Tag Archives: health

Thirsty Thursday: Pick Me Up Green Machine Smoothie

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How much time do you usually have for post-workout meals? Or even lunch? Not very much time? Me neither! That’s why this recipe is perfect. You can make it in the morning, stick it in the fridge, and eat it any time of day. I used to bring it on Pedi-cab shifts with me and now I just pack it in my lunch and have it as a pick me up.

Smoothies are awesome because you can work with whatever you have in the fridge. The only necessary requirements are:

Ingredients: a soft frozen fruit, a soft room temperature fruit, some dark leafy greens, and some liquid.

For soft fruits you can use: berries, banana, melon, peaches/nectarines, etc.

For leafy greens I highly recommend spinach (it’s tasty in smoothies and high in protein) or kale.

For liquid use coconut water, almond milk, or even just water. Definitely nothing like juice from concentrate which has lots of added sugar.

^This smoothie has coconut water, frozen blueberries, a room temp banana, a big handful of spinach, and a scoop of protein powder.

Instructions: Combine it all in a blender and blend until smooth. The sooner you drink it after blending, the better. This is because the food is already partially digested and the nutrients start to diminish as soon as you blend it. Freezing it helps pause the process so, if you can, keep it cold.

^ It looks kinda gross but it’s actually sweet and very tasty.

Ashley Life Update: I’m still sick! Bleh. But I’m doing very well and not taking any kind of medication other than what I described in this post. I’ve just canceled all my evening plans for the next week and am going to bed at 8:30. Luckily I have an awesome job that keeps me busy all day so I barely have time to think about how crappy I feel. Also, I made a big change to my life yesterday. But you’ll just have to wait until tomorrow to hear about it!

I hope you’re all having wonderful days. We’re getting closer to the weekend so just sit back and enjoy the rest of your work week. Besos!

🙂

No Workout Wednesday: How to Fight the Flu

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I’m taking a rest week as of Sunday. I could feel my body fighting something and my workouts were just getting more and more painful.

 

Take Time Off: As important as it is to develop a routine, it’s equally important that, once you’re into the routine, you listen to your body’s warning signs. Unless you’re on a strict training plan, everyone should take one week off from working out every month and a half (5 or 6 weeks). Make sure that you continue to eat healthy and that you lower your caloric intake so that getting back in the groove isn’t so difficult.

 

No Flu Shot: Second, and I know more people are choosing this route, don’t get the flu shot! This is a personal decision for most people but make sure that you are informed before you get any kind of injection. The government backs the flu shot so there are advertisements for it EVERYWHERE. But did you know that it contains thimerasol (mercury, in every shot unless you formally request a shot without preservatives), aluminum, and formaldehyde? Also, there is a very good chance, every year, that the vaccine won’t actually work. To develop the shot, scientists from FluZone went to Asia last year to try to capture the most prevalent virus. They literally guess which one it will be, bring it back here and start mixing and mass producing to distribute to the American public (people from other countries, do they push the vaccine there too?). Rather than relying on a guess full of terrible chemicals, wouldn’t it be better to arm your body with the best nutrients and minerals instead?

 

Production of influenza vaccine

Production of influenza vaccine (Photo credit: Sanofi Pasteur)

 

When you feel it coming: We’ve all felt that familiar tinge in the back of our throat or the extra struggle to get out of bed in the morning. If you start to feel symptoms of the flu, start fighting it IMMEDIATELY. Some things that your body needs to fight any kind of illness are…

 

1. Lots of water. People always say this but never really do it. Every time you think of it, drink an entire 8 oz. I’ve at least doubled my water intake over the past few days.

 

2. No dairy. Dairy makes your body produce extra mucus making it that much harder to clear the chest cough, swollen throat, and runny nose.

 

3. No sugar. Cut out processed sugar completely. Period.

 

4. Take Vitamin D. Yes D not C. Visit your local holistic/alternative medicine pharmacy and ask for Vitamin D pills. Make sure that they know the source farm and that there are no additives or alterations. Also talk to the pharmacist about how many IU’s to take.

 

5. Sleep. Don’t do anything in the evenings or early morning. Relax after work and go straight to sleep. I have to take a melatonin pill (also at your local alternative medicine pharmacy) to make sure I sleep through the night but it’s so worth it when I wake up 9 hours later.

6. Lots and lots of vegetables. Go to the store and stock up on all kinds of veggies but mainly dark, leafy greens. These should be the bulk of your diet until you’re feeling completely better. Eat them raw, lightly steamed, or lightly roasted. Just eat them.

 

English: veggies

Eat your veggies! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

On that note, how is everyone feeling today? I’ve noticed a lot of our patients coming in with one illness or another. But fight through it! Cut out any unnecessary activities and get to work healing your body.

 

Sunday Recipe: Hummus!

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Happy Sunday! Hummus is by far one of my favorite foods. I have realized that people either love it or they hate it. However, the awesome thing about making your own is that it’s cheaper in the long run AND you can adjust the ingredients so that it’s delicious to your particular taste buds. Also, hummus is a great source of protein to bolster protein intake for those of us that can’t afford organic chicken or grass-fed beef all the time.

^ I use a very basic recipe that I found in my small selection of cookbooks. If you’re trying to go gluten-free this is an awesome book. I know it’s pretty affordable on amazon, check it out here.

Ingredients:

12 or 14 oz. can organic chickpeas (garbanzo beans)

1 clove of garlic, crushed

1 Tbsp tahini (it’s ground sesame seeds and lasts forever)

2 Tbsp lemon juice

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/4 ground cumin (great spice to keep around)

2 Tbsp olive oil

Instructions:

^ Drain the chickpeas. Then combine all ingredients in a food processor or blender. Blend it all up until smooth. Taste it and add whatever else you’d like to make it taste even better.

^ Quick tip I learned from my second momma, Debbie, squeeze the lemon upside down with a fork to avoid getting seeds into the mix.

^ Scoop it out and keep it in a Tupperware. Use it instead of ranch! I eat it over salad, with celery, apples, and carrots. It’s flippin’ good. Let me know how yours turns out!

Ashley Life Update: I got my mind into a good zone towards the end of the week and ended up doing really well and overcoming all the obstacles that had been haunting me early last week. I’m pretty proud of myself. Last night, after a long day of work, my friend Sara asked if I wanted to ride this morning. My immediate inclination was, “heck no!” but I decided to commit and go anyway. It was a chilly 40°F but it also made me realize how little outdoor riding is left in the year. I’m completely exhausted but happy I went out. On top of getting in about 35 miles, we spotted a train! Now the rest of my day will be filling with eating and relaxing. I really do love my life.

 

^ It is confirmed, I live in the midwest. Please note the tractor in the background. Also, this train was so long that I had time to fumble around with my frozen fingers, take about 15 photos and put my phone away before the train ended. Pretty crazy.

One last thing, my Gran always tells me that she loves reading my blog because it makes her feel closer to me; so from now one, she will be getting a hello. So…Hi Gran! Love and miss you!

I hope you’re all having wonderful days. Enjoy the rest of your weekend 🙂

Workout Wednesday: Guide to Building Your Own Workout

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Last Wednesday I had a crazy busy morning and didn’t have time to squeeze in a workout. I resolved to workout if I got a long enough lunch break or to just save it until after work. I am proud to say that I managed to workout, shower, eat lunch, get ready, and make a smoothie all within a 45 minute lunch break. That’s right, I am Wonder Woman.

 

Wonder Woman Covers

Wonder Woman

In the end, all of my time efficiency comes from having a routine for each of these things. I had the blender on while I was getting dressed and I was eating lunch while my hair dried. It’s all about thinking out a plan on the car ride home and not dawdling even a little bit. Which is what I’m trying to do this very morning so moving on…

The workout I did was quite unique. I realized on the drive home that I wouldn’t have time to look up a workout with the lovely Zuzana Light so I made up my own. I just chose some full body exercises and a time crunch that would make me sweat AND hurt at the same time. Sounds like fun right??

Here was my workout:

3 rounds of 5 exercises. Do each exercise to the max for 40 seconds, rest for 20 seconds, start the next exercise. Repeat each round 3 times.

Exercises:

1. Pushups (from my knees because my pecks are strangely weak)

2. Crunches (with my legs straight in the air)

3. Squat to shoulder press (with weight, use water bottles if you don’t have weights)

4. Lunge Jump (lunge down then jump up and switch legs)

5. Leg raise (Lie on the ground and lift legs up to 90° angle, keeping them straight, then lower them)

This workout ended up being killer and I felt pretty awesome for formatting my own. Some rules to help you do the same:

– Make sure you know the correct form for an exercise before you do it alone. Wrong form makes you prone to injury. (If you don’t know, just google or youtube it!)

– Establish reachable goals for the workout like “I want to do 30 crunches in each 40 second time period.”

– Keep the whole workout under a time limit so that you feel like you’re really accomplishing something in a tiny bit of time.

– Record all your numbers so that you can look back and try again in a few weeks. Track your progress!

– Be proud of what you’ve done and build on it, nothing’s better than self-propelled success.

 

I repeat: nothing is better than self-propelled success. So get off your bum and get it done!

And be sure to SMILE in between grimaces 🙂

 

 

Have Some Confidence People!

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Wow. All I can say is thank you guys so much for all the feedback yesterday. I want to reply to every person that commented but you basically all said that my blog is awesome, I’m awesome, and that I’ve helped you in some way. You guys just gave me the biggest flippin’ boost of motivation. I didn’t even know some of you read it! So all I can say is I am sending a big, fat THANK YOU and a huge hug and kiss (oh yeah) to all of you everywhere.

This encouraged me to write, today, about confidence and having oodles of it. Today’s post is pretty much a way to balance out this post about setting realistic expectations. Anyway, I have a friend who happens to read this blog and also happens to suffer from an utter lack of confidence (you know who you are). She is one of the most inspiring athletes I know as well as being kind, caring, and really fun to party with. She just all around awesome and has NO IDEA.

I know that she isn’t an isolated case. I have other friends and actually read some blogs (like this one) who are similar to this particular friend and just have no idea how amazing they are. I don’t care what your IQ is, what you look like, how many friends you have, or what special skills you have, every person has a special something that makes you worth “it.” “It” being a stranger’s time, a second glance, or just respect from the people you know and love.

Anyway, I don’t want to ramble so, just never underestimate yourself. Find your specialness and capitalize on that s**t! You will always get further in your life by strengthening your strengths rather than working on your weaknesses.

 

^ This is me at my first every mountain bike race. I knew I could handle a bike so I traveled with the mountain team that weekend, rode a mountain bike for the first time for 3 hours in the morning and then raced it! I had such a good time and accomplished one of my life goals of playing in the mud 🙂

Also, and this is important so listen up, if you are one of the people who already has the confidence of a guido in Jersey then help some others out! Tell each of your loved ones and coworkers something special about themselves every day. Only stuff that is true. It’s ok to repeat stuff, it helps drill it into their heads. Compliment at least 3 people every day and you will find that they are drawn to your positivity and will start to think of themselves in a better light.

Ok, that is all. Thank you again for reading and writing all those lovely comments. You are all very special to me .

🙂

 

Happy Friday! Please Help…

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Good morning/afternoon/evening (depending on where you’re reading this from) and welcome to my new blog layout. Isn’t it pretty?? I have been telling a lot of people about this blog lately and I really have no idea who is actually reading it! So today I have 2 [very easy] questions for you.

I want a ridiculous amount of posts on this. Please? Friends, family, strangers, anyone! This will help me a ton only if I get lots of comments.* To comment, click on the heading of this post and scroll down to the bottom of the page.

Questions:

1. Which category of posts do you benefit the most from: fitness, nutrition/recipes, inspiration, gratitude, or design? You can click on the category links to the right if you have no idea what I’m talking about.

2. How often do you actually read this thing? Please be honest, I love writing but I only want to write as often as you read.

Also, any other critique or praise is welcome. I want to know what you guys think.

 

^ This is how excited I am about hearing back from you guys. Seriously.

Now wipe that frown off your face and smile!

 

 

Recipe Thursday: Simple Roast Potatoes

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Happy almost weekend! Thursdays are my cleaning mornings and I’d like to procrastinate that very much and so, let me post a recipe.

For whatever reason I’ve always been terrible at making potatoes. Their thickness and readiness to burn without cooking on the inside are a source of endless frustration for me. Ok, that may be a bit dramatic but it does annoy me. So I decided on Sunday that I would conquer the potato, and I did! Also, I made a huge batch of these so we could have them for lunch during the week. This is a great way to cut back on prep and cooking time when you don’t have any spare minutes during the week.

Here are the ingredients but I can’t stress enough that if you don’t have everything, just improvise. Smell the food then the spices you have and pick out which ones you think would go best. That’s why cooking is awesome, it’s based simply on your senses.

Ingredients:

potatoes, peeled and cubed (any kind of potato works)

olive oil

garlic

jamaican all spice

salt

pepper

Instructions:

Heat oven to 475°F. Get out a shallow baking pan. You don’t need to prep the pan (awesome!).

^ Quickly mix the oil and all spices in a large bowl.

^ Dump in cubed potatoes and mix it all with your hands. This is super messy, fun, and perfect to do with kids. (I know I look skeezy in this photo but Mike took it and I didn’t want to test his patience, he was already helping me peel potatoes).

^ Spread the potatoes on the baking sheet. Slide it into the oven and cook for 20-30 minutes, turning occasionally to brown on both sides.

^ And this is the result! Ours were a bit too oily but still SO DELICIOUS. And so easy to make.

*My mom makes the most incredible roast potatoes. Same recipe but she uses red potatoes, keeps the peel on, chops them in bigger chunks, and adds rosemary. Also, SO YUMMY.

I hope you’re all having great mornings. We’re getting so close to the weekend 🙂

Workout Wednesday: Passive Exercise

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So this morning I was awake by 6:15am and have to be out the door by 6:45. Usually I budget at least an hour and half to wake up, workout out, shower, write this lovely little blog, then eat. This morning, no way! So I will be coming home at lunch for a quick workout and shower, but for those of you who have had the workout time squeezed out of your schedule on any given day, here are a few passive workout tips.

These should never be substituted for a real workout but should be daily rules to live by so that you don’t feel so bad when you just literally don’t have the time.

1) Always take the stairs. Always. When you get off the train and see that massive, daunting set of 12,000 stairs, look at it as your mini goal for the next 5 minutes and go for it!

2) Park far from the store entrance. If you’re in a hurry, even better, that mean’s you’ll power walk to and from your car.

3) Carry your groceries rather than bringing the cart out. There have been days when I have so many groceries in my arms that people think I’m insane, BUT I also have very sore arm muscles by the time I get to my car.

4) Do calf raises while standing in line. Again, you may look kind of weird bouncing up and down but after a few reps, people stop looking and after a few minutes, your calves are workin’ hard.

5) And this is less workout and more just something to live by, stand up straight! Always! This not only tightens your core and makes you more stable in your real workouts but it’s so good for your current and future spine health to have great posture.

Ok time to brush my teeth and head out! I hope you’re all having fantastic days.

Smile 🙂

 

Friday Advice: Do Not Be Intimidated, Get Informed

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I just got back from a spectacular bike ride with a new friend! Yes, I made a new friend. Her name is Sara and she rides bikes, moved here from Northern California, and is in nursing school. This is the third time I’ve met up with her and we never fail to have something to talk about. Aside from my excitement at meeting someone that I actually connect with, I’m pretty stoked on the routes she’s been showing me. Yay!!

Anyway, today was s short ride but we spent most of the time talking about the flu shot. Haha. I know it seems odd but we’re both at different ends of the medical/health spectrum. While both of us are healthy, we have differing opinions on how to prevent and treat different ailments. I won’t go into my opinion right now (save that for a later date) but we managed to have a fantastic debate over the effectiveness and worthiness of the flu shot.

This has started happening more and more in my adult life where I am being challenged by  other people’s opinions and, instead of backing out and say “I don’t want to argue about it, I don’t have enough information to defend my opinion,” I’ve started learning from what other people have to say. I started reading and listening to people I greatly respect and then finding the science to back myself up. Instead of being intimidated by other people, I’m coming to realize that it only takes a little bit of information to get on their same level. AND when you start talking to them, debating them, you learn more about how to defend your side of the argument. I am getting smarter just by talking to people that think I’m wrong! Sweet!

So this is kind of a rambling post but the meat of it is: Don’t be intimidated by people with strong opinions, just make sure you know why you believe in something and start the debate! You may learn something.

There will be more on this later but I don’t want to bore you all right now. On a happier note, last weekend, I FINALLY learned to ride my bike with no hands! After trying repeatedly for 3 years, I realized that you just have to take both hands off at the same time and lean back. I was so excited that I asked Mike to take a picture.

 

Do any of you readers have an opinion that you’d like to be able to defend better? Maybe it’s time to dedicate an hour to researching it. 

Thursday Recipe: Build-a-Salad

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*to those interested, birthday update at the bottom of the page

Whenever I mention healthy eating, people’s automatic reaction is, “I hate salad.” Let me share something, me too. The typical restaurant salad is cold, unsavory, and wholly unsatisfying. But I’ve recently determined that they’re doing it wrong. As I’ve mentioned before, my current lifestyle goal is only eating grain for lunch and restricting carbs at dinner. This is not to lose weight but to prevent a haphazard insulin spike right before bed. So “salads” have become my go to dinner options and I’ve realized, they’re not all that bad!

To build a great salad just replace whatever carb you were going to use (pasta, rice, potatoes, etc) with dark leafy greens (I prefer spinach). This means that you get the healthy without sacrificing the hot and savory.

Recently, in the vain of cooking a big portion of one thing, I made cooked a big batch of lentils and steamed some extra veggies I had lying in my fridge. Here is the result:

^ Start with the leafy green base. Don’t worry, it will be covered up soon.

^ Add whatever warm veggies you decided to cook. I have zucchini, red bell peppers, and eggplant.

^ Pile on whatever protein you want. I made lentils but you could do any kind of meat or legume.

^ Top it off with a healthy fat like goat or sheep cheese (pretty much lactose free) and some oil based dressing like balsamic or italian. And enjoy!

* Final note: My birthday ended up being quite wonderful. My coworkers remembered and even gave me gifts. I got so much love through this blog and facebook and texting and phone calls. AND Mike came home from his business trip early! He surprised me at work with flowers, a bottle of wine, and a Gap coat that I’ve been eyeing for months. What wonderful people I have in my life. Thanks everyone 🙂

Today, just smile.