My Food Situation

Glowing Green Smoothies in my Freezer

My Fridge!!

Its the Truth!!

So, I have been having a love affair with Kimberly Snyder and her food pairings and whole foods, dairy free, gluten free lifestyle.  Not that I was keen to give up my froyos, but my whole body melted down when I was pregnant, and I just had to cry uncle and embrace the quinoa.

Confession: There was a time when I posted a question about my new food lifestyle on Kimberly Snyder's blog EVERY DAY.  Kimberly Snyder, patron saint of probiotics that she is, kindly answered all my questions.  Can you believe it??  I have to say that her kind guidance really spurred me on to follow her advice.

Every day I:

1) drink a glowing green smoothie with a few Kimberly Snyder approved changes:

• 2 apples
• 2 pears or peaches (depending on the season)
• parsely
• kale
• 2 cucumbers (usually bananas, but Kimberly says I can use the cucumbers instead)
• ginger root
• bunch of spinach
• bunch of romaine
• celery

I blend it all up in the Vitamix I got for my birthday last year and freeze six or seven servings for the week.  I have a whole schedule and system for doing it each week, and I love my GGS.

2) I take a probiotic supplement every morning and night.  I found some cheapie ones at the local Kroger and I am thrilled with them.

3) I tried to make her Probiotic and Enzyme Salad, but it was horrible.  It was so revolting that I would eat a Big Mac every day before I ever ate it again.  It really worried me that I would not be able to follow Kimberly Snyder all the way down the complicated road of eating well.  A friend turned me on to Bubbies, which is a raw sauerkraut.  They sell it at the whole foods, it is easier than making your own, and while it is not THE tastiest thing in the world, I really quite like it with spaghetti sauce and a bit of sheep cheese.  Kimberly Snyder says that sheep cheese is OK sometimes. SHEEP CHEESE!!!!!

4) I really try to follow the food pairings that she recommends:

• eat fruit early, wait 20 minutes before eating anything else
• green veggies pair with anything
• starches and proteins do not pair together
• melons are to be eaten alone

I think the fifth thing is to take digestive enzymes and I sort of stopped those, because I did not notice any big difference after doing it for a year.  

It is all pretty exciting.  I feel all sorts of better than I did before and during my pregnancy.  AND, Hanna, who cuts my hair, says that my hair remarkably longer and stronger than it was when we started down our hair road together.  ALSO, I think my aging puffy eyes are better.  They are rarely puffy anymore, and puff used to be the way I lived with my eyes.  Thrilling.   

BEAT: Look Who Is Biking!!!

Bike must be accessible

The bucket must always be packed

A long term goal of mine has been to get on the bike.  I run and swim all the time, but the bike never happened UNTIL THIS SUMMER.  A big part of it has been accountability.  I have a Saturday morning running group and a swim program (EXCEL!!), but finding a bike group that could accommodate my work schedule, kid schedule and all the rest of it has never materialized.  This meant that I tooled about my neighborhood on my own or rode on the bike trainer with a Sufferfest video.  While I will say that the Sufferfest makes riding the trainer better, on a scale of one to ten Sufferest makes riding a bike a three, whereas riding outside is a nine.

Also, just to give way too much information, riding the trainer indoors is tricky.  It works best when the house is deserted.  My house is never deserted when I am there.  My kids are on me like spider monkeys.  I have to ride the trainer with headphones while everyone is napping so that the sound of my sufferfest video does not wake them.  THEN, if someone is crying in their crib or trundle bed, and I do not hear them, I am literally consumed with the mom guilt.  Mom guilt is SOUL CRUSHING, friends.

SO, when a friend told me that the Brentwood Endurance Athletic Club was starting rides at 5:30 AM on Monday and Thursday mornings, I was dubious as I get pretty sad about having to set my alarm for anytime before 5:00 AM.  However, I decided to attempt this as it is pretty clear that there is no other way for me to get on the bike.  Getting up early is a big bummer on multiple levels:

1) you have to get up early and I am in no way a morning person
2) you have to go to bed early and my circadian rhythms have me shutting down around 11:00 at the earliest.  I have the night fever, night fever.  What can I say?
3) You have to be completely prepared when you are up early.  In the dark hours, there is no time to rethink your outfit or decide what to eat.
4) tiredness.  I like to be completely rested.  I am not one of those people that brags about the town when I am going on less than eight hours of sleep.  I literally get bitter about losing half an hour to sleeplessness, nightfeedings or what have you.  I am angry for days if a thunderstorm is loud enough to rob me of precious sleep.

Anyway, I now have a plan and here it is:

1) inform everyone in the house (including the 9 month old) that they are dead men walking if they do not leave me in complete silence and peace by 7:30 PM on Sunday night and Thursday night.  The children are asleep and my husband has relegated himself to his office only to emerge if one of the children violates the must sleep mandate. Thunderstorms and other loudness past these hours is not tolerated.

2) put everything that can be put into the car early into the car.  My bike bucket (containing my helmet, socks, shoes, bike glasses, and gloves), two huge glasses of water for post ride, and my handbag with license ect.

3) set out my glowing green smoothie to thaw for breakfast.

4) put my bike in front of the back door

5) put my Garmin 310xt on the charger beside the back door

6) Lay out all of the clothes I will even think about wearing.  Anything not laid out the night before is dead to me come alarm time.

7) take half an ambien at 7:45.  I do not advocate medication as a general rule, but I have to say that it has been working quite well this summer.  In fact, I often wake, fully rested, before the alarm to bike goes off.

My above system is going so well that it takes me 7 minutes to get out the door after my alarm goes off.  It is fabulous!!

I am riding a 17 mile route every Monday and Thursday.  My initial goal was to become fast enough over the summer that I could get in the 23 mile route in the same amount of time that I am accomplishing the 17.  Thus far, that has not happened, but I have twice averaged 17.9 miles on a ride, which is the fastest of my life!!  So, I am improving and I ride with Melvin and Tom every week and they are totally patient with me and have even taught me a few things about shifting.  There is nothing like riding with a group to improve your riding.  There is just no way to slack when you are worried that everyone is going to have to wait on you because you bike like snail.

SO, I am thrilled to have found BEAT!!!  It has changed my bike life forever.

Will the Misery Never End

5AM

Post Coffee

I mean seriously.  Baby G woke up at 5:00 AM this morning, which was expected.  I was breast feeding and rocking away in the nursing chair, when in roamed my four year old talking as if he had taken a hit of speed.  I heard his conversation start in the other room and he just continued it all the way into the nursery and I was so tired that I was not even sure it was real.

It is amazing how a child will wake up, I mean literally open their eyes in bed and begin a deep deep dialogue with THE ATMOSPHERE.  It was 0 to 120 in a split second.

His conversation ran something like this: "Oh, I am getting up, but I need my dog, where's my dog, there's my dog, you come on dog.  I got you dog.  It is dark in here, the sun is still sleeping, but I'm not.  hahahahahaha. I am getting up and watch Curious George, but where is the remote control, did my mom DVR it?  Where is my mom, did she make my milk, I bet Baby G is drinking her milk. (He crosses into the nursery where I am indeed feeding Baby G my milk).  There's my mom.  Hi mom, did you DVR Curious George, do you have my milk, hey what's that sound?  Are you turning the TV on?  My dad is still asleep, am I going swimming?  Will I see Miss Pat?....."

Again, all this sounded like an ice pick to my temple to me.  I was just so tired, but I rallied.  I thought to go run, but had a serious dose of the mom guilt.  I hated to leave my four year old vegged out in front of the TV with no one awake in the house while I took the baby for a run in the jog stroller.  Also, it was worrisome, as he may have roamed out in search of me if he needed something.  SO, I busied myself with making coffee and getting the house ready to head out to swim.

I did not have high hopes for swim and then just as we needed to walk out the door, Baby G fell sound asleep so I put him down for a nap and began working on general tasks of housewifery.  We were inordinately late to swim and then when I had been in the pool for a measly 800 meters (long course on Fridays!!), the nursery workers came to get my from the pool as Baby G was inconsolable.

It was frustrating to say the least.  As soon as I got to the nursery, Baby G took one look at me and laughed the baby laugh of a baby who knows that he has won.  He has screamed loud enough to make his mother get out of the pool, walk all the way to the nursery in her wet bathing suit, and take him from the nursery workers who will now not take him back.

SO, Baby G and I went to the locker room, and I looked into his baby saucer eyes and said, "You may have gotten me out of the pool, BUT I must take a shower."  SO, I pushed his stroller into the handicap shower and shampooed and conditioned my hair while he wailed, wailed wailed.  Oooh he was so upset.

And I will confess to you, that I felt very sorry for myself.  It is a first world problem.  I realize that as opposed to "I have to walk 10 miles at great peril to get food for my family", all I really have to say is that, "I went to the gym to get in a workout and I only got to swim 800 meters, because the baby cried."

Anyway, tomorrow, I am going to get to run with my running group.  I am pretty excited about getting back out there. It will be a ten miler!!!

Thursday: An Update on My Workout Status

5 AM run face

While I greatly dislike waking up at 5AM, I have to admit that it is efficient AND it prevents me from running around all day like a full on slob.  Baby G is currently wide awake at 5 AM.  He eats and then looks at me with eyes like saucers as if to say, "what's next, mamasita?".  On Monday, I tried to stare Baby G down with my steely eyes, but he cared not at all.  On Tuesday, I watched two infomericals.  I am pretty sure that I NEED the WEN hair care system that would, FOR SURE, give me lucious Kardashian hair.  Also, the magic bullet seems to be completely necessary.  

After a full Tuesday morning of infomercials, I realized that this could not go on.  Baby G and I cannot just wake at 5:00 AM and stare at the tube like zombies.  SO, I threw him in the jog stroller on Wednesday morning and we had a very successful jog stroller run.  So this morning when the 5AM wake up call sounded, I popped G right into the jog stroller and got in a longer run.  It was great.  I was showered with my hair blown dry and my nose powdered before I ever took my oldest to nursery school. Thrilling. Normally on Thursday's, I run on the YMCA treadmill and just hope I get a shower sometime before bedtime.  

Swimming right now is going over like a lead balloon.  I swam 700 yards on Wednesday before Glenda the nursery matron came to tell me that Little G was not having it.  9:30 found me breast feeding in the locker room before trying to return Baby G to the nursery, where he was not accepted.  Apparently once you are ousted for a crying meltdown, you do not get to return.  I had to ride home in my bathing suit and pool hair, everyone's naps were messy and my early wake up made me irritable.  

Lately, however it does not seem like it takes too much to make me irritable.  

Baby G Split My Transverse Muscle

Womp Womp

So for the past 6 months, I have been running my pants off, swimming as if for my life, doing pilates and all sort of ab work as if my life depended on it.  I guess in a way, life as I know it does.  All this work and my post baby stomach was not budging an inch.  It is just as if someone has cut a cantaloupe in half and set in on my stomach for good.  I am sort of ashamed to say how much I have fretted over it.  I realize that I should be grateful for my healthy children and the privilege of being a mother, but must it be at the price of my hard won abdominals?

Like I said, I have fretted, taken pilates, run, swam and and generally busied myself with physical maintenance, all to no avail.  My sister asked her OB about it and he said it was unremediable.  I googled until my eyes crossed, and came up with a consistent theme: Tranversus Abdominus.  My  abdominal transverse muscle was split.  I googled how to feel for it and test to see if I could get two fingers between the muscle (lay on your back on the floor, bend your knees with feet on the floor, raise your head as if doing a crunch.  Feel for the muscle cords going up your middle.). If you can get two fingers, or more, between those muscles, your transversus abdominus is split.

I tested myself and I could not quite tell.  I could get two fingers in, but not easily.  There was not much room.  This left me in a quandry, and I was forced to seek professional help.  I started asking around a the yay old YMCA for trainers specializing in post-baby boot camp type stuff and was referred to Christin.  SHE felt my transverse muscle for me and confirmed that my transversus abdominus was definitely still split.

I was actually kind of relieved to find out it was "something".  Before asking, I was sort of afraid that Christin would take one look at me and say, "You know, Hot Lips, we don't all have bodies like Sara Jessica Parker when we turn 35.  Buy yourself a mumu and a one piece bathing suit with a skirt and throw in the towel, because you are middle aged." This is not what Christin, whom I now consider to by my most special friend, said to me.

She said, "You are disciplined.  Your body is in great shape.  I am going to give you a list of exercises that you need to do EVERY day and you can have this whipped in three weeks."  She proceeded to tell me that once the transverse muscle is tightened, the half canteloupe will pull back in and give me a flat stomach.  Also, once pulled back in, I can go back to crunching and pilates, and it will all work together.  Right now, pilates and crunches are only sort of exacerbating the situation as my transverse is not tight enough to benefit from these exercises.

SO, every day I am doing:
1) 200 transverse pulses where I sit on a pilates ball and tighten everything and pulse my abs in and out while pushing my belly button to my spine.
2) 50 toe taps where I lay flat on the floor with a tennis ball on my belly button, tighten everything, set my knees in table top and tap each toe on the ground for 50 taps
3) 20 leg levers where the tennis ball is on my stomach and everything tightened, lifting my legs up and down
4) two minute long planks with everything tight

I can already tell a difference.  My stomach is better, quite a bit.  I am dubious about the long term status of my belly button, but I plan to keep working on it.  I am not seeking out the help of a good plastics man just yet.

Foods To Make: Black Bean Brownies

I am amazed by the fabulousness of this recipe.  My friend Becky gave it to me and I was dubious, but it rocked my world!!

Ingredients

• 1 (15.5 ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained
• 3 eggs
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1 teaspoon instant coffee (optional)
• 1/2 cup milk chocolate chips (optional)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease an 8x8 square baking dish.
2. Combine the black beans, eggs, oil, cocoa powder, salt, vanilla extract, sugar, and instant coffee in a blender; blend until smooth; pour the mixture into the prepared baking dish. Sprinkle the chocolate chips over the top of the mixture.
3. Bake in the preheated oven until the top is dry and the edges start to pull away from the sides of the pan, about 30 minutes.

Nutritional Information 

Amount Per Serving  Calories: 126 | Total Fat: 5.3g | Cholesterol: 40mgPowered by ESHA Nutrient Database

Returning to my Regularly Scheduled Workouts

This guy ran the Boston Marathon in these.  Can you believe it?

So now that the marathon is two weeks over and I have taken two weeks off working out, I have returned to my regular workout schedule, and it is really not going well.  Swim was yesterday and I was only able to get in about 2500 yards before the nursery workers came chasing me down in the lap lane.  Baby G was inconsolable and just not have any more of the nursery.

As I may have said before, nursery policy is to stop what you are doing immediately and head down to pick up your child.  So, I had to drag myself down to the nursery dripping in my bathing suit and pick up all my children and tote everyone home.  My hair was a chlorine nightmare and my skin was absolutely scaly.

Today was more of the same.  I attempted to go for a run with the jog stroller and Baby G just would not have it.  Wailing commenced 0.5 miles into my four mile run and 0.75 miles found me pushing the jog stroller with one hand and holding Baby G in the other.  He was thrilled to be toted along.

I have to say it is all a bit wearing.  However, we will sync back up and get back into our schedule.  We did actually get to have a trip to the YMCA in the afternoon that went very well.  Everyone was happy and I was able to take a shower and shave both legs.  What a thrill!!

Anyway, tomorrow I am trying swim again.