Sunday, September 5, 2010

elyssa: starting clean week

current location: hamilton (the boy's new house)

week in review:

bonjourno, lovely! hope italia is treating you well. i am in a less romantic location - hamilton (aka steel city), ontario. the boy finally fled the parental nest and has moved in with his friends. the transition has been umm..interesting..but i've stuck around to get him all settled in. i arrived friday night after 3 hours on public transit (one of his self-imposed conditions for leaving the house was giving up his car..oh my). i brought this cranberry coconut pumpkin banana loaf as a housewarming gift:



i adapted it from angela's cherry banana coconut butter bread. minus 1 banana for the added pumpkin. a bit ad hoc (can you tell i'm not a baker?), but it came out perfectly. i'm so excited for this new boy's house thing. they're absolutely uninspired when it comes to eating - giving me the opportunity to make and bake absolutely anything i want, freeze it, and send it over for emergency meals. yay, i have guinea pigs!

my weekend here has been blissfully free from calorie counting, but full of healthy choices. a salad instead of a particularly dense wrap. a shared dark chocolate bar instead of a starbucks carbtastrophe. ohh and we made our own fro-yo! what started as a tragic reaction to our inability to drive up the hill to get some yogen fruz from the movie theater, ended in one of the more triumphant moments of our relationship. 1 tub greek yogurt + a bit of raw sugar + dark chocolate chips + some frenzied whipping action and into the freezer for a couple hours. remove every 30 mins and whip some more and you get delicious, legitimate, crave-worthy frozen yogurt. see david lebovitz for details.

one of our less triumphant moments? boy asks what i want for dinner. i (stupidly) say: 'make whatever you want, honey. i want to see what you can do' (assuming he knows the no red meat deal still holds). boy enters cheapo grocery store. boy returns with veal. i grimace. boy cooks veal, promises to makes side of black beans for girlfriend. boy gets flustered cooking and inserts black beans into veal hodgepodge. with hot sauce. i dont do veal. i dont do hot sauce. i starve. canned green beans to the rescue.

need to get back home asap for some green monster action. i miss them so. in the meantime, i continue to take as many free starbucks and poor-man's fro yo as the boy can give.

new challenges:

this past week i suffered from binges, insomnia - you name it. around wednesday night last week it hit me - my body is exhausted. while i am always careful to integrate rest days into my workout regimen, i think i need a rest week. then i remembered my plans for clean week, and i figured it would be good to integrate the two. without the break, exercising becomes tedious..it no longer stimulates me mentally..and my body is in a permanent state of soreness. like the boy said: 'we exercise to feel good. why do we keep doing it when it makes us feel bad?' ergo, the exercise hiatus. the goal is to exercise less, and eat less - and to get everything readjusted to more balanced levels in preparation for the new school year.

- replace intense circuit/interval training with long, relaxing, slower spin bike sessions (avec a magazine or book) - just to keep the sweat in my daily routine
- go to as many yoga classes as possible, and keep yogaing at home
- eat clean:
no dairy (not even the beloved espresso con panna)
no refined anything (sugar, wheat etc)
actually, no sweeteners (no agave, stevia, honey..any of that. i find it's the only way to reset the palette to appreciate true sweetness)
no eating out

i dont intend for this week to be one of restrictions. for every no comes a gazillion yesses. i'm going to cook a lot. eat a wide variety of whole foods. keep the intake down, but nutrients maximized (and make sure i'm getting lots of protein to retain muscle development!)

blog moment:

discovering teri's words on relationship eating

current obsessions:

artisana coconut butter. getting my hands on some glo bars. zac efron. lentils.

1 comment:

  1. A lot of people think that since I went Vegan I have all these restrictions on what I can eat. However, I find I am more creative and have been trying all kinds of new things so I sort of feel like it is the opposite. I hope you can make some awesome meals this week and I can't wait to get ideas from what you have!

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