Anyway!

I was going to write a big post about what I’m thankful for, but you know what? I can sum that up in a few words: family, friends, doing what I love, lessons learned this year, and big things happening in my future. I really am grateful for a lot, but those things sum it up pretty nicely.

Now that that’s taken care of, let’s talk food! With Thanksgiving looming (tomorrow!), I thought I’d give everyone, including myself, a little reminder about what our plates SHOULD look like when we pull up to the table tomorrow.  The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston provided me with this great illustration of how big servings are, even when we’re sitting down for the biggest feast of the year.  I know we’ve seen serving size guides over and over again, but I actually really like this one, and I think the message is always good to remember! And let’s be honest, a refresher never hurt.

What do you think? Are you watching your portions on Thanksgiving? Did they cover all of the basics in the picture above? And the most important question of all, what are your Thanksgiving favorites (healthy or not!)?

Oh, yeah! And what are you thankful for?

Visiting my sister in Southern California, going for hikes, tasting wine, exploring the mountains and the beach, soaking up some sun, and enjoying family time.

Do I have to come back to Chicago?

Happy Monday!

Nothing crazy, but I haven’t been as on track as I would like to be.  I’ve been using my commute as more of my cardio than I would like to admit.  In truth, I’m on my bike at least an hour every day, but still.  My body is pretty used to it by now, so I really shouldn’t be counting it as a workout.   I also haven’t been lifting nearly as much as I’d like — and I can tell in how I feel AND look.

Food has also been slipping.  I make food at the beginning of the week — lots of chicken, veggies, egg whites, etc.  But when meal time comes? I just.don’t.wanna. So I spend money and calories somewhere I shouldn’t.  That one has got to stop too, because you know what? I feel amazing when I’m eating right!

And lastly, water and sleep.  Not enough of either, and I don’t know how this happened! Time to just buckle down and recommit.

So on Monday, I’ll be starting Operation: Remotivation and Rehydration.  Let me know if you’re interested in joining me on this….Details to come! 

Do you know what this is? It’s a Halloween costume. Called ‘Anna Rexia.‘ It features a visible skeleton, a measuring tape around the waist, and a tiny little heart serving as a name tag.  And it was actually for sale online.  This wasn’t a joke, and even if it were, it wouldn’t be funny.  I wouldn’t necessarily say this glorifies eating disorders, but it makes light of it, as if it weren’t a real condition, which I find just as disturbing.  How would people react if someone went as cancer? I’m honestly not sure why or how you would do that, but I’m just making a point here. I doubt anyone would think THAT was funny.

And there’s something about the fact that it’s a very revealing costume (duh, as a female between the ages of 18 and 35, you can’t dress up on Halloween  unless it’s something plenty skanky.  Whatever you decide to be, it must be a Skanky Nurse, Cop, Doctor, Vampire, [fill in the blank], right?) that makes it even worse.  The very small amount of fabric used here in and of itself implies that one must be fairly thin to wear it.  And that skeleton really drives the point home.  [Edited to add: Apparently there is a plus-sized version, but I don't think the design is quite the same.]

We already see EDs and unhealthy thinness glamorized on TV constantly, from teen shows like Gossip Girl and Greek (in an early episode, one of the already very thin girls eats chips right before rush starts and when the sorority president reminds her of this, she says tells the other girls she’ll be right back and heads for the bathroom) to reality TV  like the Bachelor Pad (one of the male contestants called a very much smaller-than-average-sized woman ‘thick’ when describing his first impression of her).  I don’t really think we need a Halloween costume to do any additional damage.

Thoughts? Who’s with me? Who thinks the folks at Glamour (and myself and The Village Voice) are overreacting? Whatever your opinion — spill! I wanna hear it!

I know I’m all grown up (kind of), but I still love Michigan football. It represents so many things to me and brings back so many wonderful memories that I can’t help but be obsessed this time of year. Learning ‘The Victors’ with my little sister while standing in the living room of the house we grew up in. Going to games with my dad as a 12-year-old awkward kid, shaking my maize and blue pom in the stands (please, please, never give up those tickets, Dad!). Watching my first game from the student section as a freshman, finally understanding the enormity of the stadium and completely in awe of how big the Big House really is.  Tailgating with my best friends before the game, relating tales of the night before while drinking terrible light beer at 7am on Saturday mornings (yeah, Big 10 schools know tailgating), and staying in the stadium until they kicked us out after the last game of my senior year. Reunions now with my best friends once every fall. And that barely begins to cover it.

My mom’s turkey chili is one of my favorite meals for fall.  It reminds me of all of the healthy habits my mom passed along to my sister and me growing up, and it’s seriously amazing, hearty comfort food all the same.  Especially when you add as much hot sauce as you can physically handle…and when you sprinkle it liberally with a three-cheese mix and scoop it up with blue-corn tortilla chips.  Yeah, healthy…  Either way, I made it earlier today and am still full hours later. Who wants leftovers?

Ah, honeycrisp apples.  Or really any apples you can pick in Michigan.  But these are especially amazing, because they’re huge, juicy, tart, sweet, and so crunchy!  I know it’s fall when I see these popping up in grocery stores.

Running is so much better in autumn! Summer running and I don’t really get along (gasp. midwest. humidity. can’t. breathe. at. all.), and I’m not hardcore enough to stay running outside in the negative windchill we get here in Chicago, so fall running is one of my favorite things ever.  Long-sleeved tees, leggings, and fall 5ks — ahh, can’t wait!

Not sweating constantly.  I realize that I’m a personal trainer, and being active is part of my job, but this summer has been ridiculous.  I feel like I was sweating before I even got to work, and even my easy bike ride to work left me more than glowing.  I’m pretty pumped to be able to wear jeans (and I’m not even a jeans person) and a blazer while drinking hot coffee and be completely comfortable.

New school years.  Fresh starts. Back-to-school shopping. I always loved the new academic year, where I got new books, new pens, new notebooks. I got to learn new things! Take new classes! Come back a little less dorky than I had the year before! People hadn’t seen you in a while, so even if you didn’t look any different, you come back as someone completely new, hopefully for the better.  I really feel that the beginning of the school year, no matter how old you are, is one of the best times to start fresh, because it’s not only less cliche than the new calendar year, but it’s right before the weather (at least in the midwest) sort of wipes everything out and clears the slate for you with winter.  I, myself, am planning to take advantage of the change in seasons.  I always felt like I came back a better version of myself throughout school, so I figure, why not continue the trend?

Anyway, enough about me — what are YOU excited about for fall? Do you share any of my favorites?  Did I miss one of your major faves for fall?

It’s funny, I’ve never been a dramatic person.  Growing up, I had plenty of friends, but I always kind of just naturally stayed out of trouble and just… out of the way. Arguments with friends (rather small ones, by the way) were resolved quickly and anticlimactically, breakups were painless enough and always seemed to be on friendly terms, and my parents had it relatively easy seeing how I never went through that whole ‘teen angst’ phase.  I was never the friend with the story, and besides when I was on stage singing, I wasn’t the center of attention, and I was just fine with that.  It wasn’t that I never had any excitement, but it was just usually the good kind, and the letdowns were small or kept to myself.  The decisions I made — good or bad (but mostly good, because I was, as I like to say, annoyingly well-behaved) — didn’t impact too many people, left me with no sworn enemies, and never made me wonder if my friends would have my back.  I even lived in a sorority house with 71 other women, escaping with minimal drama.  The biggest issue I had was one sister sending out a house email about the loofah left in the shower (really?) that just happened to be mine, which I don’t think she expected because when I fessed up immediately (uh, it was an accident?) she stopped her tirade on the spot.  No, really. A house full of Greek estrogen, and the worst problem I had was that someone made fun of my sponge.  Clearly, I wasn’t vying for the drama queen title.

But recently, in the last year or so, I’ve gotten a little more…dramatic.  And I don’t mean that I’m just emoting more (ask my sister — I’ve been doing that my entire life).  I mean that I feel I’ve been stirring things up and making decisions that I knew would lead to drama because I was craving something.  Excitement? Attention? To break free from the nice girl stigma once and for all?  I’m not sure whether I was trying to make up for lost time by choosing the paths that would potentially harm me or those around me (don’t worry, I didn’t do anything that bad), but it definitely affected how I was thinking and acting.  Romances coming to a close seemed to cut a little deeper, I started noticing more problems in my friendships, and my parents, unfortunately, suffered some of the backlash of me trying to navigate life as an unwilling participant in adulthood. (Sorry, Mom and Dad! Thought you got lucky on that one, huh?)

I didn’t know what was going on.  Until… suddenly, as drama-averse as I’ve been my whole life, I got it.  I understood why some folks thrive on being in the thick of it and always having someone or something you feel you’re up against.  It’s almost as if it’s a high you’re chasing, always looking for the next story or the next little spark to get you through to the next day.  It’s a fear of being bored, or maybe, of being boring.  Is that was I was rebelling against or running from?

But the thing is, I didn’t have, nor do I want to have, the resources to keep going after it, to keep hunting down that high.  I realized that staying up there for so long only leads to a near-fatal crash, so recently, I chose to face the drama, let myself down right then and there, and just hope for a softer landing that might break an arm, but still leave me standing.  (So… maybe I need to work on my metaphors.)  Anyway,  it sucked.  For a few days there, the prospect of letting things go and letting myself just be, well, myself — boring Saturday nights on the couch and all — while working on me, was kind of daunting.  The thought of facing myself and my goals and the work I need to do to become the person I want to be is more than slightly overwhelming.  But I keep reminding myself that I don’t really just want to be the girl with the story — or at least not the kind of stories I was telling.  I want to be interesting because of me, plain and simple.  I’m over being Jersey Shore, and I’m ready to be OK with being a PBS documentary. At least then I’d be educational, and not in a cautionary tale sort of way.

Because like I said, I’ve never had a penchant for drama.

I have, however, always have a thing for sugar.  Which, funny enough, is not entirely unrelated to drama.  (You know this is a health blog, did you not expect me to tie it in somehow?) If you think about it, the two have a lot in common.  Both are addictive but definitely not necessary.  Both boost you up, get you buzzing — at least temporarily — and crash you down. HARD.  Both make you lose yourself a bit in the moment, and after, you’re left wondering what just happened, and why you went that far.  Both affect your moods and can even make you act a bit irrationally.  Both trigger intense cravings for more of the same.  Both, until you quit, always make you feel like you need more to keep you going.  And after both, you never really like yourself as much when all is said and done.

So what am I doing now? What am I getting at by comparing sugar and drama? What am I changing now that I’ve opined at length about how both have had a negative impact on my life? Besides the fact that both can have detrimental effects on your physical and mental wellbeing, both are hard to just give up.  I would love to say I’m planning to make a clean break and cut myself off completely from both, and I challenge you all to join me.

But… I also know that I’m human and that, if you ask, I can give you countless examples of how I respond when I make too many drastic changes at once.  I think since I’ve had a whole lot less drama in my life, that one will be easier to cut.  I don’t really have too many positive associations tied to it, and I’m pretty sure I was over it before it even began.  But the sugar? It’s much more of an addiction, with many more positive feelings attached to it, and that one will be a fight.  One worth the battle, absolutely, but a fight nonetheless. Ultimately, though? I can see myself doing without both, and I plan on working hard at getting rid of both temptations.  And maybe I’ll do a little ‘life detox’ of sorts.  I don’t know yet, but I’ll keep you posted.  Fresh start for fall, anyone?

As if young girls weren’t already subjected to enough in the media telling them how to look and act, along comes a book written by a male author, telling them they need to slim down.  If they didn’t already have body image issues, they might now.

First of all, I kind of wish we would just let kids be kids anymore.  Give them halfway decent food and let them pick an activity they like, and their weight will probably land where it’s supposed to. And I know there’s a huge problem with childhood obesity in this country, but I don’t think we need to put kids on diets.  If a child has more than just a little belly, then fine, start making little tweaks in what they’re being fed and limit time in front of the TV, but don’t make them so aware of the fact that they need to lose weight.  This is only going to result in preoccupation with looks and fixation on food as the kids grow up.

Second of all, as Sarah Jio also points out, the fact that the book is written by a man kind of angers me.  I’m not saying that men will never understand body image issues, but the incidence of EDs and body image issues in men is a lot lower based on the fact that men are judged more often on merit than looks. It reminds me of when my guys friends rip into other girls’ appearances and expect me to think they think I’m great just the way I am or the time my college boyfriend said he didn’t understand eating disorders because if everyone just ‘ate normally’ we would all be fine (as I sat in my size 2s thinking I could stand to lose a few more).  Based on my experiences, guy just don’t really ‘get it’ when it comes to body image issues.  So unless Mr. Kramer had some horrific childhood experience that resulted in lifelong self esteem issues, I don’t think it’s fair for him to tell the world’s little girls that they should be saying no to dessert and counting calories.  As if lingerie for tots and thongs for 10-year-olds weren’t bad enough.  What’s next, Spanx and low-cal Gerber for babies?

I’m just glad this was self-published and that no editor thought this one would be a good idea to support.  Ugh.

What do you think?  Is the media contributing to body image issues starting earlier and earlier in kids? Should we be putting kids on diets? Does this new book piss you off more than just a little? Tell me what you think! Spill!

Well, I’m happy to report that I made it with very few problems!  I accidentally got cheese on something I ordered and didn’t realize until I got home (probably why I don’t eat out very often — that and the fact that it costs too much $$), but other than that, I was dairy free! I ended up relying on other sources of protein like eggs and beans for meals (I cannot bring myself to cook chicken lately, and I don’t know why!), and felt pretty great!

However, I realized that I must normally feel pretty great, because I didn’t really feel any major differences.  Besides the lack of extremely minor stomach puffiness immediately following dairy consumption (as in, it’s gone in about 30 minutes and isn’t super bothersome),  there wasn’t a huge change.  Normally my body processes yogurt and small amounts of milk pretty well, I guess.  My skin didn’t really clear up… but then again, it’s never been a huge issue for me.  I ate more almonds and produce this week, so maybe it got a little brighter from that, but I’m doubting it was the dairy.  I do think my coffee was slightly more effective without the splash of half & half — meaning the caffeine hit me a little quicker — but that honestly could have been in my head.

So… did I get anything out of this experiment at all? Yes, I do still think it was a good thing to try, and if nothing else, it made me a little more aware of what I’m eating and how it makes me feel.  I also did lose a pound,  but that may have been, again, because I was paying closer attention to what I ate.  I think I could benefit from cutting down on dairy, although a life completely without Greek yogurt sounds kind of sad to me.  I may try out a slightly longer period without it, since I’m reading The Great American Detox Diet, and it sounds interesting to me, but overall, I think dairy is going to hold a pretty permanent place in my life (and perhaps my heart?).

I know that some people have said cutting out dairy did amazing things for them, but I think everyone’s body processes food differently, so I can’t necessarily get behind cutting it out just because other folks have benefited from it.  What about you? Have you ever cut out dairy? Did it do anything of note for you? Or are you like me…and kinda unimpressed after nixing it? Spill!