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my hubby, b, and i got a zipcar name chaka (chaka car!). chaka was a dark silver honda civic with an “econ” button. she looked kinda like this:

chaka!

we had her for the whole day so we drove out to chester, nj to pick some berries at alstede farms. the farm was just okay; the pick-your-own was way way way overpriced (6.99/lb for berries) and we could only pick a few. i guess they get a lot of people so not many berries left. i don’t think i would go back, but for people who have never picked before it would probably be fun. i’d rather go to terhune or fred’s. i’ve been going to fred’s yearly since i was probably 7 years old. his blueberries are still just $1.40 a pound.

after berries we were going to go hiking at surprise lake but it was too hot so we drove down to visit my family instead. spent time there, got lots of veggies from their gardens (beets, kale, dill, summer squash, etc…), and then headed back to the city. we stopped in jersey city to spend a few hours on my (yoga) friend’s boat and watch the fireworks. he had a great view.

source

it was a perfect ending to a perfect day.

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how did you spend your fourth of july?

p.s. food post soon!

for the last few years (umm, since moving to nyc) i have been a coffee drinker. my teeth are not as white as they used to be, so i am using crest whitestrips (yep, chemicals) to lighten them up a bit. i can already tell a difference and i’m on day 5. i only plan on using 10 (1 per day) and b will use the other 10. i’ve used them before a few times and they really work. you definitely don’t have to use all 20 strips.

brunch at mudspot – coffee + OJ!

so – how to keep teeth white and keep drinking my coffee?

use a straw!

i heard you should also use a straw when you drink:

• coffee & (dark) tea
• soda (which you shouldn’t drink anyway)
• orange juice
• red wine (ha! drinking wine with a straw)

some tooth-staining foods that a straw will not help with are foods that could stain clothing – if it can stain clothing, it can probably stain your teeth. culprits might be soy sauce, dark berries (unfortunate), and aging (ok – aging doesn’t stain your clothes, nor is it a food). but flossing might help with these (and flossing is great anyway, not just for stain prevention).

what are your healthy teeth tips?

so — for those of you who have been following me for a while, it may seem like i am constantly starting and stopping various challenges (whole30, yoga every day, etc…), diets (raw food, macrobiotics, vegetarian, paleo, etc…), and the like. i don’t want to seem like a quitter. in all honesty i’m not a quitter in most areas of life – i have been doing yoga regularly for years, i’ve been in choirs since i was 7, i’m pretty good at keeping a stable job (especially compared to most people in my generation!).

unfortunately, i seem to be flaky when it comes to eating habits.

i know – i said i was going to do the whole30.

but – i can’t. i just can’t. i won’t get into it here, but my past is littered with food issues. suffice it to say, my body is still recovering from the hell i once put it through (still putting it through, some might say).

i do have a new “plan”, if you can call it that. it goes something like this:

1. eat 2500+ calories a day. every day.
2. don’t weigh yourself. (i threw out the scale – literally.)
3. give away the clothes that do not fit you anymore.
4. eat breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, and snack – every day.
5. eat whatever the fuck you want to eat. nothing is off limits.
6. mantra: “I will have good days and bad days but my value is not determined by my weight and I intend to nourish myself at the start of each day.”

for more on why i’m doing this, read do i need 2500 calories?

now guess what? YOU can do this too. women need nourishment. women need curves. we need to stop taking pride in eating like birds. a 5’10″ woman should not be living on 1500 calories a day, even if that’s what she thinks she needs to eat to maintain her weight. for that matter, a 5’0″ woman should not be living on 1500 calories a day either! if you are eating less than 2000 calories a day, please, do your body a favor and bump it up a notch. eat what you want to eat. eat when you are hungry. give your body what it needs.

(and if you are in the “trying to lose weight” camp, i have read that if you’re not making progress, try increasing your calories for a while, and your metabolism will get fired up. it might be that you’re having trouble losing weight because you are actually not eating enough. i know that doesn’t sound like it makes sense, but it works. i promise.)

—

have you ever “quit” a diet?

• paleo for women
• julianne’s paleo & zone nutrition

both of these blogs are paleo, but more focused on the womanly side of paleo. i did not even know that paleo had a womanly side until recently.

recently both of them reviewed It Starts with Food: Discover the Whole30 and Change Your Life in Unexpected Ways. this book is based on a popular paleo plan called “the whole30″ that is supposed to reset your body through nutrition. it’s a strict paleo plan that you follow for 30 days. anyway, i bought the book and it arrived in the mail yesterday.

i also had an horrible stomach day yesterday. so i am going to try the whole30. why not, right?

whole30 basics (these are actually just taken from their table of contents, which you can see on amazon)

• no: added sugar at all (including stevia) & alcohol
• no: seed oils
• no: grains & legumes
• no: dairy
• no: white potatoes (!)
• eat: meat, seafood, eggs
• eat: veggies and fruit
• eat: good fats, including avocados, some nuts (best are cashews, hazelnuts, macademias), olives, animal fats, coconuts

i haven’t even finished the book but i will certainly write a review when i do.

what sucks so far (erm, 10 minutes in):

• i am having decaf coffee (regular is allowed, but they say you shouldn’t have to have it – and i kinda do)
• i am having black coffee (no milk or sweetener of any kind, including stevia)

*btw those are affiliate links to the book.

in yoga tradition, we welcome in each season with 108 sun salutations. a sun salutation, or surya namaskar, is a sequence of movements performed in a flow linking breath and movement. sun A is a simple one and sun B adds a few extra postures. different styles of yoga have different variations on the sun salutations.

in ashtanga yoga, which is what my practice is rooted in, surya namaskar A looks something like:

• begin standing, mountain pose (tadasana)
• inhale, raise arms up (urdhva hastasana)
• exhale, forward fold (uttanasana)
• inhale, raise chest
• exhale, jump back and lower through a pushup (chaturanga)
• inhale, upward facing dog (urdhva mukha svanasana)
• exhale, downward facing dog (adho mukha svanasana)
• 5 breaths in adho mukha svanasana; on empty hop forward
• inhale, raise chest
• exhale, uttanasana
• inhale, urdhva hastasana
• exhale, tadasana

and surya namaskar B is sun A but with these differences:

• replace urdhva hastasana with chair pose (utkatasana) at the beginning and end
• before taking 5 breaths in down dog:
  1. step right foot forward at the end of the exhale
  2. inhale, rise to warrior 1 (virabhadrasana 1)
  3. exhale, chaturanga
  4. inhale, urdhva mukha
  5. exhale, adho mukha
  6. do the left
  7. then hold down dog for 5 breaths

easy peasy, no? here is a further breakdown of sun A.

why 108? 108 is an interesting number. it is divisible by a lot of other numbers and has other fun mathy qualities.

• 108/12 = 9 (9 dozen)
• 108/9 = 12
• 108/6 = 18 (18 is a lucky number in judaism)
• etc… all of the divisors of 108 are: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 12, 18, 27, 36, 54, 108
• 108 is also an achilles number, which means it is powerful (for every prime divisor or factor p of n, p² is also a divisor – ex: 3 is prime and both 3 and 3²=9 is also a divisor) but not a perfect power (a positive integer that can be expressed as an integer power of another positive integer)
• it’s also the hyperfactorial of 3, meaning 108 = 1¹ x 2² x 3³

in hinduism and other religions, 108 has more special meanings.

• 1, 0, and 8 represent “one thing”, “nothing” and “everything” (infinity).
• hindu deities have 108 names.
• because of the significance of 108, malas have 108 beads (malas are the hindu equivalent of a catholic rosary… sort of – and the rosary, i believe, also has 108 beads).
• the distance from the earth to the sun, divided by diameter of the sun ~= 108.
• the distance from the moon to the earth, divided by the diameter of the moon ~= 108.
• stonehenge is ~108 feet in diameter.
• there are 108 yoga sutras.

more on 108 (the number) here.

i am hoping to do 108 sun salutations this week. i wanted to do them all in one day (yesterday) but instead my practice yesterday was a class i took with bobby at pure yoga on 86th street. i will be back there again tonight for an inversions workshop. i wish i had been counting my sun salutes this week – i could have figured out how many more i needed to do to get to 108. i will try to find a way to fit them all in before june is over (can you believe it’s june 21st already?).

–

how did you celebrate the solstice?

today’s breakfast was small but much more gourmet than what i am used to. i had:

• sauteed mustard greens from my csa with (organic) butter, salt, and ground black sesame
• cut up turkey breast from trader joe’s (2-3 ounces)
• coffee with (organic) whole milk and a little bit of nunaturals stevia (this is my standard morning coffee; i almost always make it at home)

a simple (paleo*) breakfast

it was delicious.

*since the fall of 2010 i have been an off and on paleo person. i really like it. my version of paleo aligns most closely with mark sisson’s (who calls it primal). do check his blog out if you are interested in caveman nutrition. the premise for the paleo diet is that we should eat the way our paleolithic ancestors ate – lots of meats, fish, and veggies; minimal to moderate fruit (mostly berries); no grains, beans, sugar.

the other half of my “breakfast” was 5 sun salutation A’s. a great way to start your day is to do some yoga sun sals or meditate for 5 minutes before heading off to work. it will keep you calm and prepare you for the challenges of the day.

PCOS Bread!

combine dry ingredients in a large bowl:

• 3 cups farinetta
• 1/2 cup soy lecithin granules
• 1 tablespoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2-4 tsp of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves or other “pumpkin pie” type spices – i used cinnamon
• 1/2 cup ground flaxseed/flaxmeal (optional, but good for Omega 3s) – i did not use this
• 2 tablespoons ground black sesame seeds (optional – i did add this, and i used this grinder)

combine (separately) the wet ingredients + sweetener in a medium or small bowl:

• 2 mashed bananas (alternately, try pumpkin or applesauce?)
• 1 cup baking stevia (do not use sugar here – pcos people are particularly sensitive to sugar – our insulin response is usually messed up)
• 3 medium organic eggs
• 1 cup of whole milk (could sub a non-dairy milk, or even water)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 teaspoons vanilla or other extract

method

1. preheat your oven to 350F.
2. combine the wet and dry ingredients by pouring the wet into the dry. you may add extra goodies like chocolate chips, nuts, etc… but i did not.
3. spoon the batter either into muffin tins or a baking tin thing (what are those called? i guess like a loaf pan? mine are circular and have ~1.5 inch high sides). my batter fit into 2 of the circular ones. the batter may or may not rise – mine did, but i read online that others didn’t – so fill accordingly.
4. bake at 350 degrees for 25 – 35 mins (check after 25).

this makes approximately 16 servings (each tin cut into 8 pieces). if you have 2-3 servings per day, that should be enough DCI to be effective. there are about 5200 grams of DCI in the whole batch. that means 325 grams in each 1/16th piece. depending on your weight, have 2-3 per day (i think the study with DCI used 600 grams per day for smaller women).

***

i hope this helps someone! i really liked the muffins/bread. they definitely have an odd, “healthy” taste to them, but i like stuff like that. try topping them with butter or cream cheese. yum.

i have decided that the 30 days of writing (hopefully more) will be a private thing. but i will probably post excerpts from those entries here. privacy and being online is something i always struggle with – what to share, and what to keep for myself.

love,

maggie

***

what do you share online? what don’t you?

the takeaway from the article i linked to is that the only thing you might regret about journaling is that you didn’t start sooner!

so – i want to try to journal for 10 minutes every day. for 30 days. i would love to continue on after 30 days, but 30 days is a manageable time frame so that i don’t feel overwhelmed.

another note – i was trying to find the percentage of people that keep some sort of journal. i got nothing – anyone know any statistics on journalers?

***

journal for tuesday, 6/5/2012

woke up this morning and snoozed a few times. fewer times than usual, but snoozing is something i want to stop doing completely. it would help if i went to sleep earlier but for some reason that’s a toughie too! i meditated for 7 minutes. i do this almost every morning. i’m not sure if i’m getting better at it or not. breakfast was on the go as i was getting ready to leave for work – some PCOS bread (recipe to come?) smeared with cream cheese.

at work we’ve been on a big project since mid-march, so i just continued on with that. i’m working on some user reports and making an admin interface for campaign managers to place pixels. fun stuff – really, it is, for me. grabbed a quick lunch with my boss from pret (tuna nicoise with buttermilk dressing). i’ve been lax about the fodmaps thing lately so i was really trying today. i snacked on a few cashews and the stomach seemed to be fine.

after work i tried to stop by benjamin moore to pick up a paint color… but they were closed. we had repainted the kitchen last night but i absolutely hate the color. for some reason it didn’t look pink on the color sample, but on the wall – mauve! i have nothing against mauve, but i don’t want it in my kitchen. the color was new england brown by benjamin moore. i suppose it looks pink now – i was just thrown off by the “brown” in the name. instead we are going with august morning - a completely different direction, but after the pink debacle we had to. this is going to go with white cabinets (some glass fronts) and a dark, black/grey marble countertop.

new england brown

august morning

(this weekend my dad came up to help us fix up the kitchen wall – we took down some poorly installed tile that looked terrible, and a lot of plaster came down along with the tile. we managed to fix it up with plaster of paris, spackle, and a lot of elbow grease – i think it is one of the nicest walls in the house now.)

picked up laundry on the way home (oh yeah – i dropped it off this morning) and when i got home, packages – cat food and my first toaster oven. then picked up some groceries – kabocha (first one in a few months) and other low-fodmap-friendly veggies. got the most amazing fresh cherry tomatoes for a buck, and promptly ate them while standing in the kitchen. i also snagged some bananas for free… don’t ask how i got them. don’t worry, i didn’t steal them. dinner was scrambled egg with cheese and butter over steamed kabocha. i am obsessed with this sesame grinder so i ground a whole bunch of sesame on top and a bit of s&p.

sesame grinder - my MIL has it which is how i discovered the idea

eggs and kabocha for dinner

i don’t want this to turn into a food journal, so i am going to end up journaling some things i eat and not others. i will certainly journal the interesting things, but i’m not going to be writing down every time i eat anything, say an orange after dinner or something (unless it’s a really good orange).

before i “cooked” dinner i did a lot of cleaning and organizing. when you are doing home renovations it’s so important to keep things as normal as possible – otherwise the whole house turns into a disaster area. i even like to put away the tools i’m using (even if i need to get them out tomorrow) because having everything in its place just makes me feel more relaxed.

i was supposed to go see temper trap with b tonight, but i was feeling so tired and one of his coworkers wanted to buy the ticket from him anyway. i realized later that i forgot to have coffee this morning and that’s probably why i was out of it all day. i love coffee; i don’t love that it’s addictive. i’m glad that i got to stay home and do all the random crap that wouldn’t get done otherwise.

some other random things

• b helped me trim my hair in the mirror last night. came out nice! we only took off half an inch from the ends. i’m trying to grow out a bad haircut (short and uneven layers). i’m trying to grow my hair out in general – i want it long again. i chopped it all off last year after a bad haircut and before i went to paris and i’m still letting it get long again. i don’t know why i can’t seem to find a good hairdresser these days.
• my building is installing a new boiler. strange noises.
• my building recently repainted the fire escape and metal out front – they painted it red to match the front of the building and i don’t like it red. it would be better black.
• b and i and about 9 other people went to the sasquatch music festival memorial day weekend.
• i took david hollander’s flow yoga class at pure friday night – he is a fantastic teacher. i loved it.
• i am still working on handstand. i’ve not been practicing that regularly (anywhere from 1-3 times a week; this should really be 3+ times a week). and forearm stand (we did this on friday).
• i will be singing faure’s requiem next saturday so that will be fun.
• housewarming party on saturday night.

i’m sure some days my journals will be long, like this one, but other days they may be short or just bulleted lists. i may also post things randomly in addition to the journals.

***

do you keep a journal? what’s your definition of journal?