Wellness Day

Before leaving for the fair I had some lunch:

Cheese, tempeh burger, carrots, red peppers.

Look at my loot from the wellness fair:

I got my blood pressure done: 100/70 (low normal, good apparently!), I got my posture checked; all good, except my right hip is far higher then my left, and apparently I put about 10lbs on my right hip as apposed to my left hip! I sometimes get lower back pain, and this might be the cause! I’m really curious to go to the chiropractor actually and see what can be done/figured out… I also got my body fat measured, which included a weigh in. Lower then last week even with food and being later in the day. There were some other cool things like info on cancer, mental health, UBC farm, and so much more. I also picked up this delightful snack while at the sub:

Vegan brownie from Sprouts. And some earl grey tea (only because I wanted one of those cups. ).

I went to the gym with my friend Joyce. The residence beside ours has a beautiful free gym with all new equipment! We did:

• 35min on stationary bike
• Abs, the following twice through:
  • 20 crunchs
  • 10/side bicycle
  • 10 leg lifts
  • 20 supermans

Then I had supper:

(man I ate a lot of cheese today.)

And dessert:

Inspire tea tetley herbal tea. And a chocolate chip shot. 

Alright, well I’m off to watch TV study.

Me No-likey!

Hey all! Sorry to be so MIA, but I just haven’t had anything really interesting to write about lately. Till this happened to me at lunch…

Hmmm, you think, looks like just some ordinary PB and banana on toast. Delicious? Weird? Not really…

Well folks, this is it. This is the weird bit. I hate bananas. Ok hate is a strong word, but since I can remember I could not consume a banana unless it was in a baked good. Or mashed into non-existence in oatmeal. Or blended to soupy perfection in a smoothie. 

But today I was thinking about bananas and at lunch I noticed half a banana I had laying around left over from yesterday’s oatmeal and I just thought maybe… So I took a thin slice and tried it. Chomped down, chewing and tasting, not bad not bad. I swallowed; low and behold, my world didn’t end!

See, when it came to bananas my dislike was entirely a texture thing, not a taste thing. So while I loved bananas in breads or oatmeal, I could eat just a plain banana.

This my friends is the official end of my picky eating habits. Very sad indeed.

I know I’m not alone in my history of being a picky eater. In fact many kids are picky eaters. Apparently this term has a name: neophobia (the fear of trying new and unknown things). Apparently it can take up to 16 times before a kid will try something new. That means you’ll have to place the food in front of the kid at 16 meals before he or she will even take a bite.

My parents were pretty good with my picky eating, making sure I had my “not icky tomato sauce” (ie plain, no meat or other veggies in the sauce) or my plain cheese pizza.

I honestly didn’t grow out of my picky eating until I became vegetarian when I was fifteen. I then started to eat a few more vegetables (I’d always loved a select few, but there were a lot I never ate). Even eggs came back on my menu after a bit. Seriously it’s funny how something considered a restrictive diet by some really expanded what I ate over all.

Now I’m not afraid of any foods really. And I don’t eat meat now entirely out of habit; I seriously have no want to eat meat. Ok occasionally the bacon frying smells really good, but it doesn’t make me want to eat it. The only food I can really think that I don’t like is fish. There’s just something about that fishy smell that’s really off puting for me. I don’t know why.

Well I really should be off. I have a great afternoon ahead of me:

As a part of my “get back on track” I’m trying to also get back into a productive groove (I do have a pending midterm next week! It seems I’m not the only one in a back on track mood. Angela at Oh She Glows is getting back on track. And even my friend Marianne has started trying

The Littlest Broccoli Stalk

Hello All.

What a day. So long! And it’s not done yet! I spent 6hours studying alone today. Also had yoga and another class. Tonight I have a meeting for my council group, hopefully it’s short.

 

But I was well prepared! Last night I got ready for the day by preparing my meals for the day:

 

While I was preparing, look who wondered away…

 

He got even more lost on the way home, but made himself some friends…

 

After playing with his friends the gourds, and Mz Crane, The Littlest Broccoli Stalk made his way over the Glass Jar Wall and back home;

 

He was a little scared jumping down, but once he got back on the counter he was happy to get cozy with some carrots and cucumber…

 

Clearly I’m going crazy! But seriously, it was like the cutest head of broccoli ever! Is it weird that I find food cute? And don’t even say anything about playing with my food! :p

Alright off to make an agenda for my meeting tonight, and hopefully get some more studying in!

Brain Dead

Well one midterm down, one more to go! Plus a small paper, plus a huge event! The week is almost done.

Despite many cups of this:

(My apologies for the blurryness, pouring and photographing at once is a difficult task.)
My brain still felt like this:

…… huh?……

After my midterm Ienjoyed a decent lunch with fellow blogger Marianne. We went to the Red Burrito, a mexican restaurant in “the village”. The Village is a small little shopping/eating/living area just outside of campus. It’s pretty much on campus, but technically, I guess it’s not.

I got the tortilla soup:

It was pretty flavourful, but lacking in texture changes. I tried asking for some beans, but the server was like ….uh….I don’t recommend it. So I shrugged and went along with it. It was tough scooping out soggy chips out of my soup though! If they’d been smashed up it would have helped lots! Next time I’ll try a burrito, since Marianne’s looked much more filling then my own little lunch choice.

I went home and promptly chilled out with an apple and some reading.

Well I have a meeting to go to! Must be off. Have a great night everyone.

Another Weekend gone + Review!

And it’s once again sunday night.

I started my day with toast and pb. Which I of course forgot to take a picture of… sigh, I seem to be bad at that. I do have a question for people, once you upload pictures to wordpress, do you have to keep them on your computer? I feel like I’m taking DOZENS of pictures and I’m not sure I want to keep them all on my hard drive…

I was excited to try something new today:

Yesterday I picked up some Vega Products. Vega was invented by Brendan Brazier, a (local!) professional triathlete who also happens to be vegan. I’ve recently read his book Thrive (for a second time) and I really like the concept behind his food philosophy. I am hoping to try some of the recipes from his book actually, but just haven’t had time! Plus some of the ingredients are a little $$$, and being a poor student I just can’t spend the extra cash on “better” food.

I wasn’t too sure… Smoothie add ins are never really my thing. But I mixed it up with one cup of milk, one large banana and purred until smooth (this took a while, because the banana just didn’t want to de-chunkify).

My verdict:
-  tasted a little bit “grassy”. I can’t lie, it bothered me, but only a little bit. Actually the chocolate was helpful.
- Slight chalky texture. But not that bad.
- Wow. I did feel an instant boost in energy. I was in the middle of a 5hour study marathon with my friend Ally, and honestly it totally got me through the rest. I wasn’t expecting it to work so well.

Would I use it again?
yeah actually I think I would. It was pretty good and the fact that I felt immediate effect was really neat. I have one more to try: vanilla chai. We’ll see how it is.

The rest of my eats today:

Plus about 10 dried dates and a little more pb.

I also ran about 10k. But it was broken into 4 on my own in the morning, then 6 after the study marathon with my friend Ally.

Right now I’m just chilling and watching Must Love Dogs. It’s cute and it’s on TV, who could ask for more?

I’m hoping to maybe study a little more tonight… But night just doesn’t work for studying for me.

Hodge Podge

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have class 8-12:30 straight. And for some reason I find it sooooo difficult after that to mentally get my head into working gear.

Let’s face it, right now I have all afternoon off, and it would be the perfect time to do some school work? And am I?

No.

Ugh! Oh well. My mental focus is just like my lunch: a hodge podge of food.

So I totally thought that the hummus (which I just bought today) was roasted red pepper. Then I took a bite of a carrot with a ginormous blob.

HOLY COW! My mouth was on fire! Turns out it wasn’t red pepper:

Haha. oops. Oh well I do love spice, just not unexpectedly.

I also had me some dessert:

Match made in heaven.

Alright, I’m off to see if I can concentrate at all. Hopefully I can do something.

Look at all the contests going on in the blogging world:

Allison at Eat Clean Live Green is giving away some Kashi items.

Jocelyn of Jocelyn Eats Fresh is giving away a book, some bars, and natural shampoos!

There’s a Glo-bar giveaway by Jessica as well.

Well I should be off and try to be productive.

Hump Day’s Over!

Hello lovely readers.

Hope you all had a happy hump day!

My eats for the day started with a warm bowl of oatmeal and coffee:
(I ran out of milk with this year )

Since I knew I’d be camera shy I took a picture of my lunch before leaving:

Snack was tea, yogurt with pineapple and chocolate chips

(Am I the only one who really likes the milk curling up in a cup of tea? I don’t think it does this in coffee…)

And dinner was leftovers: + a 1/2 tortilia with cheese not picutered:

Yes that’s a chick lit book, so sue me! I like to enjoy a book that doesn’t involve huge concentration.

Right now I’m enjoying some herbal tea and the other half of that tortilla with some peanut butter and honey. Yum.

Stress Eating

So yesterday I posted about how I was stress eating. It’s not uncommon, it’s nothing new, it’s not unheard of by many of you visiting my site.

But what exactly is it? Why is it that when we feel stress we suddenly feel a need to binge on anything or everything in sight?

Well according to psychology today (a magazine), it comes down to physical responses to stress. Stress is response to something in our environment that we feel threatens our well being. There are physiological responses, and cognitive responses to these stimuli.

From an evolutionary standpoint stress responses came about for survival. We would usually find more energy to deal with the situation once thought to be out of our personal resources. Of course the stressors we originally developed these responses against were not quite the stressors we have these days.

We all have different coping mechanisms for dealing with stress. These can be maladaptive or adaptive. Maladaptive coping strategies don’t help you get rid of the stress. Think stress eating; doesn’t really help you at all does it? Whereas adaptive will help you get to your goal. Say, actually studying for the test.

I really found the psychology today article very informative.

I also took some of the notes from my Sports Psychology class, whilst studying.

And I’ve tried to think of some strategies to use for myself to avoid studying I mean stress eating:

• Like Liz suggested; chewing gum. This does help, I’ve done it in the past. My problem is I go through gum like no other.
• Keeping my hands busy. Even if I’m not studying, taking a break but still feeling anxious about something, if I keep my hands busy with something, it definitely helps keep them away from the cookie peanut butter jar.
• Breath: Put your hand just below your belly button. Take a deep breath, trying to make it reach your hand. Do this three, four times, or until you feel calm. It’s weird, but it works really well.
• Just Getting It Done. That’s right, just sitting down and getting some work done. This is something I’ve only really started getting the hang of recently, just. Getting. The. Work. Done. That. Is. Stressing. Me. Out.
• Making a list. It sometimes helps to just write out what’s stressing you. Then write what the worst thing is that can happen. Once you realize how ridiculous some of the things you think are going to happen are, you’ll probably calm down a little.
• Taking a Break. Sometimes it’s seriously what you need. I know when I start stressing and studying too hard I break, so I make sure I take a break.  Do something you really like; exercise, read a book blogs! Or listen to music or anything that will help.
• Try not to beat yourself up. This is a big one for me too. I have to make sure I don’t feel guilty not doing other stuff (like working out as much as I’d like to!) that I normally would be able to do. You can’t do everything, get used to it.

Anyway, that’s just some stuff I found that might help you other stressed out students out there. And just remember sometimes it’s ok to just have some chocolate or peanut butter.

Tuesday Blues

Hello all!

Wow, what a day. I think the weather hear that today was our first day back at school after a long weekend. It’s so hard to wake up to dark grey  and somber skies. Not my thing. Anyway today my goal was to take pictures of all my food. But in biochem I felt too self conscious to take a photo of my breakfast. :$ Anyone else get like this when they’re taking food photos?

But here are the rest of my eats:

+ handful carrots.

Preparing Dishes for dinner:

Yummy fresh rosemary and potatoes. Soooo good.

And of course veggies for roasting:

In the pan: tofu, eggplant, mushrooms, basil, red pepper and tomatoe. Soaked for an hour in balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Sooo delicious.

I had this (x3!) to make myself go on a run: Dates and peanut putter = love.

 Then a couple hours later I was eating those potatoes and veggies:

So good!

Add to that six pieces of Cadbury Dark Chocolate, a sandwich with almond butter and coffee and an apple with pb and you have my whole day.

My run today went fairly well. I am loving my new garmin. It’s amazing. It beeps every kilometer (yeah that’s how I read it here in the great white north, though I always think of pace in terms of miles….). Then I come home and load it up on my computer, and it’s all there, mapped out for me. So cool! I want to learn more about my heart rate and what it means health wise. Damn something to procrastinate with. Though it would be totally relevant to physiology.

There was one damper on my day. I ate an apple with peanut butter this evening after my supper and a meeting to organize a huge event we have to do tomorrow.

What you say?

Eating an apple and peanut butter a perfectly healthy and legitimate snack, put a damper on your day?

Well yeah, it did. That’s because it was stress eating. Hello, my name is Bronwyn Coyne and I’m a stress eater. Whenever I feel stress I get this weird crunched-time feeling that makes me just want to stuff my face. It’s really annoying because it’s destructive behaviour. When you are under stress, you can cope with good behaviour that helps to alleviate the stress or not-so-good behaviour that really doesn’t help at all (think procrastination vs. just getting that darned essay done, which is which? ). Having suffered in the past from disordered eating, I know this is just a lay over of that. And believe me, it’s no where near as bad as it once was.

But as I’m going to be beyond stressed for the next couple weeks (think two midterms, essay, group project, HUGE volunteer event before the 23rd!) I need to think of ways to cope with my want to gorge on any food in sight.

But how?

Do you readers have any ideas for how I can stop myself from eating myself into discomfort and more stress?

Challenge: Day 1

Hello!

Today my breakfast was most blogger like. Thanks to getting groceries yesterday I actually had peanut butter.

Yum, the chop stick worked awesome for mixing up my peanut butter.

And the main event:

Into Pot:
1/3 cup oatmeal
3/4cup water/milk
1/2 banana thinly sliced

Toppings:
3-4dates chopped
1 tbsp raisins
peanut butter. Don’t know how much.

I then went for a 10k run with  my friend Ally. We’re actually planning to do a race in November (10k) and then a half-marathon in February. Awesome right? The run today was amazing, perfect autumn weather; sunny, colourful, crispy, cool, but not frosty or anything. Just lovely. So I’m pretty sure we did 10k, but my garmin wouldn’t start right away so it only recorded part of the distance…

Then I showered, blah blah. Then I had lunch:

 The Sandwich:
Mack’s Flax, Silver Hills Bread
Tomatoe,
1/2 advocado
cheddar cheese
spinach

Notice the closed laptop, and the faraway remotes? Yep, this was my technology free meal of the day. Although tonight will also be technology free; I’ll be eating a free thanksgiving dinner at my friend’s residence. Hopefully there’s lots of vegetarian options!

Well I’m basically procrastinating doing school work, so I’ll say so long for now! But I’ll try and snap some shots of tonight’s meal.

Eyeballing It

Yesterday was a lot of fun in the afternoon.

My parents and I went to Home Outfitters so they could pick up a gift for my cousin, who is getting married on Canadian Thanksgiving.

Then because HO doesn’t seem to seel pots that are seperate, or you know under $50, we went to Ikea. yay! I got me some loot from there:

Pretty lamp.

A drainer (for pasta and for steaming veggies!). A veggie peeler, mainly because I want to try amazing salads like I’ve seen over at Choosing Raw. And pots! Our dorm is awesome enough to give us pots, but really, one pot between four people is just not enough! Ikea has a perfect set of three not-so-big-pots; great for the student.

Today was BUSY. I started the day by measuring out 2tbs of peanut almond butter then weighing it out to see if there was a difference… According to the jar, a serving of ab should be 2tbsp and weigh 30g mine weighed 42g!

Maybe the spoon was a little too full or something (though I made extra sure to level it off). But isn’t that interesting? It’s nearly a half a serving size difference!

The cultprit spoon.

See? Has anyone else tried this? Did they find a large difference as well?

I tried to find something to eyeball it too, as per Liz ‘s request, but couldn’t find anything very good. Maybe tomorrow. I’d also like to try weighing everything out tomorrow, since I have yet to do that.

Anyways I ate that 43g of almond butter on two pieces of the big 16 silver hills bread toasted just right. And I had some coffee to prepare myself for… the Grouse Grind. I know!

It was good. My time was roughly 1hour (I didn’t have a watch, and my parents fell behind, but I guesstimated based on what I was hearing for times around me).

At the top we had some lunch:

I only ate half that chocolate bar I swear!

The rest of the afternoon was spent doing some errands, buying me groceries and my birthday present.

But as I have a lot of work to do, and a 6am (gasp!) run tomorrow, I’ll have to tell you about my present tomorrow. Just let me say this: I am a VERY lucky/spoiled/happy girl, and clue #2: I hope to use it tomorrow morning.