Raw Kick in the Pants

Hey guys! Happy Sunday <3 Hope you’re having a lovely and relaxing day!

My last class of the day yesterday was bootcamp. Mindy Mylrea was the presenter for this one –I took a few of her classes during the workshop- and she is a little fireball of energy. Love her ideas and she has so much great enthusiasm. We were split into teams by using colored bandanas and went around the room doing each drill for one minute, with a group cardio drill in between.

I got a lot of great new station ideas for bootcamp 🙂

Afterwards, it was feast time.

PF Chizzle.

Random trivia: The pilot and I went on our first date at PF Chang’s. (The story of how we met is *here*) I almost didn’t go on the date because the pilot seemed too nice and too good-looking so I was convinced that he must be a creeper and would take me into the desert and cut my fingers off. My friend Jenna told me that if I didn’t go on the date, she would be mad at me, so I went. Our dinner lasted 4 hours and then we went out for coffee 🙂

In the spirit of our first date, we got the vegetarian lettuce wraps:

And I also had a crab wonton.. and then I had another 🙂

+ organic green tea

For my entree, I rolled with the Cantonese shrimp

brown rice

and ate every. single. bite 🙂

The pilot had honey chicken:

Bummer news: The pilot and I are both fighting something wicked. We went to Trader Joe’s for groceries last night and loaded up on Emergen-C (this stuff works WONDERS) but were up all night sniffling and coughing. 🙁

It was a little rough when I had to be at the conference at 7 this morning, but my day started off with such an awesome lecture.

Popular diet trends fascinate me. I always try to research as much as I can about them (if I haven’t tried it before.. I’ve definitely been around the proverbial diet block in my life)—this way, when a client comes up to me with a wonky diet plan they’ve been trying to follow, I already know about it and if needed, we can devise a plan to get them eating healthily again.

We discussed a lot of the popular diet strategies:

–Weight Watchers (which actually got a thumbs up because you can follow it for life.. I don’t particularly love WW because you can use all of your “points” by eating doughnuts for your meals instead of real food, but it really is an easy plan to follow with many success stories)

–South Beach

–Atkin’s (mayjah thumbs down due to the high saturated fat intake and the false claim that carbs promote weight gain- we NEED carbs!)

–The Ab’s Diet

–Eat Right for Your Blood Type

–Hoodie

–Thin for Life

–Sugar Busters (States that sugar stops you from losing weight—if you’re active, your body will process sugar well and in moderation isn’t a big deal)

–The Zone

and guess which diet got a shiny gold star?

The Raw Food Diet.

According to the presenter (who is a Registered Dietician and raw foodist himself), the raw food diet is perfectly adequate in supplying enough carbs, fat and protein—one ounce of broccoli has more protein than an ounce of sirloin (which also has saturated fat- broccoli does not). The enzymes enable superb digestion and blood test results from raw foodists are superior.

The big negative of the raw food diet?

It takes a lot of PLANNING, prep and organization, which is a turn-off for most people. Also, if you live in a small town like I do, fresh organic produce is difficult to find, very expensive and ingredients are scarce.

I’ve gotten a LOT of emails asking why I haven’t been eating as raw for the past few months. Honestly, I just got sick of the work. Making a nut crust to dehydrate, spread with a raw sauce (that I would also have to make) and fresh veggies is a lot more work than taking out a whole wheat tortilla adding some hummus and spinach. Also, when I was eating mostly raw, I was eating a LOT of healthy fats (I like my nuts! Heh) and too much of anything isn’t bueno.

After talking with Scott after his lecture, it was good motivation for me to get back into it. I know how to make the food (I went to raw culinary school for goodness sake), my energy will go back up and the small volcanoes that have been colonizing on my face will disappear.

As I start to get more into the raw things, I’m going to keep it simple.. there’s no need to be whipping out crazy stuff on an everyday basis.

I’ll also be consulting this beautiful book:

and will take it easy on the nuts 🙂

Of course, I’ll still be eating plenty o’ cooked food as well.

The cool thing about eating is that it isn’t one size fits all and it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Also, it’s always evolving. Our eats can change according to seasons, how we feel and what we’re craving. Sometimes I’m a vegan, sometimes I eat seafood and egg whites all day, sometimes I eat a lot of veggies, always, I eat a lot of almond butter 😀 You have to do what works best for you, mmmm k?

I’m off to step, then a yoga lecture and then back to Valdizzy!

I can’t wait to see these little faces….

See ya from HOME 🙂

xoxo,

Gina