Dear Food Diary...

It has been a month since my last entry “Ode to my Elastic Waste Pants” and I am excited to say that I have put on jeans since then, a few times actually, and made it through the full day without being uncomfortable! 

The vitamins with chromium and green tea, boasted to help digest and burn calories from carbohydrates protein and fat did not have an effect on me and are so big they make me gag! I will continue to take them, but only because they’re a multivitamin.

I know that when I work, I am usually in no mood to schlep myself to the gym, so with the weather getting better, on my breaks at work, I walk around my building, its about a 15-20 minute walk, and I feel great! (elastic waste pants are still my friend though)

You Gotta See it to Believe It!

And now that I have a wedding to attend in June my sister has asked me to join her (she yelled at me and whined until I surrendered) into logging my food.  The old adage “You Gotta See it to Believe it” rings very true, and I have known this for years, teach it to patients and clients (but no I don’t listen to myself).  Keeping a food log or diary is a great way to get on track with healthy eating. 

The act of writing down what you eat when you eat it (or even before you do) makes you more responsible of what you shove in your pie hole!

Like a majority of others, I am a visual learner, and I respond well to visual cues.  A food diary is just that.  You see what you have eaten or what you are planning to eat, and it’s like that food item you just wrote down (Cheese Doritos-55 chips), comes out and slaps you in the face “did I really eat all of those chips”?  may be your first reaction (mine is: “how and why did you count each individual chip?”), but never the less, it makes you aware.  That’s the key word here: being AWARE. Not mindless munching, chatty crunching, daily dipping.  Although it may seem tedious at first, logging your food does eventually lead straight to success.  Another thing I noticed is that my daily food habits have become more routine and consistent.  I more or less eat the same thing every day, and the electronic food diary I use gives me the total calories and therefore I know how many calories I am eating all day.  Again, I am more aware. 

The software I use is called “MyFitness Pal” and its also an app for your phone! You can log in your weight, goal weight and obtain a estimated amount of how much calories you should consume to reach your goal weight.  You can also track exercises.  Ask you friends to join with you for encouragement (don’t be like me and try to sabotage your brother in law and sister who already lost 5+ pounds, gross: I told them I ate my weight in chips, followed by cheapo wine and candy when really I just at carrots)

While you will have to pry the food I love out of my cold dead hands because I will never give them up, I know that I have to start being smart about my choices so that I feel beautiful inside and out. I also want my cute pair of white jeans to fit me in the right places, but regardless, there you have my second Beauty Recipe for shedding some pounds and retiring your (my) elastic waste pants. 

Natural Remedies Please!

“Hi, my name is Rain, and I make my own soap.”

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear the words “natural remedies” is the image of a hippie chick with grass skirts and hemp clothing, she eats barley for dinner and in fact makes her own soap, paper, shoes…you name it.

But I do not like to scoff at natural or naturopathic remedies, because some actually do work. 

One of the ones I swear by is the use of fennel.  I have a super sensitive stomach, anything can trigger a stomach ache, bad food, good food, fried food, alcohol, and the list goes on.  But from a young age, my mom would always give me fennel seeds to sooth any belly aches.

Delving deeper, fennel is what I would call a super plant.  It is not only used as a vegetable, but as a spice and herb!  The bulb that grows in the ground is the vegetable, often used in soups and stews, the sprouts are the herb and the seeds are the spice.  The seeds are what I consume to ease stomach pains, but not only are they great for indigestion they also help with menstrual cramps. 

To take the seeds to another level, their healing properties have been seen to have an effect on colitis (inflamed large intestine), heart disease and high blood pressure.  One study discovered the seeds to have brain boosting effects, making them great for those people with memory loss (even dementia and Alzheimer’s).

3 Easy ways to incorporate fennel into you diet:

1) Add a pinch of seeds to you cup of tea.  This is one of my ingredients when I make chai.

2) Use the seeds as one of your spices when cooking curries

3) The fennel herb is mild enough to pair with salmon (poach it in the oven with a bit of lemon, salt and pepper)

A natural Beauty Recipe indeed!