Getting Healthy – Page 5

My Favourite Healthy Foods

May 20, 2014

Since moving to Korea, I’ve had to build a pantry totally from scratch! I’ve also had to learn how to feed myself in a foreign country, since some of my favourite foods aren’t available in grocery stores here. This has been a great experience for a lot of reasons.

First, it’s showed me that I am capable of eating well wherever I am in the world, so long as I have a few basic staple foods. It’s also taught me new skills, like how to make dried beans from scratch! Invaluable knowledge to take back to Canada with me, for sure. And of course it’s also forced me to re-evaluate what my staple foods really are! If I want specialty health foods like quinoa and flax seeds, I have to order them online through iHerb, which means I have to be mindful and consider what I actually need and am going to use.

Turns out, I really don’t need anything special to eat happily and healthfully. As appealing as ordering from iHerb is (it’s like being a kid in a very healthy candy store), most of the time my staples are easily found, even in Korea. Below is the list of the usual suspects in my kitchen – no real surprises here, folks!

Peanut butter: My current favourite is Earth Balance’s Natural Creamy Peanut Butter with Flaxseed. Another favourite is Maranatha’s No-Stir. Only within the last year have I started liking crunchy peanut butter, but I still won’t usually buy it myself.

Avocados: These are hard to find in Korea, but they do sell bags of 5 at Costco, so that’s a treat. Sometimes they have them at my grocery store for the low, low price of $3.50 a pop, and usually when they do I just go for it. Treat yoself, right?

Sweet potatoes: Happily, I think almost every culture on earth eats sweet potatoes so these are everywhere here. They’re a slightly different variety from what we have back home – they’re yellower, sweeter and smaller.

Spinach: Leafy green love. I will never again take for granted the amazing convenience of pre-washed organic spinach. Here it comes still dirty and attached to its stems, which is kind of refreshing but a little more work.

Garlic: In Korea, garlic is sold pre-peeled which is so great. I love the convenience of having the cloves ready to go! Plus I pay about $1.50 for 30+ cloves.

Eggs: It was easy to continue my 30 Days to Vegan diet in Canada, but much harder in a country where the word vegetarian is often not even comprehended. That being said, the only animal product I’ve really re-introduced is eggs since cheese is incredibly scarce and expensive here and soy milk is very cheap. Who knows what my eating habits will look like when I get home, but for now I’m happy to eat eggs a few times a week.

Bananas: Of course. Always and forever. Mainly I put them in my smoothies or use them to make banana ice cream, my new favourite thing.

Almonds & cashews: My two favourite kinds of nuts. I mostly just eat these raw, as a snack.

Tofu & tempeh: No tempeh in Korea, but there’s lots of tofu. I find tempeh has a nicer, heartier texture, but both products are kind of magical. I love panfrying tofu until it’s nice and crispy and then glazing it with some kind of sauce. BBQ sauce if I’m getting my way.

Chickpeas: I have to order these on iHerb, dried. Unfortunately I can’t just pop open a can of them! I’m getting a new bag in a few days and I can’t wait to make some hummus.

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This week on the podcast, Laura and I discuss this exact subject. We’re talking about our top staple foods for building a healthy pantry. Most of mine are listed above, but the episode is also full of interesting tips about freezing food and lots of ideas for how to use healthy ingredients in your meals. You can find the show over at our blog here or by subscribing to us on iTunes!

PS. If you want to get $10 off your first iHerb order, you can use my code LWW752.

How To Use Social Media More Effectively

April 22, 2014

On today’s episode of Guinea Pigging Green, we’re talking about social media. Now, I totally love Instagram and Twitter – I think that they’re awesome tools for sharing inspiration and beauty. Unfortunately, they also have a dark side if you’re not careful about how you use them. For instance, I’ll readily admit to checking for “likes” compulsively and feeling strangely competitive towards those with more followers than me.

So that’s why today’s episode is all about using social media more effectively, in ways that will make you feel good and that take advantage of the positive aspects of these platforms. Our jumping-off point for this episode was a great article from Relevant Magazine: 5 Questions to Ask Before Posting to Social Media. It really resonated with me and since then I’ve been sharing its ideas in conversations and trying to consciously keep them in mind whenever I’m posting content.

In the episode, we talk about finding intrinsic motivations (ie. finding enjoyment in the act itself) for using social media rather than extrinsic ones (ie. enjoying the act because you want the reward that will follow). Personally I find it rewarding and (intrinsically) motivating to seek out beauty in my everyday life, to practice my photography and see slow-but-steady improvement, to find a community of like-minded people and to curate a collection of photos that are special and beautiful to me. I try to focus on these motivations every time I start to fall into a downward spiral of comparison or greed.

I think that it’s possible for these platforms to be a positive part of our lives, but I think it’s important for us to use them in a healthier and more conscious way. You can find the episode, which I think is full of food for thought, on our blog or by subscribing to us on iTunes.

Why I Yoga

February 8, 2014

That’s the first ever Instagram yoga picture I ever took! Unfortunately/fortunately, it wasn’t the last. I’ve been posting ever since, usually every day. You can see all my yoga pictures, if you’re so inclined, here.

You might be wondering, why? Why do I practice yoga, and why on earth do I post photos of me doing so? Excellent questions.

I practice yoga because it makes me feel strong. It makes me feel relaxed and centered, it makes me feel focused, it makes me feel excited and positively giddy at times. There is something absolutely incredible about discovering that you can do something you never thought would be possible. It’s amazing to see small improvements in your body every day. It’s fascinating to watch yourself get stronger or more flexible, even though you never thought you would.

I also practice yoga because in many ways, it’s practice for life. I know I haven’t even scratched the surface when it comes to the spiritual side of yoga, but I’m getting slightly deeper every time I come to my mat. When I go to classes, I get lots of perspective. I get to see people of all levels and I get to remind myself (over and over, forever, to infinity and beyond) to keep my eyes on my own mat and my awareness in my own body. I am pushed and challenged and I get angry or I get bored, and I try very hard (and never, ever succeed) to keep my focus on my breath throughout the entire class.

The teachers always tell us not to resist the poses, even though they can be so uncomfortable and frustrating. They tell us that we don’t need to react to our internal complaints or angst. They tell us to just be, without resisting, without reacting. This is, truly, the ultimate challenge, in that hot sweaty room and in real life.

I’ve been “doing yoga” for a while – on and off for maybe 5 years. I went to a few classes in high school, and took classes all throughout university. But I only really started to practice in earnest, almost every day, a few months ago, ever since I got back from Europe this past fall. The last few months were hard for me in many ways: I felt lost and sad and confused more often than I expected I would. I would go to hot yoga and put my body through the motions that I could barely do until I was totally spent and too tired to think. I cried in class almost every time, and if you had asked me I wouldn’t have been able to explain why. But it was always, always worth it for that feeling of pure clarity and lightness when I stepped back out into the fresh air at dusk.

So, in a sentence, I practice yoga because it makes me want to work towards being better, physically & spiritually, on the mat and in my life.

And that’s a lot of why I post the photos on Instagram. Sharing my progress in yoga is like the way I share what I’m reading or what lessons I’ve learned in my life like I do on this blog. The only difference (and the part that can feel uncomfortable) is that I’m posting photos of myself. But in taking those photos I push myself to try new things, explore my limits, bring awareness to my form and alignment, and bring some much-needed fun and joy and levity into my practice. :)

As a member of a generation that uses social media to nominate each other for stupid drinking competitions or to boast about how much money we’ve spent, I wish there was more positive, healthy inspiration online. Pictures of yoga, or delicious meals or friends and family or beautiful landscapes – that’s what I want more of in my feed. And I want to be an active participant in creating that kind of content.

I think yoga practice can be seen as so intimidating for people who haven’t tried it yet. The poses look so complicated and there’s this idea that if you practice yoga, you have to live the whole “yogic” lifestyle, whatever that means. Definitely not the case. Yogis come in all shapes and all sizes and from all backgrounds and personalities. It’s just stretching and body weight exercises! Nothing to be scared of.

Who knows, maybe I won’t practice yoga forever. Maybe I’ll get bored when I find another form of exercise that challenges me and makes me feel strong and light. But for now, I’m enjoying my practice. I’m learning new things every day. I have wobbly days (in yoga and in life) and I have strong days. I’ve found some advanced poses but I have an infinite number of advanced poses and transitions to conquer. For now, I yoga. Do you yoga?

Namaste – I bow to (the greatness in) you.

30 Days To Vegan

December 1, 2013

This past Tuesday, I started a 30 day vegan challenge. For the next 30 days, I won’t be eating any meat, dairy or eggs. Yes, I’m aware that Christmas falls within the next 30 days, which I hadn’t really realized when I first decided to embark on this challenge, but it doesn’t matter. As my mom pointed out, if I can make it through Christmas eating vegan, I can make it through anything.

I’ve been a vegetarian for almost four full years now, though during that time I ate fish or seafood on occasion. I’ve always been of the belief that doing something imperfectly is better than doing nothing perfectly, so though sometimes I didn’t totally fit the strict vegetarian label, I still considered myself a vegetarian.

The Why

I initially stopped eating meat after reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. The ethical and health implications of factory farming truly disturbed me, and I no longer felt comfortable with my eating choices, so I stopped cold turkey (ha!). Even with my convictions, for the better part of a year I still made a couple of exceptions – once for McNuggets (ugh, I know right?), another time for my mom’s homemade barbeque ribs.

I share this to illustrate that sometimes despite my beliefs, I have a hard time accepting change in my life, as I think we all do sometimes. For the last four years, I’ve known that I don’t believe in eating seafood (mainly because of bycatch effects and the toxicity of farmed fish), and yet I still occasionally did, when I willfully ignored the things I already knew.

And for four years, I’ve known there are major problems with eating dairy (for example, the hormones in dairy products, the potential link between meat and dairy proteins and serious disease such as heart disease and cancer, the treatment of dairy cows and chickens) and that eating less dairy is probably healthier for humans. And yet for four years, I willfully ignored the things I already knew, mostly because I didn’t want to seem radical or militant or like a hippie or just plain extreme, which is the way our society tends to see vegans.

But I know the things I know, and it doesn’t sit right with me to ignore those things anymore. I want to strive to live in a way that fits with my values and beliefs, so I want to strive to eat healthier for me and for the planet. And in my opinion, the best way for me to do that is to eat a vegan diet of mainly whole foods. I should note that I certainly don’t judge anyone for their personal choices.

The What

I decided to start with a 30 day challenge because the idea of going without eggs for the rest of my life is too terrifying to contemplate (say what you will, but it is what it is!). I’m going to start with 30 days to prove to myself that I’m capable of eating this way, but I’m aiming to keep it up once the 30 days are up. The hashtag I’m using to share my meals and track my progress is #30DaysToVegan, which to me implies progress towards a goal, not a set number of days.

So far it’s been fun and remarkably easy to eat vegan. I’ve been collecting lots of inspiration for vegan recipes on Pinterest, and I’ve been happy to see that it’s easy to slightly modify some of my favourite meals to avoid dairy (and keep all the taste). My family have been really supportive: for example, my mom has made me a meal or two already, and my dad uncomplainingly ate the nutritious but slightly bland curry I made him for dinner. They might not totally understand, but they accept me and my choices, which is a wonderful feeling. That’s the most important thing to me.

The How

I’ll be posting weekly progress updates over on Guinea Pigging Green, and I’ve been trying to post at least one photo of my (vegan!) food on our Instagram, @GreenGuineaPigs, every day. You’re more than welcome to follow along or even join in!

xo,

Steph