Why I Give!

Part of my idea of living a balanced life is doing things that make me feel good about myself. Yes, it makes me feel good that I exercise and eat well, but those things only really impact me.. and Lee because he eats what I cook :)
I'm proud to be able to say that I'm a regular blood donor (yesterday was my 12th!). I go as often as I can, which is every 8 weeks unless something in my schedule interferes. It takes up an hour of my day once every two months, but is good for me and definitely good for someone else - it never fails to make me happy. I always wonder why everyone doesn't donate, so many I can convince a person or two here?

Here are some fun facts about donating blood:

1. It's GOOD for you. It forces your body to make new red blood cells; I think of it as a refresh button. 
2. The act of creating new blood cells to replace what you gave burns anywhere from 500-700 calories! Without breaking a sweat. 
3. The nurses who work at the clinic at the NICEST people. They're always so kind and thankful that you came in to donate. 
4. It gives you very good reason to have a well-deserved treat after! I like to bring my own clean baking :)
5. Most importantly, you help SAVE people. How often do you have a chance to save someone's life?  

I made giving blood part of my lifestyle, just like working out and eating well. It's just part of what I do. When I go, I rebook my next appointment right away to make sure I make it a priority. It's also one of those perfect acts that can be both selfish and selfless all at once. I feel like a good person whenever I go, I like the extra calorie burn and the treat at the end, but at the same time I'm doing something that is absolutely vital for someone's life. Think about how you would feel if you needed blood, but no one had bothered to donate. Think about the disasters that happen everyday that you see in the news - do you ever wish you could do something to help the people that are hospitalized? Donating blood helps those people! 

Just call. Make an appointment. Now. Go!

http://www.blood.ca/

Don't let a bad day turn into a bad week.

Monday started off awkward and frustrating. I woke up at 4:20am just like every other day, dragged myself out of bed, and headed to the gym. By the time I got there I was excited for a good workout - until I realized the gym was CLOSED. I just switched to working out at the location close to my house instead of close to work last week, and I didn't realize that this gym didn't open until 5:30am on Mondays. I need to start my workout by 5:00am in order to get to work on time, so I headed back home with three options:

1. Wait it out and go at 5:30
2. Get my stuff together and drive to the location near work. 
3. Get ready for work and head to the gym later in the day. 

I opted to head right to work - and got there at 6:15am. I spent almost all day trying to convince myself that it was okay to skip the gym after work. My whole day was thrown off since I missed my morning workout and I was not a happy camper. Even on my drive home I still wasn't sure if I was going to be able to convince myself to go, but by some miracle, I did. I went and champed out an intense leg workout, and was SO happy with myself for pushing through. It definitely turned my day around. 
While debating whether or not I should go, I of course consulted with Colleen, who offered me two key points of advice:
1. You'll never regret a workout. 
2. Skipping the gym on Monday is one of the worst things you can do. Kick off the week on a high note. 
I'm very thankful that I have someone to push me when I can't push myself.  After the gym Lee and I threw together one of my favourite meals - taco salad! It's another dish that we can make together, but can modify to our tastes. 

Mine!

His!

Today started off good too - got some work done when I got up, headed to the gym and rocked a 600 calorie burn. I'm giving my dreaded workout yesterday credit for turning this week around!

Pancake Love

For a long time now weekends have meant pancakes for breakfast. Not just any pancake, but a healthy protein pancake to fuel my workout and satisfy my sweet tooth. Plus, it's a great treat for the weekend that doesn't deviate much from my rules guidelines. 
I've spent a while now trying to come up with a recipe I like. I used to just throw stuff into a bowl without measuring (I have a terrible habit of doing this whenever I cook). Sometimes it would be amazing, other time a disaster - but I think I've finally done it. 
This recipe makes enough for me to eat for 2 or 3 days, depending on how hungry I am. It's not uncommon for me to make a couple, and then go back and make an extra one!

You can modify the recipe based on your preferences - adding banana, apples, blueberries, chocolate chips.. anything works! The ones below are blueberry and dark chocolate chips. 

First mix:
1 cup oat flour
2 scoops vanilla protein
1/8 cup chia seeds
1/2 tsp baking powder
cinnamon

Then add:
1/4 cup egg whites
1/2 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk
1/8 cup blended LF cottage cheese
vanilla 

I whip mine with a whisk a lot to make them nice and fluffy. I heat a dry pan on high until it's really hot, and then turn it down and spray with oil before adding the pancake mix. You can blend your additions right into the batter, or just put them on tip like I did below. I couldn't decide which I wanted, so naturally, I made both. 

Blueberries and dark chocolate chips!

Nice and fluffy! Topped with no sugar added syrup. Also delicious with my vanilla mousse, or soon to come peanut butter frosting! 

Pizza Night!

With me being lactose intolerant and "into this whole healthy thing", Lee doesn't get a lot of pizza in our house. However, last weekend I came across a LF cheese that wasn't horribly priced, which meant a long overdue pizza night was necessary. 
I wanted it to be healthy, but taste as unhealthy as possible. This is the recipe I used:

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup oat flour (I might make these half and half next time)
1 package pizza yeast
Pinch of salt
Choice of seasoning - I used garlic powder, basil and crushed pepper flakes

1/2 cup lukewarm water
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon honey

Mix the first five ingredients in a bowl, and then add the last 3 to form into a ball by kneading with your hands. Take the ball out, lightly oil the bowl and put it back in. 
I put the lid on and let it sit for about an hour and a half (or longer, depending on when you make it), then pressed the ball back down and let it sit for a little while again. 
Roll the dough out on a floured wooden cutting board, and then transfer to a greased pizza sheet. Top with your favourites and then bake at 375 for 20-30 minutes depending on how thin it's been rolled out. I broiled ours at the end too. Enjoy! 

Can you tell which side is his?

"Diet" Wars

Holy crap. I'm overwhelmed right now over what's going on in blogland over clean eating vs IIFYM. Overwhelmed enough that I'm going to try to put my thoughts on this into words, which is taking a few days. As a disclaimer, I'm not an expert by any means. I have a BSc, which did include a few advanced nutrition classes so I'm not coming into this blind, but there's so much literature out there that I can't keep up. 

To start, here is what I know:

1. I need a minimum of 130g of carbs a day for proper BRAIN function. 
2. I need adequate amounts of fibre for proper digestion.
3. Trans and sat fats aren't the best for you and should be limited.
4. Protein is essential, but too much is detrimental for kidney functioning. 
5. Too much refined sugar is what gives you a "belly".
6. Frequent eating (every 3 hours) is beneficial for metabolism (and mood!). 
7. Most importantly - I feel MY best when I eat whole foods.

And here's my take on the two lifestyles from my understanding of them:

I believe that clean eating promotes a healthier diet than IIFYM. My first impression when I went to the IIFYM website was them promoting an "eat whatever you want" philosophy, as long as the nutrients fit your calorie goal, macros, and you had enough fibre. They scoffed at the idea of "clean eating" saying that it leads people to binge; the IIFYM "diet" could include ice cream everyday if you wanted. Granted, with the recommendations for macros, calories and fibre, one would have to eat relatively healthy in order to fit these requirements. Clean eating however, promotes whole foods, minimal processed foods, and minimal refined sugars. 

When it all boils down, I think everything depends on what works for YOU. Either of these diets can be taken to serious (and to detrimental) extremes. Clean eaters can take the rules as far as becoming orthorexic, and IIFYMers may eat garbage food all day. My philosophy with everything is BALANCE.  

I may consider myself a clean eater, but by no means is my diet 100% clean. In my past, I've been known to limit calories to the extreme, and other times I'd eat whatever I could get my hands on. Now I try to keep my foods clean, but I don't stop myself if I want some dark chocolate or a few fries. It's not always about how healthy the food you eat is, but how healthy is your relationship with food? I don't believe in tracking macros, I'd rather just enjoy the food that I eat. 

The last thing that I want to do is feel as though my diet is overly restrictive. I want a maintainable diet that is satisfying, and will give me the nutrients and energy that I need so that I can keep the body that I want. I don't believe in extreme dieting or exercising to get to your goal, because what happens after that? I've gained all the weight I've lost 3 times so far. I'm not planning on letting this happen again. 

Consistency + balance = healthiness and happiness. 

Fitness Fuel Deception

I have a problem, and I need to rant for a bit. This has been bothering me for a few days, and it continues to bother me every day when I walk into my gym. I go to Goodlife; there are a bunch of great things about the chain, and also some downfalls. Other things I find are just plain ridiculous. 
Goodlife sells protein bars at their front desk, I've known this for a while, but it recently hit me how inappropriate this may be. At the gym closest to my house they recently started selling a new kind of bar. I definitely prefer to bake my own protein snacks, but I realize that sometimes it just isn't possible to bring these along and I'm always on the lookout for new protein bars. Naturally, I had to investigate this one.
The crazy thing is that I never really used to care about the contents of the bar, permitting that it had protein and tasted delicious. Yet again I can look back at younger me and shake my head. 
I'm lactose-intolerant, so one of the criteria for my protein bars is of course that it is dairy-free. When these new bars appeared at the front desk of my gym, I stopped to check them out and to my surprise and delight, noticed that they were lactose-free! Momentarily excited, I turned it over to read the ingredients and my surprise turned to shock. The first ingredient? Sugar. It was brown rice syrup, but it's really just a fancy way of saying SUGAR. 
So why am I so offended by this? It's a GYM. That promotes healthy living and a healthy life. And it is selling protein bars packed with SUGAR! I'm sure that many people come into the gym trusting that they're going to be guided in the right direction, and might see these bars and assume that they're a health food. Protein bars are great and convenient if they have the right ingredients, but most of them unfortunately do not. Am I alone here thinking that health clubs shouldn't be selling foods that could pass as a chocolate bar?

In other news, I'm still searching for a good lactose-free, low-sugar protein bar. Any suggestions?

Lemon Poppyseed Muffins and a Balanced Weekend!

I have a love-hate relationship with Mondays. I hate my alarm going off at 4:20am, but I love it when I'm energized and excited for a week of clean eats, dirty workouts and progress with my body, school and work. It's always nice too when Monday rolls around and I don't feel like garbage because I've consumed too many unhealthy foods over the weekend. Small successes!

This weekend was an excellent balance of work and play. Friday afternoon I went for lunch and shopping with my superstar cousin Julia, which was fantastic and long overdue! Plus extremely motivating because of how hard she is working towards her Olympic goal! Friday night I was on my own since Lee was out, so I took advantage and spent some time prepping snacks for the beach on Saturday, and doing homework. I wasn't the happiest to be doing homework on a Friday, but that's student life I guess! I'm thankful that I did; it is a lot less stress this week now. I was a bit relived when the internet went out due to the storm though - meant I could go to bed :)

Saturday started with a cardio and abs workout for an active rest day, and then off to Bayfield to the beach with Amy! We could have packed a bunch of junk food to eat while we relaxed, but opted for lemon protein muffins (below), veggies, hard boiled eggs, apples and popcorn. We even had an awesome healthy peanut stir fry for dinner before heading out to the bar. 

Sunday was a rest/homework/food prep day. I spent time hanging out with Lee while we both studied, and I got to see the final stage of the tour de france. I almost started crying because I was so happy for Chris Froome! The cyclist in me is begging to go for a ride - also long overdue!

My weekend was a perfect combination of relaxing and productive, with moderately clean eating and even some gym time! How was your weekend?

Onto the recipe...

Lemon Poppyseed Protein Muffins!
Adapted from the Gracious Pantry. I prefer to make muffins instead of loafs or breads - the pre-portioned sizes are perfect!


¾ cup oat flour 
¾ cup vanilla whey protein powder ½ tsp baking soda
2 tsp poppy seeds
8 packets of True Lemon (OR 1/4 cup lemon juice and 1 tbsp + 2 tsp lemon zest)
 ½ cup egg whites
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 tbsp LF cottage cheese
2 tsp vanilla extract

Combine first 4 ingredients in one bowl and all remaining ingredients in another.
Pour the bowl of wet ingredients into the dry bowl and stir until smooth.
Preheat oven to 350, line muffin tins with parchment paper muffin cups, and divide batter into 12 muffins! Bake for approximately 20 minutes. Enjoy!!

My Life.. Lately

Once again I have ignored my blog for a while. What can I say? Life is BUSY. But balanced, perhaps? This is what I've been up to lately...

Friday after class I drove up to Wasaga Beach to FINALLY spend some time at the cottage with Lee and his family. This was my view for the weekend:

The weekend was even better because I got to spend the whole weekend getting kisses and winks from this little man!

I was more prepared than my last cottage weekend for this one, luckily. I brought up smoothies and pancake batter - which I think I've perfected now. Sunday Lee and I left the cottage to head to Toronto to see Train. It was about a million degrees outside, but it was nice once the sun went down.

The best thing about sitting on the lawn at the Molson Amphitheatre is the view. 

We both took Monday off, which was a great call by Lee. It let us get organized, since we didn't get home until after midnight on Sunday. Lee cleaned while I was at the gym, and cleaned more while I was cooking. What a keeper. I also spent some time hanging out by the pool at his parent's place doing homework. Unfortunately with being gone all weekend I didn't get as much done as I wanted, but I did what I could. I needed the weekend away to relax and not worry about school or work, and it definitely helped! 
Tuesday was back to the grind at school, and ended up being a long day with staying on campus for a conference call for work, and then working late Tuesday night to get caught up. 
I have a confession too - I skipped the gym Wednesday. For those who know me, this is VERY unlike me. I woke up, got out of bed, looked in the mirror and went right back to bed. I could tell it wasn't going to happen. This morning I MADE myself go. I could have gone back to bed, but I need my routine back, which means up at 4:30 and working out by 6:00am. I'm thankful I went! New PB on preacher curls today!

I have some new recipes to post, which I'll try to do in the next couple days, stay tuned :)

Just be YOUR Best

I had a moment today when I realized that people (women in particular), probably never grow out of comparing themselves to others. I struggled with self-image for a long time, and I sometimes still do. I'll see other women at the gym and be envious of their arms or their petite figure - whatever it may be. Sometimes it's in a different way - someone will run by me, or I'll see them lifting heavier than I can and get frustrated with myself. But here's the thing... 

I'M NOT THEM. 

THEY'RE NOT ME. 

End of story. People are born a certain way. With certain body types, certain muscle cells, and to an extent (I believe), a certain inclination to workout (or not) in one way or another. It takes some time, but when you get there, it is an amazing ability to be able to use these people as motivation instead of deflation. 

I have my own way of doing things - and even that goes through phases. I'm a runner, a cyclist, a triathlete, and lately all I want to do is move heavy weights fast and often. One of my favourite triathlon quotes is :

Why be great at one sport when you can be mediocre at three?

This is applicable not only to my triathlons, but to everything. I love the fact that one day I can do an insane lifting workout, and the next day run 10k like it's nothing. I may not lift the heaviest weights, or run the fastest, but it's what I DO. Who knows how the person lifting heavier than you would fair in a run, or how the runner would fair in a weight room? Even if they rock at both, use it to push yourself further. I truly believe that you are your only competition. 

I compete against myself. EVERY. DAY. I push my limits, and I fight against the voice in my head telling to give up. Today, I won. I had my highest burn yet, and it was an amazing feeling of accomplishment.

Don't compete against the person at the gym. Compete against who you were yesterday. And LOVE every minute of everything you're doing. Except burpees. No one likes burpees. 

A Quick Update!

I've been slacking, I know. I guess when I'm trying to balance so much all at once, updating my blog does not take priority. Here's an update from the last week:

•  School is BUSY. This isn't an undergrad that you show up to class sometimes and never read anything. I have an assignment and readings to do for every class, and it's not a small amount of work.
• My beautiful cousin Krista got married on Saturday night - great night, lots of celebrating and toasts.
• Thanks to all of Krista's toasts, Sunday was a struggle. I had a ton of homework to do, plus prepping for the week, and we didn't get home until about 2:00. On top of that - Lee left at 3:00 on Sunday to head to the cottage. A week without Lee isn't my favourite kind of week :(
• I managed to get some homework done on Sunday, but not near enough. Finally around 6:00 I realized that I absolutely needed to make some sort of food for the week, and in an hour managed to make: hard boiled eggs, sweet potatoes for eggs, ground chicken, chopped veggies for eggs and for salads, two smoothies, eggs for Monday and Tuesday, and a sandwich for dinner because nothing else sounded appetizing. I decided that sleep was necessary Sunday night, and crashed early to hopefully have some energy for Monday. 
• Monday was a long day at work, followed by even more homework. By the end of the night I was starting to feel better and more prepared for the week. As much as it sucks that Lee is away, it gives me a bit of extra focus for homework.
• Tuesday was of course Bachelorette with Ames, which was much needed after so much homework (even though we were both doing work while half watching the show). We (okay, Amy made it) made little b's clean pizza, which was fantastic! Then we had a protein milkshake, also a hit. 
• I somehow managed to get blisters on the bottom of my feet yesterday, which sucks and I'm praying go away ASAP.

So here are my take-home lessons from the last week:

• Doing school work on week nights is tough. Sundays need to be a food prep and homework day from now on. 
• Alcohol is the devil. And being away for even one night on the weekend makes things really difficult. I've come to the conclusion that I may need to skip some family camping weekends this year, for the sake of not burning out, and for staying on top of school. 
• When it comes to balance, it is important to have priorities. This blog is apparently not a huge priority when I get busy, but I missed it! I've still made it to the gym every morning, I'm still in bed before 10, earlier if I can help it, and my eats are still clean. Here's hoping that within the next week or two I have this school/work balance fully figured out! I should probably stop answering emails at 10:30pm for starters...

What get sacrificed for you when you're busy?

Confession Time

Confession time. For real. I think I need to be accountable here and not hide behind what I’m doing wrong, as much as I’d like to keep this to myself.

I’m halfway through week 3 of Body Earned right now. This is what happened this week:

Tuesday: Judging by the mirror, I felt pretty good after having a weekend that I strayed too far away from my idea of clean.

Wednesday: Stepped on the scale. 150.8. Instant meltdown and a lot of negative self-talk. Some confusion. Followed up with a day of clean eats and a good workout.

Thursday: Stepped on the scale, hoping for a fluke. 151.0. Cue panic. 

I’ll admit. I haven’t been as clean as I’d like to think the last 3 weeks. Summer is HARD. I’ve been away at two different cottages since starting the program. As much as I enjoy a cheat meal here or there, cheat weekends are not okay. I think I’ve had a mask over my eyes thinking I’m more on track than I am. Regardless, I don’t think that a 5 pound gain is realistic based on my last three weeks.

Everyone needs a push sometimes, or a slap in the face. Whatever works. So I reached out – to Amy and Colleen, and the to the fitness group with Body Earned. After some awesome advice all around, here’s what I’ve learned and what my plan is:

• DITCH THE SCALE. I need to trust the process. I’m lifting heavy weights, and my body isn’t used to this kind of training. No more weigh-ins until after week 6.  It's also perfectly possible that I will gain weight, but look better by the end of this program. Trust the mirror too!
  
•  Clean up weekends! Enough said.
•  Start tracking my food again for a bit. Make sure I’m eating what I actually think I have been. I generally aim for about 2000 calories a day. I need to stick to this.
•  Make small adjustments – use sweet potatoes instead of a grain in my eggs, and really watch carb intake at night.

I’m hoping that this small reality-check will get me back on track. Being realistic, it’s summer. I’m not expecting to see huge leaps and bounds of progress when I’m away every weekend, but it doesn’t give me an all-access pass to eat garbage. 

If this is what I looked like before Body Earned, I have NO excuses not to look better in three weeks.

What helps push you when you’re struggling and need to get back on track?

Oh Canada! And the first day of school?

I start classes today. In true Alisha fashion I arrived to campus an hour early, out of fear of not being able to find my lecture hall. Well, I found it, and now I'm sitting outside of it waiting. Very nervously. 

It doesn't help that I'm still not feeling the best after having such an awesome time in North Bay to celebrate Canada day. Lee and I got there around 10:00 on Friday night and the fun began immediately. 

I realized on Saturday morning that I did a really terrible job preparing my own food for the weekend. I brought protein muffins, protein cookies, a quinoa dish, protein powder and hummus, but this obviously wasn't going to suffice. Luckily, Lee came to the rescue as normal and dragged me into the car to go to the store. This was very successful and I came back with almond milk, chicken hot dogs, eggs to hard boil, oatmeal, blueberries, all bran and LF yogurt (which I didn't know existed until Saturday). 

This saved my mood, and my weekend. I was able to keep my eats decently clean all weekend (taking into consideration that it was a cottage weekend), which I hope helped to off-set some of the beverages that were consumed. 

For anyone that hasn't been to Northern Ontario, I wanted to take some pictures to try an capture how absolutely amazing it is there. Although no picture can really do it justice, I tried. 

A view of the lake and the dock:

The cottage lit up at night:

Sunday morning when I woke up I ate a small breakfast on the dock while reading, and went for a nice long run before everyone else was up. Perfect morning.

Lee and I on the deck :)

The most amazing cottage ever...

Overall, it was a great weekend and a nice way to spend my last few days before life gets too crazy. 
I had the hardest time waking up this morning, but luckily I was on my game and managed to pack food for the day. It will be a miracle if I can make it to the gym later today, but I'm going to try my best.