Day 3 - Feeling Better and Getting It

When I came home from work, I took a shower and then sat in the bath and meditated. I feel like it really helped to calm my mind. I am going to try to do that more often. Also, slept last night with no sleeping pills. I was feeling a bit anxious when I got home, but after I meditated I felt it go away. I listened to some audios yesterday with Natalia Rose and Macha, those really helped me to remember what it was I was  trying to do before, which is be healthy in body and mind. I think I have always been trying to be healthy in body, but never really practicing the mind part. I think taking some time out to mediate really does help, it took me a while to get all the thoughts running out of my head. As I am a bit OCD, I kept thinking I had to repeat certain mantras or wishes in my head over and over again and trying to make it perfect, but then I realized that wait meditating is about not thinking. I then tried to calm my mind and be still, finally after some time I heard nothing. Instead I heard myself saying let it go.. strange right. By the time I was done with my shower and dressed, I felt much more relaxed then I normally do when I’m at home. I think I’m like a lot of women, when I get home I unload all my stress and anxiety and then use food to help me relax. This is going to be a long process but it’s a start.

Macha and Natalia's Audios I like...

Emotional Eating:

http://www.byoaudio.com/play/WqRrqjGs

http://www.herfuture.com/profiles/blogs/talking-with-natalia-rose-1?xg_source=activity

Starting Fresh: Day 1

I am starting clean today. I had a rough weekend with drinking. I feel like I drank and ate too much. But really I feel like this every Monday and I want to stop feeling like this. I was just reading Montel Williams’ book “Living Well” and I like how he asked himself at one point, what if I took this healthy living to another level? What would the possibilities be and bring? I feel like I have a lot of the healthy living aspects in my life, but they are constantly deterred by my way of thinking. I want to lose weight, so I try not to eat, which ends up back firing on me and I end up eating too much. I exercise 4-5 times a week and then I unravel my hard work with binges and drinking too much on the weekends. My goal right now is to just do better in all those areas of my life. I want to try to do this for 30 days and see what happens.




My plan:

1. Drink one green juice a day

2. No alcohol

3. Cut out processed foods completely

4. Portion control and no overeating

I feel inspired, I feel like I have my mojo back. I just wrote a post recently where I said I felt like I had lost all feeling and motivation for work, but I have to do work that I am passionate about. I just went to meet with the PhD program coordinator at ucsd and she gave me a lot of good tips on getting started and hopefully getting into the program. Only 6 people were accepted last year, so it may be grim, but I have to at least try. I am going to try my best and make this happen. I want this more than anything else right now! I know I can do this. When I was on the campus I felt like I was home, that is where I belong. I love school, I love being immersed in that world. Being able to do what I love, wow that gives me chills. Now I just have to get started! First step, write some emails to professors and tell them about my plans for research. Second, dig up old papers and start expanding on them. Woo hoo I can do this.


Pictures to inspire… Diego Rivera working on a mural and Frida Kahlo in front of her infamous painting. Love IT!

Portion Control - Totally Need it

I was thinking of writing a post on what I normally eat and my issues I have had with food in general. I got turned onto eating raw last year and I was doing good with that for a while, but the past couple months I have diverged from this a bit. I do eat cooked food, as in steamed vegetables, tofu, usually for dinner. I try to follow the tenets from Natalia Rose’s book “The Raw Food Detox Diet,” and drink juice in the morning, fruit as a snack, salad for lunch, and some combination of salad, vegs, sweet potatoes for dinner. Where I have been verging off lately is drinking way too little juice, having too many coffee days in the morning, adding feta to my salads, eating cottage cheese (which I can’t believe I have reverted back to), eating out too much, drinking and indulging on the weekends (so hard in the summer!), all of which have led to a 5 or so pound weight gain. I think I have also been eating foods with lots of salt, like the fat free feta, too much hummus, egg white salads from trader joes (each one has 600mg of sodium), kettle corn popcorn. As of this week I have started limiting the feta and cutting back on snacking on popcorn at night, so far I think it is working.


My other issue even with eating raw and cooked, is that I tend to over eat and my portion sizes are huge. I am really trying to work on this starting this week. I am going to be more aware of the sizes of what I eat and if I am really truly hungry. I just found this on the site www.greenlemonade.com. I just love this site! She talks about eating the amount of your two hands cupped together. Geez I normally eat so much more than that. I am going to really give this a shot!

Introduce the concept of the “Buddha Bowl” into your life.

Serving size is the secret to not packing on the pounds, and allowing more of your body’s energy to be spent on healing and repair work (vs digestion all the time). A Buddha bowl is roughly the size of your cupped hands. While it may seem small at first, give your body and mind time to adjust. Practice eating mindfully and then go for a short walk after you finish eating to set the end of the meal in your mind. If in the beginning after eating this portion of food you find that you are still hungry, add another half of a Buddha bowl portion. Some of you might appreciate a little more direction here – so consider this buddha bowl in your daily routine.

I just googled buddha bowl and apparently they sell them, check it out.