Astrid

Monday June 6, 2016 Morning: Ate a slice of Ezekiel bread, one scrambled egg, and a plum for breakfast. Left in the late morning to drive to another town for some visits. Split a cider donut with my mom at the cider mill and tried a couple kinds of jam on crackers. Went to pick up cheese and tried a dozen or so types of cheese. Then went to Ben & Jerry's factory tour and had a small cup of ice cream at the end. Afternoon: Split a turkey club wrap and a glass of hard cider with my mom. Lettuce and tomato on the wrap, and it came with a mini salad. Drove to the Von Trapp Family Lodge to see the mountain (yes, the Von Trapps moved to Vermont and now own a hotel/resort complex and brewery - and it's gorgeous and really does look like it's straight from Austria) and drove up and down and around the whole mountain. Went to a local coffee shop and had a small iced maple latte with soy milk (because I love soy milk, not for dietary reasons). Then headed home. Evening: Signed up for the academy and then three hours later realized it was smart because the price is changing (lucky me). Read through some of the basic introductory materials. Made stir-fried veggies with grilled chicken and one ounce of rice noodles for dinner. Had half a cup of mango lemonade (my mom insisted we have juice in the house and now we need to get rid of it before Saturday). Walked to the ice cream shop in town and had a baby cone with my mom, 2 miles round trip. Summary: Gee, I ended up eating a lot of ice cream. Splitting my lunch with my mom was a good decision, as was making stir fried veggies and grilled chicken for dinner - now I have leftovers to eat tomorrow for lunch! I'm glad I signed up for the academy because if I hadn't done it this week, I probably would have come back in a few weeks to look at the price and balked at the new price.

Since I'm going to be starting the challenge, I'm going to post my goals here. Specific updates for the challenge will go into the challenge forum. General updates will go here. But for the sake of a general update here, here goes. My goal: The goal of this challenge is to build basic habits, especially habits that will withstand the frequent changes in my life. In July, I'll be in Costa Rica for 3 weeks at Spanish school, so these quests should be habits I can maintain during that trip. Diet: I'm picking two diet goals. Eat a vegetable with two meals a day Eat out only once a week (with the exception of week 1) Fitness: One goal. Get at least 5,000 steps 5 days a week, +1,000 each week Life: goal. Save $5 in Tip Yourself each week. Keep up with daily assignments from NFA.

My goal: The goal of this challenge is to build basic habits, especially habits that will withstand the frequent changes in my life. In July, I'll be in Costa Rica for 3 weeks at Spanish school, so these quests should be habits I can maintain during that trip. Diet: I'm picking two diet goals. Eat a vegetable with two meals a day Eat out only once a week (with the exception of week 1) Fitness: One goal. Get at least 5,000 steps 5 days a week, +1,000 each week Life: goal. Save $5 in Tip Yourself each week. Keep up with daily assignments from NFA.

A bag of frozen veggies as a meal is actually pretty easy, and all you need is a pan, some veggies, and some protein. I use "Chinese" style frozen veggies and defrost half a bag at a time overnight. In the morning, add a little salt, plenty of pepper, and any other spices you like. Heat your pan pretty high, toss in a tbsp of your preferred oil (I use olive usually, with a bit of szechuan chili oil), and toss in your veggies. Only stir occasionally, and they'll blacken a bit. Pick your favorite protein and cook that, too. I usually do one egg, scrambled or fried, over my stir fry, or half a chicken breast, cut up. You can do tofu, beef, pork, goat, lamb... up to you. If you need carbs, you can set an ounce of rice noodles to boil a few minutes while you cook. I don't add any extra sauce, but you can if you eat something. A half bag of veggies, a tbsp of oil, some protein, and even the noodles will be under 500 calories, and you won't be hungry again quickly eating half a bag of vegetables. Sometimes when doing 16/8 fasts I eat one of these stir fries at 11, another at 6, and stay full all day.

Wow, what a lame title. I know, I know. I'm not clever and catchy like you. This is my first attempt at some sort of accountability that doesn't end when I type up my food into my phone. Morning: The day started out in a bit of a rush. I woke up later than usual, not feeling too great. It's raining and humid today, probably the cause. For breakfast, I had a spoonfull of peanut butter, a pear, and my vitamins. 7:30 was my regular yoga class, except my teacher had a sub today who frankly sucked. It's an advanced vinyasa/strength class and we had 3 newbies who had never taken a single yoga class before. By all means, yoga is for everyone. Advanced classes, not so much. I should be patient, but personally it bugs me when someone with no experience comes to a class they're not prepared for. I was a little less than happy. The sub was a pilates instructor who added unnecessary elements to the class, very different from my teacher, and made up a pose that doesn't exist (or she just didn't know how to do side angle?) After yoga, my mom wanted to go to the grocery store and ended up buying crackers. Yikes. So I ate crackers with her. Michou threw up on the floor. Afternoon: Ate beef tacos with my mom, with cheese, cilantro, sour cream, salsa, and avo. I guess I should say I ate one taco. Had half a Cadbury Crunchie as a treat. We drove to Canada yesterday (I live 5 m from the border) and we had bought candy bars to take with us to my dad and brother, so the Crunchie bar was my treat to myself. I had an orchestra concert in the afternoon. My boyfriend bought me a new yoga mat/blocks/towel so that I can leave my mat here when I move in with him next weekend. (I live in VT, he lives in MI. I'm a teacher so I'll move "home" for the summer to be with him.) So that was nice. Evening: Ate leftover tacos with my mom. Skipped the tortilla and avo and had it on chips instead - but very small because my tummy was hurting and I have cramps. Yuck. I've been thinking about getting a tablet for ages and had sorta settled on a kindle fire (because haha I'm broke) so I decided to check eBay to see what's available. Lost 2 snipes because the sellers required a linked paypal account and I've got a new one since I last used eBay. Finished my Crunchie bar with my mom's help. T-minus 50 minutes to Game of Thrones. Summary: I'm just doing the best I can with my mom here. I can't eat what/when I'd like because she doesn't eat clean and isn't willing to listen to my rules about what foods she can/can't bring into my home. I really needed my yoga class to go well today and it did not, so that's not great. And I wish my tummy would stop hurting. (Probably due to eating so much dairy since my mom has arrived...)

When I'm on my own and my life isn't insanely hectic, stuff tends to go great for my diet. I don't eat bread, rice, or pasta when I eat at home, and I live alone so I get to set all the rules. The second that A. I go out with someone; B. someone comes to my house, C. someone offers me homemade baked goods, or D. I go on a trip to stay with my boyfriend, everything gets shot to heck. I start making lots of excuses. It's a special occasion, or I can't tell my mom that she may NOT bring chips, crackers, and snack mix into my house, or my boyfriend will feel bad if I tell him I won't eat chips with him, or my friend will be offended I don't want their homemade muffins. And the problem is, those things just seem to happen all the time! When I'm at home, I have no problem making sure my meals come from the perimeter of the store - I pretty much exclusively buy fruits, veggies, eggs, meat, milk, peanut butter, spices, and oils. I eat lots of stir fried veggies cooked in coconut oil, olive oil, or ghee. I did 30 days in September with no added sugars of any kind and somehow magically trained myself to actually be repulsed by the idea of eating candy or store-bought cookies/cake/junk. My main problem seems to just be that I eat too much, and don't think anything of it. For a period of time, I'd been eating (what I thought was) a pretty careful diet while my scale was broken and when I got it fixed, I found out I'd gained 10 pounds. So I think it must be little bites of treats here and there that I think nothing of slowly adding on the weight. So my real issue comes in not letting those special occasions I mentioned above totally mess with me. My ideal diet would be intermittent fasting, however when I tried it for a few weeks, my yoga teacher told me I had to stop skipping breakfast because I was coming to class totally weak while fasting and unable to do even simple poses, let alone balances or strength poses. So in lieu of being able to do that, I guess trying paleo with some (actual) form of accountability is the next step.

Hello all, I'm considering moving towards a more paleo-ish diet but I'm worried about the difficulty of giving foods up. Whole 30 has been a HUGE trend at work and 4-5 different teachers have tried it since December. However, I take some issues with some of the philosophical explanations for rules, such as not being able to create "replacements" for non-approved foods using approved foods. The idea that using bananas and eggs to make pancakes is somehow wrong because it's "totally missing the point" and that "a pancake is still a pancake, regardless of the ingredients" totally doesn't resonate with me. On other things, I'm more strict - I don't drink juice because I view it as just another fructose stripped of the fiber that would otherwise be there if you just ate a pineapple. As for alcohol... well, I'm a French and Spanish teacher so there's no giving up my wine. In a week, I'm going to be moving in with my boyfriend for the summer and he eats a fairly typical American diet, complete with boxed mac and cheese and hamburger helper. I'd like to outline for myself some baby steps for what I could do week-by-week for a couple of months to come closer to paleo - specifically, removing grains, added sugars, maybe some dairy. Does anybody have ideas for small, specific baby steps for what to switch or remove or add week-by-week. Without freaking out my boyfriend. Any ideas?

Yes, I'm looking forward to the challenge! That was what made me decide to join... I saw there's a new challenge starting immediately and thought the timing was perfect!

Hey all, I'm new around here! My name is Astrid. I'm 24, F, INFP, and live in the northeast. I'm a high school French and Spanish teacher. I've been flirting with actual training for about six years and got fairly serious about yoga a year or so ago, even though I've been somewhat regularly to classes since I started college. I'm about 180#, 5'2 so I'm not what you'd call a very "typical" yoga student, and my teacher recently invited/asked me to do yoga teacher training. I've been thinking about doing training for a few months but I've never committed because I feel like I'm not "in shape enough" to be a yoga teacher, or like they're gonna suddenly find out I can't do crow or something. So I'm looking to add something more to my daily practice and I know I need to get serious about not eating like crap. Unfortunately, I've only been on my own a year - I previously lived with my parents and we had to eat absolute junk to be able to afford my college tuition. Now that I'm on my own, I don't have a lot of willpower to eat well. I'll be moving in with my (surprisingly underweight) boyfriend who also eats junk and now my battle is going to be to convince him that mac and cheese is NOT a balanced meal and that energy drinks are absolute junk. Fortunately, since he works full-time and I'll have the summer off, I'm hoping I can do most of the shopping/cooking and spend the rest of my time going to yoga classes, working on grad classes, and doing curriculum planning for my job. And, if I play my cards right, doing some early studying for my yoga teacher training. Outside of yoga, I love languages (I speak 3 fluently and a couple more very choppily), I'm really into linguistics, I have a super cute cat (Michou), I love cooking, and I spend a lot of time reading and scrolling tumblr. I love traveling and put every penny I save towards traveling - I went to France for 2 weeks with my students this past April, and I'll be in language school in Costa Rica for 3 weeks in July. I'm queer and I love Beyoncé WAY too much. So, that's me, I guess?