Sunday, June 19, 2011

I'm baaack!

I know it's been a while. I never intend to have such long hiatuses (hiati?) but before I know it, a month or more has flown by and my poor little blog has been sitting in the corner, neglected and bare.

Sorry, blog.

So what's been going on with us lately? Well, we took a little weekend trip to our honeymoon location over Memorial Day weekend, which was wonderful. We swooped in on a B&B cancellation on the island, left the dog with a sitter, loaded the truck up with firewood for the beach, and jetted off, last minute, just the two of us.

Even with a little rain on Saturday morning, the weekend was perfect.







I also spent some time in Michigan at the beginning of June for my little sister's graduation. It was the first time in about 2 years that I had been together with my immediate family and my mom's sister's kids, too. Our two families lived within minutes of each other until I was about ten years old. All the cousins were the same age, and everyone had a buddy. Everything we did, we did with them. School, church, holidays, even vacations... we did it all together. But when I was ten, they moved to New York. One would think that we would have grown apart, but one would be wrong. All eight cousins have stayed the best of friends and even though we're gradually all leaving the nest, we managed to find ourselves in one spot for Erin's graduation. It was incredible to be with the whole gang again.

Having a family that you love is such a blessing. I cannot overstate how much of a blessing it is. And when I am tempted to travel down into the dumps, feeling sad that we all live so far apart, I instead decide to be thankful that I have a family I wish I could live closer to! (What a nightmare it would be to wish the opposite.)



Other than that, Brian and I have really gotten more serious about our diet and fitness. Well, actually, I can't say that. Brian is always serious about his diet and fitness. I, on the other hand, have (since Thanksgiving) apparently been trying to set new personal records for the amount of crap I can eat in a day. And surprise! I had gained weight and was constantly feeling like crap.

So one day in May, something clicked, and I decided to get serious about my diet and fitness.

(This is much easier to do in the summer, when the threat of a swimsuit is looming and produce is vastly abundant.)

Typically when I diet, I either take a counting-calories approach or try the 'no sweets, no snacks, no seconds' method (the No-S Diet). Both are fine. But in an effort to find meal ideas that would increase my protein and vegetable consumption (without wrapping them up in a sandwich), I stumbled upon the primal/paleo diet.

The basic concept of these types of diets is: don't eat processed food. More specifically, don't eat grains and don't eat sugar. In summary, eat food that you could kill or pick from a plant (I suppose eggs don't fall into either of those categories, but those are fine too).

When I told Brian about this approach, he shot me a pointed look and said, "Yeah. That's the kind of food you're supposed to eat. I've been telling you that for five years."

(I guess my homemade bread was too good to resist, then, because he was definitely eating it.)

Anyway, I guess I'm rambling, and you could go google primal/paleo eating for yourself, but my typical day's menu now looks like this:
-Breakfast: vegetable frittata w/ sliced tomato and avocado, coffee w/ whole milk
-Snack: cut-up vegetables, fruit, occasional peanut butter
-Lunch: Cabbage/vegetable stir fry w/ venison
-Snack (if hungry): more vegetables, extra meat if following exercise

-Dinner: Protein (grilled venison, chicken, or fish) with various vegetable sides

A menu like that, combined with drinking a TON of water, has done wonders for me. I am so excited about the difference it has made in the way I feel. When I started the 'diet', my primary goal was to lose weight. But it wasn't long before I wasn't waking up nauseous anymore... I wasn't going through the day on the verge of falling asleep at my desk... I wasn't dreading my workout. I felt so much stronger, healthier and more alert... and what's even more interesting was that I could actually feel my body doing things more efficiently. A woman's cycle of hormone shifts and reproductive functions is like a finely tuned orchestra, and when I was eating crap, it was like I was rolling a giant bowling ball into the middle of the strings section and screwing it all up. Now that I was giving my body good fuel... lots of protein, fat, and produce... it was performing amazingly!

I didn't notice these changes until I went through about a week of eating the way I used to eat... lots of refined carbs (pizza, pasta) and sugar, and few vegetables. Almost immediately, I wasn't sleeping as well, I was waking up in the morning feeling miserable and sick to my stomach (how had I gotten used to that for so many months??) and I was downing coffee all day but desperately exhausted at the same time. Yet the funny thing was, the next day I craved only more crap. It was a strangely addictive cycle, and it was easy to see why it had been so easy to gain weight and be lethargic for so long.

When I switched back to my 'diet' after a week of all that (I'm putting that in quotes because I really think this is going to be a lifestyle change) the positive difference was immediate. I have to say, I am so excited. I feel healthier than I have in a long, long time.

(And grocery shopping is way, way easier. Just a visit to the produce section and the meat department, plus a stop to grab some eggs, and then I'm done. And it's cheaper, too, because I'm not buying lots of lunch meat for sandwiches, various cheeses for recipes, and different processed foods.)


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Anyway, those are a few of the things we've been up to. I'm looking forward to cracking the whip over my blogging chariot again. Hope you can hop on for the ride.

I'll end with a few pictures of my cute dog. I'm sure you've missed him.

Sniffing where Brian spilled the bag of grass seed under the deck. : )

Playing at the lake.


Pensive.

-Maeg

1 comment:

  1. I just hopped on your blog tonight, Maegan, and here you are - blogging again! Good to see you! :-) Sorry I missed you when you were in Michigan. Hopefully I will see you at Family ("Fellowship") Camp?

    ReplyDelete