Quinoa, Chick'n and 4 Days til Vegan

It seems I haven't had a spare moment to sit down and write recently. It's been over a week since I announced I will be going vegan on April 1st for 30 days. I've been on a vegetarian diet for a week or so now and even tried out two vegan meals at restaurants that were phenomenal! But before I get into that, I want to address a question that many have asked when it comes to being vegetarian or vegan:

Where do you get your protein?

We seem to have it set in our minds that animal products are the only sources of protein available, but there are actually many ways for you to get protein. Just as a calorie is a calorie, a protein is a protein - your body can't tell which proteins have come from an animal source and which have come from a non-animal source. Vegans who eat varied diets containing vegetables, beans, grains, nuts, and seeds rarely have any difficulty getting enough protein as long as their diet contains enough energy (calories!) to maintain weight. Take a look:

I would guess that many of you are probably thinking, "OK...so to get my protein, I have to eat a bunch of beans and tofu. How is that a meal?!" That's what I used to think whenever I read about a vegan diet. I didn't understand how you could have complete meals that were satisfying. Then I changed my approach and asked myself, "What are some of my favorite foods and how can I make them vegan?" I've found so many recipes online that I cannot wait to try, like the ones below:

Black Bean-Quinoa Burgers

(These are so flavorful and filling, I have not craved meat burgers for weeks.)

Seven Layer Vegan Tacos

Vegan Eggplant Lasagna

Tell me those don't look delicious! I've also been testing out some meatless products from Gardein and MorningStar. Yesterday I had MorningStar's chick'n nuggets for lunch and O...M...G...I could not believe how tasty they were! Just 4 nuggets have 12 grams of protein.  They tasted just like regular chicken nuggets to me. Unfortunately...my vegan friend Stephanie just informed me that once I go vegan, I can't eat these anymore since there is dairy in them. Bummed about that! However, she promises there's a Boca version that is vegan and just as tasty.

I've also sampled Gardein's chicken strips - I had them in a whole wheat wrap with spinach, tomato and cheese, and they were fantastic. I truly feel that the types of tastes and textures I enjoy have changed over the past few months since incorporating more fresh, whole foods into my diet.

Last week, I had two vegan meals. The first was lunch with Stephanie at this restaurant in Oak Brook called Protein Bar. The main staple in most of the meals at Protein Bar is quinoa. If you're not familiar with quinoa (pronounced KEEN-wah, not kee-NO-wah as I thought for some time!), it is a seed that can be prepared like whole grains such as rice or barley. It also packs a lot of protein - just one cup of quinoa has as much protein as 4 eggs! Finally...it's delicious! I even enjoy the texture more than brown rice, it's smooth and not as grainy. Protein Bar has a great variety in their menu. In addition to meat dishes, they offer many vegetarian and vegan options. I ordered one of the bar-ritos - similar to a burrito, but they use quinoa in place of rice and a lo-cal whole wheat wrap in place of a tortilla. 

Vegan Original (grilled)

Marinated tofu, house-made seasoned black beans, organic quinoa, vegan cheese and cilantro

515 calories, 14 g fat, 1 g saturated fat, 1100 mg sodium, 78 g carbohydrates, 24 g fiber, 4 g sugar, 28 g protein

My meal was crazy delicious and crazy filling! A bit high in sodium if you check out the stats above, but I am not very concerned about my sodium intake. Check out the 24 grams of filling fiber and 28 grams of protein! If someone handed you this meal and didn't tell you it was vegan, I would bet that you would never know. The tofu was similar to the chicken I've had there in the past, and the whole wrap was very tasty. 

My second vegan meal was on Saturday night. My boyfriend Dan and I joined our friends Kate and Geoff at the Two Brothers Roundhouse in Aurora. I'm sure many of you have had a Two Brothers beer - Domain DuPage, Prairie Path, and Cane & Ebel are some of their popular beers found at Jewel, Target, Binny's, etc.  I've heard a lot of great things about Roundhouse, so we were excited to check it out. I tried two beers there on Saturday; Monarch Wit and Side Kick. Both were lighter ales with citrus tones. As I read through the dinner menu, I told myself that perhaps I would order meat since I ate vegetarian meals all week. But something interesting happened...

I didn't want meat. 

I thought about the grilled chicken...contemplated a burger...but a different dish caught my (and my boyfriend's) eye - vegan enchiladas. The description read: flour tortillas stuffed with chorizo seitan and soy cheddar cheese, ranchero sauce, lettuce and pico de gallo. Served with beans and rice.

Boyfriend and I both ordered the vegan enchiladas. Boyfriend and I fell in love with this meal.

As with the bar-rito I mentioned above, if someone gave you a plate of these enchiladas and didn't mention they were vegan, you would have never suspected a thing. The "chorizo" had a nice zing to it and the mix of flavors were fabulous. I had no idea it was soy cheese, either - it looked and tasted like regular cheese to me. As I look at the description above, I see a word I'm not familiar with - seitan. A quick Google search tells me:

Although it is made from wheat, seitan has little in common with flour or bread. Also called “wheat meat”, “wheat gluten” or simply “gluten”, seitan becomes surprisingly similar to the look and texture of meat when cooked, making it a popular meat substitute.

The more you know!

As we ate the enchiladas, Dan and I probably said, "I can't believe how good these are!" 20 or 30 times. I'm sure poor Geoff and Kate were thinking, "Please shut up!" I really have to give Dan a shout out for being such an amazing and supportive boyfriend. As I mentioned in my last post, Dan watched Vegucated with me to see what it was all about and to learn why I wanted to do this challenge. I didn't ask him to join me in the challenge, but I did ask him to be a taste tester for some of the foods I'll be cooking. Dan surprised me when he texted me this photo from the grocery store on Friday:

Is that MorningStar and Boca I see there?! It brought a big smile to my face to see him purchase some vegetarian items all on his own! He told me he's setting his own goal of going meatless 3 days out of each week during my challenge. What an awesome guy :)

I feel I've read enough and am well prepared to go vegan on Monday. While at Target yesterday, I noticed they were having a big sale on their Up & Up brand of vitamins and supplements. I picked up a women's multivitamin and a bottle of vitamin B12. Vitamin B12 is probably the most challenging nutrient to get if you're on a vegan diet, as this vitamin is only found in animal products. Besides taking a supplement, you amy be able to find products that have been fortified with added vitamins, including B12. Silk soy milk is one option. You can also get your B12 intake from nutritional yeast, a cheesy-flavored powder that you can sprinkle on to any dish you normally put cheese on. Just to be safe, I am going to take my vitamins daily.

Have some more questions about a vegan diet? I'll leave you with this handy infographic from PETA. It's a great way to educate yourself on the basics in less than a minute!

As always, comments and questions are welcomed! 

30 Day Challenge: Going Vegan

About a month ago, I was home sick from work for a couple of days. Any time I didn't spend sleeping I spent laying on the couch watching Netflix. As I scrolled through some of the documentaries, I decided to watch one called Vegucated. I referenced this movie a bit in my last blog, but just to recap, the film follows three meat eating New Yorkers on a 6 week challenge to adopt a vegan lifestyle. The film is directed and narrated by Marisa Miller Wolfson, a former meat eater who decided to become vegan. What I really like about the documentary is I find it to be as entertaining as it is informative. Marisa does a good job of mixing humor in with factual information, and I feel she also does a very good job of addressing the many reasons why a vegan lifestyle is good for your body, animals, and the environment.

This film really opened my eyes to many things I never gave a second thought to before, and it's been on my mind a lot these past few weeks. I've spent a good amount of time looking up vegan recipes, researching what nutrients you have to get, and reading about the treatment of farm animals. I have been giving a lot of thought to the idea of going vegan for 30 days during the month of April, and so today I decided to watch the film again to reinforce why this is something I want to do. If you have Netflix, I really recommend you watch this film - it's only an hour and 15 minutes long, so it won't take up much of your time. There are a ton of books, movies, and information on the Internet that you can review on the topic. For now, I will recap some of what the film discussed.

The Animals

As many of you know, one of the primary reasons someone would choose to be a vegan is because of the way the animals are treated. A vegan is someone who does not consume animals or animal products - so no meat, fish, dairy, or even honey. Most vegans also abstain from certain types of beer and wine, since many are refined using a product called isinglass, which comes from fish.

I used to think that animals such as cows, pigs, and chickens just really didn't serve much of a purpose on this Earth besides to be eaten. I know there are many more films out there that show a lot more horrific scenery of how these animals are treated, and I likely couldn't watch such films because the 10 minute segment of Vegucated was enough.

I won't get too detailed here, as you can look up information on the treatment of farm animals if you would like. I will say that both times I watched this film, I cried through the explanations of how cows, pigs, and chickens are treated. All undergo at least one type of procedure without any anesthesia. Chickens are kept in cages where they can barely move and have their beaks cut down with a heated blade so they won't peck their cage-mates to death. Some scenes from a typical slaughterhouse were also shown, and I watched cows and pigs dragged off the floor by one leg kicking and screaming. If anyone saw this happening to dogs or cats, they would be outraged. Why do we feel it doesn't matter when it's cows, pigs, or chickens? Is it because they don't live in our house with us? Is it because they're not furry and cuddly like cats and dogs? The fear, sadness, and pain that you can see in the eyes of these animals hurt me.

Brian was one of the three people in the film taking on the 6 week challenge to adopt a vegan lifestyle and "get vegucated" on what it's all about. After watching the film about the treatment of animals, he said, "How can you walk away from that and not re-evaluate some things?" That is precisely how I feel right now. I don't know if I'll ever really be a vegan, but I do know that I want to make some lifestyle changes because after what I've learned, it feels wrong not to do so.

The Environment

When it comes to meat and dairy production, I never thought about the number of people on this planet and how much meat and dairy has to be produced to sustain such a large population. When you consider the amount of energy and resources used to feed the animals, transport them to the slaughterhouse, slaughter them, prepare them for meat sale, etc., the impact on the environment is huge. Livestock farming produces huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. One study estimated that the farming of animals caused more emissions (18%) than the world’s entire transport system (13.5%). Also consider how much water these animals require. It takes 2,500 gallons of water to raise just one pound of beef. Newsweek once put it into perspective this way: the amount of water to raise a 1,000 pound steer would float a destroyer. A typical meat eater's diet requires up to 2.5 times the amount of land compared to a vegetarian diet and 5 times that of a vegan diet (source). Precious resources are being used to produce meat and dairy products. These should be treated as more of a luxury then a necessity, because the fact is you don't need to eat meat to survive. I'll explain that further in another blog.

Your Health

Vegetarians and vegans have a lower risk for heart disease, obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and cancer than those who regularly consume meat and dairy. The China Study, first published in 2005, examines the relationship between the consumption of animal products and a variety of chronic illnesses including coronary heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. The China Study has been described as "the most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted."

The study examined mortality rates from 48 forms of cancer and other chronic diseases from 1973 to 75 in 65 counties in China, and correlated them with 1983–84 dietary surveys and blood work from 6,500 people, 100 from each county. It concluded that counties with a high consumption of animal-based foods in 1983–84 were more likely to have had higher death rates from "Western" diseases as of 1973–75, while the opposite was true for counties that ate more plant foods in 1983–84. The study was conducted in those counties because they had genetically similar populations that tended, over generations, to live in the same way in the same place, and eat diets specific to those regions. 

The authors conclude that people who eat a plant-based/vegan diet — avoiding animal products such as beef, pork, poultry, fish, eggs, cheese, and milk, and reducing their intake of processed foods and refined carbohydrates — will escape, reduce, or reverse the development of chronic diseases.

The Challenge

With all this information I've learned recently, I've decided to create a 30 Day Challenge for the month of April: I will adopt a vegan lifestyle for 30 days. Why April? It just seems like an ideal time to take on a challenge such as this one. There are no holidays in April to tempt me. There are a couple of friends and family member's birthdays, however, I can make other arrangements for those when it comes to food. It may also help me drop those last few pounds before summer arrives. 

In my opinion, this challenge will be as difficult or as easy as I make it out to be. Right now, I feel like I have a positive outlook on it. I am going about this as an experiment. Will I feel better physically? Will I try new recipes? Will I lose weight? Will I make better choices when it comes to healthy eating? Will I strengthen my willpower? These are all things I look forward to discovering. 

Those are the questions I am seeking answers to, but now I would like to know some of your questions. Of course you can turn to Google, but I would really like to know some of the questions and/or concerns people have about a vegan lifestyle so that I can address them in my blog. 

Looking forward to your feedback!

2,340 Steps, Marathons and a "V" Word

Yesterday, I climbed 180 floors / 2,340 steps at the Presidential Towers in Chicago, and it was fantastic! A huge thank you once again to those who donated in support of my climb. I had a fundraising goal of $250 and I raised $275 for the American Lung Association. When I signed up for the Fight for Air climb a few months ago, I decided to just go for all 4 towers. I previously climbed at the Aon Center (80 floors) and Willis Tower (103 floors). For this climb, it was go big or go home.

When I train for my half marathons, I follow a week by week training plan. For stair climbs, I pretty much just make up my training as I go. I attend my morning boot camp as usual, which is about 2 to 3 times per week, for strength training and then I do cardio - a mix of treadmill interval sessions and long sessions on the stair climber. I'll stay on the stair machine for anywhere from 35 to 50 minutes. I feel like it's always hard to anticipate how you'll feel during a stair climb, and you don't really know what the stairwell will be like until you get in it.

I found this event to be very well organized and well run. Participants start in waves, and I didn't find the event to be overly crowded at all. Brent, a friend of mine from college, signed up for the climb as well so we carpooled together with our significant others coming along for support. Our start time was 11:10 AM.

When I do these climbs, and even my marathon, I view myself as more of a "slow and steady" type. I'm more concerned with finishing the race well than I am with my finish time. I started off in Tower 1 at what I felt was my regular pace on the stair climber. These stairwells were pretty narrow, but the height of the actual stairs were pretty similar to the machine at the gym. After you finished one tower, you would proceed to the elevators and take them down to the starting floor (which was actually the third floor in each tower) and then run down a hallway to the next tower. Your timing chip stopped when you crossed over to the elevator area, and started up again as you exited, so you were able to get a time for each tower.

I slowed down a bit in Tower 2 because I didn't want to burn myself out. Tower 3 and 4 I picked up the pace a bit, and I even ran up some flights of Tower 4. I didn't feel winded at all in terms of cardio. My legs and butt were feeling pretty worn out by the end, though!

I really liked that you were able to get a print out of your times at the end of the event:

                Me post race                                                      Brent and I post race

Dan and I and Brent and Kaitlyn after the climb

Congratulations on your first stair climb event, Brent! Brent took on a 4 towers as well and did a great job. He channeled his inner Kobe Bryant and was all decked out from head to toe in Lakers gear. Nice work!

 Now that the climb is done...what's next? I am participating in the Chicago Half Marathon again this September, and I'm very excited because my best friend Christina said she wants to do that race too and will train with me! (Christina...it's officially published in this blog...now you have to do it!)

I'm also considering running in the Allstate Half Marathon in June. Participating in both of these races will make me a finisher of the Windy City Challenge - basically, I just get an extra medal for doing two half marathons. You may be wondering why I don't just go for the full Chicago marathon. Answer: it's just not something I want to take on right now, and I may never take it on. I know a lot of people who participated last year, and it did make me think, "Hey, if they can do it, I can do it too!" I have so much respect for those who take on those 26.2 miles! But then I think about how I feel after running a half marathon, and I just don't want to go there. I'm not ready to commit.

My boyfriend Dan is interested in running a race with me, and may do the June race with me. If we train together, I have to accept that he is a much faster runner than I am and not get all competitive (read: frustrated) if we train together.


On the nutrition side of things, I'm preparing myself for yet another challenge. A few weeks ago, I watched a documentary on Netflix called Vegucated.
















Vegucated is a documentary about 3 New Yorkers who go on a vegan diet for 6 weeks. If you aren't familiar with what a vegan diet really means, it is a diet free of meat, dairy, or animal products of any kind. True vegans also avoid any clothing, shoes, or other products made from animals. I've heard about veganism before and have wondered how - and why - anyone would want to be a vegan. Ever since I saw this film, I have found myself reading up on vegetarian and vegan lifestyles more and more. I have greatly cut back on my meat intake since discovering vegetarian meals I enjoy, like my black bean burgers. But could I really do without milk, my beloved scrambled egg breakfasts, and delicious cheese?!

I still have a lot of reading and learning to do, and I intend on writing several blogs in the weeks to come about being a vegetarian or a vegan. For now, what I can tell you is much of the information in this documentary shocked me. I sat and cried through the part of the film that showed footage of animals, the conditions they are kept in, and the things they go through. I was presented with information I never gave thought to before, such as how much energy it takes to produce meat and dairy products for such a huge population. I've been questioning why we drink cow's milk when no other species drinks another animal's milk.

I still have so much I could write at the moment based off the information I have so far, but this blog post needs to end some time! What I can say for now is the documentary really has me thinking about the food we eat.  On Wednesday, I plan on renting Food, Inc., a documentary I've been intending to watch for a few years now.

There is so much more I would like to say, but I need to prep my lunch for tomorrow and get some sleep! Stay tuned...

Change Your Outlook

I've been (happily) living without television for well over a year now. When I moved into my apartment last February, I decided I wasn't going to get cable because it was an expense I could live without. Many of the TV shows I watch are available online and my friend Christina shares her Netflix with me. I barely have time to watch that as it is! But when I do hop on Netflix these days, I watch a lot of random TLC reality shows. Last night, I watched some episodes of a 2010 show called Freaky Eaters. The show profiles someone who takes an eating habit to an extreme. When I came home from work yesterday, I sat down to unwind for a bit before heading to the gym. I watched the first episode, which followed a woman addicted to sugar. I started to watch the next episode about a man who ate up to 4 cheeseburgers a day and couldn't eat anything else. About 5 minutes into that episode, I realized I couldn't spend the night sitting on my butt watching people with food addictions. I could, however, resume my viewing on my iPhone Netflix app while working my butt off on the Stairmaster at the gym. So that's precisely what I did.

My stair climb is coming up this Sunday, so I decided to do an hour long session on the stairs. I always do a program setting on the stair machine. My first session was 30 minutes on the calorie burner setting, the second session was 30 minutes on the fat burner setting. I've always wondered if one setting was better than the other. Turns out the results are pretty much the same:

Calorie burner: 30 minutes, 2.86 miles, 140 floors, 265 calories
Fat burner: 30 minutes, 2.89 miles, 139 floors, 270 calories

I just like to change up the sessions because the speed and resistance are different for each one, so it keeps things interesting.

But back to Freaky Eaters. During my hour on the stair machine, I watched an episode on a cheeseburger addict, a pizza addict, and a 20 year old woman who drinks 30 - yes, 30 - cans of cola a day! It was interesting to see the health professionals show you how much saturated fat the pizza addict consumed in a year and how much sugar the cola addict consumed in a month. Besides marveling at the number of pizza boxes displayed and gasping at the amount of soda cans, the show reminded me that it's important to ask ourselves what "healthy" really looks like. I say this because neither the pizza lover nor the cola guzzler were even close to being overweight. If you saw them on the street, you wouldn't think they were unhealthy. Many of us often think thin = healthy, but we need to look past that. Could these people run a 5K? What are their cholesterol and insulin levels? Do they feel energized or run down? What is more important, the way you look or the way you feel?

Many of us are often cutting ourselves down. We need to focus more on what is good and then apply that positive thinking to the goals we want to achieve. For example, I would like lose 4 or 5 more pounds. Instead of thinking things like, "Oh you just had to give in to that slice of cake, didn't you?! You'll never drop those pounds!" I should focus on positive things I've already accomplished:

• I've maintained my most recent weight loss for 3 years now.
• I've completed a mini triathlon, 2 stair climb events and 2 half marathons.
• I haven't visited a fast food restaurant once in 2013 - that's 66 days and counting!
• I haven't drank soda for 12 years (except for a few mixed drinks here and there back in college).

What does your list look like? I bet your list includes things that at one point, you thought you could never do. When I was 15 years old, I couldn't run a mile in gym class without stopping to walk, and now I can run 13 miles without stopping. If there are other things I would like to change or do, I can make that happen.

The other interesting part of the Freaky Eaters show was seeing how people approached making a change. Some focused on how miserable they were going to be without their food addiction, and those people did not do as well with making a change. I know so many people like this. They focus on how deprived they are going to feel. They focus on how much they are going to miss the food. They focus on how they are going to miss the feelings they get when they eat a certain food. If you don't view your change as positive, worthwhile, or even fun, then it is not going to go well for you. Focus on how you are going to feel healthier or more energized. Focus on one change at a time, and when you've attained one goal, move on to the next. That's exactly what I did when training for my first half marathon; I focused on adding one mile at a time instead of worrying about how I would reach the end result. Change your outlook!

Zumba, Profiteroles, and Dark Skies

I think it's a general consensus that weekends go by far too fast! I kept pretty busy this weekend and I was also pretty productive - finally tackled some things that were on my to do list for a few weeks now, like deep cleaning the bathroom and sorting through my mail and junk drawer. There were some fun things mixed in though, too!

On Friday night, I went to my Aunt Sandy's after work to go with her to Zumba. She has been doing Zumba for I believe two years now, and has asked me to go with her several times. I haven't spent time with her in awhile, so I decided to go along. I haven't tried Zumba before, but I know a few people who really enjoy it. My take on it? It's something I would try again, but I don't see myself becoming a Zumba fanatic. We went to a 90 minute class that was pretty packed. For the first 10 minutes, I was not really enjoying myself, mainly because I don't like to appear like I have no clue what is going on - and in this instance, I certainly had no clue what was going on! The regular Zumba goers clearly knew some of the familiar steps and movements. I had difficulty seeing the instructor on the stage; particularly her feet. It was hard to anticipate what was coming next. Finally I just decided to have fun with it and just make sure I kept moving. Some songs were fun and had you work up a sweat, others were more slow paced and seemed to have small, simple movements. Overall, I was happy I tried it and it was nice to spend time with my aunt. I know she really likes the class, and I'm happy it's an exercise she enjoys.

On Saturday, I woke up feeling pretty sore all over - I'm not sure if that's a result from my boot camp on Friday morning, Zumba on Friday night, or a combination of both. My boyfriend Dan and I went to the gym together in the afternoon and I did a combination cardio workout of stair climbing and running, along with some arm weights and abs exercises that I've learned from the boot camp I go to. It really makes me happy that my boyfriend loves to work out. He's a great motivator on days when I need an extra push, and overall he is just so supportive and encouraging. 

Dan and I at a fun run on Fat Tuesday.

After the gym, it was time for us to have a date night - our schedules have been really crazy the last couple months between his job and my two jobs. Back in January, I won a $200 gift card at my company's annual New Year's Kick Off party to Pinstripes, a nice restaurant that also has bowling and bocce ball -- score! It turns out you have to book your bowling way in advance - three weeks or so - but we still wanted to go there for dinner. We at there a few months ago for free thanks to some dinner vouchers the Pinstripes staff dropped off at offices in the area, and it was fantastic. This time, it was just as delicious! Saturday was a splurge day for sure. The meal started off with a generous basket of soft bread sticks with some yummy dipping oil - to me it tasted like a mix of pesto, garlic, and olive oil.

I know they say that if you're trying to eat well, you should send the bread basket back at restaurants, but I can never (and probably will never!) do that. I had about 5 or 6 of the bread sticks. Whoops! Like I said - it was our splurge night! Then we each ordered a bowl of soup (I had minestrone, Dan had chicken dumpling) and shared a jumbo crab cake. No picture of the crab cake to post, but it was melt in your mouth delicious. Then it was time for my entree: baked meat lasagna, which consisted of spinach pasta, meat and marinara, and mozzarella cheese. The lasagna was incredible. It had a little peppery kick to it too.

Dan ordered a pasta dish too, consisting of chicken and goat cheese in a more creamy sauce. We were pretty full from our bread, crab cake, and soup, so we only ate about a quarter of our meal. That was fine with me, as I love having leftovers! We made sure to stop ourselves from becoming too full, because I insisted we save some room for dessert. I saw profiteroles on the menu, and I absolutely. positively. love. profiteroles. Dan never had them before, so I was even more excited to introduce him to the tasty pastries stuffed with ice cream and covered in chocolate and caramel sauce. Sounds good, right? Well just take a gander at the photo below:

I have few words to describe how delicious these are! Everything about them was perfect. I'm drooling just staring at this picture. They were heavenly!

After dinner, we headed back home for a little bit until it was time to go to theater near me to see Dark Skies. If you were thinking of seeing this movie...please don't. Save your money. Save your time. I'm a sucker for alien movies (goes back to my 8 year old self being obsessed with aliens for a good year or so), and I was excited to see this one. Unfortunately, Dan and I walked out of the theater wanting the last 90 minutes of our lives back. The story line was weak. The only creepy part of the movie was at the very end, but by then you just wanted it to be over so badly that you didn't even care about seeing the aliens. We were very disappointed, but that's the risk you take with movies sometimes.

That brings us to Sunday. I spent a good portion of the day cleaning and doing laundry. After I post this blog, I plan on making a double batch of black bean burgers for the week, along with some sweet potato fries. Today was my rest day from the gym and I'll be back at boot camp tomorrow. Last week was really good as far as working out goes:

Sunday PM: 30 minutes on stair climber

Monday AM: 45 minute boot camp session

Tuesday AM: 30 minutes on stair climber

Wednesday: Rest day

Thursday AM: 45 minutes on stair climber

Friday AM: 45 minute boot camp session

Friday PM: Zumba

Saturday: 40 minutes cardio (20 stairs, 20 treadmill), arms and abs exercises

Share with me - how was your weekend? Hope you all enjoy the rest of your Sunday!

National Nutrition Month

Welcome, March! January and February 2013 are now behind us and we are creeping closer to spring and summer and warmer weather. Swimsuit season will be here before we know it, so now is a great time to assess your health and fitness goals. Did you make a health related New Year's Resolution this year? Whether you believe in New Year's Resolutions or not, I think it's natural for many of us to focus on eating better and exercising more after the holiday season is over. We've been surrounded by food, drinks, and social events, and by the time January 1st rolls around, I certainly feel the need to detox! Resolutions aside, I believe it is important to regularly set goals and try to improve yourself. Today I learned March is National Nutrition Month, and since good nutrition plays a key role in good health, it's a great time to assess where you are at in terms of health and fitness habits and set some new goals.

National Nutrition Month is an annual campaign created by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. This year's theme is, "Eat Right, Your Way, Every Day." I really feel that theme is a great one to think about. There are so many diets out there and so much advice when it comes to eating healthy. If you are looking to lose weight, it is easy to fall into fad diets and look for something that is going to be a "quick fix". It is important to recognize that eating right and being healthy is a journey and one that requires dedication and most of all, patience. You have to do things that are actually going to work for you as an individual. I started that journey in 2001 when I was a sophomore in high school. It was baby steps back then - eliminating soda was the first step, then starting to exercise was another. Over the years, I've continued to make changes and set new goals. I believe you can still enjoy the good food and drinks that life has to offer if you do it in moderation and strive to eat well and exercise the majority of the time.

This year, I made it a goal to cook meals at home more often to help out both my budget and my health and fitness goals. I've done a good job of only dining out a few times a month (a huge improvement from last year, which was a few times per week!) and am actually starting to enjoy cooking. The recipe I've fallen in love with most is, hands down, homemade black bean burgers. 

I talk about these burgers quite a bit and have sent the recipe to many. One of my coworkers is hooked on them, as am I! As a huge cheeseburger lover, I'm really happy I have found a healthier alternative. I had a regular meat burger last night, and I honestly did not enjoy it as much as I used to because I am so hooked on these burgers. They're great on a whole wheat bun with all the regular burger fixin's, and they're also fantastic crumbled over brown rice with guacamole, salsa and some shredded cheese. I am also obsessed with Wholly Guacamole 100 calorie packs - they are the perfect amount of guac!

I've also developed a love for sweet potatoes. I love making baked sweet potatoes fries in the oven, and some days I've even had a sweet potato for lunch - I'll bake one while I get ready for work in the morning, and then at lunch time warm it up with black beans, cheese, and salsa on top. It's a very filling and satisfying meal! Nutritionally, sweet potatoes are an excellent pick - just one cup of sweet potatoes has 65% of your daily requirement of Vitamin C. They are also high in fiber and beta carotene and, among root vegetables, sweet potatoes offer the lowest glycemic index rating. That's because the sweet potato digests slowly, causing a gradual rise in blood sugar so that you feel satisfied longer. These meals have been much more satisfying than the boring Lean Cuisines I often took with me to work - and, they're cheap!

On the exercise front, I've been training for the American Lung Association's Fight for Air Climb at the Presidential Towers in Chicago. The event is about a week away, it's on Sunday, March 10th. I've been thinking about this stair climbing event for a couple years now, and decided this year to go for it. This will be the longest stair climb I've done, as I'm taking on all 4 towers for a total of 180 floors! The Willis Tower climb I did back in 2011 was 103 floors, and Aon Center last year was just 80 floors. While I've met my fundraising goal, I still encourage you to donate to this important cause.

Let's get a discussion going - how are your health and fitness goals coming along? What changes have you made? What frustrations have you encountered?

Have a fantastic weekend, everyone!