There are only 22 days left until Thanksgiving, but who’s counting? Yup – “it can’t come soon enough” is how I’m feeling right about now. In fact, I have been looking up recipes to make for our lovely feast – that’s how much I can’t wait to eat sweets again. This is where short-term loss for long- term gain comes in. Sometimes, we need to suffer now to reap the benefits later – or so I’ve been told. I really hope that wisdom is honest and sincere because if it’s not, I’ll be pissed at the end of this.

To fully and truly embark on this remarkable sugar-free journey, I imposed a new sticker rule for myself which goes as follows: “You do not get a sticker on your calendar if you do not follow your “Food Rules” AND “Exercise Rules” listed under November goals.” The end. I was fortunate enough to receive a sticker for yesterday, but I must say that it was a very painful procedure. I was pretty much exhausted all day and I had to crank out a three mile run – oh, and I had about 3 loads of laundry. How’s that for a cherry on top?! Nevertheless, I got it all done including; a beautifully crafted salad (Romaine, Belgian endives,Red Cabbage, Onion and Feta) for lunch today. All that with not one drop of sugar. Don’t underestimate your energy levels. The mind -over -matter principal greatly applies here.

Speaking of mind-over-matter, I’d like to also point out my daily temptations:

In case you all thought I had it easy. I think not! Try eating your salad with a sugar mountain like this staring at your face. “Eat me – Eat me” is what that says right there. My response: “I will win you.”

So, ladies and gents, the moral of this story is that you need to really fight those urges to cure your short-term cravings in order to reach your long-term success! This really applies to a lot of things in life (short-term loss for long-term gain) not necessarily the craving part, but you know what I mean! I know, I’m full of wisdom

Since it is hungry hump day, I’ll post a recipe I’m thinking about making for Thanksgiving – if I can wait that long. I’m all about simple food and simple ingredients.

Mashed Sweet Potatoes with Caramelized Onions and Pancetta – I’m salivating as I write this.

Ingredients:

Okay, so last night I tried the “mock’ mashed potato recipe and I’m happy to say that it was a great success!

After boiling the cauliflower for 7 minutes, I threw it in the food processor with the rest of the ingredients. I didn’t have fresh garlic so I used garlic powder and I drizzled a little EVOO to get it moving.

Finished product:

Disclaimer: Do NOT eat this before an event, going out or going to the gym. Cauliflower is a cruciferous veggie and they cause gas and bloating. Not pretty. Nonetheless, a very delicious alternative to mashed potatoes!

While the cauliflower was boiling I decided to grab my yellow squash and make “squash chips” before they spoiled.

Sliced up squash drizzled with EVOO, garlic powder, salt, pepper, oregano and paprika!

Dinner is served!

I am incapable of skipping dessert, so this was immediately following:

After dinner, I forcefully went to the gym thanks to some motivational text messages that reminded me of the two bites of Portillo’s chocolate cake I ate after lunch. (I really need to just throw that out).

I promised I’d show you my snazzy new running sneaks, so here they are:

And here is my new nike thermal hoodie that I bought for $35 from $65 (thank-you-very-much!) I loved that it has a cut-out for your pony tail – perfect for running outside! (Please ignore my dorky pose, just pay attention to the pony tail feature)

You may have noticed that I have gone a little picture happy with my new Photoshop app, but that’s because it’s so much fun!

Anyway, today is Thirsty Thursday so bust out that H20 and get crankin! (I was craving Dunkin Donuts – easy cream, no sugar of course!)

Workout plan today: Run 2 miles plus strength.

A little motivation:

We can all get easily discouraged because the truth is it’s much easier to sit on the couch and watch TV than it is to exercise, but the bottom line is that we all need to move – for the rest of our lives. Period. This is just non-negotiable, so below are some images from pinterest.com that I found to be very motivating last night as I had a few five handfuls of kettle corn - told you it wouldn’t last longer than two days! As I read a few of these, I found myself walking to the garbage can and dumping out the rest - oh, yes I did!

I’ll be honest, yesterday I was feeling really crappy. Massive headache all afternoon and it was the first day of my 10K training, but I didn’t let that stop me. When you have a goal you really just need to do it. I completed 2.5 miles which means I get a gold star on my training calendar The easy way out would have been to use my headache as an excuse, but no one ever accomplished anything the easy way and the feeling of accomplishment is so worth the pain!

When I got home after my run, I went straight to the kitchen to make some steak fajitas – with Feta (truth be told, I eat Feta with everything. I’m Greek - it happens.)

• Breakfast: buckwheat waffle with peanut butter, frozen blueberries and a drizzle of raw agave nectar.
• Lunch: my quinoa salad with shrimp.
• Unnecessary snack: kettle corn.

I don’t count calories because I would lose my mind and it seems to have the opposite effect for me. Again, there’s no one method that works for everyone - as we are all different, so do what works for you! Instead of counting calories, I sort of just eye-ball it.

Example: If I eat a heavy breakfast or heavy lunch my dinner will be lighter or if I eat a lot of starchy carbs for breakfast and lunch my dinner will be more lean and green. You know when you are over-eating better than anyone else, that’s why it’s hard for me to say only eat this or that. My best advice would be, through trial and error, figure out what keeps you full throughout the day and eat off of a small plate – just don’t keep going back for more

Words of Wisdom:

  WORK IT – WORK IT!!!

I hope you all had a fabulous weekend filled with fun memories! This was definitely an overly-ambitious weekend for me, but it turned out to be better than expected! Friday night I was singing at this local Greek restaurant/bar in Chicago. My besties all came to support me – as they are my groupies and I love them for it! PS: I’m proud to say that I did a 2 mile run/walk after work like I promised It was absolutely dreadful.

Here are a few pictures that were captured:

We ordered some appetizers which included; tiropites (cheese pies) and grilled calamari (not pictured). De-licious! Anyway, the night ended around two am and I had to get up early for wedding dress and bridesmaid dress shopping for my bestie! The day was a great success! We left wedding dress in hand (not really in hand) but it was purchased – woo hoo!!! That took up most of the day and left us pooped after, so I was happy to do absolutely nothing for the rest of the night. Nothing included no workout.

Sunday was a busy day, starting with church and then a trip to Dick’s and Target (my favorite place in the world.) I ended up buying a pair of fitted running pants – much like my Nike ones in my previous post, but these have a necessary draw string, and a dry fit pull over! I love getting new workout clothes

At night, my besties and I went downtown to see Carrie Fisher’s “Wishful Drinking” – absolutely hilarious!

In fact, here are a few of her funny quotes from the show:

• “Instant gratification takes too long”
• “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die”

Overall, it was a very productive and fun weekend, but I did slack in one two departments: exercise and food. That’s exactly why I titled this post, “Tomorrow is a new day” because that’s exactly what it is and we should take full advantage. I didn’t have time to prepare any food for today, so I went to Whole Foods after work to stock up on some groceries.

From left:

Fage Greek yogurt, sweet potatoes, Alexia sweet potato fries (amazing), mushrooms, kind bars, cauliflower, yellow squash, buckwheat waffles, rosemary and oil quinoa (it’s cheaper to get quinoa in bulk, but my curiousity got the best of me – as always – so I had to try it), green peppers, organic pumpkin, asparagus, Kashi frozen mushroom and spinach pizza.

Fyi: Don’t go shopping when you’re hungry or having cravings. It always leads to bad decisions – in my case, the kettle corn popcorn pictured above (bad because I can’t stop at one serving.) That won’t last longer than two days – I promise.

I came home and made my lunch/dinner for the week:

Put a pot of the quinoa mix, 2 cups of water and 1 tbs of oil to a boil.  Takes about 15 minutes. While that was cooking I took some veggies I had (mushrooms, yellow and red baby bell peppers and red onion) and sauteed them with a little olive oil spray.

I remembered that I had frozen kale so I added that in the skillet at the end. When the quinoa was done, I fluffed it with a fork, put the veggies in the pot and mixed it all together.

Final Product: Cancer fighting meal! I also decided last minute to add 6 shrimp for extra protein and then portioned it out into three 1 cup containers. Perfect example of cook once, eat three times!

This week I’m learning about beating sugar addiction and also have a lecture from Dr. Joel Fuhrman on the anti-cancer diet GOMBS.

• G: Greens
• O: Onions
• M: Mushrooms
• B: Berries
• S: Seeds

Whether you slacked or not this weekend, tomorrow is always a new day and the perfect day to get back on track! Let’s rock this week!

Day one of “October Goals” and I’m proud to say mission was accomplished! After registering for my first 5k yesterday, I guess you could say I got a sudden burst of motivation. At work, I made a list of what I wanted to accomplish once I got home which was: run three miles outside, make dinner and lunch for the following day. That’s it. Those three simple things that sometimes just aren’t as simple as they sound.

To ensure that I did those three things –  these are the steps I took:

I have a very small window of energy when it comes to working out after work and I’m typically hungry once I get home (and if you know me when I’m hungry, you know it’s not pretty.) To solve this crisis, my first decision was to work out before dinner instead of after – this way I don’t have enough time to get lazy.

The next step was figuring out what I would eat for dinner and when to do it all. When I workout right after work -already slightly hungry- I know if I don’t have food ready once I’m done working out I will probably eat anything and everything in sight. So, to prevent this situation I first decided what I would eat based on ingredients I knew I had at home (sweet potatoes, red onion, bell peppers and yellow squash.) Then, I decided to do my own – similar- version of my friend Lea’s “Accidentally Indian” recipe.

When I got home, I immediately grabbed my ingredients and started chopping away. I had the ingredients ready to go in a few bowls – took about 5 minutes tops. Once I finished that, I changed into my workout clothes – grabbed a handful of Kashi heart to heart cereal because I was hungry – and ran out the door. It was an absolutely perfect running day! I went to a path by my house and ran three miles in 32 minutes!! I finished off with a mile walk to total a 45 minute workout.

As soon as I got home – clearly starving now – I got to work in the kitchen. No, I didn’t shower first. When I’m hungry there’s no time to do anything, but eat!

Ingredients:

• 2 small sweet potatoes (High in Vitamin A, lots of fiber too!)
• 1 yellow squash
• 1 red bell pepper 
• 1/2 red onion (helps reduce your risk of ovarian cancer and heart disease – can cause bloat, but who cares it’s delicious!)
• Feta Cheese
• Spices: salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika, cayenne

Chop or slice all the ingredients. Separate the sweet potatoes, as those take a little longer to cook. I actually nuked my chopped sweet potatoes for a minute first, before putting them on a large skillet with a good amount of EVOO. Then I spiced them and let them cook on med/high heat for about 10 minutes. Flip them around half-way through. Take them off the skillet and put them in a bowl. Put the other cut up veggies in the skillet and cook those for 5-7 minutes on medium heat. Put the sweet potatoes back in for the last few minutes, top with some crumbled feta cheese and serve! It’s DE-LICIOUS and packed with nutrients!

I used enough ingredients so that I can make two servings and bring some for lunch tomorrow (which was my other goal, cook more so that I don’t eat out.) That’s the trick when preparing meals – you need to cook once and eat twice!

Overall, Monday went beautifully. I’m proud of myself and hope to keep the enthusiasm as high as it was yesterday. It wasn’t easy doing the run, but I kept repeating “change isn’t comfortable” and pushed myself to keep going. The end result was “I can totally do this!” and so can you!!

“With self-discipline most anything is possible.” — Theodore Roosevelt