Picturing the healthy treats I made for the Halloween party yesterday, but that barely anyone eat (candy went fast, though…)
😛
Apple monsters with sun or almond butter
Hot dog mummies
Banana ghosts
Carrot fingers
This post was written in response to the Weekly Photo Challenge: Treat and is also the first one in my attempt to write all month long for the NaBloWriMo
It’s been a while since I last time I posted here. Almost a full month!
But I haven’t been not posting, I was just busy writing about my experience with the Whole30 program and about getting into the Paleo diet.
I also had the homework to create a site during the course break in September, and that’s why I posted elsewhere. Â I actually created a whole site all from scratch, doing the htmls, css’s, images and everything in between (apart of course from also writing the contents). It was a pretty cool experience and I guess the site turned out very nice.
If you want to have a look at it, the address is http://mywhole30.com.
The Whole30 experience was also very good and I’m still sort of following the rules of it, even after finishing it. Just because I feel so good now, that I don’t really want to go back to the old ways…
Or if you want to know what-da-heck Whole30 is, but do not want to bother to go my the site, here’s the contents of the What’s It Is page, that explains it a bit:
What is the Whole30®?
According to their own site Whole 9, the Whole30® program is a “nutritional program designed to change your life in 30 days”.
The main idea is to re-educate people on how and what to eat in order to improve life on both physical and psychological aspects.
The physical aspects the program claims to improve are body composition, energy, quality of sleep, attention span, mental attitude and athletic performance.
Psychologically, the benefits are typically related to our relationship with food and how and why do we eat, for example, it targets eating only when hungry and not giving up to cravings (by actually eliminating them), or having events of emotional eating – when you eat when you feel stressed out, or tired, or sleep deprived…
The program exists for a few years now and the people who participated on it have been pretty successful in improving their lives and even getting rid of some illnesses they never though they would be able to get rid of. Some of those illnesses include, but are not limited to: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, types 1 and 2 diabetes, asthma, allergies, migraines, depression, GERD, joint pain, thyroid dysfunction, leaky gut syndrome, and Celiac.
This re-education happens by having you follow very strict rules for 30 days in order to eliminate everything that could potentially be affecting your health, so you can evaluate how do they affect you. So at the end of the program they also show you how you should re-introduce any foods you still think you cannot live without, and tells you to be attentive on how that food will affect you so you can decide if it’s really worthy to have it or not.
One of the things they try to stress a lot is that this is not a diet, it should be a temporary fix and is not focused on weight loss. People do lose some weight during the program, but loosing weight should not be the reason for doing it. They even ask you to ditch the scale and do not weight yourself for the whole 30 days the program lasts.
About their eating recommendations, they follow the Paleo ideas but are more strict on certain areas (like for example, desserts are not allowed even if with allowed items).
The basic idea is that there are some more healthy foods, what you should consume, and other less healthy foods, that you need to eliminate during the program.
The list of more and less healthy foods are as follow.
More Healthy Less Healthy Meat, Seafood and Eggs Sugars, Sweeteners and Alcohol Vegetables and Fruits Grains and Legumes The Right Fats Seeds Oils                                               . Dairy If you’re interested in knowing more about the program, visit their website at whole9live.com.
The program is also detailed on their book It Starts with Food, by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig, which is the one we read as a group before taking the challenge. It’s a pretty good book and I certainly recommend it.
In this site I’ll be quoting the book and the newsletter they send throughout the program, as I deem appropriate.
Now, let’s go eat some real good food!
Then, when the September break was over, my first class in school was WordPress (yeah!) and we had to create a brand new blog during class. Instead of creating just a exercise blog that I would abandon later, I decided to create one that would continue talking about my new diet, but without the day-to-day descriptions I did during the Whole30 program. And that blog is http://paleotizingthegirl.wordpress.com. It’s public and open for everyone to have a peek. Feel free to stop by there too.
So now you know…
😉
Today a friend from work came back from vacations. Her brother came to visit her and they decided to go on a 2-week road trip, leaving from Redmond, Washington, going down all the way to Los Angeles, California, then from there to the Grand Canyon, Arizona, then Yellowstone, ID,MT,WY, and back from there.
As usual, upon coming back to the office she brought some local treats from her trip. There was some candy, which is something I usually don’t like and barely have.
And there was some desert food.
Not cactus. That’s easy and she wanted something different and challenging.
So she went for protein sources:
I’m the kind of person who likes to try everything.
So I went for the larvae very easily, since they look a bit like those tiny rice crackers anyways.
Tastes like nothing, though. Not even the promised cheddar actually.
For the crickets I was not so sure.
I know it couldn’t be worse than the larvae, but just the fact that they were there in whole with legs and eyes and everything was a bit intimidating.
Yeah, yeah, I do eat cows and pigs and chicken and fish and sometimes some lamb. But except for the fish, it’s not common for those to be whole in my plate and looking at me.
And eating fish is so culturally accepted to me, that it does not feel intimidating.
So I know my problem with the crickets was more psychological than anything else.
I really wanted to try it, but had to do some psychological work on myself first.
Then came OG, all open minded and went directly to the crickets.
That was what I needed. I took one too and we both tried at the same time.
She even took a picture of us a moment before we started chewing on the thingy.
That’s me eating a cricket. Cropped to preserve the identity of OG who was also pictured…
And you know what?
It’s not bad! Not bad at all.
Much better than the larvae actually.
Crunchy!!!!
When I sent the picture to my husband, though, he replied back saying it was gross. I guess tonight will be a no-kiss night… hahaha
This week’s Photo Challenge at WordPress is Lunchtime.
I love taking pictures of food and taking a pic of my lunch at the office cafe is pretty common for me.
At lunchtime, I usually try to eat more vegetarian, which makes the plate always pretty with all the different colors of all the veggies.
Here is one I took last Wednesday, when eating Mo Po Tofu with Eggplant at the Chinese food section of the cafe.
Ma Po Tofu with Eggplant
Yummy!
The picture was taken with Windows Phone 8 and edited with fotor for Windows Phone
A couple of weeks ago, I went to Trader Joe’s and, while waiting at the checkout line, I noticed a cute box with a set of 7 different flavors of Dark Chocolate.
I love Dark Chocolate! So I could not resist and bought it.
The flavors were not really the usual ones, and included:
But Oh-My-Gosh!
Those things were delicious!!!!
Yes! All of them! Even the salt & pepper potato chips!
The only problem is that it was a temporary item.
So this morning I went to another store but could not find it anymore.
😦
I did find one of the varieties in a big bar (caramel with black sea salt), and a different one but from the same ‘line’ also in a big bar (toffee with walnuts and pecans).
Bought them, before they are over too.
And btw, the toffee with walnuts and pecans is also delicious!
Looooved it!!!
Thanks Trader Joe’s!!!
Foreign is to take a picture of a marionberry cobbler on a roadside café just because cobblers are not usual where we come from and roadside cafés are also not to be trusted over there.
But then, what has this to do with mother???
Well, after 12 years, I got to a point that I would not normally take a picture of a marionberry cobbler on a roadside café. So this picture was taken upon my mom’s request, who was going on a road trip with us this past summer.
😉
This post was the second response to the Weekly Photo Challenge: Foreign and to the Word a Week Challenge: Mother
Not sure if those are the most delicious food in the world, but they certainly made me happy when I had them…
This post was created in response to Jakesprinter Sunday Post: Delicious.
Proof that exercise and diet do make a huge difference.
Last year I was eating better and exercising more than this year. I lost 11 pounds last year, gained them all back this year.
How does that affect my health? The numbers tell.
Last year results from the ‘Know you Numbers’ program at work:
Total Cholesterol = 170 (Desirable < 200)
HDL = 62 (Exceptional >= 60)
LDL = 94 (Desirable < 100)
Total/HDL Ratio = 2.8 (Exceptional <= 3.5)
Triglycerides = 71 (Normal < 150)
BMI 24 (Normal Weight = 18.5 – 24.9)
Body Fat= 31% (Borderline High = 31-36.9) -> this was the only one not ideal
Glucose = 90 (Normal = 71 – 99)
This year’s numbers:
Total Cholesterol = 176 (Desirable < 200)
HDL = 48 (High Risk: <50) -> according to her, although this number falls into the high risk based on the chart, it’s still borderline and the ratio total/HDL is still pretty good, so she considered in a Desirable.
LDL = 108 (Near Desirable 100-129)
Total/HDL Ratio = 3.7 (Recommended 3.6-4.9)
Triglycerides = 101 (Normal < 150)
BMI 25 (Borderline High = 25-29.9)
Body Fat= 32% (Borderline High = 31-36.9)
Glucose = 91 (Normal = 71 – 99)
As you can see ALL numbers got a bit worse.
Still good, but not as good as… 😦
Wake up call to go back to a healthier diet and more exercising…
Taking pictures while cooking and storing my veggies.
Rainbow carrots
Purple carrot?
Onion
Lettuce
Chard
Crookneck squash
Cucumber
All combined
Chop chop chop
Roasted squashes
Bon Appetit!!!
😉
Creative Busyness 