Wellness Wednesday: {A Review Of Life Task 2}

Welcome back to Wellness Wednesday, a fun mid-week look at the areas of wellness in our lives. To remind you, in talking about wellness I'm discussing the positive factors in life that help protect us from the events of life. Wellness is therefore not about the absence of the negative, but the presence of the positive. I just finished talking about the 2nd (out of 5) life tasks, and I thought this would be a good time for us to review these components.

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Life Task 2 is made up of 12 subtasks:

• {Life Task 2: Self Direction}
•  {Sense of Worth}
• {Sense of Control}
• {Realistic Beliefs}
• {Emotional Awareness & Coping}
• {Problem Solving & Creativity}
• {Sense of Humor}
• {Nutrition Part 1}
• {Nutrition Part 2}
• {Exercise Part 1}
• {Exercise Part 2}
• {Exercise Part 3}
• {Self Care Part 1}
• {Self Care Part 2}
• {Stress Management Part 1- healthy coping}
• {Stress Management Part 2- Eustress}
• {Stress Management Part 3}
• {Gender Identity}
• {Cultural Identity}

A few questions to get you thinking:

1. What is your greatest area of strength? 
2. How does this strength further your overall wellness?
3. What are your greatest areas of improvement?
4. What is one step in each of these areas that you can take to help improve those areas? 
5. How does your overall wellness in nutrition affect your stress management?
6. What's one new healthy coping skill that you could implement?

It's interesting to think about how the health in one area of our life affects our health in another (either positively or negatively). It's important to regularly evaluate how each of the areas of our wellness is currently impacting us. 

Now it's your turn!

What are your thoughts on wellness in your life? What areas are easier to be healthy in, and what areas are a little more difficult? 

Wellness Wednesday: {Nutrition Part 2}

Welcome back to Wellness Wednesday, a weekly "holiday" on my blog that focuses on an aspect of wellness. Wellness isn't usually the easy or most convenient choice in life, but then again, most things that are good in life are a little more work, aren't they?

Remember that I'm using the Wheel of Wellness to help visualize health in life:

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Last week I began a discussion on Nutrition. If you've missed Part 1 of Nutrition, you can read it here. 

Last week I said I would share some of my own tips on how I try to maintain balance in the nutrition component of my health and wellness. Again, I'd like to emphasize that I am not a nutritionist, but am simply sharing some of the things I do to try to be healthy. 

1. Remember that nutrition doesn't always have to be all or nothing: I said this in my post last week, but wanted to highlight it again. I think sometimes people get intimated about trying to eat healthy because there's so much to know, do, understand, or change in their life. It's ok to do this in baby steps. Something is ALWAYS better then nothing in this area of wellness, so don't make it all-or-nothing! Give yourself the freedom to grow and experiment. 
2. Don't label food as "good" or "bad": This tends to only lead to shame, and we start to engage in guilt beatings. When we beat ourselves up for eating "bad food", it is actually counterproductive. Especially if food is a coping skill, the guilt beating will only drive us back into eating the food we wish to enjoy.
3. Eat dessert: Dessert is a wonderful and beautiful thing in my life, and I would definitely not give it up. Eating dessert doesn't mean you need to consume 500 calories. Eat a little dessert, enjoy the flavor, and use a little self control! You'll feel good about yourself, plus you'll get a little bit of sweet too:)
4. Menu Planning! To some extent, plan out meals for the week before grocery shopping. Wandering aimlessly around the grocery store can be stressful, and tends to not lead to healthy and delicious meals during the week. Menu planning helps decrease stress in this domain of wellness, and leaves you feeling prepared!
5. Keep Healthy Snacks On Hand: We often feel the need to eat between meals, and it gives us the extra boost and energy we need to keep going throughout the day. We snack on what's convenient and nearby, so surround yourself with healthy and nutritious snacks. Some of my favorites include: almond, fruit salad, crackers with almond butter, protein bars (especially Luna Bars), chips or pita bread and hummus, and cut up veggies. I try to keep veggies cut up in my refrigerator for convenience. 
6. Make extra servings of food and freeze it: It's nice to have meals pre-made for those nights that we're too busy or stressed to make a full meal. It's easy to make extras and saves time and energy later.
7. Drink enough water: Hydration is incredibly important in our health and functioning. Furthermore, sometimes our craving for food is simply just thirst. Drinking water may be all we need in the moment.
8. Don't use food for coping: Life is messy and because of that, we need to develop healthy coping skills. People can easily go to food for comfort, which isn't healthy. Become aware of why you want food. Are you really hungry or are you trying to use it to cope with something in life?
9. Cut up fruit & veggies and store them in the refrigerator: Convenience!  It's easy to grab chips when we're hungry because it's easy. If we have veggies cut up already, it's easy to snack on them or add them to a dinner with no extra effort. 
10. Supplement a healthy diet with vitamins and calcium pills: Sometimes we don't get a perfectly balanced meal in the day. To help balance out what our body needs, vitamins and calcium can be helpful. I leave them on the counter by my sink so that they are within reach and I actually remember to take them!

Of course I do more things then just this to live a healthy life, but these are a few of the things to help bring balance to my nutrition.

Now it's your turn:

What are your healthy nutrition tips? What snack is a must have for you? What is one aspect of nutrition that you would like to change? 

Wellness Wednesday: {Nutrition Part 1}

Life is not merely to be alive, but to be well.  ~Marcus Valerius Martial

Welcome back to Wellness Wednesday! If you've missed the other posts in the wellness wednesday series, you can catch up on all the posts here (and believe me, you don't want to miss out on them)!

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Today I will continuing to move through the subtasks of Life Task 2. That means today we're talking about: Nutrition!

Myers & Sweeney define nutrition as:

Eating breakfast regularly, daily variety in diet of healthful foods, maintaining one’s ideal weight.

Pretty simple, right? Or, is it easier said then done? Myers & Sweeney state that the "eating and drinking habits of Americans have been implicated in 6 of the 10 leading causes of death, including the fact that two in three Americans are considered to be overweight" (p. 24). That alone signals that this might be an area of wellness that we need to be taking notice of and prioritizing in our lives. Beyond physical health, our nutrition plays a very strong role in our mental health as well. 

I will not lay out for you here a perfect nutrition plan for your lives. I've included some links at the end of this post that give nutrition information, recipes, and help in setting some nutrition goals for yourself. Please check those out, and include any other links you have found to be helpful in your own journey. I do not have a degree in nutrition, and don't even pretend to be  an expert on this. I'm simply sharing some thoughts and lessons I've learned in my personal journey.

I want to highlight this: NUTRITION DOESN'T HAVE TO BE ALL OR NOTHING. If you have identified something like "well I really messed up with this meal, so I'll just waste the rest of the day" then that's pretty black and white thinking. Just because you "messed something up" doesn't mean that the entire meal or the entire day has to be a complete waste. Nor do you have to go total "food nut". Something is always better then nothing, so just because you don't want to give up your daily piece of cake doesn't mean you can't make healthy and balanced choices throughout your meals. 

I also think that people can get too caught up in labeling food as "good" and "bad". When doing that, guilt and shame can easily be ushered into your life. Shame and guilt don't produce healthy changes, but instead tend to chase you back into the very behavior that you are trying to avoid. 

Here are a few helpful sites: 

Nutrition.gov

Harvard's "The Nutrition Source"

The Pioneer Woman

Daily Garnish

 Next week I will do "part 2" to this post, including some of my tips for maintaining a balance in the nutrition aspect of my life. 

Now it's your turn:

Do you have a hard time finding balance in this area of your life? What are your "go to" tips or rules for this component of wellness? 

Peanut Butter & Jelly {with chocolate} Oatmeal!

Happy Palm Sunday! When I was little, this sunday always led me to waving palm branches while walking around the church in which I grew up. It was always fun:)
On Friday my post was on life's tiny delights. Well, I thought I would share another one of my favorite little delights with you this morning: Oatmeal! I could eat it every morning, and I love finding new and different things to add to it. Well, you can imagine how excited I was to stumble on a recipe for PB& J and chocolate Oatmeal on Sarah's blog at the Strength of Faith.

I made 1.5 servings of oatmeal (to keep me going through a longer morning)

a small (1.5 teaspoons-ish) spoonful of brown sugar

A scoop of peanut butter

A scoop of raspberry jam

A small handful of lactose free chocolate chips

Delicious! It added a fun and different twist to a fairly consistent breakfast food, and I loved the added benefits of what I added. 

Do you have any fun traditions for Palm Sunday? What do you like to add to your oatmeal? 

"Fruit of the Angels"

Today was a beautiful, sunny day, and the thermometer passed 80 degrees! Needless to say, I was outside as much as possible, and when I was inside, I had my windows and patio door wide open. Now only if it would stay this way throughout the spring...

While I spent time outside (and of course got in a great workout!), I also had to do grocery shopping (is this really on the top of anyone's list of things to do? Probably...just not mine!) to accomplish. Because of the warm weather and sun, I decided to buy my first tropical fruit of the season: PAPAYA! In doing a little research on the fruit, I found out that Christopher Columbus called papaya the "fruit of the angels". Although I'm not sure the exact reason behind this, I have to believe that the texture has something to do with it.

I personally fell in love with this fruit when I was in Ecuador earlier this year. While they ate it in chunks often, they also put it into the juicer in the mornings and made fresh papaya juice. Yum!

So why papaya? It's a great source of Vitamin C, and aids in both digestive and heart health. They are also a great source of folate and dietary fiber (among other things!). I would highly suggest adding this fruit to your next shopping list! Besides eating it in "chunk form" after a meal, it's great atop cereal (or oatmeal!), ice cream, yogurt, or in smoothies!

1. This is what a papaya looks like. If it's completely green when you buy it, you'll want to keep it for a few days until it starts to turn yellow or reddish. Wash the outside of papaya before starting.

2. Cut just a little off of both ends of the papaya. Take a fruit/veggie peeler and peel the papaya. The first layer may produce a light yellowish color, so you'll need to go over it more then once. You want it to look orange, like in the picture below. 

3. After peeling the papaya, cut it in half length wise. This will produce what looks lots of seeds (like in the picture below). This is the only part that really bothers me, as the seeds sort of make my skin crawl. Take a spoon and scoop out the seeds. There is a sort of membrane that separates the seeds and the fruit, so you'll want to make sure to scoop that out as well. 

4. Place the flat side of the papaya face down on a cutting board, and cut in to chunks!

There you have it. Once you have it cut up, you can enjoy this delicious and tasty tropical fruit!

Have you ever tried papaya before? What was the highlight of you weekend? 

Oven Roasted Broccoli

As I've said many times on this blog, I'm in no way a great cook, and I don't find cooking enjoyable! However, in an effort to try to increase my health & wellness in ALL areas of my life, I have tried to add healthier recipes (with a few fun ones thrown in!) to my weekly schedules.
Here are a few of the other things I've tried lately:

• Pot Roast
• Stuffed French Toast
• Plantain
• Kale Chips!
• Rice & Beans Dish

See, I'm really trying to stretch myself here! So, in reading some food blogs and magazines over the last few weeks, I've seen a few variations of recipes for Oven Roasted broccoli. I like broccoli quite a bit, but haven't bought a head of it in, I don't know, a year or two? So i ventured to the grocery store to get what I needed to try this new recipe. I LOVED it! besides eating them straight off the pan as it cooled, I ate it as a side with mashed potatoes, and it was delicious (and SO easy to make). I took the recipes I found on a number of sites and sort of thew my own thing together.

1. Cut the broccoli into small, bite sized pieces (with very little stalk on it!)

2. Mix in a bowl with 3ish tablespoons of olive oil, sea salt (i didn't measure how much I used), and garlic powder (again, I sort of just dumped it in there until it seemed about right)

3. Preheat oven to 400 and cook for around 20 minutes. 

Delicious!

Steps to Wellness in My Life

Remember my post yesterday on running? Well, because it went so well, I decided to take advantage of the great weather again and go running/walking this morning. Unfortunately, I don't nearly have as positive of a report to give. I felt like I had 20 pound weights strapped to both legs, and every step I took was a struggle. I ended up running almost a mile of the two miles that I went... and walked the rest. I wish running was easy and enjoyable for me!

I also really dislike cooking. However, I know that in order to increase wellness in all areas of my life, nutrition is also important. I've been craving some of the food I ate in Ecuador (recaps here and here), so I decided that this weekend was going to include a lot of cooking.

 Kale Chips! Drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt. I can hardly control myself when they come out of the oven!!

 Dinner Friday night: Black beans, Corn, Spinach, Rice, and Red Cayenne Pepper in a tortilla. Delicious:)

 For dessert I cooked a plantain! This is the first time I've ever made them on my own, and they turned out really well!

 Breakfast Saturday Morning: Old fashioned Oats for Oatmeal, with Cherries, Blueberries, and a little Brown Sugar mixed into it!

Lunch on Saturday: Scrambled Eggs with Chicken, Red Peppers, Cheese, and Tomatoes mixed into it. I reheated the rest of my plantains from last night and put ketchup on them. 

So, there you go- A look into how I eat. Although I've always eaten fairly healthy, as I started to focus on overall wellness 2 years ago, I've been trying to change how I eat too. I'll post the recipes for plantains and the kale chips in the coming days! (thanks to Sarah at The Strength of Faith for inspiring me to start taking food pictures outdoors)

What're your favorite foods to make on the weekends? Anything fun planned for the day?