Raw Food -- Cooking Class!

I have such a weird attitude when it comes to food. I mean, I want to learn to cook, but I get so stressed out about wasting food!

Yesterday I sat myself down and had a little talk about this. I said, "Nadia, you've spent $500 countless times on classes during your eight year university degree, why not spend the same on a self-directed cooking class?"

Damn. I am so right! I'm really glad I have me to talk me out of being so irrational sometimes -- I always know what to say to my crazy self to make things make sense.

So.

I'm cooking. Well, not cooking, actually because I'm learning to make raw creations. Uncooking? Food preparing? Blending? ... I don't know about titles. I'm basically chopping stuff up, throwing it into the blender, cackling out a "will it blend?", then pushing go.

Easy!

But now I'm taking notes LIKE A SCIENTIST, yo. To see what ratios work and don't work. And taking pictures too of all my concoctions.

I'll post them soon -- some are really quite delicious!

Status Update

Well. Where did most of that year go? I really got distracted, friends, by something that while it did help me grow in a certain way, definitely threw me off the track of my health goals.

Ooo... ambiguous mystery...

But!-- I am pulling this run-away carriage of a life right around and getting back on the straight and narrow (wherever that was). I'm a little lost in the woods, but I'm sure my intuition can find the right path again.

SO.

I now have 70 days until the end of the year. It's a Saturday morning today. This weekend I will be CLEANING ALL THE THINGS and thinking about the goals I want to accomplish by the end of 2010.

I'll post them here tomorrow.

200 Sit Ups Challenge -- Trying Again!

Um... So I did Week 4 again and again and again... then fell off the wagon.

For a month or so.

But!

I must not lose heart!

So this week I went back to Week 3. It hurt! My abs are flabs.

But!

I must persevere!

Running Report

I felt horrible when I woke up today. So, in crazy Nadia style, I got mad at my own uselessness and made myself go to the gym, where I proceeded to kick my own ass for half an hour.

I really thought I wouldn't make it through today; I kept thinking "I'm never going to make it, I'm never going to make it..."

SHUT UP BODY -- DON'T WANNA HEAR IT

Whatevs. I made my body do it anyway. I'll show you, body! Just for the whining, I'll make you do sprints!

Sprints are great. I did three: one at 10 min, 15 min and 20 min, one minute each followed by one minute of walking.

Upshot to sprinting: shoots up the adrenaline and then makes the running feel eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeasy afterwards.

Distance 2.52 km
Time: 30 min
Velocity: 5 km/h

Monday Morning

I wake up and spend too long THINKING about whether or not I should go to the gym.

Argh.

No more thinking -- JUST GO NADIA.

Okay, okay, here I go.

I hadn’t been going to the gym last month for the stupidest reason: the payment didn’t go through on my credit card.

Today, I went there with a fist full of cash and was determined to get back on my treadmill. But, as it turns out, the money all went through yesterday. Oh.

So I had been stressing about nothing. Ha. So silly.

Time: 20 min
Level: 4
Feeling: AWESOME! Energetic despite being sleep low this week and my mood is good. Just what I need to plow through all this work on my desk.

200 Sit Ups Challenge -- Week 3

Doing Week 3, Day 3 of the 200 Sit Ups Challenge, I thought I would never make it through. But then when I got to the end, I just threw everything into it and just kept doing sit ups.

Doing ten, taking a breath, doing the next ten.

I did 200 sit ups today!

Okay, that was probably a crazy one-off. Nonetheless, I'm proud of myself. :D

Today is my first beach day of the year. I don't think I look any different, but maybe I will in three weeks when I'm done. Having a flat tummy is a nice bonus incentive. :)

Ikigai

Why do you wake up in the morning?

Why do you live your life?

For me, it's to grow, love and contribute. If I can do all three, it's a good day.

Running Report

Only made it twice this week to the gym. I ran 20 min each time at Level 6. (My friend Susan has decided to rename the arbitrary levels at the gym: Warp 6 instead of Level 6. I think that's AWESOME. :D )

First instinct: beat myself up about it. But why? What's what gonna get me? A hurt Nadia, that's what. And a hurt Nadia helps no one, not ever herself. Instead, let's figure out why I dropped from four times I week to twice.

Why? I've been staying up too late (out at events on weeknights) and researching raw this whole weekend (oh, the irony that my health research takes over the space of actually doing healthy behaviours).

So? Let's get to bed on time! 10:30 or bust!

Raw -- Apple/Banana/Flax Breakfast

(left)

1 tbsp soaked golden flaxed (overnight, then drained the next day)
1/2 banana
1 apple

BLEND

(right)

other half of the banana

---

I love this breakfast -- way better than my usual packet of nuked oats and sugar. Only problem is that it takes forever to eat since bananas make me gaggy. Hm. Let's see if I can work on that.

Raw Food -- The Beginning

Yesterday, I went to Drive Organics, a grocery store on Commercial Drive that is dedicated to providing healthy food options. This is the haul of food I got. In the top right corner, that's golden flax seed in a bag and cayenne pepper.

I have to say that I've never had flax seed before, but it has extremely high Omega-3 levels which is GREAT for the skin. I take Omega-3 fish oil pills when my skin is really bad and it always seems to help. I'm excited to see if this will help.

Price: $25 (though $10 was just for the almonds)

Raw!

I decided today to go RAW!

...photos and more info tomorrow.

200 Sit Ups Challenge -- Week 2

I made it! I made it! I finally made it to Week 2 of the 200 Sit Ups Challenge!

I've never made it before -- I somehow kept falling down on Week 1 over and over. I finally realized what my problem was: I had assigned my three days of the week (M/W/F), but I never bothered to set a time. So I've set my time as first thing I do after I roll out of bed.

That being said, I've already managed to lose track...

But no fear! I have seventeen minutes left!

Okay, gotta go crunch it up! G'night, lovelies!

Running Report

Last week I managed to get to the gym FOUR TIMES! Break through! I don't care that one of them was 15 minutes as the gym was closing; when I'm new at something, it's more important to take steps as little as I need to, as long as the habit-forming is taking place.

Last Sunday was my birthday and I finally turned 27. Woo! Now I can stop pretending to be 27 (I spent all last year pretending to be 27, as I much prefer its aesthetics over 26). But even on my birthday, I didn't skip -- what would be the point? People seemed to think that my birthday would be a great day to laze about, but I'm really glad I went. My birthday wasn't an easy day for me, so really kicking my ass at the gym -- going longer and harder -- made me strong enough to handle the day with grace.

Well, I'm dressed up in my shortshorts again -- time to get back out there! Yesterday I ran 3k in 33 minutes with a handful of SPRINTS in the middle (oh reader, you have no idea how much I thought I was going to die and/or fall off the treadmill). So today I'm taking it a little easier on my 27-year-old self.

But not too easy -- I've still got a lot of growing to do. ;P

Running

CRAP!!!

Gym is closing in 28 minutes!

GO GO GO!

Running Progress

Back from the gym!

30 min on Level 4 felt like a snooze -- tomorrow I'm kicking it up a notch to 30 on Level 5.

I love that sweaty, gross feeling. Now to wash it all away in the shower. Mmm... clean.

Finding / Making Oneself

I spent eight years in a university, reading, thinking, writing, talking, talking, talking -- trying to find myself. Somehow I never found her.

I think I'll go to the gym instead and go make her.

Why Do I Grow?

To save myself, then save the world! :D

Running

Why do I gorogoro around the house for so long on weekends before going to the gym? Sure, there's a bit of mild discomfort for some stretches of the workout, but on days like today, I felt GREAT 2/3 of the way through the workout!

REMEMBER THIS NADIASELF: WORKOUTS MAKE YOU FEEL GREAT

Since it's the weekend and I have a little more time to spend, I pushed the "5k" button on Level 5. This made the machine jump to an 8(!!!) and was SUPER FAST! I lasted for three crazy minutes, grinning through jump of adrenaline before I had to hit stop -- I thought I was going to fall off the machine!

Anyway, I did 30 minutes on Level 4. Longest time yet at the gym! Woot!

Tomorrow: 30 minutes on Level 5? I'm excited to try!

Going to sleep in my workout clothes instead of naked. Hopefully this will cut down the time I lay in bed COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLD, not wanting to leave. I need to get out and RUN! :D

Okay, okay! TO BED!

Running / Dancing

Have had a bit of an upside down week, so while I went to the gym on Monday and Tuesday, I didn't manage to make it yesterday or today.

What I did do, though, was to crank up the intensity from Monday to Tuesday: level 4 for 20 minutes on Monday, level 5 for 20 minutes on Tuesday. I liked level five better -- I felt like I really got to RUN for stretches of time. Still not sure what the five means -- five mph? five km/h? five on a scale from one to ten? -- but it's faster than four. Four feels like a jog, five feels like a run. I like the running part.

Oh! And tonight, I have a new thing on my plate: dancing! I'm taking a four week workshop on the basics of flamenco dancing. SO EXCITED. I will report back!

Running Progress

Okay, after all that big talk of running three times last week, I only went on Monday.

*shakes head*

Oh, Nadia. This is always the way: talk big about what I intend to do, feel accomplished, don't do it. But there's no lying to the blog. So this week I've got to do it.

Three times or bust!

And yeah, I only made it through the first week of sit ups too. So I have to restart that too.

Now that I think about it, I put something on every night last week. This week, I'm going to make sure I have some down time so that I can sleep on time and be up to do all this exercise. I'll report back soon on how this goes.

200 Sit Ups Challenge -- Week 1

Oh yes. And I'm back on the 200 Sit Ups Challenge again, back at week 1 of the regime:

http://www.twohundredsitups.com/week1.html

I'm following column two on their site.

Woo! Done them! Okay, my abs were very wobbly. Let's see if we can't strengthen them up! :D

Running Progress

The last two weeks, I've gone to the gym twice each week for twenty minutes, jogging at speed 4 (4 miles an hour? 4 km an hour? Arbitrary 4? Who knows!). Which is good. Which is more than I was going last year, which was not at all. So good for me.

I now seem to have a new habit: going to the gym twice a week, on average.

I like this. I want to go more. I intend to go every day this week.

I will report back on how this goes. I expect the most difficult day to be Wednesday, after my date with my man -- I foresee it being difficult to leave those arms at the crack of dawn. Let's see how strong I am! :D

---

Oh, and I've dropped the 30 Day Challenge. I wanted to set a big goal, but it was getting emotionally demoralizing to keep falling back to Day 1 over and over. Now that I'm actually going to the gym, I just want to feel good about my progress and to keep pushing myself a little bit every day to grow more and more. Restarting the number felt like going backwards, felt like running in circles, when where I want to be going is linearly forward.

30 Day Running Challenge -- Day 4

I didn't make it to the gym today.

I tried. After work I bought Subway and Starbucks to try to save time and energy, but I fell right asleep on my bed. I just ate my sub and am so tired.

I'm just happy that I'm getting the rest and food I need. I'm also sitting here drinking gallons of water and chompin' away on my vitamins.

So today is my Get Out of Gym Free card day.

Tomorrow morning, I'll be back there.

30 Day Running Challenge -- Day 3

Having gone last night, going this morning was a little bit harder than normal. I don't know why I have this block about mornings -- why am I always trying to push it to later in the day? I don't know.

But I've made it to the third day! Finally! No more sickness or business to keep me back -- I MADE IT! AND!-- through my first morning. I'm proud of these two things.

Today at work, I will walk down to the sushi store at lunch, all by myself. I will order the big tuna and salmon combo, the one with the maki AND the nigiri. I will probably have a flavoured iced tea too. Mm! :D

---

Distance: 2.4 km

Time: 25 min

Velocity: 5.76 km/h

30 Day Running Challenge -- Day 2

This time at the gym, it was all jogging!

YAYAYAY! :D

I thought I felt my heart skip a beat at 7:40 minutes in. I hope not. :( My heart is slightly irregular, in that it has a hole in it. I hope I don't break it or anything! I need it for LOVE and things, y'know? :)

Okay, time for a shower, then to finish my dress.

Tomorrow's going to be quite the day! I've got the UBC Poetry Slam Finals to attend -- hence the dress -- but that means I'm going to be back at the gym in less than ten hours. ACK!

---

Distance: 2.4 km

Time: 25 min

Velocity: 5.76 km/h

30 Day Running Challenge -- Day 1, Take 4

Jogged again at the gym, with just a few minutes of walking.

ALSO! Started Week 1 of the 200 Sit Ups Challenge again! :D

I'm feeling good.

---

Distance: 2.4 km

Time: 25 min

Velocity: 5.76 km/h

30 Day Running Challenge -- Day 1, Take 3

Ran on the treadmill this time at the gym. Well, jogged and speedwalked really. But my heart rate was high, so that's good.

Sweated a lot, got lightheaded after.

---

Distance: 2.4 km

Time: 25 min

Velocity: 5.76 km/h

30 Day Running Challenge -- Day 1, Take 2

Ran again. Barfed again.

BUT

I did it all in two minutes less than last week's Day 1 time.

SO THERE

---

Distance: 2.8 km to Nanaimo and back.

Time: 22 min

Velocity: 7.63 km/h

30 Day Running Challenge -- Still Fail

Still sick. Still fail.

HOWEVER

I did NOT barf today.

SO

Tomorrow I run again!

RAWR!

30 Day Running Challenge -- Fail

Got sick. Can't run.

GRR.

Get better. Try again.

I think I'd be more mad about having to stop if I thought I wasn't going to finish this.

But I am.

So whatevs. You can't take me down, sickness!

*shakes fist into the night!*

30 Day Running Challenge -- Day 2

Ran again to Nanaimo. Legs more sore. Took more time. Am tired.

Went in the morningish, near noon.

---

Time: 30 min

Distance: 2.8 km

Velocity: 5.6 km/h

30 Day Running Challenge -- Day 1

Despite feeling ill, despite having lost my glasses, despite my gym being closed, I went for a run because today is the first day of my 30 Day Running Challenge.

I ran.

I ran.

I spat.

A lot.

I tasted blood.

I spat more.

I ran.

I threw up. (Sorry, East Van neighbour! :( )

I ran.

I ran home.

I threw up again.

I'm swaying.

And trying not to throw up again.

BUT I RAN.

DID YOU HEAR THE PART ABOUT HOW I RAN?

YEAH.

THAT WAS ME.

I DID THAT.

Okay, going to die now...

---

Time: 24 minutes, straight east to Nanaimo.

Distance: 2.8 km

Velocity: 7 km/h

Exercise -- Back to the Gym

Today I went to the gym!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

I have to confess, dear friends, that I more often talk about going to the gym than I actually go. But not today -- today, I went.

I think it can be really hard for me to care about my body. But this week, not caring about my body almost lost me something very close to my heart. So today, yes today, I went.

Most people don't know this about me, but I live with a huge anxiety problem. Most days it's cranked up to about a 7 or 8 (on that arbitrary doctor scale from 1 to 10). After my 30 minutes on the elliptical machine -- which spent the whole time yelling at me to slow down -- I felt like I was back down to a 2 or 3. I was even able to make progress on another front -- but more about that tomorrow.

Because today? Today I ran 2k and left my worries behind.

Daily Results

I cooked.

I did sit ups.

I drank water.

I ate my vitamins.

I slept eight hours.

Off to bed with me now!

Three Meals

Today I ate three whole meals:

-- cereal with milk
-- sushi (tuna maki, salmon maki, miso soup)
-- two smokies (with the cheesey goo inside!)

AND!-- vitamins. My multi and my skin one. I don't know if vitamins actually help at all, but considering the general state of unhealth I keep myself in, they can't hurt, right?

Results

Tonight I:

-- did the dishes
-- ate dinner
-- did laundry
-- took two bags of give-away stuff to the book and clothing drop off bin (good-bye 34 books!)
-- tidied a little

While that doesn't look like a lot, my heart and head were full of black goo today, so I'm calling it a win that I got anything done at all!

[eta: I paid bills too! Goodbye $1100 of credit card debt!]

Beginning!

It's eight o'clock. I have three hours. I'll be back then to tell you what I got done.

Happy New Year!

'Tis the season for personal growth!

Ready?

Set?

Let's grow!