How To Eat On The Go

Eating on the go has never been a favorite of mine.  I like to sit comfortably and enjoy my meal, tasting every ingredient and savoring every morsel, like the French do.  However, I constantly stay on the go.  Whether I’m running from one meeting to the next at work, going to the gym, volunteering with youth organizations, church, going to the gym, the grocery store, writer’s workshop meetings, book clubs, going to the gym (there’s a pattern here), I have to have food with me wherever I go.  I’m timed and scheduled to eat every 2-3 hours, 5-6 meals per day.  I cannot afford to skip a meal.  This is mostly important when I am in competition prep.  That is why I pack and prep my meals Sunday evenings for the entire week.  

Meal prepping saves time throughout the week.  No matter your profession, corporate, in the field, etc., having your meals prepared ahead of time and stored in ready-to-go containers makes eating on the go painless.  Now, when I say meal prep, I do not mean prepping pasta or any other heavy foods that will essentially drag your energy levels down because of the amount of carbs.  Since I am a competitor, I eat clean and my meals consist of foods that aid in muscle gain, muscle retention and boosts energy.  So, the million dollar question; how do you meal prep?  Think of your basic healthy eating needs:

·         Protein – chicken breast, turkey breast, fish (tuna, salmon, tilapia), egg whites, lean ground beef, protein shakes

·         Carbohydrates – sweet potato, brown rice, quinoa, squash, oatmeal, black beans, strawberries, melon, apple, orange, yogurt (greek or fat-free)

·         Vegetables – broccoli, asparagus, lettuce, carrots, spinach, kale, celery, artichoke, green beans, green peppers, cucumber

Seems a little simple, right?  It gets even better.  Now, think of the meals you eat throughout the day.  I do not encourage anyone to eat 5-6 meals a day, especially if you are not a competitor.  This can be a lot of food for a non-competitor to consume.  I suggest focusing on breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks in between.  If you are on the road to a healthy, clean-eating lifestyle, which I strongly encourage for everyone, you want to plan your meals accordingly.  This is just a breakdown of how I go about the thought process for prepping my meals:

·         Breakfast – I boil a dozen eggs, eating one or two within the day. I also have my oats for oatmeal.

·         Lunch – I usually like to eat tuna with fat free mayonnaise (it’s not for everybody and definitely an acquired taste) with spinach.  I also have lean turkey breast on hand as an alternate on other days to eat with a whole wheat wrap.

·         Dinner – One week I may prep chicken breast or fish because it is easier to take out of the package and line on cookie sheet and bake in the oven.  I eat that with asparagus spears, broccoli or kale spinach, alternating and switching up meals within the week, along with brown rice or quinoa.

·         Snacks – My snacks consists of assorted nuts, and by assorted I mean almonds or walnuts, plain greek yogurt with fruit, celery (I have to have a dip such as cookie butter or almond butter to eat this) and fruit (strawberries, apple, orange).

When you package everything together, meal prepping can be one of the easiest things you can do for getting your week started.  If you live an active lifestyle, such as I do, where you have to have food ready at a moment’s notice, having your meals prepped can make your week run much smoother.  It is about finding balance and what works for you.  Making healthier eating choices as opposed to unhealthy not only does produces positive results for your health but makes you feel good that the meals you are eating on the go do not consist of fast food, bad fats, and heavy, loaded carbs.  Competing has taught me how to master meal prepping, and I know there are others out there that have busy lifestyles that could benefit from meal prep as well.  Try it out and see what it can do for you.

Cucumber Benefits

I never liked cucumbers.  I never knew any of the healthy, nutritious facts tied to cucumbers, nor did I care, at the time.  Whenever someone said cucumbers I automatically thought pickles (pickles are preserved cucumbers in vinegar).  The only thing I liked about cucumbers were the body washes and lotions that combined cucumber and melon.  During my health journey, I discovered some amazing health facts about cucumbers.  Not many people know the benefits of cucumbers and the nutrients they are packed with.  They are more than just slices women put over their eyes to reduce puffiness during girl’s night (I watch too much television).  They serve as a health benefit associated to your overall well-being. 

Here are the facts:

·         They act as a diuretic, flushing out fat cells and increasing energy levels

·         The nutrients in cucumbers include vitamin A, B1, C, D & K, calcium, fiber, iron, folate, magnesium and potassium

·         Promotes joint health and relieves arthritis

·         Regulates blood pressure, fights cancer and reduces cholesterol

·         Can be used as a facial wash or detox cleanse

·         Cures hangovers (I do not promote drinking, however, for some this is relatively important fact)

Now that you are up to speed with the health benefits of cucumbers, I suggest incorporating them in your diet.  Adding a few slices in your water is not only healthy but refreshing.  Think about it, you are essentially drinking your nutrients and benefitting from the fiber content.  And of course simply eating cucumbers is a plus as well.  My relationship with cucumbers has improved, overall.  When I hear cucumbers I cannot help but include the health facts I’ve learned.  I’m not one of those annoying health nuts that feels the need to jump into every food discussion and add her two cent information, but I do like to educate people on what I know from my unbiased perspective.  Add a punch to your health and wellness and give cucumbers a shot, who knew about all the benefits!

Bored Eaters

I'm bored. I have nothing to do and nowhere to go. All my friends are busy and I am, essentially, stuck at home, alone. What to do?  Plop on the couch, watch trash T.V. or a good movie and eat, eat, eat.  Pizza sounds good, salty, buttery popcorn is always good, cookies are a great sugary treat, and how about washing it down with a thick milk shake or a soda.  Funny thing is, I’m not really all that hungry…
Sounds typical, right?  Nothing else to do except sit around and eat.  You’re not hungry, you’re just vegetating (no pun intended).  When you're bored you instinctively become what's called a "bored-eater". You fall into this rut where you have nothing to do and you're at home with an abundance of unhealthy foods and snacks.  They’re accessible and available for massive consumption because, let’s face it, you made it that way by purchasing them.  So what are the reasons behind bored eating?  I am naturally inquisitive (notice how I said inquisitive and not nosy), so I asked a few people and came up with a few good reasons:

1.      Nothing to do – this is clearly obvious.  If you have nothing to do and nowhere to go, of course you are going to eat.  We sit at home in front of the television or behind a computer and automatically feel as if we have to snack.  Solution: get up and do something active.  Exercising at the gym or the park is a great way to stay healthy and in shape. 

2.      Everyone else is doing it – sigh; “when in Rome do as the Romans”.  I used to think it was ok to drink beer when I was in social circles because I wanted to “break the ice”, so to speak, and seem relatively interesting instead of the bored one of the group.  Solution: do not give into the temptation of eating unhealthy just to fit in.  If you are bored and you resort to bad eating habits in social circles just to relate, you may want to look at those circles a little closer.

3.      Depression – I hate to hear people say they eat because they are depressed.  You are in an unhappy state of mind, you are trying to deal with your emotions and in the process, searching for something to soothe or comfort you.  What’s more comforting than chips, cookies, or pizza, things that taste good and will seemingly recharge your neurons?  It is easy to turn to junk food when you’re in an emotional state because it won’t turn on you.  Or will it?  When you fall into bad food patterns it seems harder to get out of them.  Solution: observe the pattern you are creating when in an emotional state of mind and turning to food to cope.  The overeating inevitably leads to weight gain and, undeniably, holding onto that emotion.  It is better to deal with the emotion than to associate it with bad eating choices.

4.      It’s time to eat – I find it funny when people throw time under the bus.  “Time isn’t on my side”; “time is moving too fast”; “I never have enough time”; “the time is now”; “it’s time to eat”.  Time is innocent.  We use time as an excuse for so many things and do not realize if we use it correctly, it can benefit us.  Solution: listen to your body and ask yourself “is it really time to eat or am I just eating because I have nothing else to do right now?”.  There’s nothing wrong with eating at specific times. Body builders and athletes have to do this all the time for muscle growth and retention.  But eating on a schedule and eating at a specific time just because there’s nothing else to do at that time are completely different. 

There are more reasons why people are classified as bored eaters.  I found these to be the most interesting.  There should be no reason a person should eat unhealthy due to boredom.  There are many methods of removing yourself from that bored state of mind, it is a matter of finding what works for you.

Your Health and Fitness Should Be About You and No One Else

I've mentioned in earlier posts my reason for turning my life over to health and fitness.  For those of you who have not read those posts, let me fill you in.  My mother suffered a major stroke 13 years ago that rendered her somewhat paralyzed on her left side.  I say somewhat because she can still walk and talk but she hardly has any movement in her left arm (she's left-handed) and she walks with a limp. She was able to fight back, however, and even managed to drive and continue living what she deems an active lifestyle; church activities, store runs, attending school events with my niece, etc.  June and July of last year, my mother suffered multiple mini strokes back to back, which affected her speech.  She has days where she sounds clear and other days where she sounds tired and sluggish.  Nonetheless, she's still a fighter.

I wasn't sure how to react or what to be mad at.  My gene pool (my mother's mother suffered a stroke many years ago and died), myself for not knowing what to do to help prevent my mother from having the multiple strokes, or my mother for not slowing down enough and taking care of her health the way she should.  I decided none of the above options were good enough reasons to throw a tantrum and curse the world over, so I decided to take stock in my own life and see what bad habits I've inherited or picked up along the way and how can I change them.

The change would be for me.  It doesn't seem fair to my mother to say I'm changing my life and making it healthier and incorporating an active lifestyle that involves heavy exercising and getting into a sport like body building to keep up appearances, something you were not able to do for me or for yourself.  That's a pretty rotten way of thinking.  I thought I was giving my mother credit by saying her stroke and bad eating habits were the reasons I became more health and fitness conscious, but realized it only highlighted her condition and put her in a negative light.  At least that's what I felt it did.  She may not be a body builder but she's a fighter, and her strength may not be in lifting a 35 lb. bar over her head or doing bent over rows, but it is her willingness to not let this illness drag her down to the depths of despair and inevitably take her life.  She wasn't giving up for herself.  No one or nothing else was a factor in her decision. 

Having learned this, I decided I had to do this health and fitness thing for myself.  Many people do not understand why I'm doing it in the first place, and in actuality, my parents don't either.  For me, that motivates me that much more to push and do it for myself.  No one else will understand what you're doing until they see the end results and eventually it makes sense to them.  Your reason for turning your life over to whatever suits you in a positive way primarily starts with you.  The story behind it and the motivation to keep going is secondary.

The Joys of Being an Ectomorph; My Body Type

As I've stated in earlier posts, I am an ectomorph.  I was not made known of this until I started taking fitness more seriously and got into fitness modeling.  At that point, it was important to learn my body. I couldn't figure out why I could not gain weight or keep muscle, no matter how much I ate, how much I lifted, and how much I prayed for the weight gain (exaggerating).  I dismissed it and said it must be genetic, so I better eat all I can now because when I get older it is not going to be the same.  This was easy to do, but being that I was now competing and showing off my body against other females who could pack on more muscle in a day than I could in a month made me more alert and wanting to know more about my body and what I needed to do to gain size.

The basics: an ectomorph body type is lean/skinny, less muscle mass, small bones and joints, high metabolism, and essentially, everyone hates you because you are this way.  Maybe not so much the latter, but not much of a stretch.  Because your body is already lean you have sort of an edge in the competition, but not by much.  You still have to gain and maintain muscle mass.  This is probably the hardest part. 


Because our bodies naturally burn a lot of calories and our metabolism is high, ectomorphs are advised to keep cardio training at a minimum.  Cardio is still essential, but it can include certain types of cardio workouts such as circuit training or HIIT style (kettle bell swings, push ups, sprints, etc.).  These should be kept to at least 30 minutes. Workouts such as dead lift, lateral pulls, jump squats with the bar, dumbbell curls, calf raisers, bench press, squats (the list goes on and on) are vital in muscle growth, in addition to eating the right nutrients and supplement intake (amino acid, protein shake, creatin).  Some are against ectomorphs taking supplements because our bodies do not need it.  However, if you are in a sport like body building or just want to gain it is essential in getting them into your system because of how it works consistently with your workouts and dieting.  At least for me it does.

One other challenge I continued running into was eating.  I did not know what to eat, how to eat, when to eat, etc.  All I knew was that I had to eat properly because my brain has been trained that when your body feasts on improper eating habits (fried fatty foods, high sodium, high glucose, fructose, sucrose, dextrose...sugar) it will suffer and the end results, at least the ones I've seen in my family, are not good.  My mother suffers from high blood pressure which has resulted in her having multiple strokes.  I saw this and immediately wanted to change my eating habits and maintain an active, healthy lifestyle.  Everything comes with a price.  Literally.  The price of organic vs. non organic is about $5, and that is not an exaggeration from the stores I shop at.  Or taking organic out of the equation, a box of cookies at $2.50 vs. a bag of kale chips at $5.60.  Seriously, if you don't grow your own foods you're liable to go broke if you live on a budget and trying to eat healthy.  This is a sacrifice I was willing to make for competing.  The key to remember for ectomorphs is we can essentially eat what we want, in moderation of course, but smart and healthy.  Breaking up large meals into smaller portion sized meals throughout the day is beneficial.

 

At the end of the day, ectomorphs are rare and unique in true form.  While our bodies, for the most part, appear lean and lanky, there are tricks of the trade to learn in order to even out our body, and by that I mean shaping it into a form that suits us.  My form consists of tightness and definition, one that I am proud to say took hard work to develop, so naturally I cannot go back to the way I was just to start over again.

Fitness Is My Boyfriend

All my ex's and the guys waiting in the wings for me, please pay very special attention to this message. I have a new boyfriend named Fitness (fancy isn't it 😉). We were kind of "talking" and "just friends" for a while until sometime last year when I made my feelings known that I wanted more of a serious commitment. He agreed and said he would do anything it takes to keep me right; mind, body and spirit. Doesn't that sound like a keeper?? 

So here we are, a year and four months later, and we're still going strong. Don't get me wrong, we've had our blow-ups and I've almost ended the relationship a few times. But something in me won't give up on us. It's all in how he makes me feel, not to mention look. I feel and look better than I ever have in my entire life, and I owe that all to my boo, Fitness (such a fancy name!). We've done things together I never thought I could do or even wanted to do.  He's kind of wild and exciting, spontaneous. And he wears me out 😝!  Sorry ladies, he's allllll mine!! I know I won't be giving him up without a fight, because he taught me how. 

So to my love, my heart, I say I love you with all my aching muscles. I will never cheat on you nor will I give up on you as long as blood pumps through my veins. Our bond is as strong as two 45 lb plates resting squarely on my shoulders as I squat. You planked me with your love and I reciprocated by bench pressing your heart to mine. You don't consider me a dumbbell when I do an exercise wrong. Instead, you arm curl me to your chest and show me how to do it right. You're not easy on me, though. I can handle that. You're my iron therapist on days when I have issues, and my beast on those...other days. I'm a lucky girl to have such a strong man in her corner 😉. 

Stress is for sissies...take it out in the gym!!

If stress is for sissies, I'm one of the biggest sissies in the world.  When I'm stressed, it seems as if the whole world is pressing on my shoulders and I can't do anything about it.  When it's there, it seems to hang until it tires itself out and I can finally relax and get peace, but that comes at a price.

My first fitness modeling competition was a disaster.  First off, I didn't want to do the show.  I was actually talked into doing it by my trainer and my coach.  I decided to go through with it anyway because it would be good "exposure", whatever that means.  Needless to say, I was stressed beyond recognition.  Not only did I feel as if I didn't have everything ready for the show (bikini bite, supplement intake, hair done, makeup, suit, hotel reservations, tan, need I go on??) I had an even bigger issue to deal with in the form of mother nature and her monthly "check-in".  I tried explaining all of this to my trainer, who happens to be a male, and he looked at me as if I had 12 heads.  Why couldn't he understand what I was going through and why I was lashing out the way that I was?  Because he's a man and they don't understand anything.  Simple as that.  Hormones raging, nerves jumping, pressure raising; this was the perfect storm.  Needless to say, I was devastated and angry.  I was heavy, puffy, sloshy, and did I mention STRESSED?!  But there was nothing I could do at that point but deal with it.  I no longer had control over the situation.  The only thing I could do was get one thing done at a time, ignore my trainer for the moment, and find some inner peace to get through the weekend.  I learned from that instance what I needed to do if I was ever faced with a difficult situation like that again.

When I'm stressed, I have a tendency to get very anxious and everything I can think of comes tumbling down on me and, for the moment, I lose control.  I felt this very recently right before my third competition.  The stressed started at work and spilled into the one place I get relieved from stress, the gym. My iron therapy, as it's so aptly called, was not working.  The stress continued to mount each time someone tried to "make me feel better".  I tried holding it together because I didn't want the effects of my stress and aggravation to be an all out shouting match.  I remained calm and held it together as long as I could but I still didn't feel better.  I rushed through the workouts only to be more aggravated.  I was crumbling.  Self-doubt began to weigh on me about my next show and how well I would do and look and everything else I could think of that would add more pressure fell on me.  Finally, I said enough is enough.  This is ridiculous.  That night, I sipped my dandelion root tea, said a few prayers, and went to sleep, with hopes that everything would smooth over the next day.  And it did.

Stress is a beast. It's not fun when you're going through it, but coming through that storm is the greatest feeling.  A sense of relief and peace is restored and you feel complete again, regaining all control that was inevitably lost during your sissy rant.  When I feel I don't have everything together for my competitions, I use everything around me to build my stress and it begins taking a toll on my body and my performance.  I didn't realize until this last competition.  This is probably the most difficult situation I've had to undergo since graduate school, and because I feel as if there is no one I can go to that will hear and understand what I'm going through (besides the people who are also fitness models and coaches) it makes it that much harder.  That's why it's so important to have support going through this and thick skin.  Nonetheless, this stress thing is just something that I have to work through if I ever plan on getting to the top and getting any better.  I have to hold it together, somehow, and not lose control in the process.  How can I call myself a fitness model then act like a sissy?  Last time I checked, sissies didn't have defined muscles and washboard abs...I'm just saying.