fit week // whole30

or me, fitness and food are inextricably linked.  I never understood people who would eat fast food and binge on tons of sugary cocktails every night, then workout.  Maybe they looked how they wanted to, but I can't imagine they felt good.  The fact is what my body looks like will change, regardless of how much working out I do.  When I have kids, my body will transform in order to grow and birth a child.  When I age, my body will hold on to fat in new places, I'll find new wrinkles and grey hairs.  My body could change as the result of illness or injury.  I have some control over my body by choosing to be active and fit.  What I have the most control over, and what has the power to impact my health most, is how I choose to nourish my body.

I eat pretty healthily.  I don't eat fast food, rarely eat snacks like potato chips, almost never drink soda, and in general don't overeat.  The months leading up to Thanksgiving I was tracking my food daily, eating well, working out every day, and was pretty on top of my life in terms of fitness and food.  I decided to stop caring while we were on vacation in Hawai'i, because I knew I'd want to drink Mai Tai's and indulge a bit.  The whole next month was a blur of travel and I wasn't able to focus on feeding myself right or have time to fit in a workout.  Perhaps it's cliched to start a fitness or diet plan at the new year, but it really is a perfect time to settle into a new routine.  The craziness of the holidays are over and you're finally free to focus on your own health.

My friend Mandy recently did the Whole30 program in November and, while I was never enticed to do it before, I really enjoyed seeing her experience with it and was inspired to get my eating back on track with Whole30.  What is Whole30?  It's sort of like hitting the reset button for your body in terms of eating.  A lot of foods can disrupt your hormones, cause acne or inflammation, be addicting, cause allergies and more.  With Whole30, you strip your diet down to whole foods to help your body reset and then you can start adding foods back in to see how they affect your body.  Or, you might just end up feeling so awesome you'll stick with a Paleo type diet.  I know lots of people who've said that their Whole30 experience was pretty life changing.

Another thing I'm excited about is that Whole30 kind of forces you to be more proactive when it comes to meal planning.  I'm so so bad at meal planning.  We are fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants eaters and it means we go out to eat more than we should, spend more money than we should, and don't eat as healthily as I know we could.  Whole30 requires a lot of foresight and planning, so you don't accidentally fall of the wagon, which is something I desperately need when It comes to making food.
I'll be starting my Whole30 on January 12th because I want to start with Mandy and she's starting her next round on the 12th.  Also, I'll be traveling until January 6th and I want to give myself time to prep properly.  I love reading on planes so I'm getting the book It Starts With Food, which is by the folks that started Whole30, to read on my flights so I can start working out my plan of attack in the next two weeks.


So what can and can't you eat with Whole30?  You can eat meat, seafood, veggies, some fruit, good fats from fruits, nuts, oils, and seeds.  Basically:  Whole foods.  No processed crap, no stuff with tons of ingredients you can't pronounce.

What can't you eat?  No sugars or real or artificial sweeteners.  No Alcohol.  No Grains.  No Legumes.  No Dairy (ugh, bye cheese!).  No carrageenan, MSG or Sulfites.

It sounds pretty restrictive, but really it's just 30 days and I'm excited to revamp my diet to be more focused on eating whole foods.  Ultimately I'm not sure if I'll end up adopting a more paleo-type diet at the end, but who knows!  I have a friend who has a mostly-paleo diet and she loves it.

I eat a ton of breads and carbs and I know that, while I'm not a big sweet tooth, lots of sugar finds its way into my diet in sneaky ways.  Whole30 is technically a "detox" since you're removing a lot of foods that can have detrimental effects on your health, so I've heard that the first week or so can be a bit rough, but after that, by and large, everyone I know who has done it says they feel amazing.

One thing I love about the Whole30 program is that it's not about weight (though lots of people do experience weight loss).  They stress that you're not allowed to step on a scale for the duration of the program, and I think that's important.  So much importance is put on the number on the scale, but that's not what Whole30 is about.  It's about feeling great, being healthy, and nourishing your body.


There are tons of resources out there for helping prep and stay on the Whole30 program.  The Whole30 site has a bunch of resources.  Jessica from WhatIWore has done Whole30 a few times and has a lot of helpful guides.  Mandy started a whole30 focused instagram account to help support others who want to hop on board.  I'm a newbie so I'll just be sharing my own personal experience here on the blog as I go and hopefully I'll have some fun Whole30 recipes to share as I get better at meal planning.

Are any of you guys Whole30 grads?  Have any favorite resources?  I know Pinterest is a great resource for recipes, so I'll definitely be pinning up a storm trying to get my meals planned!  Are any of you guys planning on starting Whole30 in January?  

fit week // kayla itsines bbg

lright folks, let's talk new year's resolutions!  I know this is a time when gym memberships skyrocket, diet plans abound, and everyone is feeling super confident about their fitness goals for the new year.  This week I'm focusing on my fitness and health plan for the next year, my goals, and my strategies for making my lifestyle as healthy as possible!

Over the past couple years I've really enjoyed pursuing my own fitness and feeling healthy and strong more so than I ever have before.  I did probably three-ish rounds of Insanity, off and on, for about a year and a half to two years and really enjoyed the results and routine of doing the Insanity workout.  But I'm ready for something new.  I love intense workouts, and I was looking for something that added in a bit of weight on top of cardio.  I do love how Insanity doesn't require any equipment, and that made it really easy to even do on the road (I did it in my grandma's living room and multiple hotel rooms), but I wanted to add more tone and muscle than I was getting by just using my own body weight.  I took to instagram and did a google search of inspiring fitness IG accounts and found Kayla Itsines' account and started following.  The snippits she posted of her workouts looked intense, and she used some weights in her workouts as well, both of which I was looking for.  I also really enjoyed seeing the transformations of real girls who had done her program, which really inspired me.  A lot of workout programs feature extreme transformations and vast weight loss, but that's not my story.  I'm a small person just looking to tone up, get strong, and feel healthy, and that's what most of her transformations show.  I was sold.

 

 
I bought and downloaded her Bikini Body Guide and I'm super excited to start it in January.  She has both a workout guide that takes you through 12 weeks of workouts (and if you finish and want to step it up even more, she has BBG 2.0 which goes from week 13-24), and if you're a workout newbie and aren't sure you can cut it at the beginning, she also includes 4 weeks of easier workouts to start you off and get you ready for week 1.  These photos are taken back in late November right after finishing month 2 of Insanity, before we went to Hawai'i.  I'll be taking new "before" pictures when I start Kayla's guide in January since by then it'll be nearly two months of laying around, eating holiday treats, and not doing any workouts whatsoever.  I feel fine in terms of how my body looks, but I want to feel stronger.  We haven't climbed at all in the last 5 months (okay, well, we just climbed one route in Joshua Tree last week, but that's been the first time in 5 months), which is sad, but our lives changed a bit and something had to give and it turned out that rock climbing got the short end of the stick.  I really enjoyed how strong I felt because of rock climbing and maybe we'll get back to it, but for now I just want to feel strong and I'm looking forward to Kayla's guide pushing me physically.

She recommends getting both the workout guide and her nutrition plan as well, but I opted for just the workout guide as I'm planning on doing the Whole30 program to get back on track with my nutrition after the indulgences of the holidays.  She just revamped her nutrition guide, though, and now offers vegetarian and vegan options, which I think is pretty awesome!  I'm neither vegan or vegetarian, but I know that a lot of fitness nutrition guides tend to overlook those areas.


I'll be talking more about my plans for Whole30 and kickstarting my health when it comes to eating tomorrow, but I'm planning on starting both Whole30 and my BBG workouts when I'm finally done traveling for the holidays, which will be on January 12th.  I'd love it if you guys wanted to get on board with me and support one another.  I'm super goal motivated, and one thing I've wanted to do in order to have a tangible goal is enter a body building competition, but unfortunately the one that I was looking into is on the same day as our next Adventures in Oz burlesque show this April, so I might have to put off that goal for a bit.  I'm so motivated by competition, and it's such a physical goal (though certainly daunting and a whole new world!) so I'd love to at least try it once!  Have any of you guys done body building competitions before?  For now I'm going to start with Kayla's guide and I also got a gym membership through Groupon, but maybe later in 2015 I'll be able to see if it's in the cards!

images via kaylaitsines.com and kayla's instagram
leggings in top photo via bombsheller

postcards from paradise pt. 3

his month has been travel mania!  Dan and I just got back from spending Christmas in Palm Springs with his family and in less than a week I get on a plane to Anchorage to shoot a wedding!  These are the last few photos from our time in Hawai'i, and a little video I made from some of the footage I shot.  I'm no filmmaker like my brother but I do enjoy shooting a bit of video now and then.  The last couple days we got big enough waves on our beach for boogie boarding, which Dan loved.  We also went hiking at twin falls, which is sort of a tradition of ours.  It's a short little hike, but you get to swim in the pools and, if you're brave, jump off the falls.  It was a little chilly for swimming that day, but I felt like conquering some fears so I took the leap.  My mom got footage of it in the video, but I edited out the five minutes of me standing there chickening out before I finally jumped.  

 


 

 

Pumpkin Spaghetti Squash Carbonara

e get hella winter squash from our CSA, which is slightly overwhelming, but also not bad because they last quite a long time and you can always roast them and then freeze the puree (confession: I still have frozen pumpkin puree from last year...).  Luckily I actually really enjoy pretty much all squash, which I'm not sure I knew until I was an adult.  I don't recall eating lots of squash as a kid, though maybe my mom hid it in dishes to get us to eat it, but if I remember right, she did mention how when she was a kid her mom fed her canned squash and it was gross, so she endeavored to save us from that fate.  I mean, canned squash in the 60s probably wasn't that great, let's be real.  Locally grown, organic, farm fresh squash though?  Yum.   
This past summer, Dan and I planted a bunch of herbs in front of our house, which has turned out to be so great when it comes to seasoning dishes.  Just run out the front door with a pair of scissors, snip some leaves, and we've got fresh herbs to cook with!  We did sage, thyme, marjoram, rosemary, and lavender.  My last attempt at growing herbs was a failure, but I'm convinced basil is just a finicky herb and refuses to grow for me.  We did have mint, too, but I forgot to water it for a couple months. There's rogue mint growing in our old neighborhood, though, so whenever I want to start a new plant, I just go snip a piece from the alley where it's infested and plop it in some water until it starts to grow roots and bam.  New mint plant!


Ingredients
(recipe via cooking for keeps)
For squash:
1 spaghetti squash, roasted
2-4 tbsp olive oil
salt + pepper

For breadcrumbs:
1 tablespoon butter
1 cup breadcrumbs
1/8 tsp salt
1 tablespoon fresh sage, chopped
1 tbsp grated parmesan cheese

For sauce:
3 egg yolks
1/4 cup half & half
1/4 cup pumpkin puree
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Slice squash in half lengthwise. Drizzle with a little olive and sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. Roast for about 45-50 until easily pierced with a fork.

2. While the squash is roasting prepare the breadcrumbs and sauce base.  In a large non-stick skillet melt butter over a medium heat. Add breadcrumbs, 1/8 teaspoon salt, sage and 1 tablespoon parmesan cheese. Toast until golden brown, making sure not to burn. Remove.

3. In a medium bowl, whisk together egg yolks, pumpkin, cinnamon, 1/4 tsp salt, half & half, and parmesan cheese.

4. Once the squash is done roasting, let it cool for a few minutes.  Using a fork, pull the squash away from the skin, creating “noodles”.  Pat with a paper towel to remove excess moisture.

5. In the same skillet you cooked the breadcrumbs, heat over a low heat. Toss the hot spaghetti squash noodles into the skillet along with the egg yolk mixture. Toss the noodles until completely coated. The hot squash will cook the eggs.

6. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Top with breadcrumbs and extra parmesan cheese and garnish with fresh sage leaves.  Enjoy!

merry christmas!