This Week in My World of Wellness

Happy weekend, happy March, happy almost spring!

Journey Update:

On Wednesday of this week, I coached for the first time in my life! In the fall, I became a Matter of Balance coach certified to encourage older adults to not be afraid of falling. As an Intern, at my local Health Department, I shadowed one of the Health Department’s dynamic Public Health Educators teach a Matter of Balance class to the residents of a retirement center. I know I’m in the right field when I become excited talking about this. So, on Wednesday I met up with the same dynamic Public Health Educator that I shadowed. We’ll be working together and I cannot be more thrilled! She is so incredibly helpful and willing to help me grow in every way possible as a coach. I cannot wait to share what I learn about being a coach along the way.

A Matter of Balance: Managing Concerns About Falls is a program designed to reduce the fear of falling and increase activity levels among older adults. You may know of an older adult that has taken a fall and as a result, broke their hip or experienced a life threatening injury. Matter of Balance is there to teach participants to:

• View falls as controllable
• Set goals for increasing activity
• Make changes to reduce fall risk at home
• Exercise to increase strength and balance

This nationally recognized program was developed at the Roybal Center at Boston University.

If you’re interested in learning more, check out MaineHealth’s website to learn more: http://www.mmc.org/mh_body.cfm?id=3498#mob

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Product Find:

On my way home from work this afternoon, I stopped at the grocery store to not only restock on some goodies such as sweet potatoes, yogurt (Fage was on sale $1!), and pumpkin seeds. They didn’t have any flax seeds…boo. Anyway, I stumbled across this bread:

Alvarado St. Bakery California Style Complete Protein Bread 100% Whole Grain made with organic sprouted wheat.

The nutrition stats are awesome! I’m really looking forward to my next sami. Has anyone tried Alvardo St. Bakery Bread?

Friday Night AKA Pizza Night:

I was really in the mood for tomato sauce and something with a nice zing. I had just bought sweet potatoes, and opted for a sweet potato pizza! I’m going to have to start calling my blog for the love of sweet potatoes pretty soon!

Sweet potato with Fage Non-fat Plain Greek Yogurt, tomato sauce, flax seed (there was still some on hand at home), a hickory smoked Primal Strip (these are delicious and a great vegetarian protein option!).

Cool tip to keep bananas fresh: Wrap the top of bananas with plastic wrap and they should keep 3 to 5 days longer. See more ways to keep groceries fresh longer.

Have an awesome weekend! 🙂

Gold Star

Dear Brain,

Tonight I will study who wore what at the Oscar’s over relative risk and randomization and the latest and cute gym hair looks over prevalence. Yes, I love you Public Health, but we need a break.

This afternoon, I took my very first Graduate school exam, a scary thought to me alone in and of itself. Pacing myself for this test was thrown out the window last Monday when we found out the test was going to be on eight chapters, 2 we had not fully covered. I put my game face on along with my war paint. It was me and Epidemiology against the world from last Monday until today.

At noon today, I was home from work and quickly changed into some sweats. Lunch was crunch time. By about 2:30, I reached my full saturation point and decided to chill. I made myself a nice dinner to look forward to for when I came home:

A sweet potato with Chobani Non-fat Plain Greek Yogurt with Amy’s Chile, avocado, and chicken, kale, tomatoes, sunflower seeds, strawberries, pineapple, and raisins.

I also put on an outfit I would feel confident, comfy, and test ready in.

This is my favorite sweater in the whole wide world from the Loft.

I left early from home and arrived to class with plenty of time to settle. When I took my seat, I partook in conversations about being nervous, but my professor was sure to ease our nerves which was definitely comforting. The professors really want the best for their students! I love it! After I finished taking the test, I felt good about all of the hard work I put into studying for it and realized I knew a lot more than I gave myself credit for knowing. I give myself a gold star for getting through my first exam.

What would you give yourself a gold star for today?

Tonight I have a date with my pillow, a book, and my dreams.

Sweet dreams and don’t let the bed begs bite. 🙂

Happy Healthy Monday!

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Healthy Monday on Twitter

Healthy Monday Facebook

This week Healthy Monday’s tip is all about SMART goals!

“Revive your Routine

Having a consistent fitness routine is the easiest way to make activity part of your daily life. When

planning your exercise, aim for SMART moves (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, timely):

pick a time, place and activity that fits into your life and stick with it!

Find three places in your schedule this week where you can fit fitness. It may be in the morning,

during your lunch break, before dinner or in the evening. Recommit to these times at the end of the

week, or adjust your work-out schedule if need be.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP9IFX-Agt4

Ignore where she says Holiday season! Thought this was a great and quick yoga!

My First WIAW Post

Thank you Jenn at Peas and Crayons for hosting this great What I Ate Wednesday (WIAW) link up!

The breakfast that I am about to share with you is one of my absolute favorite recipes. Growing up, I always enjoyed a bowl of Quaker Oatmeal whether it was in the morning or for an afternoon or nighttime snack.

Did you eat Instant Dinosaur Eggs, Brown Sugar flavor too?

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Although Dinosaur Eggs oatmeal was great, in my teen years, I began adding in toppings of my own to Quaker’s Old Fashioned Oats, the best foundation for so much. Through trial and error, I found what I did and did not like.  The recipe below is what I’ve been making every day that I can!

At night, I add  a 1/2 cup of Old Fashioned Oats, 1 cup of 1% milk, 1 tsp of cinnamon, 1 packet of Truvia, and 1/4 of a teaspoon of pure vanilla extract to a medium sized bowl. I mix these ingredients together and cook in the microwave for 2 minutes.

After taking the oatmeal out of the microwave, I mix in 1 tablespoon of Chia seeds, cover, and put into the refrigerator. Chia seeds take on a thicker, gelatinous texture when mixed with liquid. This is something I have acquired a taste for and quite enjoy!

In the morning, I add in about a cup of frozen wild blueberries and then, a little bit of a lot:  flax and pumpkin seeds, raisins, and mini chocolate chips. I top with a couple spoonfuls of Chobani Non-Fat Plain Greek yogurt. Enjoy cold or warm! I like to add a little bit more Truvia and cinnamon in the morning. If you try this recipe, play around with amounts to see what you like best!

 

My mom and I go through blueberries like it’s our job!

When mixed together:

This oatmeal is a good source of healthy fats (from the seeds), complex carbohydrates (from the oatmeal and blueberries), and protein (from the 1% milk and Greek yogurt). It holds me over, and I always feel like I’m eating a big ol’ desert rather than something ridiculously healthy!

Lunch:

Sandwich: Ozery Bakery Inc. One Bun Multi Grain Whole Grain bun with Chunk light tuna mixed with Chobani non-fat Greek yogurt and Cedar’s Garden Vegetable Hummus, mozzarella cheese, avocado, spring mix lettuce, and tomato

On the side: Spring mix lettuce, carrots, Organic Everyday Value no salt added 365 Black Beans, and some fresh strawberries

Snack:

100% pure pumpkin mixed with Chobani Vanilla Greek Yogurt. Toppings include a crumbled VitaCake, pumpkin and flax seeds, and raisins.

Dinner:

A Wild Alaskan caught salmon burger with Annie’s Organic BBQ sauce on top.

The side includes a sweet potato with Chobani Non-Fat Plain Greek Yogurt and a spring mix salad with Organic Everyday Value no salt added 365 Black Beans, avocado, and tomato!

Today, I think I consumed a little bit too much fish and will be adding soy or other sources of protein for future days I make meatless meals!

I hope everyone is having a great day filled with good eats! 🙂

7 Facts & Tomato Soup

Thank you again to Meghan at After the Ivy League for nominating me for the Versatile Blogger Award! It is an honor! For this award, I am suppose to share seven facts about myself. Here we go! 🙂

Seven Facts about me:

1. Tea is my comfort. When I don’t have tea with a meal, I feel as though a food group is missing. Lately, I’ve been enjoying: Decaffeinated green tea, Black Tea, Chamomile tea, and Celestial Seasonings Candy Cane Lane. My pantry is still stocked with Candy Cane Lane since it is only offered for such a short time during the year.

Right now, I’m enjoying a cup of Tazo’s Calm Chamomile. 🙂

2. The summer before my senior year of High School, I knocked learning how to surf off of my bucket list. Hang 10 baby.

3. Unbeknownst to my college friends and co-workers, I was involved in theater during high school. I started singing lessons in the 8th grade, because I wanted to be the next American Idol.

That’s me in the blue shawl wrapped around my head as a pauper in Les Mis my sophomore year of high school.

4. When I was 16, my hormones got the best of me, and I suffered from severe acne until mid-way through my freshman year of college. I tried everything from non comedogenic products, over the counter medications, meditation, and eating a healthier diet free from grease and junk. Although my insides were thanking me for being less stressed and eating more nutritious, my skin remained problematic. I wanted to hide under a rock. I always felt like people were looking at my face and I would actually avoid going out. After a lot of thought, my dermatologist prescribed me Accutane. It was a long process, but my face healed. Today, I only have minor scarring.

Lesson learned from this journey: Your friends and family will love you no matter what. Today I would tell my teen self to stand up tall and not hold back, because you’re beautiful whether you know it or not! People who make fun of someone for the way that they look need to take a step back. They’re not worth the time. It’s all about karma. From this journey, I learned a ton about health, one of the reasons I changed my major to Exercise Science and Health Promotion.

5. Throughout the day, I eat yogurt in some shape or form for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and in snacks. When on vacation in August, there was no Greek yogurt in site. I could feel the sadness of the Greek gods. One day, while walking down a street of stores, I stumbled upon a little market. I kept telling myself not to get my hopes up as excitement built inside of me. Venturing to the refrigerator section, there was a Peach Chobani waiting for me in its glory. It was the best Greek yogurt I ever had.

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6. On Monday, I begin a new chapter of my life. At 4:30pm, I’ll be sitting in my first Graduate school class, working towards a Master of Public Health. When I think about it, I feel excited, anxious, and a little nervous. Physically and mentally, I feel ready to take on the challenge!

7. In college, I passed a Whole Foods to and from school. Frequently, I found myself turning into their parking lot, parking my car, and walking through their doors. There is something about the Whole Foods experience that is calming, making you want to go back for more.

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My nominations:

Alex at The Run Within

Emily at The Good Era

Cindy at Clean and Green Nutrition

Grace at Practicing Grace

Nikki at Scientifically Nutritious

Nicole at Health Advocation

Since I’ve started blogging, I’ve really enjoyed talking healthy with Alex, Emily, Cindy, Grace, Nikki, and Nicole! They are walking examples of wellness and share great healthy recipes and or exercise tips! Be sure to check out their pages and hard work!

Big congratulations to the blogs I follow below for being nominated on Meghan’s page:

Kate at Quarter Century Southern Living
Alex at Cookie Dough Katzen
Carrie at Fitness and Frozen Grapes

Well deserved! 🙂

Unfortunately, the Healthy Food Party I was going to this weekend was postponed. 😦 But I still did a little healthy cooking in the kitchen today!

After much research on blogs, Pinterest, and other websites, I found an easy recipe for a Winter Tomato Soup on Women’s Health.

I made the Winter Tomato soup this afternoon and it was super easy to make just as Women’s Health said. It would be great with a grilled cheese sandwich too. I already know what’s on the menu for my lunch tomorrow. 😉

Winter Tomato Soup

Prep time: 5 minutes Cook time: 25 minutes

1 tsp olive oil

1 small onion,

diced 2 cloves garlic, chopped (or 1 tsp jarred chopped garlic)

2 Tbsp no-salt-added tomato paste

1 tsp sugar- I used Sucanat

1 tsp thyme

1 bay leaf

2 cans (14.5 oz each) no-salt-added diced tomatoes, including juice

1/4 c fat-free milk- I used 1%

2 Tbsp plain nonfat  Greek-style yogurt
1. Heat olive oil in medium saucepan. Cook onion and garlic until soft, about 5 minutes. Add tomato paste, sugar, thyme, bay leaf, tomatoes, and 2 cups water. Stir together and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer about 20 minutes.

2. Remove bay leaf. Use a handheld blender to puree the soup in the saucepan, or transfer soup to a food processor or blender. Puree until smooth. (If you’re using a standard blender, allow the mixture to cool first; hot liquid may cause the blender to squirt out contents. Depending on the size of your blender, you may have to do this in batches.)

* Rather than pureeing in a blender, I mixed the contents with a whisk.

This left the soup with a nice consistency. I would call it a chunky tomato soup. I enjoy my soup either way, and tonight, I was in the mood for chunky tomato soup. My family gave the recipe two thumbs up too!
3. Heat milk in microwave for 30 seconds to warm, and then stir it into the pureed soup along with yogurt. Mix well. Add salt and pepper to taste, and serve.

Makes 4 servings. Per serving: 76 cal, 1.5 g fat (0.2 g sat), 14 g carbs, 43 mg sodium, 3 g fiber, 3 g protein

Do you have a favorite winter soup?

A Bond that Never Breaks

Hey everyone! I’d like you to meet my older brother, Chris:

In this picture, he’s in his dream habitat, Costa Rica. Chris is the most calm, cool, and collected person that you’ll ever meet.

We had so much fun growing up together.

Chris was my playmate.

My partner in crime waiting for Santa.

My person to share adventures with always.

Chris, I am looking forward to the ride to come!

Happy Birthday to my amazing brother! Thank you for all you do each and every day!

Happy Birthday to all who are celebrating a Birthday today! Today is your day to shine!

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Make a wish!!

What is one of your Birthday traditions?

I’d like to dedicate the yoga practice I am doing this evening to everyone who is celebrating a Birthday today. The focus of this yoga session is on the hips.

Before I finish, I have to share some exciting news! After the Ivy League nominated me for the The Versatile Blogger Award! You have to check out Meghan’s blog. She rocks! Please look forward to 7 things about me in my next post.

**Breaking News (the good kind of course): This weekend, I am going to a Healthy Food Party at a friend’s home. I have always wanted to go to and do something like this! In my next post, I’ll be sharing what I am making. Please look forward to a recipe with no other than Greek Yogurt!

Have a Healthy Monday

Happy Healthy Monday everyone!

For the past two years, I have celebrated Healthy Mondays. It all started when I took a role as Peer Educator through the Office of Health and Wellness in college. My Alma mater is a part of the Healthy Monday movement. According to the Monday Campaigns the day all health breaks through website, “Healthy Monday can be used as an umbrella campaign over a wide range of wellness initiatives. By using Monday to unite health messaging, organizations can create a culture of wellness that motivates people to join together and start the week off healthy”.  Kudos to all who encouraged each other to be healthy today!

Wellness initiatives include:

1. Meatless Monday
2. Quit and Stay Quit Monday
3. The Kids Cook Monday
4. Move it Monday
5. Man Up Monday
6. Caregiver Monday

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The Healthy Monday campaign will forever be in my blood

One of the ways that I celebrated Healthy Monday today was by going meatless. Meatless Mondays says, “Cutting meat one day a week can reduce the risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease while saving precious resources like fresh water and fossil fuel”. What’s your favorite meatless meal?

Below is one of mine.

A Warm and Savory Vegetarian Dinner

In the mix:

Serves 1

Gardein brand Tuscan breast

Bolthouse Farms Balsamic vinaigrette

Gerb’s toasted onion and garlic pumpkin seeds

Potato

Tomato slices

Spinach

Amy’s Split pea soup (can not pictured)

Chobani nonfat plain Greek yogurt of course!

I enjoyed my Balsamic on my Gardein Tuscan breast, salad, and potato. My potato includes a dollop of Greek yogurt on top. Yum!

My split pea soup included a dollop of Greek yogurt as well and pumpkin seeds for a crunch!

How did you celebrate Healthy Monday? What is one of your healthy goals?

Proud moments and a Brown Bag Lunch

A few months ago, I suited myself up and put my brave face on as the new girl. Since then, I have gained confidence at my job, learned faces that I never thought I would learn, and have answered questions that I never thought I would be able to answer. I work at a fitness and wellness center where over 1,000 people check in to the club each day. My main responsibility is to offer the best customer service that I can. This weekend, I trained two new employees. It was a very rewarding time and I hope that they had a good training experience with me. I put myself in their shoes, slowly went through one thing at a time, stopped frequently to see if they had questions, and was patient. They did a great job! This was my first time training another and I am proud of myself to have come this far at my job.

What are some of your recent proud moments?

Speaking of work, during longer work days, I’m given 15 minutes to nosh (really 11, when you subtract time to walk to and from the team room and have to go to the bathroom). No, this is not a lot of time to eat a lot of food. After trial and error, I eventually was able to put together a go to 15 11-minute meal for fuel.

In my efforts to come up with the perfect 15-minute lunch, I found out the following:

1. It takes me way more than 15 minutes to eat a salad quickly and with food etiquette at the same time
2. Rice with chicken or other sorts of leftovers are never enjoyable to me at lunch time. I suffer from sandwich separation when I can’t eat one for lunch. Maybe it’s the fact that every day since Kindergarten, I’ve eaten some sort of sandwich combo.
3. Plain Greek yogurt mixed with a little mustard or hummus (or both) is delicious with lunch meat, tuna, or other forms of protein
4. Tuna sandwiches with hummus, Greek yogurt, and other goodies definitely keep my energy levels up most and keep my stomach from growling for an extended period of time. They are definitely something I can eat within 11 minutes too.

Lindsay’s 11-Minute Brown Bag Lunch* 

The goods:

Two pieces of Vermont Soft 10 Grain bread

Avocado

Cheese stick (I improvised here, because I wanted to put mozzarella in the mix and this was all that we had on hand!)

Tomato

2 tablespoons of Chobani Plain non-fat Greek yogurt

1 tablespoon of Cedar’s Garden Vegetable Hummus

Spinach

1 can of Starkist Chunk Light Tuna (either in water or oil)

Mix together yogurt and hummus

Add avocado slices, mozzarella, tomato, spinach, and tuna to sandwich

I also added 2 pieces of Hershey’s dark chocolate to have on the side!

* I highly encourage you to enjoy this for more than 11 minutes if and when time permits!

What’s your go to brown bag lunch?

Enjoy your Sunday night everyone! 🙂

Healthy Pumpkin Pie Snack Attack

What are everyone’s plans this weekend? It’s a rainy day where I am and it’s definitely making me sleepy! Tonight might have to be a night in with a slanket, a good book, hot tea, and a yoga session.

Okay, so I’ve been pretty obsessed with pumpkin lately. We have a TON of Libby’s 100% Pure Pumpkin stored in our cabinets from when there was a pumpkin shortage last year and I can’t resist adding it to meals when I can.

One afternoon not too long ago, I was in the kitchen looking for a snack. When I go for a snack, I always try to go for something that has healthy fats, complex carbohydrates, and protein to fuel my body!

I had an aha! moment when the Libby’s can was staring at me in the face. I was going to combine pumpkin with Greek vanilla yogurt for a delicious, nutritious snack! I call it Scrumptious Pumpkin Pie in a Bowl for One! I’ve been eating this a lot and I’m hoping I’m not going to wake up orange one morning from my pumpkin consumption!

Scrumptious Pumpkin Pie in a Bowl for One

serves 1

Ingredients:

1 container of Greek vanilla yogurt (I used Chobani)

1/4 cup of 100% pure pumpkin

1 tablespoon of sugar-free applesauce

1/2 tablespoon of pumpkin seeds (or as much as desired)

1 mini Fudgy Chocolate VitaCake

Dash of cinnamon (yes, that is the large size of our cinnamon container below…we love cinnamon!)

Stir yogurt, pumpkin, applesauce, and a dash of cinnamon

I like to sprinkle my pumpkin seeds and crumble my VitaCake on top. For a finishing touch, I  add one more dash of cinnamon.

Bon Appetit!