My Tumultuous Relationship with Yogurt

Curdled Coagulated Goopy Occasionally known to explode when opened…. Yeah, I’ll admit yogurt really isn’t a food that I’ve ever been particularly drawn to. The consistency of yogurt when I …

On being well informed in the fitness world

It’s absolutely no secret that the fitness and nutrition world is largely full of scammy, half-truth, poorly researched nonsense. It’s my biggest reservation about entering into the industry….how do I successfully market myself while still remaining truthful? After all, sustainable long-term fitness rarely makes for explosive headlineS and viral campaigns. but, if I’m going to do this I want to do it as honestly as possible…however mundane that may be.

I feel that the ultimate way to get our tumultuous relationship with health and fitness on track is to arm every single person, athlete or not, with the information to make sound decisions for his/herself.  This is incredibly burdensome, I do get that. If we all could get some quality biochemistry education, kinesiology training and access to fresh foods it would be so much easier. But, we don’t live in a world like that. So, the best I can hope to do is educate those around me and pass on good quality information when I run across it. The article I’ve linked is one such example. It is long, but it is so worth the read.

Arm yourself

An Apology to my Digestive Tract

I AM SO SORRY!!!

Like, [(sorry)1000]^7….or something.

I am a vegetarian, walking a very fine line between that and veganism. By and large I do not worry about what I eat and whether or not I am getting all my vitals because, well, for one thing I’m 13 years into this lifestyle and still alive. I’m doing something right. And, also, I eat a lot of really decent, varied foods. Nature has me covered regardless, or in spite of, my efforts otherwise. So, other than my daily protein shake (because there isn’t enough quinoa, peanut butter and nutritional yeast in the world to get me to daily intake goals while still staying at my calorie goals), I really don’t supplement anything. Don’t feel the need to. But then I started to read some actual, scientific facts about creatine. Specifically how study after study showed that vegetarians have lower muscle creatine levels than their meat eating counterparts.

Creatine is not essential in the diet. Our bodies can naturally synthesize it using two other amino acids, glycine and arginine. Regardless of how it comes to be, creatine is needed to assist in the rapid synthesis of ADP to ATP. The faster ADP can be transferred to ATP the more energy is available to the muscle. More energy equals more reps, heavier weights and more explosive movements. You see where this is going.

So, I decided to give it a try. I went with creatine monohydrate because it’s a classic, has close to 100% bioavailability and it’s cheaper than the fancy stuff. Now this is the turning point of where all my good intentions started to fall apart. Instead of reading about the best way to take it I decided to just dump 5g in a glass of cool water and drink up. For some this might work. It does not work for me. Not at all. I may as well have drank sand. Or concrete. Or glass shards.

The best part is that I didn’t learn my lesson the first day. I did this for 2 more days. I did this until I couldn’t eat. Sometimes I can be quite dense. Much like the glob of creatine that was festering in my gut.

BLARGH!!

Via the endless internet wisdom, I now have some ideas on how to experiment and possibly make this process better. Once my digestive tract returns to digesting and moving things along I will be mixing the powder in hot water, splitting up the dose in to two servings and also trying it with a meal. I would like to see what creatine can do for me but if it requires me to feel like this it can’t possibly be worth it.

But, hey, on a way more excellent note, I found a super delicious, not at all guilt inspiring, alternative to nutella. I had to ban nutella from my house because it was binge inducing and I absolutely could not control myself around it. But then I found Date Lady Chocolate Spread. It’s vegan, sweetened with date syrup and pectin and wonderfully simple. AND ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS. Oh, and only 79 calories per tablespoon.Get Some here

And to exemplify my point of both how wonderful the chocolate spread is I present to you a picture of my goofy ass dog and her imitation of my face when I first tasted it.

ERMERGERD!!!

In conclusion, this weeks lessons are thus: When trying a new supplement don’t just mix it with water thinking that’s the best or only way to do it. Also, Date Lady Chocolate Spread is a game changer and you need some in your life.

Food Confessional

Step in, my child. Air your food sins to me and be absolved. (I’ve never actually been to confession, so I have no idea if this is how it goes …

Just close your eyes….

..and jump.

There are many ways to make a living but I know it was well burned into my brain that the surefire path is where one goes to school, fosters a clean permanent record (where does one go about finding this record anyway?!), goes to college where one finds oneself through various carefully planned activities, debaucheries and groups and graduates with a very expensive piece of paper.

This always felt kind of wrong to me. I love school and love learning. Hell, I voluntarily went to summer school….for many years. But, at 17 I really had no idea how I was to pick a career path when I had no real experience doing, well, much of anything. Many things sounded interesting. In fact, probably more than things that didn’t sound interesting. So, for something like 8 years I majored in various subjects like sociology, photography, automotive technology, biology, graphic design…..

Yeah…I was fairly lost. Wandering. Not really stumbling upon anything that clicked with me. Eventually I decided that it was time to get out and just pick something I could ‘live with’ and get on with life. I picked Medical Laboratory Science. While it has allowed me to buy a new car and finally take yearly vacations I found that my day to day-ness was rather monotonous and dull. The overly optimistic 12 year old in me was constantly going on about how life was supposed to me ‘so much more than this’ and how I should be following my ‘passion’, yadda yadda blah blah. But, really, she was right, persistent and loud as hell. However, when you’ve already stepped foot in the adult world it’s very hard to step back into playing poor college student. I thought of doing IT. Thought of doing vet tech. Thought of just napping and eating ice cream all day as a coping mechanism,

It wasn’t until I started to think about stepping off of the path that is traditional higher education that I started to feel like I was headed in the right direction. I was drowning in cliches like “follow your passion/dreams/etc” but I didn’t have a clear picture of what that was. I just knew that wanted to live, learn and explore.

Then I had a very ‘Can’t see the forest for the trees’ moment. I realized that I actually enjoyed doing burpees. Yup. I said it. One of the most important things my dull but profitable job afforded me was to turn my basement into a home gym. I’d been a gym rat for a few years at this point but realized that for every good set I had at the gym I had to wait 10 minutes for someone to finish posting their perfect gym selfie at the squat rack. The gym by my house had one squat rack and practically no free floor space. Sometimes I could find a 20lb kettlebell, but most times it was MIA. For the cost of a little over a years membership I was able to set up my own space and it is something I cannot recommend highly enough for those able to pull it off. But anyway, back to the forest. It was a combination of this and realizing that at work I talked a lot about nutrition and fitness. I have a sodium restricted diet and work with a few people with diabetes and thyroid diseases. So, it seemed natural to discuss little tips and tricks I knew of or just what a difference something like weighing your food can make. I found myself talking about new exercises and recommending them to some of my co-workers. My idea of a social gathering was to hit the gym together. And there it was. I started looking into dietetics and felt that it was too clinical for my goals. Started looking at personal trainer certifications and felt that this could very well be what I had been looking for all along.

I have dreams of teaching classes on how to read and decipher nutrition labels and workshops on getting over the hassle of weighing and portioning foods. I wanted to talk with people about the bullshit that is our idealized, over-photoshopped vision of beauty and health. I wanted to be that voice that pushed people to realize their true strength. I want to be that person that tells a woman who has spent years doing steady state cardio that lifting heavy things will finally get her the results she has wanted. I want to be a voice of reason in this over-crowded, mess hall that is the media of health and wellness. It doesn’t have to be complicated. It doesn’t have to be miserable. For instance, I don’t like running….so I don’t run. That’s ok. It’s about finding a good, realistic, fit.

And so, I’ve decided to take a chance on myself and just close my eyes and jump into this world of health and fitness. Hopefully I can make a big ass splash.