ELIMINATION (diet)

The title sounds pretty intense, right?

A couple of months ago I started seeing a nutritionist because I found out that my insurance charges me exactly ZERO dollars to see one as often as I'd like. I love when I discover things I can do to better myself that cost me nothing. These days it becomes harder and harder to find, but I digress..

When we first met I discussed the fact that I never really lose/gain weight, portions were fuzzy to me, and some sort of food allergy had to be going on because sometimes I feel SO uncomfortable after eating. We met once a week for a few weeks. She put me on a 5 meals (or mini meals) a day plan. I was told to make sure at every meal/snack to include protein. I was also to cut out any starchy foods after lunch time. At first this was kind of a hassle, but I started to meal plan and pack lunches and snacks with me to take to work. After about a month of following this plan, my nutritionist dropped the new plan on me.

THE ELIMINATION DIET.

Sounds scary, but it wasn't all that bad when I started looking into it. Although I did cry a little on the inside when I was told that I wouldn't be able to drink coffee or alcohol. That's usually how my day begins and ends. With coffee then wine :-) For three weeks you cut out a bunch of foods and then slowly re-introduce them into your diet to see how you react to them. This is supposed to be one of the best ways to determine food allergies. Even more so than allergy tests. I'm not usually a diet kind of person, but I think the fact that this is short term and has helpful results made me willing to give it a try. I really hope to see some results whether it be weight loss or pin pointing food allergies.

Have you ever heard of the elimination diet or tried it yourself?

Weekend Shenanigans

It was a pretty low key weekend. I'm really loving low key weekends these days. Maybe it's a sign of my aging? :-)

I am now a week into my Elimination Diet (post to come tomorrow!) and yesterday I was having a serious drive to eat any sort of junk food I could. When I strolled the aisles at the grocery store I had to restrain myself from grabbing Pringles, donuts, and mini pies. I just wanted to devour anything sweet and bad for me. I strolled over to Fremont and went to The Flying Apron and found a muffin that fits my requirements. I paired it with some wu wei tea and sat down and indulged while reading my kindle.

It was sunny in Seattle on Sunday! I soaked it up. The sunglasses were dug out from deep inside my closet. I don't care that it was still freezing out, because if it's sunny, I'm happy.

My running outfit for the St. Pat's Dash on Sunday. All green-ed out! I was really happy with the race this year. The weather was absolutely PERFECT. A sunny Sunday morning in March..in Seattle? It snowed during last years race, and there was a torrential downpour the year before that! I guess third times the charm. There was over 15,000 people running the race! My body also felt really good. It was a welcome relief considering I've probably ran 4 times in the last month.

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

NAIL FILES!

Happy Friday, Y'all!



Last weekend, my bestest friend Kitty came down to celebrate her birthday. We decided to go get our nails done at a new salon down the street from my house. Saturday also happened to be the day that my little miss Matilda went to her grooming appointment so she too got her nails done. Matilda is a big brat most of the time and loves to scratch my furniture..and me when she gets feisty. I had the soft paws put on. Hers are minty green and glow in the dark. Pretty awesome I think.

 

Mine are the dark Merlot colored ones, my best friend's are the red ones, and as you can tell, Matilda's are the green ones! If you're wondering whats around her neck, the groomers put a coffee filter with a rhinestone (to make it cute, obvs) on each cat so that they don't lick up the product.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

San Francisco Part Two

Once we arrived back to San Fran from wine country we set out like true tourists and hit most all the spots that we had on our agenda. We checked into our cute little hotel, Hotel Mark Twain, dumped our stuff off and made the trek to Chinatown. The three of us were beyond excited to start exploring and then we hit the hills. THE HILLS!!!

Seattle has some hills, believe me, but San Fran has hills that are so steep you feel like you might fall backwards when you walk up them. The San Franciscans are smart though and walk on their toes when climbing one of the many monster mini mountains. I took notes. None the less we still walked 99% of our adventures and only cabbed it when absolutely necessary.

 

Before returning our sweet convertible we stopped at a look out spot (1,5.) on the other side of the water from the city. When we finished with our food in Chinatown the three of us walked all the way to the worlds crookedest (their term, not mine :-) street: Lombard street (2,3). I don't know why anyone would want to actually drive down it. You're barely moving the entire time on a street jam packed with other cars and pedestrians. No thanks. We continued our walk because it was all down hill once we got to Lombard street. Might as well go down when you just hoofed it up a huge hill! I couldn't believe how much there was to look at. Including the gorgeous trees and flowers (4).

 Our hours long walk (1) led us to our next stop: Fisherman's Wharf. It was such a gorgeous sunny day, but wayy too cold for my liking on the water (4). We stopped at Ghiradelli (2,3) and had a delicious coffee with free chocolates. That place was PACKED, and I hate being in a place that is almost to capacity so we got the heck outta there and kept moving down the wharf. We did some trinket shopping and went into an empty looking wine bistro and drank and ate shrimp cocktails and bread :-)

 

Recognize the house in picture 5? I hope you do or else maybe we shouldn't be friends..This was absolutely a HUGE  highlight of my trip! Who didn't watch Full House growing up?! I can remember being a kid and my mom telling me that I better take my bath at that exact moment or I was going to miss watching Full House. Needless to say, I was in that bathtub before she could finish her sentence! Is it ridiculous that I still watch it when it comes on Nick at Nite?  Fun fact: we ran into a guy when we were taking pictures and he told us that the owners just put that gate up at the bottom of the stairs the week prior. One look at #Fullhousehouse on instagram and I knew why. People are all up on those stairs and standing at the front door taking pictures. Get serious people, let's have some respect. I think people forget that it's actually someones house. Which by the way, the house would NEVER fit the Full house layout in it. This place looks wayy tiny compared to how it looks in the show. I would love to know what the actual inside looks like. You can also see that the street (3) doesn't really seem fitting either. 

We also managed to make it over to the Mission District after we visited the Tanner's. We stopped in to La Cumbre (2) for burritos and beer. If you're a Man Vs. Food fan, then you'll remember that this was one of Adam's stops. It was really well priced and delicious. The burrito also came with chips that you could dip into all sorts of salsas that were at the salsa bar.

Overall it was a great trip. We got some nasty cold and rainy weather the last two days we were there so that deterred us from making it out to Alcatraz, but other than that we pretty much accomplished all we set out to do. We did so much walking, but I noticed after the fact that I was so occupied with all the sights around us that I didn't realize that we had walked two hours straight. The architecture is so different than Seattle, and the hills and city skyline also provided a welcome distraction. I think from the whole trip though, wine country was my favorite part. I'm in a city all the time so heading out to Mendocino county and slowing down was a great break from the norm.

Goals for the month

I've come to the realization that I love lists. Whether it be To-Do lists or a list with goals written down. There is something so fulfilling about writing something down and then being able to cross it off the list when it is completed.

Since this deployment has began, I've observed things in my life that have been affected since KC left for Afghanistan. It's funny to see that in 5 months I've experienced so many different feelings. To see all the positive things that have occurred is what is really great. Reflecting on these months I've been able to focus on me. I've started to make my eating habits better by meeting with a nutritionalist and figuring out what is fitting and nutritious for my body. I'm reading more books than I have ever before and I look forward to crawling into bed early just so I can pull out the kindle and read a few chapters. Having the same early bed time during the week makes me well rested, and I think has been one of the contributing factors to why I haven't gotten sick (while being surrounded by sickies) in over 6 months (flu shots are overrated, and I'm glad I have still yet to get one!) maybe the red wine and the nightly chamomile tea helped too ;-)

Becoming even more comfortable with having more "me" time has got me thinking that I only have a couple more months before KC comes back, and I'm sure once he returns it will throw a bit of a wrench in my all about me schedule. I'm an independent lady, but I know with the return of my soldier, some things will for sure be different. I'll probably start eating later in the evening, I'll most likely stay up later, and eat out more often. Obviously I'm more than excited that he's coming home, but changes will occur and I want to be able to balance the before and after and mesh the two together as much as possible. Until then though, I plan on documenting some goals for the next few months starting this month.

March Goals
-Complete my elimination diet successfully
-Become more efficient with meal planning and grocery shopping for the right amount of food
-Stretch everyday for at least 5-10min
-Run 2-3 times a week and get a workout of some sort in 4-5x a week
-Keep up with my reading plan (I veered off at the end of feb)
-Send KC a final care package

Have you experienced similar feelings of personal growth while your soldier was deployed?

Here's to a great March! I think it will be a good month..I mean daylight savings picks up again next weekend, and that always means longer days and sun ahead..AWESOME :-)