Getting Juicy

What day am I at now? I'm not sure, but I know I have to do 14 burpees by the end of the day. 13 nearly killed me last night. The thought that I need to get to 38 burpees seems like an impossible dream at this point.

This is the first Halloween that I'm not dressing up or going to a party. There are a couple of reasons:

1. I am have to pay off a credit card within the next 2 weeks. It was one of those- don't pay any interest for a year thingies that got me winter tires last year. So I'm more than a little cash poor. Can't be blowing my money now on booze.

2. Oh Henry bars. They are my kryptonite. I set a goal for myself to get through Halloween without eating a single trick or treat. In years passed I probably ate a bag or two by myself. Fill me with booze and I'll have no power to resist those devilish chocolate coated calorie bombs. I've done amazingly, I haven't eaten a single one. I doubt I'll get any trick or treaters, but if I do, I will give them an apple and ask them not to egg my car.

This last week has been good. I've juiced every day, and have done my burpees in addition to the usual walking. I've also been researching more about raw food. On the surface it looks like there isn't all that much to know... eat fruits and veggies raw right?

Well no! There are different camps. Like raw vegans who eat 80% carbs, 10% fat and 10% protein. They tend to eat mostly fruit. Like eating 30 bananas a day, seriously. I can't help but think that's just an eating disorder with a nicer name. Or the raw vegans who make copies of normal foods. Like un-baked muffins, or raw "pancakes." Or another camp that are all about juice feasting. Juice feasting is when you only drink juice, no eating for up to 90 days. I can't handle that much whole fruit, so I'm doing more of a 50/50 veggies and fruit, eating some and juicing some with a little bit of cooked food. A big glass of veggie/fruit juice is surprisingly filling. Today's intake: brown rice with raisins and soy milk for breakfast, a protein shake at lunch, 2 apples and almonds for lunch and a big juice and half a bagel for dinner. I might have some popcorn tonight, but I'm still way below my max calories for the day. So far, I feel good. I've been reading a lot about people going through nasty detox symptoms when they switch to raw vegan. I'm hoping that this won't happen to me because I haven't eaten the standard american diet in a long time (like meat and fried foods), plus I'm easing into it.

So who am I learning from? Lou Corona- this amazing guy who has been eating raw for 37 years and is 60 but looks 40. It's hard to describe him other than to say he has good energy. If he ever comes to town, I would love to hear him speak. And Dan the Man- he is all about veggie juicing. He is a wealth of information with about 1000 youtube videos. It helps to have the online community out there, cuz god knows I sure don't know any raw vegans. I also don't know any gluten free people either, but I had the determination to do that no problem. I think I can do this too. I wish I lived in the city where there are raw vegan restaurants. Oh well. One day.

Day one

Day one? Of what you ask?

Last week was a tough week for me, in a new office, feeling pretty insecure, and isolated. No body likes a whiner do they? I decided to do a couple things that make me feel good and hopefully turn things around. I'm going to do two 30 day challenges at once. My inspiration came from a couple of blogs that I started following. The first : http://www.yourinnerskinny.ca/category/blog/ it's written by a guy who lives up north and is really into fitness. (yes still obsessed with all things northern). What I like about his blog is that he has good youtube exercise videos that don't require gym equipment. Right now he is challenging people to do a burpee a day for 30 days. Today I did eight burpees without stopping, and tomorrow I'll do nine, then ten the next etc. Sounds do-able. If you don't know what a burpee is, google it.

The other blog that I'm following is http://www.loveveggiesandyoga.com/. This blog is written by a vegan, raw, Californian yogi. She is the most ripped woman I have ever seen in my life. I would love to be half as muscly! She has some really great recipes, she is inspiring me to try and eat more raw. I have always wanted to try going raw vegan, but I thought it would be too hard. What I learned from her website is to not think so black and white, I can just eat more raw foods, I don't have to go 100%. I find the hardest thing for me has been cutting out dairy, so instead, I'm just eating less dairy. Baby steps.

The next blog that I am loving http://kristensraw.com/blog/. This blog is written by a vegan raw body builder mommy. She's hardcore, my sister says she's insane. She looooves protein shakes. I can understand this, I have drank a vegan protein shake almost everyday for the last 18 months. I love the taste and I love how I feel just by upping my protein intake. She is also a big fan of juicing. I have juiced in the past, but nothing too exotic. These days I'm being more adventuresome, I just polished off a cucumber, celery, apple juice. It was fantastic. My other favorite? Carrot, spinach, red chard, orange. Before I would have called bullshit, but it really does taste good. This is the other part of my 30 day challenge, I'm going to juice everyday for the next 30 days.

I think drinking juice everyday is pretty doable too. I'm not taking it too the extreme like Dr. Ali. Who's Dr. Ali? Well he is a vegan raw guy who ingested nothing but juice for 92 days. No eating, nothing but juice. Incidentally he's also a guy I used to get high with in high school. Dude did a total 180, let me tell you. If you're interested in he has some good juice recipes : http://www.youtube.com/user/TheRawFoodDoctor#p/a

So this is my part of my plan, focusing on the things that make me feel good. It should be a great month. The only downside is that it takes a while for the digestive system to balance out. Words of wisdom: increase your fibre intake slowly. This is part of the reason why I am juicing instead of eating whole fruits and veggies.

float on you bastard, float on

Ahhh, the struggle of negative thoughts taking over.

A quick tally of the number of hours I have spent lately fighting the negative thoughts floating around in my head was about 6-8 hours a day. What a waste of energy. I've been reading about my specific thoughts, and how to move beyond them. As I suspected, the most common treatment is medication, but I'm determined to not do that. Why apply a bandaid. I think my anxiety has just been kicked into overdrive by my new job.

So instead, I'm going to try a technique to retrain my thinking. The more a thought comes to mind that is distressing, the more attention it gets, and in turn the more it keeps coming up. It's like having a cupboard full of chocolate and telling yourself not to thing about it. Impossible!! So I'm going to try "mindful acceptance." Whenever I have unwanted thoughts, I am going to stop, breathe and observe the thought passing by like a cloud in the sky. So rather than stressing, I hopefully will instead focus on the thought drifting away. I hope that I won't be bothered by the thought if I think of it like a cloud, and if I'm not bothered by the thought, it won't come back so often. The cloud thing makes sense to me.

I know that lots of people have the same unwanted thoughts, let's try this mindful acceptance thing. If nothing else, I'll spend lots of time thinking about clouds. That'll be an improvement.

return to baking

Okay, I've picked myself up and climbed out of the sad-sack I was in. Still reading The Secret, focusing on the positives, not letting myself sabotage the good things that come my way. Fear not, this is a happy post!

I haven't baked anything in about 2 years. I had some pretty sad failures in my attempts at gluten-free baking. Nothing is worse than making a big batch of something and then throwing it out. Before going gluten-free, I baked a lot, I enjoyed baking. I started to enjoy it a lot less when everything I made turned out like crap.

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night feeling sick, but couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I've been glutened, Old Dutch Ketchup chips struck again. This is the third time. Their website says the chips are gluten-free so I always figured something else I ate had made me sick. Third time? I'm pretty convinced. Piss on you Old Dutch Chips!

What is the best cure for gluten sickness? For me a liquid diet, with my pj's infront of the TV while checking out gluten-free blogs. I found a new blog with a really yummy pumpkin spice muffin recipe. I had a new multi-purpose baking mix I hadn't tried out yet (I'm not even sure why I bought it) so I made a batch. Maybe it would help me get my mind off the pain of the gluten-monster destroying my intestinal tract.

The results? Flipping amazing! I don't think anyone would be able to tell it was gluten-free. Light, moist, pumpkiny. Yummo!

Tomorrow I'm off to the new office in Chilliwack, wish me luck!

Boredom

I'm still slowly reading through The Secret. Some good things have come from focusing on the positive things I wanted. It is a good reminder to focus on the positives in life, and go with the flow.

But somethings haven't worked out how I thought. I knew that at the end of my 12 week training I would be placed in a new office in one of three suburbs. I had prepared myself for having to commute over an hour each way for a month or so until I could find a new apartment. I was looking forward to being closer to friends and being able to jump on the skytrain and be downtown. After moving to the country and finding it difficult to socialize, I was really looking forward to the change.

Let me explain. I live the bible belt- it's a strange mix of Mennonites, Hudderites, Mormons, Sikhs and newly released parolees. Turns out super religious people have their own social functions within the church. I didn't really see myself joining a church to make friends- it seemed wrong. So I started a coffee social group, but got freaked out by a creepy dude that started sending me angry pseudo-threatening emails after what he believed was a date. That was pretty much the end of that. I made a list of activities I wanted to do : enroll in yoga and pottery classes. However, there wasn't any pottery studios in 30 km, and there is only 1 yoga studio in town- hot yoga- not interested. So then I decided I would volunteer! But that didn't pan out either. Every flipping volunteer organization is linked to a church! The SPCA is not looking for volunteers either. I could volunteer in the local prisons, if it didn't mean volunteering for my previous employer. Now I'm contemplating winter sports... curling? Oh god, I don't think I want to be that uncool.

This makes me wonder if I would have made it living in the high arctic. I won't ever know since I am pretty well committed to living in this province now. Although there aren't the same sort of religious communities there, so who knows?

It's been very frustrating. I look forward to work because my weekends are so boring unless I drive into the city. So you can see how I was looking forward to moving! On Friday I got an email telling me congratulations for the next 5 months you will be working in Chilliwack/Hope. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Get me the fuck out of the bible belt. Going back to The Secret, I'm fairly sure this is not something I focused on. In fact, I was specifically told when I was hired that I was only hired to work in those specific three cities. This news came as a shock.

So I have 20 weekends ahead of me until I will change communities again. What to do? Will it be a long dark winter? (I have a mental picture of The Shining going through my head. Please don't let me end up like Jack)

I need a plan! There is a yoga studio in construction on the other end of town. I am enrolling. Even if it's crappy B.O. inducing yoga. Maybe I'll start swimming at the community centre on Sunday mornings- it's bound to be a ghost town then!