Food Steamer

My awesome sister bought me a food steamer for Christmas.  I love it!
So far I have cooked root veggies, frozen broccoli and haddock in it.  It is so easy, 10-15 minutes and 20 for the root veggies (potatoes, turnips, carrots).
The fish turned out great and the clean up was easy, I don't know why I didn't get one sooner.
From a caloric point I am saving a lot of calories not using oil to cook the fish and steaming is supposed to be the best way to retain the nutrients of the veggies.
Buy one, you'll feel so healthy! Rival food steamer

No Caffeine Day 8

No head ache! The head aches on day 5 & 6 six where bad.  Just a hit of coffee would take it away instantly but nooooooo.
I felt good all day today, taught an all day ski lesson, had energy, no head ache and I seem to be getting a deeper sleep!
I can take the coffee expense off my bill!  For me that's about $400.00/year and that's just from making it at home!

Salad

Eat one everyday.
And no, not with blue cheese dressing!
I buy organic spring salad mix
Add a little of each: sweet peppers red or yellow
carrots
chi chi beans
nuts
olives, I like any greek type
organic sunflower seeds, good iron source
seasonal fruit: summer is berries, fall apples, winter oranges, spring anything
Top it off with crumbled (blue) organic tortilla chips.
Dressing:  a good quality aged balsamic vinegar and pepper, skip the oil if you are trying to lose weight.
I try to use everything as fresh as I can and preferably organic. Organic foods tend to be higher in nutrients and keeps you from putting cancer causing farmer chemicals in your body.  This is so healthy and you get so many nutrients including a balance of carbs, protein and fat.  Your body will love you.
I made a large version of this for a party and it was gone in 10 minutes.

Stop Eating!

Stop eating cookies!  I know that it's the holidays but enough!

Me, where I am the happiest!

Okay I confess... I had some chocolate last night, mmmmmmm.  But it was a treat, only about 6 oz and allowed myself to enjoy it guilt free!
I think that I am finely able to not feel guilty about it because I am so proud of my healthy eating lifestyle!
My family is actually starting to be more tolerant of my eating choices, I got 2 vegetarian cookbooks and a food steamer for Christmas.
I think it was very thoughtful!  But why are Veg. cookbooks all cheese?  How can you be a vegetarian and eat cheese? That's just gross and it doesn't make sense to me.
As you have read I am not a vegetarian, I eat fresh caught local fish, and meat if I shot it myself (no factory farmed meat).
He is a new years resolution: pay attention to where your food comes from and know the negative effects that it has on our planet.

Merry Christmas

Ho ho ho!
Merry Christmas everyone!

4 Days Without Caffeine

I started to go without caffeine on the 19th of this month.  The first day didn't really count because I had half a cup in the morning.  The second and third day I had no caffeine at all.  My head was in a fog until noon and I was ready for bed by 5pm.  Today is day 4 no fog but I have had a headache all day kind of like altitude sickness.  It is now 8 pm and I keep getting these throbbing shooting pains in my head.  OOOHHHH.
I'll live.  Remember caffeine is a drug and there is bound to be withdrawal symptoms. I am sleeping ok but not great yet, I still have hope.  One thing that I have noticed is that I am thirsty a lot in the morning which is good to drink water instead of coffee. I think that drinking coffee has definitely made me more dehydrated than I realized.  I let you know when the headaches stop.
Oh yeah, my teeth look whiter!

Hot Cocoa

Here is my hot cocoa recipe:
1 Tbls real maple syrup
1 Tbls cocoa powder
pinch salt
Stir
Add 1 c or so of almond milk
Stir
microwave 1 1/2 to 2 minutes on high
MMMMMMMMMMMM
Make adjustments in the amounts of ingredients to your taste and remember it's a treat not a daily ritual to have a cup of hot cocoa.
Enjoy!

Thinking Screws Me Up

If you change how you think, you will change your life.
I take pride in my healthy choices.  It's a great feeling knowing that you are doing the right thing.
Educate yourself on healthy lifestyle, take action, change the way you think.  This works.

Holimont

Remember, Nay sayers are usually jealous and ignorant, keep your pride.

Trans Fatty Acid

Trans fatty acid can kill you. maybe not instantly but eventually.
Trans fat is formed when oils are hydrogenated in order to make food a more consistent texture and to keep it from becoming rancid.  It is one of the major causes of atherosclerosis or plaque forming in the arteries.  Over 40,000 deaths per are attributed to trans fatty acid. This caused the FDA to require that trans fat be listed on all nutrition labels.
Where can you find trans fat? margarine, oils used in restaurants for frying french fries, packaged baked goods, some chips and some peanut butters like Peter Pan and Jiff.
Bottom line: if the label list more than 0.5 trans fat, don't buy it and definitely don't eat it.

My BFF Hooty!

Sleep or lack of...

Mount Snow Vermont Dec. 2010

I have had many problems with sleep dis-orders.  I have gone to the doctor, the neurologists and even done sleep studies.  The results, squat!  The doctors couldn't find anything so they decided to prescribe me some anti-seizure medication.  WTF?  The side effects among many are that they make you tired, stupid and fat.
They also told me that my inability to sleep was due to hormonal changes, stress, age and phycological.  Maybe it is but they were just guessing, there was no proof and the only thing that I can do is manage is my stress.
Since I have changed my diet and am working on stress management, I am sleeping better but not great.  So this is what I decided to do: Quit drinking caffeine!  I was reading an article in Outside magazine Jan. 2011 called 31 ways to better health.  One of the things the article explains is the effect of caffeine: "It can lead to drowsiness, insomnia and increased blood pressure",  "Imagine you buy two plants and put them in the same windowsill.  One of them you feed only water and the other you feed caffeine and vodka.  You know what will happen"?
My plan is to replace caffeine with herbal tea.  I will let you know how it goes.
Wish me luck!

Mount Snow Instructor Training 2010

My good friend Walter from Pa.

What a great week of ski instructor training! 

Just goes to prove no matter how good you are eating healthy, it's still calories in calories out.  Ate a little too much during the week and boy can I feel it.  It's a never ending battle.  But I chose not to beat myself up because I had such a great time and I am happy!

Maintenance

Anyone that has been successful at keeping the weight off has their own story, we are all different.  I chose the healthy chemical free path because it was something that I could actually do.  I can not eat a regular* balanced diet and limited my caloric intake.
I just can't maintain it.  I think it's because this diet is too calorie dense I feel like I don't get enough food and I am hungry all the time.  Eating mostly fruits, vegetables, legumes and grains are less calorie dense so I can eat so much more for the same amount of calories as sweets, meats and dairy.
 Eating very clean, green and sat fat free is something that I can maintain everyday for the rest of my life.  The bonus is that I am proud of what I am doing.

*Based on the FDA

Spend Time Outdoors

Xcelskiing.com

Get outside!  It's good for your body and your mind!  Find a club or a group or like me, make your own group (we are the Barkeaters).  It is so important to be social and active.  It keeps you motivated to be healthy and may even burn a calorie or two.  Just skip the cheese, crackers and the beer. www.xcelskiing.com/barkeaters.html

Getting Greener

I just got a little greener.
When I first started hearing about the conflict between mankind and the environment I figured that all I had to do was by a car that got really good gas mileage, unplug things and change my light bulbs.  And I did it.
Just like anything else, going green is a learning process, the more you learn the more you learn.
As I started to clean up my diet I realized the impact that poor diet of processed and factory farmed food have on the environment.  I am proud of myself for this change.
Yesterday I bought eco friendly shampoo, soap and lotion. Next will be dish soap and cleaning products!
I love this stuff!

Enough Nutrients?

They say (who "They" are I'm not exactly sure) that our excessively obese society is starving to death nutritional. In other words we eat to much food the has little or no nutrition and is packed with calories. Eg: soda pop and sugary foods.
Now lets say that you are a very conscientious eater.  You eat all the EAR (estimated ave. req.) of nutrients.  You eat nine servings of fruit and veggies/day, low sat & trans fat, low sodium, low sugar, etc.  Are you really getting in all your EAR? Probably not.  Why? Because of the way our food is being produced.
The soil that our food is being grown in has been striped of nutrients and replaced with chemical additives.
A colleague of mine was telling me about a study that was done with a head of romaine lettuce from a popular local grocery store. It was tested for its nutrient value against one grown in someone's private chemical free backyard garden.  The store bought variety had 60% less nutrients than  the home grown one.
Now I know that studies can be vague and mis-interperted but is the food that we think is healthy really healthy enough?
This is one of the reasons that I take my all natural multi-vitamin.

Doing The Dishes

A moment of realization that I had about the relationship with my health and the the food that I eat. After about a week of eliminating dairy (cheese) and other saturated fats (meat) I noticed a big change it doing the dishes; nothing sticks!
You know that 13 x 9 glass pan after you finished that yummy cheesy lasagna? After you soaked it over night and you still need a chisel to get that crap off the pan?

Chilean Andes

That's the same thing that it is doing to the inside of your body, cholesterol you know, taking up space in your arteries, not letting the blood flow through, heart disease, heart attack.  Maybe that's why it takes three months on the proper diet to get your cholesterol down because crap sticks.
Now everyday doing my dishes quickly and easily it reminds me of how I am doing my body good.  Now there's some pride in that!

Am I a vegan?

Kinda but no.  A true vegan eats no animal flesh of any kind and doesn't wear it either, like no leather boots or belts.

I am not a vegetarian either, the tend to eat eggs, dairy and sometimes way too much sugar.
So what am I ?
I've been pondering this one for a while.  I don't eat dairy or eggs, I won't eat any meat that I didn't shoot myself (and I will never shoot anything unless I am starving to death), I won't eat commercially caught or farm raised fish and most of all I try my best to never eat anything that is chemically laced.  (This includes but not limited to, dairy, meat, fish, junk food, junk drinks, most packaged foods.....). I eat little or no white sugar and try to limited bad fats to minimal.
I did eat some organic turkey for Thanksgiving and I will eat a little venison this winter maybe.
I came up with: "I eat chemical free" or "I'm chemical free", for lack of a better label.
I am I perfect with this healthy diet? No, it's reasonably impossible in todays factory farmed society.  But I find trying to eat chemically free makes me feel really good about myself.  Eating this way really works for me and the more I learn about eating healthy the better I get at it!
www.realizedhealth.com

Exercise

It is a must!
If I don't exercise I think of it like forgetting to brushing my teeth, my body gets scuzzy! Gross, huh?
I think that it is very important to do what you like.  I like to do seasonal things.  In the spring I like to hike and run, in the summer when it's hot I like to ride my road bike.  In the fall I like to walk, hike and run and in the winter I like to ski, ski, ski!
Then there are the days like today, we are getting flooding rains now turning to wet snow.  I have turned my basement into a gym for just such an occasion.

 If you think that you can get healthy without a good dose of exercise, you are fooling yourself.  We are meant to move!
The least that you should do is walk if you are physically capable.  And everyday!  None of this 20 minutes three times a week, the only thing that does for you is keep your ass looking like cottage cheese. (Ooow, sorry for that image :).                    
Now get moving and make it fun!
www.xcelskiing.com