And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

I have been trying to figure out why I have been having such a difficult time blogging, and i realized why: I don't want to create a negative imprint of myself online. I don't want to send out negativity. I have a difficult time being positive and not judgy, but I am making an effort. 

Here are 3 positive thing i have done recently:

1. I refinished my coffee table and gave my living room an HGTV worthy pop of color

2. I am back in school, and even though i am only taking two classes this semester, it feels good to be in a learning environment again.

3. I have decided to rededicate myself to what will ultimately be my life's passion, midwifery, and have decided to apply to nursing programs to get things started instead of waiting for it to come to me.

And now 3 positive things i want to do:

1. Get my nails done. Get my eyebrows done. Be selfish, and then send that positivity outward.

2. Make a conscious effort to not be judgmental of my coworkers and customers when they are being rude. It becomes hard to judge people if you remind yourself that you don't know their life and what is causing their negativity.

3. Spend more time outside. Grab a book and read at the dog park, go for a long walk, explore new neighborhoods, breath clean air.

That wasn't too hard, now was it?

I'm Back (and Fatter Then Ever)!

Lets pretend i just took a one month, 3 day break from the Internet and move on, cool? cool.

Valentines Day is coming to a close and this is the first year where i don't have a months worth of chocolate sitting in my lap. This is a good thing. I don't really even miss it... I mean, kinda.

So I have a confession: I never stopped winter/holiday eating. I have a problem. Before Christmas, i was doing great with intermittent fasting and i was actually on the path to be at my goal weight by my birthday. Christmas is long gone and so is my prospects of skinny jeans by march. Something's got to give, and i really don't want it to be the button on my pants. Fuck.

I have a shameful history of dieting. I've done weight watchers, Atkins, vegan/vegetarianism, skinny bitch (vegan), multiple diet pills, adderall, fasting, fasting with expensive shakes, cleanses and I have reoccurring episodes of b/ping. Gross, right? None of this has lead to anything but a bad body image and a few more lbs then I started out with. Some things are great. For example, i occasionally get into a groove with exercising... I managed to run a treadmill 5k in about 45 minutes (15 minute miles, not that great, but still) last October until I got into a funk one day and quit my gym. The total body cleanse I get from trader joes feels great for my digestive system. Some things do work.

Then there is intermittent fasting. Holy shit, dude. IF first came to my attention when my coworker randomly asked me if i was doing "lean gains" which i had never heard of. I looked it up that night and it was all body builders and gross muscles, but their theory of eating was that, when we, as humans were evolving, we went significant periods of time without eating (because we were hunting, gathering, ect). Now we live in this culture where we constantly have food around us and we are constantly hungry. Your body, and the way it has evolved, has not forgotten how to handle long periods of fasting  and can still regulate blood sugar just fine, but your brain has most likely forgotten. Your stomach tells your brain that it's empty and your brain tells your stomach to grumble and you feel hunger. If you wait to eat, that hunger will go away. Sound familiar? Everybody has been in a situation or two where they couldn't eat when they wanted and they suddenly weren't hungry.

The theory is that this period of fasting, which can last anywhere from 12 hours to many days, allows your body to regulate it's blood sugar so there is a slow burn and to utilize it's fat stores. The moment you eat, your body uses the food it just received and the fat burning ends. So if you ate dinner at 7 o'clock, went to bed, woke up and then didn't eat until noon, guess what?! You just fasted 17 hours! Fantastic! Can you keep it up?

Even more so, the period of fasting (i.e. fat burning) changes your body composition more so then just dieting. You can still eat the same amount of healthy calories and your body will still change, just by altering when you eat. Myths surrounding "starvation mode" have been busted time and time again. Yes, there is such thing as starvation mode, but your body is not starving if it has a store of nutrients built up in your body. Additionally, larger meals, whether practicing IF or not, yield larger boosts in metabolism then smaller meals. Your body wants to remain as is and will slow down and speed up metabolism as it needs to remain at a constant state. (This is also why it is important to exercise while dieting and why many people hit plateaus when reaching fitness goals).

There has recently been a lot of attention on intermittent fasting. It seems as though i came across it just as everybody else did. I read a blog article on lifehacker about it, there was a little blurb in Women's Health Magazine and there is a new book called The 9 to 5 diet that talks about limiting your eating to an 8 hour window (i.e. fasting for 16 hours). It is everywhere, and it works. For some, that is.

This diet, like every single diet ever, does not work for everyone. People with type 1 diabetes should obviously stay away from this diet and some woman do not respond well. (The trouble with women, opposed to men, is thought to be related to hormones that are dependent on fat stores and the idea that the way our bodies work are different from men because we're constantly preparing to have a baby, whether we want to or not).

That being said, i like this diet. It doesn't require a ton of work and i like the way it makes me feel. I don't have to eat little baby portions of food 6 times a day, i can eat a real meal twice a day. It works with my ever-changing work schedule and there is no such thing as cheating.

It's time to start again.

INTERNET BLACKOUT

I need a break. I realized this as i was on my third hour of bubble mania, having not left the house since i left work to come home. Internet addiction is a common occurrence of many people my age and younger, and it is something that needs to be controlled. While i wish i could use the term "addiction" lightly, it has been proven that addiction to the Internet can be very real and scary. Remember the episode of south park where the boys are trying to beat world of warcraft (i could be wrong, don't bother correcting me) where they get all fat and pimply? That is a reality for many people. I don't want to be stuck in a rut because i can't log off. So i am going to. All day Sunday. 

I am choosing Sunday because it is a pretty slow news day as far as the websites i check regularly are concerned. I am also choosing that day because i do work in the middle of the day, so i won't be left to my own devices for too long.

What do i mean by logging off? I am not going to make an effort to avoid my cell phone or television. Maybe someday, but not this Sunday. I will be avoiding twitter, facebook and my Internet browser. I will not be avoiding my emails or my "lifestyle" apps (i have to track my calories, duh. And who the hell knows what's on my todo list anyways? Oh yea, there's an app for that). I will be avoiding any games or entertainment apps. Basically, i am going to be bored. But i will enjoy that boredom. I will take a bath, read a magazine, paint my nails, get caught up on orangutan island. It's going to be glorious. 

Maybe, if i enjoy myself enough, i will make this a regular habit. Who knows?!

Today, a recipe.

I have been comfort eating for a while now, so I figure if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it right. Life is too short to eat crappy food.

Ricotta cheese has been a culinary epiphany for me these last few weeks. In the past, i've only thought of ricotta as a filling, but who knew you can eat it full on. It is both sweet and salty with the most enticingly creamy texture. I was salivating in the parking lot of the grocery store thinking about buying it.

I searched recipes on allrecipe.com for ricotta and came across a bunch of cookie recipes, so i decided to give one a try. The recipe i've posted has been halved, so the text doesn't quite match the ingredient amounts, so use common sense if you are going to follow :)

The dough was literally the most perfect tasting cookie dough i have ever had. It was so light and fluffy, i would imagine i ate about two cookies worth of cookie dough while i was mixing it. The consistency was a lot less dense then regular sugar cookie.

I mixed the wet ingredients in my brand new food processor (thanks mom!) because i don't have a mixer, and it worked great! The wet ingredients were the perfect consistency to hand mix the dry ingredients in, thank god.

The recipe called for a frosting, but i didn't have enough powdered sugar to make the full amount, so i decided to toss some sprinkles on a couple of uncooked cookies, and good thing too because mark came home in the middle of my baking session and declared he hates frosting -_-

 The cookies came out of the oven really light colored. So much so that i ended up baking them two minutes longer then the suggested time even though my knife was coming out clean. After the cookies cooled, i was able to see that the bottoms had browned. I wasn't nervous about drying the cookie out because i knew how much moisture the dough had, and i was right!

I must admit, mark was right about the frosting. I only frosted two cookies, and it neither added or detracted from the overall yum experience. Even Maggie wanted in on the action. Of course mark indulged her the second i had my back turned.

All in all, great recipe, great baking session and great cookie. This is definitely something i am going to add to my box of yummy recipes.

Living Girls

I recently rewatched a few episodes of the famed series, "Girls" on HBO. As much as I love the show, it is very painful to watch. Seem critics have complained that Lena Dunham, the show's writer and lead actress, does not relate to the majority of her watchers (I.e. there are few people of color, everybody is straight except for one cliche gay male character) but she relates to me. Dead on. I am living with the fear of not finding myself and my perfect job. I understand the pain of not knowing what the guy you love is doing when he is not there, and then feeling terrified when he finally is there. I know what it's like to not let someone love you because you don't love yourself. Painful, right?
What is a girl to do? How do we stop this negative thinking and jus feel good about ourselves. The last time I wanted to get my nails done, I suddenly felt selfish for even thinking about spending that kinda of money on something so trivial and changed my mind. I will eat an entire pizza and then look at myself in the mirror for the next hour asking myself how I could do something so gross and poke my stomach. Where is the self love? Where is the appreciation that we need to have for our bodies for being able to carry ourselves through each day. I am convinced that if I learned to appreciate and love my body for what it can do for me, I will treat it better and I will feel better. Instead, I am stuck in this rut of self loathing.
We can never escape from the cycle if we don't start thinking good thoughts. Where is the action without intent? It does not exist. Therefore, I herby vow to think good thoughts. I vow to indulge when it's appropriate and to move on from the negative. I don't want to be stuck. I'm finally ready.

Tea: a love story

Thank god i work at a coffee shop, because if I had to buy my own tea, I'd be broke in a week. My love affair with tea started long before my current state of manically addicted. When I was a child, my mother would brew me earl grey in the microwave and sweeten it with sugar and milk. Blowing steam off the surface was just as calming as taking my last sip of the sweet drink.
Today, i do things a bit differently. I take a strong black (single origin, obviously) loose leaf in a tea pot. No sugar. No milk. I pour a little into my mug before I set the timer, to let it cool a bit, and I wait. It takes me about thirty minutes from when the water first boils until I take my first sip. For the next hour or 3, I am back an fourth from the stove to my cozy spot on the couch as i enjoy my pot(s) of tea and the morning news.
While this is the first thing I do in the morning to energize myself for the day, I am certain that this is also my most relaxing routine as well. I find myself waking up early then I need to in order to ensure I get to drink my tea and I am constantly searching for night time replacements for my glorious black and occasional green. As of now, only my rooibos will cut it.
Every now and then, when I need a little bit of comfort, I go back to my earl grey. Those are my roots.

Testing, testing, is this thing on?

I am not sure the purpose of this blog will be. I find myself constantly wanting to express myself in different ways and being fearful of the outcome while at the same time trying to garner attention for things that I have done. I can never tell with myself. Elin, you started this.