Grainless Wonder.

I realize this post is a retrospective, considering how I experiment with food, and how food changes me and my impulses toward things. At the time of my decision to type about the wonders of not eating grains, I was feeling the moment as being very specific to my leaning out goals. But come on Connie, who wants to go to holistic sessions to focus on weight? You go for the deeper, more pertinent goals right? Well when the calling is right motivation to focus on a physical pursuit, we realize that nourishment is part of the body, our groundedness, and the experience of our souls on earth plane. Having said that, if the goal is to radiate greater health and vitality through food choices, then this was the correct motivation.

After my spiritual pat on the back, I have myself the go ahead to have another bowl of soup and work out the logistics of offering my body a grain-free paradigm for a few weeks. 

I was up for the challenge of finding myself looking for soulful and yummy vegetables that would satisfy me while offering enough nutrition. I ate greens and potatoes, a variety of veggies, lots of onions and fruits, using bananas and apples and cherries as part of that carb content. 

But the more I did this, the hungrier I was. I increased my proteins and sucked it up. I ate warrior style during the daytime, eating very little fruit, nuts and seeds until dinner time, which was after working out, which consisted of the heaviest fishes cooked in coconut oil or butter. There were moments where I did too much compensating, but that is of course the pathway one takes when consuming a warrior profile. I was beginning to take it personally, that food was becoming less manageable, until I ended up wallowing in a sugary fiesta come Vegas at the beginning of June, which apparently destroyed my workout. How that day could continue to mess with my intake, I'll never know...

At this moment, I'm currently exercising the possibility that bringing SOME of the carbs in was a good idea, but is mostly just connected to mom and my upbringing with the fork. Those dieting patterns are tough to break out of.

Food Victories.

Everyone has that moment before the sun rises, where things just don't seem to be clicking into place, and then there's that golden moment where it finally does. That's where my diet is. It is finally having its shining, clean moment in the sun.

Food is commensurate with one's own personal physical goals, and the quest is to create some leanness in the body, so the lean muscle shows. I personally have never really seen my body super lean, but the truth is, I want to. In fact I need to, because I feel I've been in this business for a long time, but I never wanted to starve. I finally found a way to eat that works for me, based on bioindividual principles and intuitive eating...and wouldn't you know it, I'm on my way to lean.

Lately I've been getting my fill of salmon. Dinner consisted of a blackened piece of salmon with mixed veggies, salad and brown basmati rice that I decided against eating. If I didn't love it, I didn't want to spend those calories having zero fun. That sounded droll. Monday's lunch consists of carrots, tomatoes, avocado, smoked cold salmon, and a kale salad I made with pomegranate and black raspberries.

Today's Sunday Deliciousness.

Ah, Sunday.

 This is truly one of my most favorite days of the week for many reasons. One is because I get so many sweet delights from it: spending time with family, making the choice to do something fun, having time to work, cook, clean and run errands, relax, read or just sleep the day away. While i usually choose to work and clean and blah blah blah, I know that this is a healthy choice offering a wonderful outcome.

Today I had Michael over for lunch and cooked him a double decker beef patty on whole wheat, lettuce, tomato, cheddar and nitrate-free bacon. (A 6'5" trainer male can utilize this food in about an hour without too many metabolic issues). As for myself, I had a beautiful bowl of seasoned kale, yams, avocado, grape tomatoes and pan seared tilapia, seasoned with smoked paprika, red chili pepper and cayenne, good metabolic thrusters. I was way pleased at the outcome of this dish and wanted to eat all day. It was my only big meal and the rest consisted of hydration, supplementation and meditation (lots of great words all at once using-ion!). I was ready to make dessert an apple with almond butter, but I didn't get that far (couldn't fit it in).

...Okay, so I caved and had two squares of bittersweet dark chocolate. My mind thought it was the weekend...and went with it. My darn mind has a mind of its own. All of this fine food accompanied both black and green cups of tea, my favorite drink to consume from sun up until its setting. I always feel so sattvic with a little bit of tea to soothe my senses. I'm also about to down a bottle of water infused with minerals and chlorophyll. I'm thinking that this is the way to go, is to continue to drench my body with wonderful sources of nutrients it loves to experience.

Later on I had a perfectly boiled brown egg. I've been marveling over my eggs and how I've gotten the times down on cooking. I heat the water and place the eggs in slowly. I cook for 13 minutes and immediately remove them from the water, allowing them to sit for about ten minutes in replacement water that I salt. Then I proceed to crack, roll, then peel under cool running water and they peel beautifully. I've heard tale of not boiling a fresh egg, but two fresh batches later, and I had the most perfect eggs I've ever seen myself peel!

The day rounded out perfectly with having been able to accomplish a huge number of tasks, including cleaning my room and putting away clothes, washing dishes, prep cooking for the week, totally planning my meals mentally at least, and throwing out bags of trash. I'm on a mission to not only get my diet right...I'm out to get this life right. Namaste.

A Day of Successful Clean Eating

We talk about eating clean but I don't think most people actually have a grasp of what it means to eat clean. Eating clean contains all whole, unprocessed animals and vegetable and fruit calories (but not too much), the odd sweet potato and the occasional brown rice, keeping the amount of carb grams to a fat burning minimum (which according to some research, 100-150 carbs can still burn body fat and is just enough where fat loss can still happen). Protein totals and overall sugar intake matters, so that insulin is not compromised (which some say is good for muscle leanness and performance).

Here's a couple of articles on eating clean.

http://caloriecount.about.com/means-eat-clean-b583101

http://www.completenutrition.com/blog/posts/2013/march/what-it-means-to-eat-clean/

Eating clean is a discipline for me of major proportion, but I still attempt to produce. It's nothing easy but the results are so worth it. Every time I eat clean, I see a major difference in the way I look and feel. However I must say that it initially makes training harder, but at the same time easier, because ultimately you can see more muscle and striation by eating this way.
For muscle building competitors, they are even impressively organized on the timing of meals and what and how much they consume and when. When you are a week out from competing, it's a whole 'nother ball game. I considered competing for that reason alone, and I need to see if I can sustain the type of intake that is suggested, or I'd fail plus lose my entry money because it wouldn't be worth it to put on a swimsuit and be called fat by your peers. It's a different scale of measurement. The Gods and Goddesses of the muscle realm call it shop lingo, but I digress.

Last night I went to bed without any carbs, just a protein shake, sauteed shrimp and greens. I had a huge amount of protein for my dinner. In the morning I had my almonds and tea for breakfast. Here's an entire breakdown.

Morning: 40 almonds, plain black tea, coffee with some cream and sugar (I broke down), apple, orange, banana.
Noon: 20g of spicy Thai tuna, brown rice bowl, 20 baby carrots.
Dinner: 6 oz. BBQ salmon, 3 cups mixed greens (1/2 dino kale, 1/2 dandelion greens), sweet potato with butter.
Lemon water and green tea helps me to stave off weird sugar cravings.
Snacks: 50g total protein from 2 different protein shakes

Food Is Love.

Ever since I could remember, I connected food to a true sense of belonging. Every little bite and morsel that I ate, was contributed to some loving and supportive moment in my life. No wonder I fell in love with food. It was my greatest supporter and my biggest fan growing up! It was there for me in my lowest moments, when no one else was. It was a surrogate father, a replacement emotion for the man who wasn't there. Today I am back in that father relationship to heal it, and I realize that I make the same mistakes while being with a man who helps to recreate the reasons for my food choices.

My mom energies helped me to recreate the reasons I was supposed to find that same food disgusting. Now my mom never even seemed to enjoy the concept of being in a marriage, and wanted all of us daughters to get our careers and our skinny "on" before accepting a man (read: loser bum I have to take care of ) into my life. Mom projected a fear onto me that wreaked of a little bit of hatred for men, a hatred for choosing that man, and looking at fattening, sugary foods as the enemy. No wonder men left a bad taste in my mouth...

So then, was food really love? Yes it still was, if that food could give me the satisfaction that a man wasn't giving, food once again became the hero. Besides, mom would never approve of any of the men, but a hot baked pie, she might approve of that.

Holidays was a must to attend, and would be piled high with all the fun, exciting, crazy fattening foods one could find in one sitting. Everyone would gather in the kitchen at mealtimes to talk on a regular basis, and it was in fact what my mom wanted for us, was to have a community watering hole where everyone felt comfortable coming into and contributing our efforts to. It wasn't often after a certain point in all of our lives that we would sit to the table together to eat, so I immediately felt a void being the youngest one, to not have that table meal. It is no wonder that I had to cultivate a sense of need around serving Mike and Kai a meal at dinner, no matter how subservient I felt doing it. That's another topic in itself for another time.

When I didn't feel skinny, I ate a peanut butter cup. That put me backwards and almost drove me to seek counseling after a bulimic bout. No matter how mild, there was a part of me that wanted to go down that road, and another part of me that just knew how awful it was to take on bulimic habits. If food was love, throwing up was not the answer, even in my desperate state.
So since I eliminated that option, I headed over to another form of desperation, exercise buliminia. Don't even THINK about eating peanut butter. That sent me into an easy 5 miler and making me think it wasn't enough. That's when I started eating vegetarian. I guess now orthorexia was in my cards.

Is this still love? One thing I learned was, food may have signaled some form of love coming from an external force, but it definitely did not express self-love in my life. I wonder what other family members taught me that a lack of self-love was okay.

We all emotionally eat...My Big Opinion.

...Okay. So I'm sitting here, thinking of the last sugary thing I ate, and laughing at how rebellious I can be about my food at times. I also realize that all of us can be rebels when we choose it. It is a matter of knowing when the choice is conscious, and when it is unconscious.

I know that I was feeling a loss of sweetness in my life at the moment I felt a craving creep up for sugar. I also knew that I needed more protein, and had eaten less of it over the course of the last 24 hours. Well I read the energy right, but I simply ignored it, and chose to feed my emotion, rather than feed the regimen I'm on to achieve the results I truly want out of my body. After all, I'm getting ready for photos! Gotta be lean...I even bought a bag of carrots most recently to feed my sugar urge.

So what was going on when the sugar urge hit: Physiologically, I had celebrated that past weekend with a little alcoholic imbibement...this led to a surge and drop in blood sugar levels. Emotionally: I had some issues with my partner. Sugar! Missing the sweetness in life! Louise L. Hay has an affirmation for this one. She writes: "This moment is filled with joy. I now choose to experience the sweetness of today. I now choose to make my life light and easy and joyful." (I put two together.) Mentally: "I want sugar, and I will have it because I'm rebellious!" Spiritually: I didn't do enough meditation, and I definitely needed to do some yoga. I also may not have journalled that day. For me, all of these things are very important to offset my childhood urges for sugar, which began at birth. ...
What do mommies give their babies when they are upset? Sugar. What is given as rewards for good behavior? Sugar. What is considered dessert food? Sugar. What is in all processed, packaged, fast foods?
Sugar. What is the first thing that drops when you realize you're famished? Sugars. Don't tell me we don't all emotionally eat. It has to be connected to SOMETHING.

So here's my thought: since eating has been a part of our lives since our humble beginnings, just like our DNA, then there is no way that we haven't connected our emotions to what we consume, as it such a sensitive topic for so many, and because we feel such satisfaction from eating particular foods. Many of us also understand that emotions are the window to our soul's walk, so it is important to listen to the messages our emotions bring us, for they tell us a great deal about ourselves. Ultimately, it is about a reprogramming of this emotional trigger and tendency, to allow our souls the joy of choosing a food because it is good for us and not because it feeds our emotions...though I do have to say, sometimes a little celebration is pretty awesome! Namaste.

Salmon tacos, zucchini and cucumbers

I'm so happy right now. I just made a yummy yummy, and a minor kitchen cleaning victory, and dug it.

The evening began with me coming home late from the last dress rehearsal for Beauty and the Beast, a wonderful play directed by Bob Arnold, at Romer MS, my old home, and I committed to choreographing it last year. Oh it was so much fun. But the real point was that it was late, and my son and I hadn't eaten. My food intake consisted of some tuna and a few crackers, some dark chocolate, an apple and water. It wasn't until dinner, that I had consumed the real sustenance. It feels funny to look at carbs and glycemic load again.

I didn't want to make the same (possibly) boring slab of fish with some veggies, so it occurred to me that I had some organic corn tortillas waiting for me to notice them. I found salsa, avocados, peppers, and diced some onion. I even found cilantro! I so scored with that. As I was cooking, I came across an English cucumber and sliced it up. When I ate several slices, they tasted so sweet and delicious, almost as if it was the first time I had ever had a cucumber. I topped them with salsa and avocado, and wondered why I didn't open up a can of black beans.