Good lord, how long has it been? Three years? Really? Yikes.
The world has changed a lot in three years, hasn’t it? My world is certainly different. I moved (again). I am a proud cat mom to two of the craziest furballs to ever walk this earth and are currently watching me type this. I got a new position at work. I got a new car and am so in love with it. I’ve dated a bit… and now am single lady. I became an aunt again and again. I’ve met some amazing new people. I started and am coming to a close on a Masters of Public Health degree. I bought a BIG girl couch after my “starter” couch died a very slow death. And a headboard, because nothing says “single girl living her best life” like a shimmery and very classy headboard.
And the crafting? Yeah, it’s still happening. At a much lower scale, but it’s happening and making a comeback.
So. Last week I forced myself to the gym after work. This has been the hardest thing for me to master with moving offices, so much so that I eventually cancelled my membership. Unfortunately for me, I cancelled too late and had to take January as my last month and pay for the month-to-month dues… stupid, but that’s the life of a gym goer. But it’s been way too difficult to arrange driving an extra hour a day (already on top of about 4 hours total of commuting daily) to the gym which should only take about 20 minutes to get to from my office. I know I should. I know it’s important to do. But it’s just not happening right now. Before it was on my way home/to work… now it’s completely out-of-the-way and is making me quite sad, because I really did enjoy it.
Another unfortunate aspect is that it’s JANUARY. Welcome to the month of every resolutioner in all of creation who will eventually drop out after the first two months but are super motivated for a few weeks and spend most of their gym visit taking hours on machines because they’re still not sure how to work them… I can say this because I was, in fact, one of them last year. (Reminder: I was insanely cliché and signed up for my membership at 6:00 pm on December 31st, 2012. Yeah. That was me.) Needless to say, I’ve been trying to avoid the gym like the plague.
Well, in attempt to get back on track and beat out this holiday weight gain, I went. I kept my gym bag sitting out at work as a reminder to myself that I was going to go. I had to go. And if I didn’t, I knew the guilt of not following through would keep me up all night. Well, something else decided to keep me up all night…
It started out like any other normal gym trip: Stop by the ladies room, fill up my water bottle, grab some towels and head downstairs to the cardio floor. I was doing pretty good: good stretching and hydration left me feeling loose and ready, I was going at a decent pace, had my music up as high as it could go without disturbing those around me-when out of the corner of my eye I noticed people running around behind me. I glanced to see panicked faces and people running up and down the stair case, employees bolting down as fast as they could. Naturally I stopped to see what all the fuss was when I noticed the gentleman behind me getting CPR after going into cardiac arrest.
Knowing there was really nothing I could do now that everyone had already jumped to help out (calling 911 was covered, medics called, employees notified and defibrillator gained) I froze. Now, this isn’t the first time this has happened and honestly the first time (only about three years ago) sparked my reboot for wanting to lose weight again. But this time seemed different. We were all in a place where this wasn’t expected, where people were going to get healthy. And I know he was doing well with it, I had seen him before and knew a bit of his story. Maybe that’s what it was too, maybe the fact I at least knew who he was shook me a little bit more.
Eventually they closed down the floor and sent us all upstairs. We all were a bit shaken and you could tell who had been downstairs versus the ones that had already been working hard upstairs: we all had that ashen “what the hell just happened?” face.
It’s insanely sad that these situations are the ones that have to smack sense back into me. I made a doctor’s appointment the next day and check ups for three others. I panicked in my own health status: on my way but still not good enough. Still not at that point where I don’t worry at every turn and question my every move. It’s neurotic, I know, but I want to live a long and healthy life. I want to get married and have children. The children thing didn’t really spark a whole lot of concern until my trainer brought up that those who are overweight have a much harder time conceiving. Crap.
But I don’t want to scare people into thinking that it’s a lost cause; that even by getting healthy you could still find yourself in a situation like this and that exercising doesn’t help. Because that’s not my point. My point is that if anything has kicked me into high-gear it’s this experience. Oh, also and to get re-certified for CPR. Because I felt utterly helpless that I couldn’t help, thank goodness there were folks there that knew CPR and could start before the medics arrived. That’s something my bosses nodded in complete agreement with when I told them about it the next day.
So. I’d like to start sharing with you a few of my favorite healthy habits periodically. I’m hoping through sharing these, I’ll keep myself a bit more accountable and give some of you some new workouts, recipes, etc that you can do to spruce up your life routine! These workouts are also great to use when you’re not able to get to a gym and for days like this when it is just far too cold (and snowy) to do anything outside.
The first is a workout by Tracy Anderson that I found online a few years ago from the Fitlbr community on Tumblr. I can’t remember exactly which blogger I found it from (I think it was from Liz of onetwentyfive or Johanna at myquirkylife), but I found it to be a fantastic five-minute workout for my arms! No weights, just your own resistance! For those of you who aren’t familiar with Tracy Anderson, she is the personal trainer to a lot of celebrities, most notably for Gwyneth Paltrow. She is big with using your own body to get strong and lose weight and working multiple muscle groups at once to give you the best results in a short amount of time.
So enjoy and let me know how you liked it! If if nothing else, check out the two bloggers above! I’ve been following them since my first go at this game! Very big inspirations!
You can follow my fitness journey through my Instagram: heyheyheatherk!
In conjunction with my last blog post, I’d like to get back on board with blogging. I feel like I can zen when I can express my life through this little piece of heaven. And I promise, craftiness will be returning! I have a few things I’d like to accomplish in the near future and with all of these snow days, I might just be able to do so!
So sending many hugs to all of you out there and make sure you pass them on! Because you never know… you just never know.
No, I am not dead. No, I have not been sent into the Witness Protection Program and thus why I have not posted in a while…
Life has become more of a roller coaster in the past six months, more so than I ever imagined. I unfortunately have not had any time to do much of anything besides sleep; even my workouts have suffered. They’ve changed my position at work a bit and it’s kept be busy beyond belief. Not only that, we’ve changed offices and now I’m commuting an extra hour a day. And in order to get a parking spot, I have to leave at the crack of dawn.
On top of all this, we’ve had a few family health issues in the past few months that have kept me on my toes more so than usual.
Basically life has changed… a lot and continues to do so. To say I’m exhausted is an understatement. Any chance I can sit and just be is like heaven on earth. But with all of this chaotic change, came parts of my life that had to take a back seat for a while. This blog of mine, unfortunately, was one of them. Crafting was one of them. My etsy shop was another. My social life took another nose dive and I say a huge ‘thank you’ to my friends who have understood my chaos and haven’t disowned me for it! Fortunately for me and unfortunately for them, most are going through similar life situations.
The past few weeks have caused me to do a lot of thinking: where I’m going, what I want to do, etc. Obviously, new years will do that to you. It’s the hot thing: resolutions and all that. But with the changes going on at work and the changes going on at home, I’ve forced myself to take another look at everything and see what changes I need to make in order to feel normal again.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not unhappy through all of this. I have to say I’m VERY proud of myself and how I’ve handled all of this change. If you had put last year’s me in this year’s situation, I’m not sure that girl would have made it through. I was in a bad place last year personally; I was surrounded by bad juju and a bad support system and made the decision that 2013 would be the year to change all of that. And I did: I am incredibly calm about everything. Stressed, yes, but calm. And happy. Quite happy. One of those contented happinesses that are quite rare, especially in D.C.
2013, however, was quite a challenge for me because it was a huge year of finding myself. It was kind of the first year in a long time I actually learned/had the chance to be myself, to be me and not let myself get influenced by so many others. That, i’ve discovered, is a bit of a personality flaw of mine… partially blamed on being a Pisces. We tend to do that: to absorb the feelings of others and place that burden on ourself in addition to absorbing others personalities and making them our own… which, if you aren’t careful can be more harm than good. But I’ve done a lot of amazing things this year like losing 50 lbs for instance. Sometimes I forget how big of a feat that is, huge even. I lost a whole elementary schooler! Once upon a time, I lost quite a lot more and I’ve struggled with that this year only because it’s taken me much longer to do so this time than last time. But I’ve had to keep in mind that I had a much different situation last time and just need to continue to adapt. This time I’ve been building a lot more muscle. That I know. That I can tell. And it feels amazing. 🙂 Along with the weight loss, I took on a new position at work, reignited old friendships, made some new ones, challenged myself personally and tried to do something that scared me more often than not, sewed a satin gown, made some decisions on my future including finally taking the GRE’s, among many other things…
This year already is bringing more new and exciting things! I’m in the process of making some major plans for September, of which, I don’t want to jinx until they are final so you’ll just have to wait on those. I’m doing a short product presentation on one of our webinars at work in a few weeks (kind of freaking out about it, but still excited!) and working on a major project at work that will be launching in a few months (again, so excited!). Trying to get back some social aspects of my life and have resolved to do at least one or two outings with friends a month. That probably sounds so lame, but baby steps, y’all, baby steps.
So there we have it and here we go. 2013 was an interesting year, great, but interesting. 2014 is going to be amazing.
I can’t wait.
I hope everyone had a great holiday and a happy new year! May 2014 bring you happiness and joy in whatever you do! And may you all remain healthy!
A week ago my nephew graduated high school. HIGH SCHOOL. Screw quarter life crisis, more like quarter life meltdown at this point! I was not able to attend due to each graduate getting a limited number of tickets but was definitely there in spirit as my teacher and father were sending me pictures of the days events. The week before that, my niece graduated from preschool. The reasons we’ve learned that these two amazing kids are related to me is:
They’re awesome.
Zoe’s plans were the following: “Zoe is going to kindergarten. And she wants to do EVERYTHING!”
Yup, sounds like moi. I’ve actually been struggling a little bit because I have no idea what I’m going to do anymore. The reason? TOO many things interest me.
Talk about first-world problems.
Seriously though, I always do feel really stupid saying stuff like that, but unfortunately, it’s true. With work contracts coming to a close, I’ve been thinking about my next move in life. The one definite I have is that I’m going to go to grad school. (HOLY CRAP!) I am set to take the GRE’s mid-August and am baffled by why it is so expensive to sit in front of a computer for 4.5 hours to take said test. Regardless, now I have to narrow down the grad school choices. Determining what I wanted to study was another problem. I would love to get into infectious disease research, but I also really enjoy health psychology. But then there is neuro which, I’ve hung around in for the past two years and thus leading to wanting to become a PA in the future…
Maybe that’s why I always wanted to be an actress growing up. That extinguishes the issue because you can be so many different things in such a short amount of time. After all, I always liked getting to be someone else for a while, someone new and different… But the reasoning of why I never divulged into the performing arena is going to take more than just a few paragraphs and will require a lot of alcohol.
What I’ve actually decided on has been Kinesiology with a concentration in Sport Health and Physiology. My goal upon trying to lose weight and get healthy the first time was then to help others the same way my trainer helped me. I often feel really bad that I let myself get back to this place and like I’ve let her down. There were a lot of situations that led to this issue, but again… more paragraphs, more time and more alcohol. I’ve been talking with my current trainer and we were talking about this idea again: becoming a personal trainer/health coach extraordinaire. See, she has been there. She lost a ton of weight, was a figure competitor for a while and now is a fairy-god-sister disguised as a personal trainer. Having done this journey once already and now again, I want to help people who have been in the same predicament and just can’t seem to get ahead of the game. Because this time it’s going to happen.
Anyways, back to the story… since I had the house to myself last Tuesday, I decided to make up the spaghetti squash I had sitting on the table for a week. Spaghetti squash is fantastic, but sometimes takes some getting used to! You’re expecting a mushier texture, like pasta, since that’s what everyone compares it to but it is a little crunchier. I was super lazy so instead of dishing it out of the rinds, I decided to use them as bowls!
The perks of eating it right out of the rind is that you don’t have to worry about extra dishes! I decided it was a good idea when I discovered we obtained more paper plates and I was too lazy to dish out the “noodles” from the squash rinds.
Spaghetti squash is so easy to cook:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Cut each squash in half and then clear out the seeds (note: you can keep the seeds and cook them like you would pumpkin seeds!).
I like to sprinkle some safflower or olive oil on top and then sprinkle some spices: salt, pepper, sometimes garlic, old bay, or even greek seasoning.
Cover in aluminum foil pretty tight and put in for a half hour.
After a half hour, check with a fork and see if you can easily peel the squash away in little strips, usually it takes an hour or an hour and a half.
If not, put back in for another half hour and check again.
Now here is where the fun part comes in…
Spinach and Crab with Cheese
Mix in a bowl 1/3 cooked crab meat, a sprinkle of old bay seasoning, a handful of shredded baby spinach, about 1/8 cup of cheddar cheese and a little alfredo sauce. After shredding the squash, pour the mixture into the “bowl” and then top with mozzarella cheese.
Chicken Parm
Add a mixture of cooked chicken pieces, tomato sauce (I used tomato and basil), and some sprinkled parmesan cheese to the “bowl” of shredded squash. Top with mozzarella cheese.
I didn’t have any meat left over, so I stuffed the remaining two with just sauces and cheese!
Stick under the broiler for about 5-10 minutes (don’t forget to leave the door open a crack!) but keep an eye on it. It’s done when the top of the cheese is cooked.
DIG IN!
I topped it off with a little extra old bay and DIVULGED. So good you guys!
So the life overhaul has taken a turn down a different path as of late. Remember the “I’m going to move out! I’m going to conquer the world! I’m going to be awesome!” Well the latter two are still true: I’m still on my route to conquer the world and I’m (and, no lie, always have been) a pretty awesome person… but the first kind of got downgraded to “Eh, I’ll move out eventually.” How blessed am I to have such amazing parents that just want to see me get on my feet and be me? I’m VERY blessed. I can proudly say my parents have only ever wanted the best for me and if that means taking the time (and most importantly money) to take care of myself right now, then so be it. SO, the apartment funds have currently gone to my health and I honestly couldn’t have made a better decision in that arena. I’m feeling so much better about life, my body is slimming again, I am feeling refreshed and less toxic, and feeling no craziness! I have felt a little overwhelmed with everything (work, shop, gym, etc) but the good kind, not the “Holy crap I could have a nervous breakdown any minute!” kind. So I took off last week to rejuvenate and kick out some much-needed rest and recovery that was needed. Wash that craziness away… and I did!
I may have gone a little nuts though… just a teensy-weensy bit: A week ago I decided I was going to go… yup… you guessed it… PALEO.Whaaaat?
First off, let me say that I’m kind of a modified paleo-ite. I feel like the “true” paleo person is the one who only eats all organic food, no processed foods, most importantly: no processed carbs. But screw it, I’m my kind of paleo and that has meant putting some processed foods into my lifestyle: greek yogurt, cheese, Quest bars (that I just can’t seem to give up). At least I’m not consuming so many unneeded chemicals that I was! Even a short time ago…
Anyhoo, I’m a huge pizza-aholic. Dad got us on this kick that every Friday was pizza night and it was my favorite night of the week so you can bet your bottom dollar that I pigged out like mad crazy. Ever since I started with my trainer, I’ve tried to be über careful of the dreaded pizza with its bleached flour, sugary sauces and deliciously, oozy and greasy cheese… Can we talk about how I NEED pizza in my life?
I was so excited when I found the Cauliflower Pizza Crust recipe on Pinterest. All you have to do is search for it and there are a gagillion posts from other bloggers about how they make their own crust with cauliflower. SO, I bought a head of cauliflower (is that what they call it?) and decided I was going to do it, I was going to make cauliflower pizza crust even though I can’t stand the smell of fresh cauliflower itself!
No seriously, that stuff smells god awful to me, why am I the only one who can see smell that?
Anyhoo, there is something you should know about cauliflower: that crap is hard to chop up into tiny pieces, a la the recipe. Blenders? Yeah, that doesn’t work… believe me, I tried all of them in my household. After my extreme bought of frustration (and sending my father into a similar bought of frustration over the situation) I gave up, threw the rest of the cauliflower in a tub and threw it in the fridge.
Feeling so discouraged, I searched for an alternative paleo pizza recipe and found a little gem of a video for paleo pizza crust… that I couldn’t find again… This is becoming a theme of mine with healthier recipes. So I made it up from what I could remember. (If it might have been your video, please send me a message!)
Now, I say “Not so 100%” because I’m sure I’ve added way too much cheese to make sense in the world. Though if anything it’s about 95% paleo, so that’s a win! … Right?
Anyway… (EDITED CONTENT BELOW!)
Ingredients:
Crust:
1/8 c of coconut flour (sifted)
1/2 c of almond flour (edited to add)
1/3 c of ground flax-seed
1/4 c of almond milk
4 eggs
Seasoning (I added 2 tbsp of garlic salt, 1 tsp sea salt, 1 tbsp ground pepper
Pizza:
Organic Pizza Sauce
Low-fat, Low-moisture mozzarella cheese (can be pre-shreaded – there comes that “almost paleo”!)
Yes, the protein shakes have officially made their comeback and I’ve been experimenting like crazy with some of them! One, that came up by accident, has now become one of my favorites!
Lemon Meringue Protein Shake
Ingredients:
A handful of baby spinach
1/2 cup of almond milk (vanilla or unsweetened)
2 scoops of “Sweet Cream” Visalus protein powder (or other cream protein powder)
1 tbsp of lemon juice (or more, depending on your preferable tartness)
~6-8 small ice cubes
1 tbsp of flax-seed
1 Splenda packet (should you need it, you probably won’t)
Lets talk about this for a second. I love pie. But I hate fruit pies, something about the texture that weirds me out. I love custard or chocolate pies and lemon meringue is right up there near the top of my favorites! This shake almost looks like a key lime pie and I’m sure you could substitute the lemon for lime and go for that one! The joy of single served blenders is that there is no hassle: just throw it all in, blend and walk away happy knowing you’ve just concocted a fantastic creation.
I have quite a few things to share with you guys in the next few days! Keep a lookout!
I was sitting here, catching up on some blogs, watching “Spongebob Squarepants” (because I’m secretly my 5-year-old niece) and drinking my coffee shake before my workout!
This is one of my favorite shakes that I make and now that it’s starting to get warmer (not today, bleh it’s COLD!) I figured it’s ok to bring back my frozen shakes again. 🙂
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