Fit for Free

Today has been filled with eager anticipation, but I can’t share the details until tomorrow!! EEE!!!

Okay, deep breaths.

Breakfast happened in courses this morning. I started off with lots of water (to offset last night’s whiskey + wine), then moved on to 1/2 cup of Udi’s granola with soymilk and a kiwi (the last piece of fresh fruit in the house, ahhhh!!):

Course 2 was a soymilk refill, per yesterday, plus 1/2 cup original puffins (because I’ve neglected them the past few days ):

and finally, 3rd course: a small piece of pumpkin pie banana bread with a dab of pb (I had 3/4 of this):

(that’s a 1/4 c. measuring cup, for portion purposes).

After course 3 I was a little too full. Just a little. I should’ve just let breakfast part 1 settle before breaking into the bread! I picked up an iced coffee with soymilk on the way to work to celebrate the 40-degree weather, and sipped on it all day.

For lunch I packed a mix of 1/2 my leftover tofu scramble and 1/2 my last portion of tempeh salad, mixed with a large chopped carrot:

(it looks like a lot b/c it’s in a large tupperware, but there’s only a thin layer on the bottom).

I also packed a little snack bag mix of 7 prunes and 3 tbsp. sliced almonds (b/c I loved this mix yesterday!), and another slice of pumpkin pie banana bread:

I had to run an important secret errand (EEEE!!!) between 11 and 1 (sorry—I promsie I’ll share tomorrow!), which involved 2 miles of brisk walking and lots of excitement. I missed morning snack time, so I was definitely ready for lunch when I got back to the office at 1:15, and broke out the tofu/tempeh salad along with 1/2 the prunes/almonds and 1/2 the pumpkin pie bread. I also stole a mint from my coworker. I had the other 1/2 at 5:15, and also enjoyed around a cup of green grapes leftover from an IT meeting (couldn’t let them languish in the kitchen all weekend!)

After work I went to a memorial reading of Agha Shahid Ali’s poetry at NYU (I featured him in my senior thesis in college), and walked the ~2.5 miles from work to the event. The reading was wonderful—if you haven’t checked out his poetry, I highly recommend it!

After that, I stopped by Dojo (a NYU haunt that my friend and I used to go to after an evening copyediting class across the street). When I go to this restaurant, I always, ALWAYS order the steamed veggies and tofu over brown rice with a side of tahini dressing (for dipping purposes), but I didn’t have enough cash with me to order the tofu (and it’s a cash-only place), so I experimented and just got the steamed tofu and veggies with rice and sauce:

I had all the veggies and rice and maybe 1/4 of the sauce (which is pretty salty and heavy but DELISH!)

Normally I wouldn’t eat something like this without a protein component, but thinking back, I realized I’d had more calories than usual earlier in the day so I wanted to see if something lighter would hold me over. And it did! I walked over to the East Village afterwards because Sonny had a concert here. That brought my daily total to 5 miles covered on foot. I love how easy it is to accumulate mileage in NYC!

On any other day like today (which was pretty rainy) pre-Fit for Free, I would’ve talked myself into going to the gym after work and done a lazy 20–30 minutes on the elliptical, with maybe some light weights and abs if I was feeling extra-motivated, and I would have been frustrated at the time it took to change/shower/etc. It’s SO much more satisfying to me to just WALK and get some semi-fresh air (in midtown Manhattan nothing is really “fresh”). I guess I wasn’t born to be a gym person (and that’s NOTHING against gym people—I envy your ability to focus and get in a good workout in an hour. I’m no good at it!! I also recognize that the gym isn’t everyone’s first choice, but they value fitness enough to get it workouts any way they can.)

At Sonny’s show I enjoyed a glass of Shiraz (thanks for the picture google!):

Home at 1 AM, SLEEP!

It’s felt so good to maintain an activity schedule throughout these winter months. I’m glad I’ve been able to do it without the gym or Bikram yoga this week! What is your ideal workout schedule/favorite exercise? Do you find a way to work it into your schedule? If not, what do you do instead?

I may or may not have had another dessert last night . . .

But comeon, what else are you going to do when there’s only that much sunflower seed butter left in the jar!

It’s even better topped with a few more chocolate chips and a spoonful of vanilla bean soy ice cream

I could NOT sleep last night! I had a lot on my mind and it was buzzing until after 2:30 AM. Needless to say I gave myself a break on the run (I was frustrated about it, though—it was a PERFECT morning for it!), and opted for 20 minutes of self-paced yoga instead. It hit the spot and made my morning, along with the coffee pot:

That little light is a beacon of hope every morning.

Breakfast featured a sliced gala apple, leftover tofu scramble, and 1/2 c. Udi’s granola with unsweetened soymilk (I love my little 7 oz corningware bowls; they’re the perfect size for a small portion of cereal or ice cream!):

I decided halfway through breakfast that I didn’t want the rest of my tofu scramble, so back in the fridge it went:

Instead, I opted for a soymilk refill:

For lunch, I packed the second portion of my tempeh salad, my leftover beets from dinner last night, and ~1/2 c. of “ghoulash”:

And for a snack I packed another gala apple (my last) and a mix of 7 prunes and 3 tbsp. almond slivers:

I broke out the snack around 11:30 AM and lunch at 12:45, and took a brisk 2-mile walk an hour or so later. I also did something I haven’t done in awhile: I chewed a pack of gum (it was a small pack, only 5 pieces, but still not a good habit!). It made my stomach feel nasty and I remembered why I stay away from fake sugar. Blech.

After work I went to WW and was down 1.4!!

And after WW I went out with a couple friends to an awesome Thai restaurant, Wantana. I didn’t have a camera, but found a picture on google that approximates my basil tofu and eggplant with brown rice (I asked for no fish sauce, extra spices, and added ginger):

I ate all the tofu and veggies and around 1/2 c. of the rice, and the 3 of us split a veggie dumpling appetizer (I had 2 bite-sized pieces) and a bottle of white wine (which we brought to the restaurant with us).

Afterward we went to the monthly hootenany (!!) at a bar called Buttermilk. It was my first time going, and it was a riot! We danced for hours, sang, and had such a good time. I had a seltzer (to calm down the spices in my stomach) and then a small Old Fashioned. Then I walked home. My walks today totaled around 4 miles.

It is SLEEP TIME! Hope you had a great night. Get ready for Friday!!!

I’ll post a food recap later (I’m loving them!), but need to get this non-food-related post off my chest!

A few weeks ago, Jason at Run 4 Change put up a great post about cycles that got me thinking about my history with them. And I just noticed that Roni at Roni’s Weigh posted about it recently as well. Ah, universal struggles.

Like many people, for years I followed a pattern of motivating myself onto “the wagon.” For me it this meant more than just the way I ate and how much I exercised; it carried over to how clean I kept my room, how much attention I paid to my schoolwork, whether I stretched/did yoga to take care of my back/scoliosis, etc. I’d inevitably cycle out of that “motivated” (and often self-loathing) state and back into messiness, bingeing, skipping class and workouts, etc. Inevitably, I’d get fed up with myself (and notice a visible weight gain) and spiral back into restrictive eating and self-imposed rules (only smoothies today! only raw fruits & vegetables all weekend!  no sugar for a month! no eating after 5 PM!), daily workouts, etc. I felt certain that I would never escape from this progression and would be doomed to unsustainable states of being for the rest of my life.

When I was studying abroad in India, this was still on my mind. I was back “in control” of my body, but deep down I knew that it wouldn’t last forever. When the semester was over, I visited a friend who was studying in Dharamsala in the Himalayas. We heard that there was a Mayan shaman in town who was planning a  day-long sweat lodge in the mountains, and we decided to join in (because really, when would we have the chance to do this again?).

Before the event itself, we met with the shaman for a one-on-one “consultation,” during which he cracked an egg into a bowl and told us about ourselves based on the way the egg looked (wasteful, in retrospect!). I honestly can’t remember what he said about my egg but afterward, he asked if I had any questions for him. On a whim, I outlined the points above and asked, “will I be trapped in this cycle forever?” And he said, “what cycle?”

A little frustrated, I explained myself again. He shook his head and said, “the cycle doesn’t exist.” I thought he just wasn’t getting it. I explained my frustration with falling in and out of the yoga practice as an example. I told him I felt like I could never stick to a regular practice, but that I craved that great, limber yoga feeling and mental clarity. He said, “then why don’t you just do yoga when you want to?” I smiled politely, but left the “consultation” feeling like it hadn’t really accomplished anything.

As frustrated as I was at the time, I’ve thought of this meeting often in the years that followed (the sweat lodge is a story for another day—it ended up being an incredibly affecting experience). And literally, last week, it dawned on me. He was right. I fabricated the idea of the “cycle” because I felt out of control. It never really existed. It was all in my head. And now that this notion of “balance” has made its way into my life, I can leave it behind.

It’s a little scary, becuase I still feel myself drawn toward those extremes, almost daily. I have to make a conscious effort to strive for balance. It doesn’t come naturally to me. But it feels so much better than the things I used to do to myself, like wear jeans 2 sizes too small so the tightness would remind me not to eat, until they eventually fit, or (on the opposite end of the spectrum), eat a large chocolate-chip cookie at Starbucks by myself just because I’d told myself so many times that I wasn’t allowed to have it. For example: last night, I got home, had dinner, cleaned the kitchen, and started to wind down, but my head was buzzing with “you could still go running, you know! you really should, you need it! all you did today was yoga, and that’s not enough. a few years ago you would’ve done it!” Making myself go running at 9:30 PM, while I was in evening relaxation mode, would not have been a balanced decision for me.

Have you ever battled a “cycle” of your own?

But first: do you like the new look? I’m excited about it!!

I may be becoming obsessed with this photo-food-blogging thing! It’s so much fun to see what I’ve eaten for the day in picture form. And you’re all right: it makes me want to make my meals more colorful!

Before I went to bed last night, I threw a bunch of stuff in the crockpot: corn, frozen mixed veggies, a can of tomatoes, black-eyed peas, ancho chili powder, and adobo seasoning. When I woke up it looked too watery, so I added some Israeli cous cous, which did the trick:

And for breakfast, I had exactly what I was craving:

PUMPKIN OATBRAN! 1/3 c. oatbran cooked with 2/3 c. unsweetened soymilk and 1/2 c. pumpkin, topped with 1/4 c. Udi’s granola and a tiny bit of agave. Heaven. When I got towards the bottom of the bowl, I remembered the chocolate chips in the freezer and added 8 of them to the mix:

I stopped myself when I was full and saved this little bit to make a dessert creation tonight:

I love having a breakfasty dessert to look forward to

Lunch/snacks (packed and ready to go):

A plain Whole Soy yogurt, 1/2 c. Udi’s granola (can’t get enough!), a gala apple, and a random just-add-hot-water package of lentil soup (it’s pretty small, 170 calories, 1.5 grams of fat, and 11 grams of protein, although high in sodium as expected).

I also brought around 1/2 a cup of the crockpot goulash (I don’t know what else to call it):

I go to a 1-hour yoga class from 1:20 to 2:20 on Wednesdays, so I have lunch part 1 before and part 2 after. Today I had the yogurt, apple, granola, and veggies around 11:45 and the lentil soup around 3:15. I was satisfied all afternoon until I got home at 7 and went veggie-crazy:

The last kale pancake with hoisin sauce (I’m sad to see these go—they got better after a few days!), more goulash (I keep writing “ghoulash,” hehe), a pile o’ beets, and tempeh salad (which I made by crumbling one block of tempeh and mixing it with black olives, 1/4 a diced onion, 2 diced carrots, paprika, black pepper, and around 2 tbsp. miso mayo—this is probably 1/3 of the recipe).

I noticed that I attacked the pancake and goulash first, even though I was really craving protein and veggies. I guess I needed to get my blood sugar up?

And apparently my eyes were a little bigger than my stomach, because I’ll be having beets in my lunch tomorrow!

Never too full for dessert, though I microwaved the leftover pumpkin oatbran from breakfast and added unsweetened soymilk, a little ground flaxseed, and a few more chocolate chips:

And I’m writing this on here so I have no excuse to bow out of it: I’M GETTING UP EARLY TO JOG IN THE MORNING! I have no time all day to get any exercise so this is the only option!

NOW I am off to clean the kitchen!!! I’m never happy unless my kitchen is clean! I had a roommate once who was obsessive about cleaning the bathroom, so between the two of us our house was in pretty good shape.

Besides photo-food-blogging (for now, at least!), and cleaning the kitchen (always) I’m also a little obsessive about how many sentences start with “I” in these posts. [I] just noticed that nearly every sentence here does! Argh. [I] guess that’s hard to avoid in a blog like this though, huh? Or maybe just a good potential challenge.

What are you obsessive about?

I had a bit of a freak-out moment at work this morning. Do you ever feel like there’s just too much to do, and it’s all running away from you?? I powered through, though, and my co-worker even commented that I was “digging my way out” (i.e. out of the pile of projects on my desk).

Breakfast (at 8 AM) was another yogurt concoction made up of a Whole Soy plain yogurt and my new groceries from yesterday!

1/2 c. pumpkin:

1 c. cinnamon puffins, 1/4 c. Udi’s granola (it was my first time trying it—LOVED it! chock full of fruit, nuts, and crunchy oats), a tiny drizzle of agave nectar, and 1 tbsp. sunflower seed butter:

with pineapple on the side:

I ate all the pineapple and most of the yogurt but it was a pretty large bowl! I saved around a half cup for an evening snack or dessert

For lunch I packed more leftovers:

red lentil dahl mixed with quinoa, a little container of tofu scramble, a gala apple, and the last of my baby spinach.  I had the tofu scramble and apple for a mid-morning snack around 10:15, and broke out the rest of lunch around 12:30, but it was a bit of a failure . . . I used week-old quinoa in the dahl mix, and unfortunately I think it went bad, because it had a tangy taste I tried to ignore it (I really hate wasting food) but ended up throwing out probably 2/3 of it. Oh well. I did enjoy the fresh spinach.

To make up for the dahl mishap I had this snack around 1:30:

An Almond/Macadamia Nut Kind bar. It was okay. Too hard, though, like peanut brittle. It kindof hurt my teeth. And didn’t do much for my hunger, so I had this guy before I left work:

(I saved the wrappers and photographed them at home. For some reason I cannot get a good pic on my kitchen table! Maybe it’s the light??)

On a different note, it was nice using walking as my exercise yesterday. I do miss the endorphin rush of Bikram/jogging, but my walks were energizing and added up to around 4 miles. Not too shabby for a “day off” In this new “fit for free” lifestyle it’s REALLY important to me to be able to take days off from “scheduled” exercise. I used to feel so guilty and worthless when I took a day off. Now I know that it’s really not the end of the world, and it’s not going to make me gain 10 lbs. overnight or make me a slower runner. Some of my best yoga sessions/jogs have been after a few days of rest!

I got home from work, dentist, and a friend’s house around 8:30 and had a quick meal of leftovers (again). Sorry to be boring!

Here we have a kale pancake (with hoisin sauce instead of teriyaki, since I live on the edge), tofu scramble, and raw carrots. Sonny and I split the leftover pineapple.

Dessert was my leftover yogurt/pumpkin/puffins from this morning, with a sprinkle of puffins, a couple prunes, a tablespoon or so of vanilla bean soy ice cream, and a few chocolate chips on top:

Exercise today = a few walks that totaled around 3.5 miles total.

How often do you take “rest” days? What do they do for you?