Prep

So, the other day I posted about my goal for this week: to make (and drink) green smoothies every day for breakfast.  It's healthy, portable, and perfect for an on-the-go breakfast.

This morning, I made a menu for every breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the week.  Grocery list in hand, I made my weekly shopping trip today, and got everything I needed for the week, including fruit and spinach for my smoothies.  As I was putting my groceries away, I got to thinking.... I have to be at school before 7 am every day.  I am not a morning person.  Will this discourage me from making smoothies each day?

So, instead of getting overwhelmed, I got practical.  I went ahead and prepped everything I needed for the entire week!  Here is everything I purchased, although I already had the random kiwi and the frozen fruit.  I will say that I normally use Almond Milk instead of greek yogurt, but the store was slam out of the almond milk I usually get in the pint-size, and I knew I couldn't use 1/2 a gallon in 7 days, so I got the Fage for my protein instead of the almond milk.  I love Greek yogurt, so I know I'll devour that by the end of the week, even if I'm only putting a little bit in my smoothies!

I decided to prep my strawberries because they were super-duper ripe and wasn't sure how long they would last.  Even though these are "green" smoothies, I just felt weird using the greenery on the strawberries, so I tore that off and halved or quartered the strawberries.  I used all of the strawberry, except for the few that had some soft/spoiled parts.

I divided the strawberries and put a cup in two different containers.  This way, I can just grab one for each day I'm using strawberries in my smoothie.  Then I sprinkled the strawberries with a few spoonfuls of sugar to help them keep over the next few days, and make that delicious strawberry juice.  Mmmm.

Next I prepped my lemons and limes.  The recipes I've used in the past called for the zest and the meat, but not the hard white stuff between the two.  So I went ahead and zested the fruits and will cut off the white part when I de-seed them to throw them in the blender.

Next, I went ahead and cut two bananas in half and froze them.  A few days, I'll probably use a whole, fresh banana, but some recipes call for 1/2 a banana, and the frozen part helps make it a thick consistency, so I decided to have both on hand.

Finally, I separated the spinach into 5 baggies so I could grab one each day.  Easy peasy lemon breezy!  

Finally, here is the prepped fruit all laid out in my fridge!  I'm so excited and can't wait for the week to begin.  I will most definitely keep you updated on my progress!

Next on my agenda today: cooking up some quinoa so I have my lunch for Monday and Tuesday, then I will be making my vlog!  I am participating in a vlogging link up party and I am so excited!!

Yoga For Fat People

For the past few weeks, I've been feeling tense and achey.  Some days were better, some days were miserable - overall just icky.  This morning, I woke up feeling much better than I had over the weekend and decided to take some proactive measures to stop feeling so all around blah.  I've been wanting to get into yoga for a while now, so I searched Netflix, found some yoga work out videos, and set out to stretch my muscles and get in touch with my internal organs.

Now, I had no allusions that I would be gliding through poses with the greatest of ease.  I knew that it wouldn't be easy.  I took 2 warm yoga classes last year and I knew it was challenging, but I wasn't sure how much of the difficulty was attributed to the 98* room and how much was attributed to my own awkwardness.  I was pretty sure that I wouldn't end up on the bathroom floor, white as a ghost, clutching the toilet wondering when I would pass out (true story and basic summary of my first warm yoga experience), but I wasn't sure what to expect.

So, I rolled out my awesome green yoga mat, pushed play and did my best to go along with the moves.  For the most part, I did okay.  However, once you get into some of the moves, it is very difficult for a size 18 body to maneuver.  For example, please review this picture I snagged off of Google:

See her taut little body nicely folded in half?  Very easy when you don't have a gut in your way.  When this yogi does this pose, you can see whatever is behind her.  When my much more tubby body tries this, it is a sea of rolls, boobs, and squished blubber.  Having boobs doesn't make this any easier either.  They are just in the way.  If you have a belly pooch, like I do, any move that involves bending over or planking is just super hard.

I felt really good afterwards, despite being a little sad that I couldn't do all of the poses correctly.  I kept saying to myself "they need 'yoga for fat people' videos." So I decided to google it - there are a ton of pages about this and I found some helpful modifications.  Hopefully if will continue to get better!  I can only hope.

To be fair, it's not only my excess body fat that makes yoga hard.  I am a giant bag of medical issues.  First, I have a several fibroid tumors on my lower spine/pelvis, on my L4-L5 and my L5-S1.  Basically, right here:

This makes laying on my back uncomfortable at times, and during some of the poses I thought I was going to pass out.  It happened to be on each of the poses where she said "Feel all of the blood rushing through your spine".  Turns out my tumors don't like the blood rushing down there.  Ironically, I get the same feeling when I drink liquor.

Also, my neck is kinda messed up, which makes sitting up straight and elongating my spine kind of hurty.  See, a normal neck is supposed to be curvy, like the second picture below.  My neck is like the first picture below.  It's fixable, and I've seen a chiropractor about it once before, but I just haven't gone to the therapy for it yet.  It's on my "to-do" list.

So I will continue to try yoga, but I think I'm going to have to make some adaptions, supplement with cardio and hope that yoga gets easier as I lose weight.  It can only get better, right?!

Pound Foolish #1 - Naughty, Naughty

So, I am currently doing my student teaching internship at a elementary school in Hampton.  I was at a staff meeting one day and read some data gathered through a survey given to the fifth graders about what they liked and didn't like about their school.  One kid wrote "THE FOOD IS NAUGHTY".  Caps included.  Which put me in a fit of giggles, I barely composed myself in time for the meeting to start.  I found it hilarious on so many levels.  On the one hand, the lessons taught in language arts about synonyms got through to this kid.  However. s/he must have been asleep during the part about syntax.  Or, maybe there is some stuff going on that I don't know about in the cafeteria.  I mean, I haven't been at this particular school during lunch.  Maybe the food causes some drama..... the carrots simply refuse to mingle with the peas; hot dogs refuse to be placed on a stick and dunked in batter... flat out chaos.

However, after my giggles died down and I started to think about it in terms of my struggle with eating healthy.  The food IS naughty.  I mean seriously.  If a person tempted us, made us struggle against our will power, and did something to adversely affect our health, they would be considered a bad influence.  Afterall, peer pressure is naughty.  And succumbing to a craving is sort of like peer pressure, right?  Ipso facto - Food is naughty.

Maybe this kid is on to something.........