When I’ve got a million things whirring through my mind I turn to my calendar and just start planning. Between workouts, lunches and breakfasts, I decided to just write them all in. I don’t do this if I’m not that busy, but when it comes to packing workout clothes so I can go straight to the gym or packing lunches or figuring out how much time I have in the AM, it’s very helpful.

As you can see, I have 3 days at Winthrop of orientation and then my internship starts on Thursday. Purple are meals, grass green are workouts. I feel much better now!

I also had Matt pick out 3 months worth of soup recipes that he’s going to be making on Tuesday nights. He put the soups into his calendar (which I can see) and put the ingredients in the Description area so I’ll know what to put on the grocery list. I’m going to also plan a crockpot meal and do the same – I just need to pick the recipes! One night a week is going to be eat-what-you-want (i.e. sandwiches or leftovers) and the other will be a more formal recipe (likely Mondays when ingredients are fresh).

If you have some great make-ahead salads or crock pots, please post them below! I might do a compilation of links (so I’d prefer for them to be posted online somewhere).

At 11AM I met up with Emily for a stellar yet freezing run at the greenway. How did I know it was 19*? The whole marshland was a block of ice! The greenway is in a flood plain and with all the rain they got recently it was quite full and it was all frozen solid. COOL!

Emily and I did SEVEN MILES again! We didn’t run super fast, but the run was fun and pretty easy. I was so intimidated by 7 miles, but really it’s just an hour of running and I workout for an hour all the time. I have a feeling going over 1.25 hours is going to be when it starts to feel hard.

All I wanted for lunch was a spinach salad and yogurt!

Like mother, like daughter! Mom got me the matching mother bowl from Anthropologie for Xmas

My salad contained spinach, dressed in EVOO + agave + sat, plus carrot, red pepper, broccoli (steamed in the microwave), CRANBERRY CINNAMON GOAT CHEESE from Costco!!!, and my newest homemade olive hummus

Kalamata Olive Hummus: Food process for 3-4 minutes: a can of garbanzo beans, ~2 tbsp bean liquid, 1 heaping tbsp tahini, ~8-10 kalamata olives, ~1/2 tsp kosher salt, a pinch of garlic powder, and a pinch of oregano.

On the side: Stonyfield pumpkin yogurt with Kashi Warm Cinnamon

Trying to warm up by my space heater. Not sure what else is on the agenda!

While I was studying today I did some prep work for the week in the kitchen, or rather my stove-top did the cooking for me

I always tell people if you can just take a few hours out of the weekend to cook some of the time intensive stuff it makes the weekdays so much more pleasant. I cooked (on the left) a bunch of brown rice for dinner (raisins in the bottom one!) and 5 servings of oatmeal just for fun. Sometimes I do enjoy a break from cleaning the pot everyday! For those of you who may not have been reading this summer, I had to leave the house at 7am I pre-cooked my oats just as normal in a big bulk pot and then packaged them in containers. That’s how you turn stove-top into "instant oatmeal." You just need a little milk to rehydrate I still think fresh oats are best, but since the husband is going to be gone 3/5 days this week, I thought it would be nice to have breakfast already made.

So I set out to make steel cut oats (1 cup oats, 3 cups water, boil, cover, simmer for 30 minutes) but for some reason I decided to add an extra CUP of water….and then realized I meant for it to be MILK so I added that too!! I suddenly had oatmeal soup. So I brainstormed ways to fix it, including draining it, but I decided I needed something to absorb the liquid: oats!! So I added a cup of rolled oats and 5 minutes later had the perfect combo. This could become a regular recipe.

When I cook things in bulk I use my food scale to portion it all out. Just subtract the weight of the food from the weight of the pot (which you should have pre-weighed) and then divide by the servings. Makes it easier to get them all even, since my eyeballs are horrible at the job.

So that was the kitchen prep!

I got a good chunk of studying done and then had snunch at 5:00!

A cup of our leftover potato soup , which is JUST like mashed potatoes and divine -

I also had a half-eaten end piece of bread and some crackers -

And then I went back for more crackers and hummus – just because. AND had a handful of crackers more that I didn’t photograph…

Food For Thought

I’ve been having a lot of trouble recently stopping eating. I haven’t been listening to my body at all these days, and I really haven’t felt that in control of my eating since my trip to Boston. You may not have noticed in my blog commentary and think my thoughts are irrational based on what I’ve been eating, but it’s not about what or how much I’ve been eating, but my state of mind .

I love this passage from Fit From Within that a long time ago that always stuck with me:

The rationale behind three meals a day is simple: if you start to eat only three times, you have to stop only three times, and stopping is the problem ….This doesn’t mean there can never be an exception, that you will never have afternoon tea or an after-theater snack…Nothing that you eat rationally and out of choice rather than compulsion will interfere with the fit-from-within process. Nevertheless, I highly recommend that, unless you have a medical condition that requires you to eat more often, you stick with three meals a day most of the time.

If you do, there will be several waking hours during which you will have nothing in your mouth. This is good. This is when you learn to focus on your inner life and your outer world instead of food. It’s also when you come to know at a visceral level that, although food and water and air are indispensable for maintaining your body, the essential individual that you are is sustained by something else, something more.

Eating three meals a day is both a discipline and a gift. In the beginning, it might take all the fortitude you’ve got to get form one meal to the next without picking up something to eat. Call in your inner resources, understanding friends, or something else that inspires you. Learn the difference between what it feels like to be hungry and to think you’re hungry because you’re used to eating often.

In conclusion, I think…..I am bored . Despite all the studying, I need some mentally fulfilling activity in my life that I choose. So my solution is to really, seriously devote time to reading fiction each day. I use the lame excuse that I should be studying if I have time to read, but really, you can only study so much. I LOVE to read, but it’s one of the first things to go when I’m busy. So I’m going to make the time. Get me off of the computer!!

Dinner

I made a favorite dinner of ours tonight: Happy Herbivore’s Red Lentil Dal and Saag . The only change I made was to omit the onion (and I used curry power instead of plain tumeric. And I used kale for our greens). Both are excellent, filling, flavorful, healthy recipes. If you haven’t cooked with garam masala before, you must go buy some. It’s like cinnamon meets savory spices. The third dish was just Lundberg Short Grain Brown Rice (my FAVORITE) with raisins and garam masala .

I also had a bite of this jalapeno corn muffin the husband brought home from EarthFare.

I am off to take a bubble bath and assess my "to read" pile.

Even as someone who enjoys exercise, on the days I don’t start with a workout I sometimes let it hang over me. I know I’m always happy when I’m there, but it’s just the thought of going that’s dreadful. But I’ve noticed that if I few the gym not as a place to go and sweat hard but as a place where I can go to mentally relax and read a magazine, then it’s much more appealing. Today with beautiful weather and lots of time, I put myself in the mindset of looking forward to my workout and the bike ride to and from, and what do you know, I left 30 minutes earlier than I had planed to go because I was looking forward to getting outside and taking a break. Sometimes a simple change in perspective is all it takes.

Once home I scrubbed the master bath from top to bottom. I LOVE my new Mrs. Meyers cleaner !! It works really, really well. I think the Basil scent is absolutely amazing, but I have the Lemon Verbena one right now in their concentrated All-Purpose Cleaner.

But before I started cleaning, I put a halved acorn squash in the oven. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with it but I figured I should get it cooking. The result was quite interesting:

Once I got downstairs I realized I had some turnips and carrots to use so I chopped those up and added them to the roasting pan. I just let everything cook until tender at 400*. I have no idea how long that was – 30-40 minutes? (One acorn squash half and some veggies are already on my plate!)

I also decided to add in the rest of my garbanzo beans and some wheatberries .

And cheese! (Four cheese mexican blend from TJs)

I have to admit that this could have used more forethought in the flavor dept. I went back and added a little brown sugar to have with the stuffing base once the cheese was gone. I was just too hungry and lazy to come up with anything to toss it all with. Hummus would have been good. I thought about cottage cheese as well as adobo chilies but decided against both. But the possibilities for flavors are endless.

Plus a slice of bread "crackers." Since we have so much bread I make myself eat it (which isn’t hard at all!!) but I also like to eat my grain sides in bite-sized pieces like crackers, so cutting it up like this is the perfect solution.

We have to go pick up the CSA again because there was major confusion yesterday and the husband left it there thinking it was our partner’s week. Ugggg. I HATE going down there. If we do this next year (and we haven’t decided yet) we will definitely do the home delivery, which was only $2 more per box. I think it’s worth it not to have to pick up at inconvenient times.

The husband is home and it’s his "weekend" today and tomorrow!! He worked for 12 days in a row, so he’s really excited to have a break, although he says that since he gets afternoons and mornings off frequently that the hours/shifts aren’t as bad as working in corporate America.

Guest Lunch Blogger

Another fabulous sweet potato lunch from one of our favorite readers: VeggieGirl !!

Since I follow a high-raw diet, I consume mostly raw foods with a portion of cooked foods. To be more specific, I consume about 80-90% raw foods (10-20% cooked foods) during the warmer months, which decreases to about 70% raw (30% cooked) during the colder months (**this is true/what works for me – not all high-raw foodists follow the same percentages; and a high-raw diet may not be for everyone).

With autumn weather in full-swing here, and temperatures beginning to drop somewhat rapidly, my body is starting to crave more warmer foods/meals than I did just last month (when the weather was still "summer-like"). So, I created a dish that packs a lot of warmth, spice, flavor, and nutrition – a dish that I (rather lamely) refer to as my B-S-Cubed Dish.

What on earth does "B-S-Cubed" stand for, you may be wondering? Well, it stands for each ingredient that is present in the dish (I know, I’m so clever): black beans, a sweet potato (the first "s"), sauteed spinach (the second "s"), and salsa (the third "s," hence the "cubed" part of the title; and it is the extra hot & spicy kind of salsa – just how I like it). This dish is sensational – period.

I think we ALL could live on sweet potatoes alone in the colder months

Hope the sun is shining where you are!

I am not doing well today!! I’ve wasted way too much time on the Internet and haven’t been working on my to-do list (ironically I was searching for new to-do list programs but decided ToDoist.com is still my favorite because of the elegant look and color coding).

I stayed up late last night and ended up having a bowl of berries and cream! I was going to have a little cereal, but I decided that the nutritional information on the all-natural strawberry ice cream was so close to that of 1% milk I should just have the ice cream for the texture instead With a little H2H for a little fiberific staying power:

This morning I continued the blueberry theme with a yummy bowl of oats.

The combo was typical of my current favorite:

• 1/3 cup oats, 1/3 cup 1%, 1/3 cup water
• 1/2 banana
• 2 tbsp ryeberries
• Vanilla bean pasta
• About 1/2 cup blueberries
• Granola plank
• PB

With tea -

Normally I like a rainy day every now and then, but today I just want to go outside and play! Guess I’ve been spoiled with lots of biking and sunshine. Maybe a little yoga is in store?

National Thank You Day

While at the merci chocolates booth at BlogHer, I learned about National Thank You Day , which is coming up on September 22. In celebration of saying thank you, there is a contest where you can nominate someone you appreciate to receive "the ultimate thank you gift," a gift you choose for them valued up to $20,000! And 100 first prize winners will receive an autographed copy of the book Excuse Me But I Was Next…The Top 100 Manners Dilemmas and a box of merci European Chocolates! So take a moment to say thank you and share some chocolates – the deadline is FRIDAY!

(PS. I am not saying nominate me!! Pick someone you know well – your mom, grandmother, teacher )

Thanks to you all for expressing your support of an ad on KERF!

I’ve been working with BlogHer, a community and network of women bloggers, to debut my first ad. In the next few hours (or days) you’ll notice a new BlogHer advertising network ad in the sidebar. The ads within the window will rotate each day, and many of them are actually pretty interesting – charitable donation opportunities, tips and tidbits, and links to other blogs in the women’s network. My greatest hope is that the ad will not only earn KERF a few extra dollars, but that the information will be helpful and fun to you readers as well.

Thank you all 1,000 times over for your loyal reading and comments each day!

Kath

I got an email last week from reader Tracy from Mission, Texas, home of the ruby red grapefruit, reporting that she has a tree in her yard that produces over 500 lbs of grapefruit per season!!! Seeing that I LOVE grapefruit, she generously offered to send us a few. Of course I said we’d love some!! Much to my delight, the box arrived on Saturday and they taste absolutely divine

Tracy, who holds a phD in nutrition as well as masters degrees in biochemical studies and nutrition and dietetics and food science (!!), is a school nurse at Cantu Elementary where she shares KERF with her students as an example of how to eat healthy. So I want to give a big shout-out to the Cantu Elementary School students and thank them and Tracy for the grapefruit!!!

My grandmother gave me a stack of antique recipe books over Christmas – they are quite interesting to read! Here is an excerpt from Salads for Health, copyright 1929! I thought you guys might find this humorous -

Salad – The Health Builder

The every-day use of salads helps maintain a healthy body, clear complexion, properly-conditioned teeth and gums and freedom from digestive disturbances.

In appetizing salads made of fruits and vegetables there are found three vitamins that foster a healthy body – the fat soluble Vitamin A and the water soluble Vitamins B and C. These vitamins promote healthy growth, are essential to maintenance and build up a body resistance to disease.

In the process of digestion, toxic acids are formed. These poisonous acids may endanger the well-being of the entire digestive system, the blood stream and the body in general, unless they are neutralized by such minerals as iron, potassium, calcium and sulphur, which are to be found in abundance in raw fruits and vegetables.

The daily use of salads eliminates these acids and strengthens the digestive system. Salads give the proper balance to a meal and provide the proper sunshine elements, raw food bulk and fresh vitamin properties.

Dr. E. V. McCollum and Nina Simmonds, nationally known authorities on nutrition, say, “Twice each day a salad should be eaten.” This is an excellent rule to follow if you would preserve your health and vitality.

Apple Luncheon Salad

• Lettuce
• Celery
• Watercress
• Pineapple
• Apples
• Marshmallows
• Pompeian Olive Oil Mayonnaise
  

Place lettuce on the plate in cup-shaped form. Then place a small brilliant red apple, scooped out, in the center of the cup-shaped lettuce. Fill the apple with diced pineapple, celery and marshmallows which have been thoroughly mixed with Pompeian Olive Oil Mayonnaise. Garnish with two sprigs of watercress placed at the side of the apple.

Many of you have been asking about how to start getting up earlier. Surprisingly, I have the most energy the first few hours I’m awake – and the least mid-afternoon and evening. If you’re the same way (and it might take a 5 a.m. workout 5 days in a row to truly find out!) then give early morning workouts a try! To me, there’s no better way to start the day than with a good sweaty workout under your belt. It boosts self confidence, motivation and happiness all day long.

I thought it would be helpful to share some of my tips for my 9 p.m. -5 a.m. routine

1. You HAVE to go to bed on time. If you don’t, you will feel like a sleep deprived zombie, and in that case should probably get back in bed anyways! Count backwards 7, 8, 9 hours of sleep – however much you need – and get in bed 30 minutes before then. It will seem really early, if you are normally a night owl, but it’ll only get easier!
2. Pick the right alarm clock. It’s REALLY hard to get out of bed on the first buzzer. I always snooze at least twice, but you can’t snooze for more than a few minutes or you’re wasting time!! I have two alarms on my clock and set them 2 minutes apart. Then instead of snoozing with the button, I just click two minutes back when the second alarm goes off. Beeping at much shorter intervals helps me wake up MUCH faster.
3. Turn the light on. Be brave, reach out of the warm covers into the cold air, and just do it. It’ll help wake you up 100 x better than darkness.
4. Program your thermostat. If you don’t have one, go buy one! Ours was $10 and was very easy to install. I have the heat set to turn on about 10 minutes before my alarm goes off so it’s nice and toasty when I get out of bed. It turns back off shortly after I leave at 5:30.
5. Decide what to have for a pre-workout snack while you’re still in bed. If you’re anything like me, the thought of peanut butter will get you up and going!
6. If you’re hoping to workout first thing, set out your workout clothes neatly before you go to bed. Then you just have to put them on in the morning. No fumbling around in drawers. Sometimes I even put my sports bra on my nightstand and when the alarm goes off I bring it in bed with me to warm it up so it’s not so cold against my skin in the dead of winter!
7. Mondays are ALWAYS hard. Fridays are (almost) always easy. Lesson learned: the body clock does exist. On Saturdays I often wake up at 5 (although I usually go back to sleep for an hour) simply because I’m used to it. The first day will be hard, but after that it gets easier and easier.

Happy sleeping!

My mom shared with me an article from this month’s O Magazine on making changes in our lives. Although I haven’t had the chance to read the article, she said it stresses that sheer willpower is not how we make change. The article reports research from the book Change or Die: The Three Keys to Change at Work and in Life by Alan Deutschman.

Deutschman’s research found that, surprisingly, many people would rather die than make changes in their lives.

Here’s a quote from the article that my mom typed up. I find this quote particularly meaningful because I had so many role models throughout my own weight loss, both friends and strangers, who impacted me more than they will ever know.

“What he {Deutschman} found is that people get unstuck not through willpower but through a relationship with a person or a group who shows them the way. Not just any relationship will do. It has to be an emotional relationship with someone who inspires hope and belief, who makes you say, If she can do it, I can, too.”

-O Magazine, January 2008

As a health, food and weight loss blog author, my greatest hope is that I can pass on just a little inspiration to those of you committed to make positive changes in your lives.

Happy New Year 2008!

A little slow getting up this morning. We didn’t get to bed until after 9:30 so I added 20 minutes to the alarm clock, making me a little late this morning (hence the late post!). In retrospect, I’m SOOOOO glad I didn’t drink last night. It was great not waking up with wine in my veins.

Breakfast #1

The usual, toast with Smart Balance and jam…

Workout

30 minutes stairmaster, 15 ET, just a little stretching. I did weights yesterday and my abs are still a little sore from Monday so I didn’t want to do them, and my legs just weren’t up for it. So cardio only it was. 420 kcal burned.

Omega-3′s

As you might know from yesterday, I’m reading Dr. Andrew Weil’s book Eating Well for Optimum Health on the lightrail. One of his big points is the horrible ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 essential fatty acids in the American diet. I did not realize that polyunsaturated fats were actually not quite as desirable as I once thought. I thought saturated and of course, trans-fats, were the ones to avoid, but according to Dr. Weil, Americans get WAYYY more polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) than we need in our diets and an abundance of omega-6 from PUFA actually inhibits omega-3s from doing their job. So to make a long story short, I’m trying to remember to eat my omega-3′s, so I added ground flax to my oatmeal along with the walnuts. I like flax a lot, but I don’t love it so I need to remember to add it for nutritional purposes!

Omega-3 = Eat More

• Flax and flax oil
• Hemp seeds
• Herring, Mackerel, Salmon, Sardines, and fish oil
• Soybeans
• Walnuts and walnut oil

Omega-6 = Eat Less

• Peanut oil
• Safflower oil
• Sesame oil
• Sunflower oil
• Meat
• Corn oil
• Cottonseed oil
• Grapeseed oil

One thing I learned during my nutrition class this fall was that on days when I had flax seeds I was meeting my omega-3 recommended goal and on days when I didn’t have flax I was way under. Just shows what a fabulous source of omega-3 ground flax is!!

NOTE: Whole flax seeds, which are about the size of sesame seeds, are indigestible by the body so we must ground flax to make the omega-3′s bioavailable. I have been buying the flax pre-ground and keeping it in a tupperware in the fridge, but I don’t eat it fast enough and it can oxidize if it gets too old. Dr. Weil recommends just grinding a little bit at a time, so I think once we’re out of this batch we’ll use our coffee grinder to grind a half cup or so at a time and use it for a few weeks. Seems more practical than grinding it every. single. day.

Breakfast #2

Oatmeal!!! With pear, walnuts, PB and flax.

Another great latte:

Breakfast calories:450.

With toast: 560.

Today

I’ve got a walk planned at lunch, tuna salad, and a new tilapia recipe invention for dinner. Can’t wait!