Giving Thanks

This past weekend was Thanksgiving in Canada. Unfortunately we didn’t celebrate this weekend. My dad and step-mom are coming to visit in a week and we decided to save Thanksgiving until them. We did do quite a few fun activities including taking the niece and nephew to an amusement park, having a board game evening with the family and another trip to Banff but I decided to go camera free and just enjoy the weekend. It was actually kinda nice to just enjoy myself but because of this I have nothing to show you.

Since this past weekend was Thanksgiving I decided that a post on what I’m thankful for would be appropriate today.

I’m Thankful For: My Husband

He can be silly or serious, happy or sad but he is my best friend and I love him. He would do anything for me and I have no idea what I would do without him.

I’m Thankful For: My Kitty

He is the best fur kitty anyone could ever have.

He loves to play…

 

He love to sleep…

 

And everything in between.

I’m Thankful For: My Friends and Family (back home and all over the world).

 

 

I’m Thankful For: My Family (here in Alberta)

I’m Thankful For: All the Awesome Food I Get to Eat Everyday

 

I’m Thankful For: My Two Job Interviews I have Coming Up

(Source)

Finally, I’m Thankful For: My New Blog Friends

Over the past year I have met some wonderful people. Whether in person…

Through twitter…

(Source)

Or through other blogs. You all have changed my life for the better and I thank you.

For all those things and many others…I give thanks.

~ Katie :)

My Turn to Respond

I have been debating all night about whether I should comment on the Marie Claire article that was written about six of the bloggers in the healthy living community. I think I’m a little late in the game but I thought I’d respond anyways.

I feel very small compared to the bloggers in question and the other bloggers who have responded and I usually don’t get too involved with controversial issues in the blogging community but I guess this one just invoked something in me and I felt a few these things need to be said:

1. I only read a couple of the bloggers in question but from my perspective the ones I do read I do not feel like they are creating an un-realistic or bad perception for others.

2. I am not going to blindly defend everyone and say they are all perfect – I don’t read at least half the blogs in question so I can’t comment on those ones.

3. Maybe I feel this way because I am 30, feel more confident in myself and don’t feel like I get influenced as easily as others (if I had encountered this community 10 years ago I might feel differently then??)

4. I do feel that the article was mean-spirited and the author could have made some of the same points without attacking specific individuals. I also found the way the author presented herself to the bloggers (you can read what Meghann had to say about how she contacted them) a little questionable. She says she is writing an article about one thing then the article ends up being about something else (I guess you can say that’s journalism)

5. I think that the author has points about disordered eating, obsessions with exercise, eating and healthy living in general, destroying food, etc but  just attacking 6 bloggers I do not feel is the way to discuss this. Writing an article about these topics in general might have been a better strategy. I think the way she went about it is now causing people to be more upset with the article then to bring light to some important topics.

6. I think that there are blogs out there that might have some over the above issues but I try to stay away from blogs that are negative or have unhealthy behaviours on them. The reason I joined this community was to help inspire me to lead a healthier lifestyle and blogs that don’t do that I tend to avoid.

7. I enjoy reading healthy living blogs not so I can see every single thing someone has eaten or to want to be that person but because it has become a resource for me for healthy living.

8. Blogging has helped me become a better cook and more willing to eat different things. I use to be extremely picky but after seeing some yummy recipes on blogs I’m more willing to try something I might not have been willing to try in the past.

9. I have found some of these ladies who are constantly training or running races more inspirational then anything else. I am not a runner and have found Caitlin’s mantra, ‘You can do anything for a minute’ exceptionally helpful when just trying to complete a 20 min run. Reading her blog does not make me feel incomplete or bad about myself for not being able to run 22 miles. I’m happy with my 20 min run on the treadmill and blogging has helped me realize this.

10. Finally, what I see, as far as I can tell no one else has pointed out, is how are these bloggers any different then a show like The Biggest Loser. If we feel that these bloggers are unhealthy for those with body image issues/disordered eating then a show like The Biggest Loser would be well (this is not an attack on the show – I love it and watch it every week). We can’t think that it is realistic for ‘most’ people to lose 30lbs a week like they do on The Biggest Loser. People need to be responsible for themselves. I agree that maybe a person with body issues/disordered eating shouldn’t be reading some healthy living blogs but they probably shouldn’t be watching The Biggest Loser either. As must as people need to be responsible for what they are writing, the people reading also to be accountable. If you feel it is creating unrealistic expectations then maybe you need to find a blog you find more inspiring. I think almost every healthy living blog that I read (especially the ‘big’ ones) always says something along the lines of this might not work for you but this is what works for me.

Well I guess that is more then just a few points. I didn’t think I would have so much to say but once I started typing I just wanted to get all my points across.

Please let me know what you think of my points.

Do you agree?

Disagree?

Comments below welcome!

~ Katie :)

Lite Week

After a weekend of on and off eating I made a decision about this week. Over the last week or so I’ve been eating quite a bit of meat and red meat at that. I’ve been trying to cut out my red meat consumption so after this weekend I really wanted to make a change for the week so I’ve decided to go a little lite on my meat consumption.

I am not a vegetarian but I do think that most of our food should be coming from plants and sometimes I lack in my veggie intake so I’m going to change that this week. My body just really needs a week of light, healthy eating. Just a little bit of a cleanse.

Monday started off very well.

Breakfast was late so quite light. A piece of whole wheat toast with some Dark Chocolate Dreams PB.

I thought this might be ok to hold me over until lunch but about 30 mins later I was hungry again so I grabbed a granola bar from the freezer.

When lunch rolled around I knew exactly what I wanted – a snack plate. Carrots, orange and yellow peppers, cucumber, tomatoes (all from the farmers market) along with some hummus, pb, brie and mozza.

Dessert was in the form of an apple with some cinnamon.

I spend the afternoon blogging, twice and uploading some pictures to facebook. I’m very behind there. I’m good at keeping my blogger friends up to date but not some of the other people in my life. I actually haven’t uploaded any photos to facebook since the wedding last year. Yesterday I was able to upload pictures on our trip to Rainbow Haven and and My Friend's Birthday/Public Gardens trip. I’m going to try to continue to upload pictures as the week goes by.

One thing I didn’t do yesterday was get to a yoga class. I’ve been going quite regularly lately but I was still a little sore from the hike on Saturday so I took the day off. I do have a yoga post planned for this week so stay tuned for that.

Dinner last night was simple: Healthy Chicken Parm along with a Strawberry Spinach Salad (strawberries, spinach, cucumber, yellow peppers and some sliced almonds).

I followed the same recipe as before but used bread crumbs instead of fibre one. I think it turned out better this time.

Well that’s all for now. I’m about to go to yoga, come home and make dinner then relax and watch The Biggest Loser.

~ Katie :)

Blogging Choices

I’ve been thinking about blogging a lot lately (don’t worry I’m not going anywhere). I love it and honestly I’m not doing it to become famous, to make money or even have hundreds of readers but I have noticed a lack of traffic and comments lately. I’m not blaming my readers at all. I feel that my lack of consistency, following through and participation in the blogging community is to blame.

Let’s discuss the reasons behind them then I’ll discuss my ways to solve these:

• My lack of consistency – I am very sporadic with my blogging. I really have no reason to be. I’m not working at the moment so I should be better with my blogging and I thought I would be but sometimes I’ve just been frustrated with the whole not working situation and I really don’t want to write depressing and feel sorry for me posts so I’m just not blogging at all. The other reason might be the lack of healthy choices I’ve made sometimes (eg. pizza, greasy fatty ribs, homemade granola bars, more homemade granola bars, and even more homemade granola bars – I don’t feel that these are bad for me but when they are the only food item to sustain me for the entire day I feel that might be a lack of healthy choices).
• Following Through – I’m terrible at following through. I owe you a number of posts including an about me post, our first wedding anniversary post, an apartment update and a Calgary update post. I keep promising these but never delivering.
• Participation in the Blogging Community – I actually read many, many post but never comment. I’m getting better at interacting on twitter but still lacking in the commenting/getting involved part of blogging.

So now that I figured out some of the issues I’m having here are my solutions:

• I’ve been reading, ‘Eat Pray Love’ and although I’m not too far into it Elizabeth has taught me something. I need to be happy and not feel guilty about not working. This is a problem that I’ve been having and I know its not the husband that is upset about me not working it’s me. That is one of the reasons we made the move across the country, we could afford for me not to work for a while if it happened but I’ve still been feeling guilty. I’ve decided to enjoy my time off because sooner or later it is going to end and I’m going to be complaining about how much I’m working.
• Also, I know healthy living is a process so I’m working on eating healthy one day at a time and making good choices one choice at a time and if I have a bad day – it's ok and I can just start fresh again the next day.
• In regards to following though – this is going to blend well with my first point about not feeling guilty and enjoying my time off. I’m going to spend some time over the next little while working on my blog and catching everyone up.
• Finally, stay tuned…more comments on your blogs to come.

Ok…that feels better. I’ve been thinking about all that for the past few days and it feel good to get it off my chest.

Back to what this blog is all about…HEALTHY LIVING!!!

I do have a few pictures to share with everyone.

Over the weekend Matt and I hit up the local Calgary Farmer’s Market for the first time. We were so busy looking around that I didn’t even take that many pictures and a few of the ones I did take didn’t turn out but I do have these few to share with you.

Rows and rows of fresh, local fruits and veggies.

We ended up picking up quite a few local goodies: green beans, snap peas, baby cucumbers, green, yellow and orange peppers, onion, tomatoes, baby tomatoes, sliced turkey and free range, organic chicken sausages.

We also did something different we decided to base our meals around our fresh veggies instead of decided on meals and then picking up veggies to go with it. It was a great idea and a wonderful market. We’ll definitely be going again and next time I’ll take some more pictures.

I don’t have too many meal pictures to share with you today but I did have a couple of yummy, healthy eats over the past day or so.

More leftover Hearty Veggie Soup.

In my new fall bowl of course.

I only have one more container left in the freezer. I think it might almost be time to make another batch.

Amy’s Veggie Burger with mozza and spinach on a whole wheat bun.

Served with roasted brussel sprouts

And baby tomatoes from the farmers market.

Breakfast this morning was a two egg cheese omelette served with a whole wheat cheese roll from a local bakery.

Do you see that sunlight? The sun if finally back in Calgary and it looks like it is here to stay for a while.

The floor sometimes takes the nicest pictures.

Lunch was a grilled spinach wrap with hummus, mozza and veggies (cucumbers, carrots, green and yellow peppers).

 

More new plates.

So adorable and great for taking pictures.

Just look at all that yummy gooeyness.

Thanks so much for everyone who continues to read and enjoy my blog. I have lots of fun and interesting posts planned for the next little while so please come back or subscribe in your google reader on the side.

Also if your just catching up here are some of the latest posts:

• Fall Decorating
• Ali’s No Back Oatmeal and Angela’s Granola
• Grocery Shopping with Me
• Apple Blueberry Breakfast Cobbler
• Hearty Vegetable Soup

~ Katie :)

In Defense of Food

I’m going to do something a little different in today’s post (actually you may notice that the next few posts are going to be a little different).

A couple of months ago I picked up Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food. I had heard so many great things about the book and I really wanted to read it for myself.

I also loved his manifesto: Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants.

I thought this was a great way to summarize the way I wanted to be able to eat.

Instead of a review of the book (since it is all over the blog world and you can read reviews just about anywhere now) I thought I’d share a few of my favourite quotes from the book.

While I was reading the book I kept a highlighter with me so I would be able to highlight my favourite parts/quotes. I have never done this before while reading a book but there were just some things that he said that stuck out in my mind and I wanted to be able to find them again.

Before I start I better bring out up to date on a few concepts that he talked about in the book.

• The Western Diet – he talks a lot about the western diet in the book. This being the diet of America (although I would include Canada in this as well). He compares the diet of *most* westerners to that of Italians, Greeks, the French, Asian cultures and other cultures around the world. He claims that the western diet is made up of mostly fast food/processed food – food that he claims our grandparents wouldn’t recognize as food.
• Nutritionism – this is when people, scientist, nutritionist become obsessed with the nutrition of a particular food, or understanding the nutrition behind a particular food. He says people become so concerned about one nutrient or another (eg. protein, omega 3, fats, saturated fats, fibre, vitamins) that they forget to look at the bigger picture.

Here are just a few of my favourite quotes from the book – or at least the ones that got me thinking.

*What would happen if we were to start thinking about food as less of a thing and more of a relationship?

I love this because from my perspective it wasn’t until recently (and sometimes I still forget) food was just something to put into your body when your hungry/bored/stressed/ etc. Since discovering the blog world I have found that food can be more then that and food can actually help you re-fuel and eating the right foods can actually give you more energy. I am learning to enjoy eating not just eating for the sake of eating.

*”Food Synergy" Here, then is support for the idea revolutionary by the standards of nutritionism: A whole food might be more then the sum of its nutrient parts.

Just because a pomegranate is a good source of antioxidants and we know pomegranates are good for us doesn’t mean that we should start adding antioxidants to everything we eat. Maybe its more then just the antioxidants but it’s the combination of antioxidants with the other nutrients in a pomegranate that make it good for us. It’s more then just one nutrient but that nutrient in combination with the other nutrients in that food that makes it healthy.

*Destroying complexity is a lot easier then creating it.

It is much easier to make something healthy become unhealthy then to make something unhealthy become healthy.

*A century ago, the typical Iowa farm raised more then a dozen different plan and animal species: cattle, chicken, corn, hogs, apples, hay, oats, potatoes, cherries, wheat, plums, grapes and pears. How it raises only two: corn and soybeans. This simplication of the agricultural landscape leads directly to the simplification of the diet, which is now to a remarkable extent dominated by – big surprise – corn and soybeans.

He goes on to discuss that although we don’t realize that we eat that much corn and soybeans we do. 75% of oils come from soybeans and and about half the sweeteners come from corn. Then he continues to say…

*Humans are omnivores, requiring somewhere between fifty to hundred different chemical compounds and elements in order to be healthy. It’s hard to believe we’re getting everything we need from a diet consisting largely of processed corn, soybeans, rice and wheat.

I don’t really have much to say other then if we need fifty to hundred different compounds/elements to stay healthy our diets better be diverse.

*An American born is 2000 has a 1 in 3 chance of developing diabetes in his lifetime.

How sad is that?

Here are just a few of his ‘rules’ or ideas on how to follow some of the rules:

• Don’t eat anything incapable of rotting
• Avoid food products that have a health claim – For a food product to make a health claim on it package it must first have a package, so right off the bat it’s more likely to be processed then a whole food (eg. Fruits and Veggies are healthy/good for us but they do not have packages or make health claims – they just sit in the produce section hoping that someone will pick them up)
• To avoid the western diet depart from it’s rules – the supermarket, the convenience sore, the fast-food outlet
• When you eat from the farmers’ market, you automatically eat food that is in season, which is usually when it is more nutritious.
• Eating in season also tents to diversify your diet – because you can’t buy strawberries or broccoli or potatoes two months of the year, you’ll find yourself experimenting with other foods when they come into the market.
• Shake the hand that feeds you – A wall of ignorance intervenes between consumers and producers and that wall fosters a certain carelessness on both sides. Farmers can lose sight of the fact that they’re growing food for actual eaters rather then for middlemen and consumers can easily forget that growing food takes care and hard work – Food reclaims its story…when the person who grew it hands it to you.
• Depending on how we spend them, our food dollars can either go to support a food industry devoted to quantity and convenience and ‘value’ or they can nourish a food chain organized around values – values like quality and health. Yes, shopping this way takes more money and effort, but as soon you begin to treat that expenditure not just as shopping but also as a kind of vote – a vote for health in the largest sense – food no long seems like the smartest place to economize.

I’m going to leave you with one of my favourite quotes from the book:

*I no longer think it’s possible to separate our bodily healthy from the health of the environment from which we eat or the environment in which we eat or for that matter, from the health of our general outlook about food (and health). If my explorations of the food chain have taught me anything, it’s that it is a food chain, and all the links in it are in fact linked: the health of the soil to the health of the plants and animals we eat to the health of the food culture in which we eat them to the health of the eater, in the body as well as the mind.

Well I hope this gave you an idea about what the book was about. I would definitely recommend it to give people an idea of the different foods out there and just a different way of thinking about food.

Healthy Living Blogs

Before I go for the day I just wanted to share this awesome link for all the healthy living bloggers out there. This is an incredible resource of there for everyone so if you want to be included don’t forget to send Lindsey your info.

Healthy Living Blogs is a new resource for the health blogging community. Created by Lindsey of Sound Eats, HLB is a site designed to enhance the positive community of the healthy living blog world. Bloggers and readers can explore the site and find more blogs to love, bloggers in their area, and forums to deepen healthy discussion and support. If you're interested in having your site listed on HLB, simply send the following information to healthylivingblogs@gmail.com and check the site out for yourself!

• Email subject line: MEMBERS

• Your name (please share if you prefer to go by first name, first and last, or however you prefer to be known on the Internet)

• Blog Name

• Blog URL (please start with http://, not www.)

• Your twitter handle, if applicable

• Your location (if you prefer not to disclose this information for privacy's sake, that is completely understandable. We'll simply include your blog listing in the A-Z listing, not by location, too)

• Any specific labels (i.e. vegan, gluten-free, weight loss, running, etc.)

Have you read In Defense of Food? If not are are interested in reading it? If you have what was your favourite quote/section/topic?

~ Katie :)

Blogger Award

So I while I’m working on my Organization post I thought I’d share this with you all.

I’ve been nominated by to lovely bloggers – Jenny and Shelly. Thanks ladies.

The rules are:

*Thank the person that nominated you. Done and done.

*Share 7 things about yourself.

1. My favourite book is The Catcher in the Rye
2. I love Harry Potter. The books, the movies! I can’t wait for the last (2) movies to come out.
3. I went to Canada Games for Synchronized Swimming.
4. My first anniversary with my husband is coming up on Sunday.
5. My favourite movie is Love Actually. I watch it once a year just before Christmas.
6. Speaking of Christmas – it’s my favourite holiday. Once the summer comes to an end I start getting very excited for it.
7. Finally, I love giving gifts more then receiving them. I love shopping for others.

*Nominate 15 newly discovered blogs. I’m going to nominate anyone out there who would like to participate. I love learning about others in the blog world so if you decide you’d like to participate leave a comment below with the link so I can check it out.

Thanks again to Jenny and Shelly. This was fun!

~ Katie :)

Pump It Up

Happy Hump Day Everyone!

Thanks so much for everyone sticking with me lately. I know my blogging has been super sporadic and maybe not very exciting but there’s lots going on in my world right now and I promise I will be blogging about it very soon.

As I think I mentioned yesterday last night I was going to cook supper no matter what! I was tired of Subway and needed a home cooked meal.

Dinner was Chicken Quesadillas. The husband and I had another night of running around to do but this time I was determined to cook so we whipped today some BBQ chicken, cheese (monterey Jack and cheddar), whole wheat tortillas as well as some onions for the hubby.

Easy healthy dinner.

With some BBQ sauce for dipping.

That evening when we got home we munched on some cherries (unpictured).

This morning after driving the hubby to work I had a piece of Sunflower flax toast with pb and some oj. Since I forgot to take a picture of this mornings meal I’m going to recycle the one from yesterday.

I got to work doing some more organizing and mid-afternoon snacked on a light laughing cow slice and hydrated with some water.

Lunch was some Annie’s Mac and Cheese (with a little added in parmesan to pump it up a bit)…

Along with some carrots and baby tomatoes for veggies.

Super easy to through together while getting stuff done.

Again, thanks for sticking with me everyone. I know it’s the summer and we all love to be outside enjoying the beautiful weather but I really appreciate anyone who’s reading!

~ Katie :)