Recommended Books

I have recently been reading Make Shift Happen, by Dean Dwyer and Practical Paleo by Diane Sanfilippo. I highly recommend both!

Make Shift Happen is all about changing how you think. He uses examples outside of the fat loss world to show you how your thinking cash hold you back or help you get ahead. I found it very inspiring for my life, not just fat loss. The shifts that had the most profound impact for me were:

#17 Think in beta: Consider that you are the beta version of yourself right now, testing to see what works for you and what doesn't and once you test drive some theories, you will upgrade to You 2.0. Following the lead of software engineers where the dream of perfection doesn't get in the way of getting started but rather pushes them to create something that functions but has bugs that will get worked out after being used to figure out what changes to make. This excited me not only for fat loss and realizing that there is no set plan for my body and lifestyle and it will take me some time to figure out weekday works best for me...
I also saw it in my desire to sew. I love sewing and fabrics and dreaming up images of clothes I would make... But the fear of failure along with wishing my body had a different more "fashion" shape has prevented me from even starting. I have been living in places with space to sew, finally, for 11 months now and not sewn a single item of clothing. This has not stopped me from buying fabric and sewing patterns! For some reason, the thought that seeing clothes for the body i have now can NE a beta period of testing out not only fashion but also my sewing skills (which will only improve the more sewing i do) means that when I do have my dream body, by then I will have developed superior sewing skills and will be able to make even better garments (or alter garments I had already made to adjust to my new body!)

#8 Be 911. Could you save yourself in the event of disaster? Could you save a loved one? He writes about survival and what it means physically to be able to save yourself (endurance running, pullups, pushups, swimming 1 km, etc.) And saving a loved one (carrying 80 pounds for a distance, pulling 180 pounds of dead weight). If you needed to pull someone out of the water to safety could you do it? His entire exercise regimen, while being under 30 minutes, another shift, is designed with survival in mind. This gives your workouts a purpose. Not just mindlessly riding a stationary bike and watching the news, but focusing intensely on your workout and knowing you ate working towards a goal that could mean life or death to you our someone you love. Pretty much blew my mind.

There are other shifts that have been inspiring as well, but I don't want to give it all away :)

Practical Paleo has way more than just recipes. She explains the digestion process and how grains, legumes and sugar effect your digestion, mood and body. It also includes several reference sheets to help sum up fats, foods to eat, and a carb index showing you where to get carbohydrates from vegetables. I found her one sheet references on her website before I got the book at Balanced Bites.After some serious GI tract issues last month I am all about healing my gut and the first half of her book explains the science of digestion and HOW TO FIX IT! This is important! I've only just started reading it and flipped a bit through the recipes which look delicious.

Organized kitchen

Having an organized kitchen is going to make is so much more pleasant to cook!

My first frittata!

I hope it is delicious, I am too full from dinner (chocolate beef chili and sweet potato fries that were disappointingly soft) to try it, so I shall wait until breakfast tomorrow! I love an evening of cooking that is not food for the same night! It takes the pressure off timing and feels more fun and experimental rather than a chore. It just means every meal is a leftover!

SUGAR!! Oh, and getting things done

Yesterday I had a bit of sugar, made my teeth hurt and I felt like I had a long drawn out sugar crash through the evening. So I'm going to work hard to cut as much sugar out of my diet as I can. I've found some chocolate bars I can make that use cocoa powder and agave nectar (though from the Amazon preview of the cookbook Practical Paleo Agave is suggested to be avoided). I think I eat too much fruit. I've slowed down on the fruit smoothies since I first got the Blendtec blender. I need to suck it up and go without sugar for a while to get it out of my system.

I've cut out soda and I feel good about it. I still have some hard cider and beer on occasion. I love Crispin Cider so I'm fine not really having beer and just having cider.

Last night we watched Ratatouille. I love that movie. It makes me so excited about cooking, and plating and trying new recipes. Last weekend I spent some time prepping foods (pressing garlic, chopping onions, making Pad Thai sauce) so that we'd have food ready to go for the week. The prepped food lasted about 2.5 days. So this was brilliant to do but I need to do more! As much as I enjoy cooking, when I get home from work or the gym, I hate that we don't eat dinner until about 9pm because prepping food takes a long time.

One part of this is when the kitchen isn't cleaned up the night before, if I leave a few pans in the sink after dinner and get home the next day from work and want to make dinner but first have to do dishes it makes me procrastinate. This leads to an even later dinner. I have a 7 minute commute! I used to have this problem when I had a 45 minute commute and I thought "oh, if only I had a shorter commute, I could eat dinner earlier!" This is not the case I am learning. I need to keep the kitchen ready to go for whenever I want to cook. There was actually a Good Magazine tip about this in 30 days of home cooking.

Looking up "clean kitchen" I found this article from The Kitchn about how to keep your kitchen clean by doing a little something everyday. This is a concept I have been planning/thinking about incorporating into my life - the only want to build a stone wall is one stone at a time. So the quilt I am working on, I'm going to start by gathering the fabrics, then cutting the pieces, then slowly assembling quilt blocks.

I downloaded a desktop timer program to use the Pomodoro Technique to try to focus more on work when I'm working and also in seeking things to help me not only study for my exams but also get things done like chopping up veggies on the weekends, cleaning the house/my woman cave, etc.

Awesome dinner, curry and mashed cauliflower

Mashed garlic cauliflower and red pineapple curry. Eating while watching Ratatouille, quite possibly my favorite movie :)

Cook up 2 bags frozen cauliflower.
In small saucepan, heat up a couple Tbsp coconut oil and a cup of coconut milk, a crushed clove of garlic. Heat up for a few minutes.
Put cauliflower in the food processor with the liquid and blend until smooth. Add Salter and pepper.

For the curry... Coconut oil in hot pan, spoonful of red curry sautee a bit, toss in some thinly sliced onion, sliced zucchini, can of pineapple chunks after drinking most of the juice, shredded 1/4 cabbage. Sautee for a while then pour in a can of coconut milk and add a pound of sliced already cooked chicken thighs (cooked on the George Foreman). Put lid on and simmer!

I was so pleased with this dinner... deliciousness! And paired with Ratatouille?! Now I'm even more excited to cook more! Omnomnom!

Shifting to a budgeted, stationary lifestyle

The hardest part of a food budget is that I know I have enough food for the week and my fridge is getting more and more empty. Normally I would go to the store now and buy more food just to fill it up - I have to keep reminding myself that I have food already for the rest of the week, it just requires thawing some meats and using things in the pantry. (The plan for tonight is grass-fed steak with cauliflower "mashed potatoes" and sauteed kale and spinach; then is red curry with chicken thighs with cucumber to cleanse the palette afterwards.

I've been keeping track of our grocery spending, we're just about to halfway through the month and we are more than halfway through the month's small food budget ($300).


Spending Since Sept 1st (for two people)

TOTAL                   $165.04
Meat                 $60.40
Fruit                         $42.23
Vegetables         $27.16
Alcohol                 $20.02
Spices                 $16.72
Fats                         $16.33
Dairy                 $9.10
Eggs                         $8.99
Sweets                 $8.65
Coffeeshop         $6.00
Nuts + Seeds         $5.89
Restaurants         $3.95 (a Jamba juice)

Internally saying "no" to going out to eat when we're tired and hungry has been difficult, but it has also lead to  making a random stir-fry with whatever veggies and meat we have which always turns out delicious - especially with some coconut amios and Worcestershire sauce! Mmm.

I made soft caramels last weekend, mainly because I wanted to, I'm not really eating them. And now I found this recipe in Imbibe Magazine for Apple Cider Caramels! I very much want to try these.

I have also started a budget spreadsheet where I am keeping track of expenses. I'm adding in big ticket items I know about, average bills that I then update when I actually get the bill, spending as it happens and trying to keep track. I have this vision of the future that is keeping me going. Visions of living debt free, in a house that I own, with a puppy and a garden. Not too much to ask right? So I just need to keep that vision clear every time I want to splurge on something that's not a neccesity in the budget.

The gas budget is a big stumbling block because having a car makes it feel really easy to so somewhere, "Oh my friend is in Seattle? I'll just pop up there for a weekend." Well, the cost of gas is really high and then the expense of buying food when I'm visiting a town where I don't have a kitchen just adds to it. So as much as I love to travel and visit friends - this is going to be a big change for me.

I'm excited about it too though because I will be studying to take my Architect's exam and I have many projects at home, and a lovely fella who I can happily lounge around with at no expense :). When I first moved here back in October of last year, I spent most weekends not at home and wondered why I felt like I wasn't accomplishing any of the things I was so excited to have space and time for now that I didn't live in the Big Apple anymore.

I hadn't stopped my living on the road mentality from the travels of the previous summer. So now, I'm here, I'm buckling down, staying home and studying as well as sewing, learning to cook more things, bonding with local friends and working on fitness. I'm excited about this, but I just have to remind myself of that when I start feeling restless... and maybe go for a jog in the park and hang out with some friends among the trees. :)

Dentist for the first time in like 6 years

I went in for my initial exam and x rays for starting at a new dentist (one I hope to keep for a while as he is located 2 floors above my office!) I had more cavities than I care to utter the number of and the start of tooth decay in many locations. There were cavities between my teeth which he said is a result of poor diet choices. I'm going to list some things that we discussed:

• When brushing your teeth it's not about pressure, it's about time, 5 seconds in each area
• He recommended a Sonicare toothbrush and said that would help with my gum sensitivity. Thier office sells them without a markup because he believes in them and wants them to be affordable. I need to inquire what model it is though. 
• Apparently I never was taught how to floss, just told to do it. He showed me how, taking the floss down the side of each tooth once getting it past the point of contact. Also pushing down on the gum a little bit but the idea of flossing is more to scrape stuff off the teeth
• Wait at least 20 minutes AFTER you eat something sweet/acidic to brush your teeth. The acid makes your teeth soft and brushing too soon can actually scrape away parts of your teeth. 
• If you are going to drink a soda, use a straw to keep it off your teeth - that way it just goes straight down your throat without pouring all over your teeth.
• Cavities on the side (between) teeth is generally caused by diet, and not flossing. 
• Probably most people know this but hard candies (when you suck on it for a long time) or gummy candies are the worst. They provide the longest exposure to sweets to your teeth causing the most damage.

I told him that I had begun to eat a Paleo diet which he said would help. I was also informed of dietary studies of reversing tooth decay a while back by a friend who was researching it because one of her teeth is dying and she wanted to see what she could do without resorting to a gap or replaced tooth. Basically the gist is avoiding sugars, limiting fruit to 1 piece a day, A DAY! Consuming fish, bone broth and organ meats as well as taking Cod Liver or vitamin D3 supplements. I have also read some reports of people chewing Trident gum with Xylitol and having cativies go away, or even cracked teeth fix themselves. So I'm reading into this a bit more and I think my plan is to get the two big cavities on my right side fixed because I know about them and they make it hard to eat sometimes (and they are big) and see what I can do diet and hygiene wise (getting a Sonicare and stepping up my flossing)  to reverse the issues, or at least stop them in their tracks. 

The x-rays I got were digital and I read something online that the digital x-rays are more powerful/sensitive than traditional films and therefore can pick up more cavities that weren't considered there before. This can mean better preventative work but it can also mean lots of money for dentists filling cavities that previously wouldn't have been found. I told him I wanted to spend as little out of pocket as I can (I have dental insurance, but it doesn't generally cover that much) so it looks like I'll be getting silver fillings rather than white ones.