourself snacking on fresh or dried fruits and nuts - real food - rather than chips and sweets.

Rule # 15 - Get out of the supermarket whenever you can

You won't find any high-fructose corn syrup at the farmers market. You also won't find any elaborately processed food products, any packages with long list of unpronounceable ingredients or dubious health claims, anything microwaveable, or, perhaps best of all, any old food from far away. What you will find are fresh, whole foods harvested at the peak of their taste and nutritional quality - precisely the kind your great-grandmother, or even your Neolithic ancestors, would easily recognize as food. The kind that is alive and eventually will rot.

Veggie Quinoa recipe

1 3/4 cup Vegetable Broth (I didn't have any on hand, so I just used water)
1 cup Quinoa
3 whole green onions, chopped
1 whole tomato, diced
1/2 whole English cucumber, diced
2 Tablespoons EVOO
1 Tablespoon Balsamic Vinegar
1 pinch sea salt
lemon wedges

1 = Heat broth/water in a medium pot to boiling, add quinoa and stir. Cover with a lid and reduce heat to low. Simmer for about 15 minutes or until all of the liquid is absorbed. Remove from heat and fluff with fork.

2 = Toss vegetables, oil, vinegar and salt in a large bowl. Add cooked quinoa and stir. Serve warm or chill in the refrigerator until ready to serve.

Tila

I can't wait to bring my puppy home! September 4th come on and hurry up already!!!

Monday food log

Breakfast = 8oz Green Machine
Lunch = Pizza - Work ordered pizza for us. I had 2 slices of pizza w no cheese, just sauce, mushrooms, tomatoes and olives. So good, and I controlled myself and stopped at 2 pieces.
Snack = Granola
Snack before Zumba class = Peanut butter and banana sandwich
Late dinner = spaghetti leftovers
Late snack = poptart (seems as though I have been craving something sweet lately since I've been indulging in pop tarts - normally I do not eat them but a couple times a year. I'm putting an end to this)!

Rule # 14 - Eat foods made from ingredients that you can picture in their raw state or growing in nature.

Read the ingredients on a package of Twinkies or Pringles and imagine what those ingredients actually look like raw or in the places where they grow: You can't do it. This rule will keep all sorts of chemicals and food-like substances out of your diet.

Sunday Food Log

Brunch = scrambled eggs, 1/2 orange, 2 strawberries, breakfast potatoes (garlic, green pepper, green onion, red onion with salt, pepper, paparika, chili powder), 1 cinnamon roll. Yes, I stopped at one! :)

Late lunch = PB & J, applesauce with cinnamon sprinkled on top

Dinner = quinoa with veggies - fresh lemon juice squeezed on top!

Saturday Food Log

Breakfast = scrambled eggs, salsa, black beans
Lunch = Refried bean, lettuce, salsa, guacamole, spanish rice burrito
Dinner = PB & J
snack = pop tart

Friday Food Log

Breakfast = Cranberry juice
Lunch = spaghetti & asparagus leftovers
Snack = couscous leftovers
Snack = pretzels
Dinner = Went to Chili's with Mom, Yvonne, Anthony and Taylor
ate a salad with ranch (picked out the cheese - forgot to say no cheese) cajun pasta (ate 3/4), chips and salsa
Late snack = ate the rest of my cajun pasta

Rule # 13 Eat only foods that will eventually rot

What does it mean for food to "go bad"? It usually means that the fungi and bacteria and insects and rodents with whom we compete for nutrients and calories have gotten to it before we did. Food processing began as a way to extend the shelf life of food by protecting it from these competitors. This is often accomplished by making the food less appealing to them, by removing other nutrients likely to turn rancid, like omega-3 fatty acids. The more processed a food is, the longer the shelf life, and the less nutritious it typically is. Real food is alive - and therefore it should eventually die. (There are a few exceptions to this rule: For example, honey has a shelf life measured in centuries.) Note: Most of the immortal food-like substances in the supermarket are found in the middle aisles.

Thursday food log

Breakfast = apple juice, celery with peanut butter
Lunch = Chinese leftovers
Snack = Couscous w veggies
Dinner = Spaghetti w sauteed mushrooms, roasted asparagus, 1 crescent roll
Snack = Pop tart (I rarely have pop tarts, maybe twice a year if that)
3 Popsicles :/

Rule # 12 Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle

Most supermarkets are laid out the same way: Processed food products dominate the center aisles of the store, while the cases of mostly fresh food - product, meat and fish, dairy - line the walls. If you keep to the edges of the store you'll be much more likely to wind up with real food in your shopping cart. This strategy is not foolproof, however, since things like high-fructose corn syrup have crept into the dairy case under the cover of flavored yogurts and the like.

Favorite part of the day

My favorite part of the day is when we take the dogs to the park. We wait until after 8, when it starts cooling off outside. Here's a pic of Tue and Wed night. The sunsets are always beautiful, but Wednesdays was spectacular!!! :)

Wednesday food log

Breakfast = apple w peanut butter (peanut butter should contain peanuts, or just peanuts and salt. If it contains more than that - don't buy it! I was only able to find this brand that was natural, but it had salt. Normally I buy without salt, but I don't eat a lot of salt so I decided to go ahead and buy it)
Early Lunch = Garlic couscous w sauteed mushrooms, veggies, mango salsa on top (so good!) - made lettuce wraps out of that. Cucumber on the side
Late lunch = more couscous :)
Snack = pistachios
Late afternoon snack = 5 strawberries
Dinner = leftover Chinese
Snack = chips and salsa (finally out of tortilla chips)
3 popsicles - yes, it was super hot in my house and I had 3 - epic fail on the portion control goal! :)

Rule # 11 - Avoid foods you see advertised on television

Food marketers are ingenious at turning criticisms of their products - and rules like these - into new ways to sell slightly different versions of the same processed foods. They simply reformulate (to be low-fat, have no HFCS or trans-fats, or to contain fewer ingredients) and then boast about their implied healthfulness, whether the boast is meaningful or not. The best way to escape these marketing ploys is to tune out the marketing itself, by refusing to buy heavily promoted foods. Only the biggest food manufacturers can afford to advertise their products on television: More than two thirds of food advertising is spent promoting processed foods (and alcohol), so if you avoid products with big ad budgets, you'll automatically be avoiding edible food-like substances. As for the 5 percent of food ads that promote whole foods (the prune or walnut growers of the beef ranchers), common sense will, one hopes, keep you from tarring then with the same brush - these are the exceptions that prove the rule. Bogus health claims and faulty food science have made supermarkets particularly treacherous places to shop for real food, which suggests the next two rules.

Tuesday food log

Yesterday was Nate's sister Cindy's birthday, so Nate's Mom had the family over for dinner. I knew she was going to make Chinese food, so I didn't want to eat anything that was too heavy during the day. Jacque is a wonderful cook!

Breakfast = leftover eggs, veggies and potatoes
Late morning snack = banana
Afternoon snack = handful of pistachios
Afternoon snack # 2 = grapes
Dinner = Rice, Veggie Lo Mein and 3 egg foo young patties - soooo good!
Cherry Popsicle when we got home
Late night snack = chips & salsa (I need to beak this habit)
Dessert = small piece of strawberry pie Nate's Mom made for Cindy. I was way too full after dinner, so we brought home leftovers and dessert!

Daily Om

While riding the wave of life you must also practice stillness so you can flow with, rather than resist the wave’s motion.

Rule # 10 - Avoid foods that are pretending to be something they are not

Imitation butter - aka margarine - is the classic example. To make something like nonfat cream cheese that contains neither cream nor cheese requires an extreme degree of processing; such products should be labeled as imitations and voided. The same rule applies to soy-based mock meats, artificial sweeteners, and fake fats and starches.

My thoughts - fake meat grosses me out. I have never even tried it before, not do I want to!

Monday food log

Banana for breakfast
Spinach salad with sunflower seeds, tomato and carrots (I need to start making my own dressing)
Orange for afternoon snack
Breakfast for dinner - scrambled eggs with sauteed mushrooms, green peppers and red onions, breakfast potatoes = 1 russet potato, diced, EVOO, pepper, little sea salt, paprika, chili powder
little snack of chips and salsa after zumba
2 strawberries and a handful of grapes before bed

31 day challenge

Today is the start of my new 31 day challenge!!!

* Do some form of working out 5 days a week
* Portion control
* Stay away from processed foods as much as possible
* Walk dogs/take to park more often
* Take/post pics of what I'm eating to help me stay on track

Let the games begin! :)

Rule # 9 - Avoid food products with the wordoid "lite" or the terms "low-fat" or "nonfat" in their names.

The forty-year-old campaign to create low and nonfat versions of traditional foods has been a failure: We've gotten fat on low-fat products. Why? Because removing the fat from foods doesn't necessarily make them nonfattening. Carbohydrates can also make you fat, and many low and nonfat foods boost the sugars to make up for the loss of flavor. Also, by demonizing one nutrient - fat - we inevitably give a free pass to another, supposedly "good", nutrient-carbohydrates in this case - and then proceed to eat too much of that instead. Since the low-fat campaign began in the late 1970's, Americans actually have been eating more than 500 additional calories per day, most of them in the form of refined carbohydrates like sugar. The result: The average male is seventeen pounds heavier and the average female is nineteen pounds heavier than in the late 1970s. You're better off eating the real thing in moderation than bingeing on "lite" food products packed with sugars and salt.

Rule # 8 - Avoid food products that make health claims.

This sounds counterintuitive, but consider: For a product to carry a health claim on it's packaging, it must first have a package, so right off the bat it's more likely to be a processed rather than a whole food. Then, only the big food manufacturers have the where-withal to secure FDA-approved health claims for their products and then trumpet them to the world. Generally, it is the products of modern food science that make the boldest health claims, and these are often founded on incomplete and often bad science. Don't forget that margarine, one of the first industrial foods to claim it was more healthful than the traditional food it replaced, turned out to contain transfats that give people heart attacks. The healthiest food in the supermarket-the fresh produce-doesn't boast about it's healthful-ness, because the growers don't have the budget or the packaging. Don't take the silence of the yams as a sign they have nothing valuable to say about your health.

Daily Om

We hold onto material objects because we think they make us feel secure, when in reality they are cluttering our lives.

So true - one of my favorite sayings is - LESS IS MORE!!!

I tend to feel cluttered often, which reminds me - it's about time to go through my belongings again and sort out what I really need to keep, and what I can donate.

Rule # 7 - Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third-grader cannot pronounce

Basically the same idea, different mnemonic. Keep it simple!

Rule # 6 Avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients

The specific number you adopt is arbitrary, but the more ingredients in packaged food, the more highly processed it probably is. Note # 1 - A long list of ingredients in a recipe is not the same thing; that's fine. Note # 2 - Some products now boast, somewhat deceptively, about their short ingredient lists. Haagen-Daaz has a new line of ice cream called "five". Great - but it's still ice cream. Same goes for three-ingredient Tostitos corn chips advertised by Frito-Lay-okay, but they're still corn chips. In such cases, apply rule 60 for dealing with treats and special occasion foods.

My thoughts - I have definitely been paying closer attention to labels recently. I sued to just grab a bag of chips without hesitating. Now, I think twice when I'm at the grocery store getting healthy food and some not-so healthy things that Nate loves.

Rule # 5 Avoid foods that have some form of sugar (or sweetener) listed among the top three ingredients

Labels list ingredients by weight, and any product that has more sugar than other ingredients has too much sugar. Complicating matters is the fact that, thanks to food science, there are now some forty types of sugar used in processed food, including barley malt, beet sugar, brown rice syrup, cane juice, corn sweetener, dextrin, dextrose, fructo-oligosaccharides, fruit juice concentrate, glucose, sucrose, invert sugar, polydextrose, sucrose, turbinado sugar, and so on. As for noncaloric sweeteners such as aspartame or splenda, research (in both humans and animals) suggests that switching to artificial sweeteners does not lead to weight loss, for reasons the brain with the reward of sweetness stimulates a craving for even more sweetness.

My thoughts - I have been cutting out sugar as much as possible. I have never liked splenda or aspartame - never liked diet soda either. I haven't had a soda in a few months. The only time I ever want one now is if I don't feel well, sometimes I will want a Ginger ale or a Sprite. I used to drink it all day long back in the day. I'm so glad I no longer have that addiction!

Criticism - Rhonda Byrne - The Secret

Criticism can be very subtle in the way it creeps into our thoughts. Here are some examples of criticism to help you become aware of its subtlety, so you can eliminate it from your thoughts:

The weather is awful today.
The traffic is terrible.
The service is really bad.
Oh no, look at the line.
He/she is always late.
How long do we have to wait for our order?
That motorist is a lunatic.
It's so hot in here.
I've been on hold for so long!
These are subtle things, but the law of attraction is listening to them all. You have the ability to appreciate something in every single circumstance. There is always something to be grateful for.

May the joy be with you,

Rhonda Byrne
The Secret...

Mexican restaurant

So, these have been my staples lately while working at the Mexican restaurant. I bring a salad in with some carrots and tomatoes. Sometimes I include cucumbers and sunflower seeds and sprouts, and I eat this for lunch. Breakfast consists of eggs, black beans and salsa. I'm cutting out tortillas and refried beans, so there goes the breakfast burrito I always look forward to!

Rule # 4 - Avoid food products that contain high-fructose corn syrup.

Not because high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is any worse for you than sugar, but because it is, like many of the other unfamiliar ingredients in packaged foods, a reliable marker for a food product that has been highly processed. Also, high-fructose corn syrup is being added to hundreds of foods that have not traditionally been sweetened - breads, condiments, and many snack foods - so if you avoid products that contain it, you will cut down on your sugar intake. But don't fall for the food industry's latest scam: products reformulated to contain "no HFCS" or "real cane sugar". These claims imply these foods are somehow healthier, but they're not. Sugar is sugar.

New Journal

So this is my new journal. I have so many of them. I keep track of what I eat in one, what workouts I do each day in another, and I have another one for my thoughts/feelings. It's good to vent. Get it all out. It's great therapy.

This journal is made from sugarcane. SAVE THE TREES!!!

31 day challenge COMPLETE!

Well folks, I have completed my 31 day challenge of not consuming candy, ice cream or cheese. It was really easy to stop eating everything but the cheese. Even meat - I never looked back once. But cheese, soooooo many things have cheese! I never really noticed that until I stopped eating it. I would want to make Mexican for dinner a few nights, but what's a quesadilla or enchiladas without cheese? I have yet to try the imitation cheeses, or the imitation meat for that matter. I will try anything once. Needless to say, I did not run out yesterday to eat candy, ice cream and cheese! I'm still going to not eat these things for the time being, because I feel really good!!!


My NEW 31 day challenge is as follows:


** Working out 5 days a week **

I was really lazy last month and only went to the Y a couple times. No wonder why this was the first time I didn't meet my monthly goal. I wanted to be at 155 by June 30th, but I was only at 158. I'm now at 157 and I plan to be at 154 by July 31st, and 150 by August 31st. I like setting realistic goals instead of 'I'm going to lose 20 pounds in a month' kind of thing. I heard somewhere it's healthy to lose a pound a week - so that's what I'm focusing on at the moment.


** Not eating empty calories **

I will eat as healthy as possible. No fries, unfortunately I can't have my Mom's refried beans anymore because of the lard), graham crackers, things like that.


** Portion control ***

Keep a closer eye on how much I consume in one sitting. Like my sweet friend Kyla says, you don't have to stuff yourself - you will eat again soon enough. SO TRUE!!!

Rule # 3 - Avoid food products containing infregients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry

Ethoxylated diglycerides? Cellulose? Xanthan gum? Calcium propionate? Ammonium sulfate? If you wouldn't cook with them yourself, why let others use these ingredients to cook for you? The food scientists' chemistry set is designed to extend shelf life, make old food look fresher and more appetizing than it really is, and get you to eat more. Whether or not any of these additives pose a proven hazard to your health, many of them haven't been eaten by humans for very long, so they are best avoided.

My thoughts - I'm going to start paying closer attention to ingredient labels when choosing what little processed food I will be eating.

Family Garden

Rule # 2 Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.

Imagine your great-grandmother (or grandmother, depending on your age0 at your side as you roll down the aisles of the supermarket. You're standing together in front of the dairy case. She picks up a package of Go-Gurt Portable yogurt tubes - and hasn't a clue what this plastic cylinder of colored and flavored gel could possibly be. Is it a food or is it toothpaste? There are now thousands of foodish products in the supermarket that our ancestors simply wouldn't recognize as food. The reasons to avoid eating such complicated food products are many, and go beyond the various chemical additives and corn and soy derivatives they contain, or the plastics in which they are typically packages, some of which are probably toxic. Today foods are processed in ways specifically designed to get us to buy and eat more by pushing our evolutionary buttons-our inborn preferences for sweetness and fat and salt. These tastes are difficult to find in nature but cheap and easy for the food scientist to deploy, with the result that food processing induces us to consume much more of these rarities that is good for us. The great-grandma rule will help keep most of these items out of your cart.

Note - if your great-Grandmother was a terrible cook or eater, you can substitute some else's gradmother- a Sicilian or French one works particularly well.

The next several rules refine this strategy by helping yo navigate the treacherous landscrape of the ingredients label.


My thoughts - so true! There's so much CRAP out there it makes me sick! Look at what most people feed their children, and they wonder why the kids act up and are hyper all the time - probably because of all the sugar and processed foods they eat. Not a good combination.

My goal is to eat as less processed foods as possible. I'm going to challenge myself!

Rule # 1 - EAT FOOD

These days this is easier said than done, especially when seventeen thousand new products show up in the supermarket each year, all vying for your food dollar. But most of these items don't deserve to be called food - I call them edible food-like substances. They're highly processed concoctions designed by food scientists, consisting mostly of ingredients derived from corn and soy that no normal person keeps in the pantry, and they contain chemical additives with which the human body has not been long acquainted. Today much of the challenge of eating well comes down to choosing real food and avoiding these industrial novelties.


My thoughts - I have cut out a lot of processed foods, but I still eat some, like tortilla chips (I love chips and salsa), Chex Mix, graham crackers. But, when I do eat something like this I can definitely tell that my body isn't happy. Eating real food is the way to go!

Food Rules

One of my favorite books that I have read so far this year, is Food Rules by Michael Pollan. There are 64 rules in the book, and I try to stick as close to the rules as possible. Every week day I'm going to post a rule. This will help me stick to the rules and make better choices, and it will give you a chance to see what the rules are without buying the book!

Daily OM

Cleansing and eliminating toxins from our bodies can help slow the aging process and allows for clearer thoughts.

Missing you

I miss you Brandie. Been thinking of you a lot lately, and I would give anything to have you here with us.