Camera Fail

Good afternoon everyone!

I'm doing pretty well today but yesterday was just one of those days...

I started my morning with a really nice breakfast: coffee with my breakfast soy bread. Such a delish!

I made some small changes this time, as always (I can never stick to a recipe, even if it's my own). In this case I soon found out I didn't have enough soy flour so I used 90g of that and for the remaining flour I used whole wheat. For the pureed fruit I used mostly bananas (I think it was 280g) and a little bit of apple. Chopped the rest of the apple and mixed it to the batter.

Yummy! The chopped apple made the bread really moist.

Proceeded enjoying my morning and the absolutely stunning weather. Doesn't the sun make you feel instantly better?

I took advantege of the day and took a few pics. There were signs of spring everywere...

Those two are loving the warmer weather...

This guy was particularly happy... in case you couldn't tell...

I then made myself a lovely freshly squeezed orange juice with one red and one orange orange ;P

<3 the contrast!

A nice glassFULL :D

And some hummus.

First time trying it, I have to say I was pleasently pleased.

But then bang! My camera crushed. Brand new camera broken in less than 2 months!!! I'm so clumsy, it's not even funny. So now I'll have to take it back to the shop to see if it can be fixed, lets hope so! That will take a while though since I have to find the time to go to Milan.

***

On another note, I've given my body a 2-day break from exercise since I felt very sore all over but I can't wait to working out tomorrow again. Still don't know what I'm going to do though. I'd love to go for a run but it's freezing today and it looks like it's going to rain any minute (I've been freezing my butt off at work!). Let's hope tomorrow gets better! I might just do some HIIT at home.

Have a lovely day everyone!

Love,

Elisa

Mugs, Cats And Taste Buds

Hello everybody!

Sorry for being MIA lately. It's been a really crappy week for me even though now I feel a lot better. As I wrote in a comment on Bodyrock.tv:

"I've been absent for a little less than a week. Some personal stuff really struck me bad this past week and I ended up feeling like crap, eating like crap and not exercising. This is so me and when things go wrong acting like this makes them only worse. I stop caring about myself and it's just all a downward spiral from there. Having recovered not long ago from bulimia does take a lot of strength not to go back to that dark, dark place. In the past these "bad periods" would turn into months or even years. But today, after a few days of not exercising and eating poorly (nothing compared to before tho!) I had a moment of clarity and turned the whole thing around, I started caring about myself like a mother would with her own child. I ate wholesome and nutritious food, cleaned up almost the whole house (it always makes me feel better and more in control) and did one of Z's ass kicking workouts. I feel so good right now.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to share this with you all, it's so hard to feel vulnerable but I owe it to this wonderful community to be true to you and myself. Life can be a real struggle at times and it's ok to slip every once in a while as long as we get back up and keep going, remembering that no matter how hard life may be we have the choice and power to take control. And God, does it feel good!"

It really struck me how well I reacted compared to when I was still suffering from my ED. It really shows how much I have grown in the last few months. Nobody is perfect and I do know I will have set backs every now and then, but now I have the tools within me to fight back and it feels so freaking awesome.

***

Today it's been very laid back, I worked from home plus I got a lil bit more cleaning done but overall I've just relaxed, I so needed that, and for whatever reason I just kept smiling throughout the whole day... without even trying! How crazy is that? Isn't it nice when that happens?

I guess this lil guy helped me stay positive...

Camera shy dear?

Before he was sleeping on my lap and was purring so loud, he quite literally woke himself up if that's even possible!!!

Now I am in my comfy robe enjoying a hot cup of green tea and guess who was waiting for me while I was taking this picture... :D

 

Yes, I do have a Hello Kitty cup! My ex housemate was pretty much obsessed with Hello Kitty stuff so when I left she gave me this as a gift, isn't she a sweetheart? On the other hand, I am obsessed with mugs, I don't know what it is about them but if it was for me I'd drink out of a different mug every single day.

And for the record Menelao is still on my lap. You can see his grand scheme in action:

1.      making sure I am not going to stand up until he is ready to do something else aka dinner time!

2.      measuring the distance from the floor to the chair

 

3.      pretending to be still measuring but really just begging to be lifted… he is sooo lazy!

 

4.      purring like truck on my lap! Sorry I missed the picture, he made sure I was focusing on him and him only!

Note: I am not a crazy cat lady... Just crazy! ;P 

***

Funny thing about green tea, until a few months ago I used to utterly dislike it, for the life of me even though I really wanted to like it, I couldn't stand it at all! And now I drink 1 to 2 mugs per day and love it. I find so fascinating how much taste can adapt. My taste for foods has changed immensely over the course of the past few months. Since ditching sugar and switching to a mainly clean and vegetarian diet (I eat turkey, chicken or tuna only a couple of times per week), I find that my taste buds enjoy the true flavour of natural foods way more than processed ones. Do I like stuff like pizza? Of course I do, but I also love almost every vegetable you can name (I wasn't always like that, I used to be a very picky eater), I enjoy things like candy way less than before, I actually don't eat them anymore. I'd rather have an homemade baked good (coz I know what's in it and it's not as sweet as those store-bought ones). And all this coming from someone that used to put 2 packets of sugar in her cappuccino and now I genuinely like it plain (and with no foam :P, I know, I am one fussy costumer!). It’s all about starting slow. My taste didn’t change overnight, it did over the course of days, week, months but I learned to appreciate the process. 

Wow, this is some ramble! I apologise ;) I guess my thoughts were pretty much all over the place... I wanted to talk about something totally different but I went with the flow today :P

The brain works in mysterious ways haha.

***

I see another ass kicking workout in my near future and maybe some yoga too, we’ll see. Go with the flow, right?

***

Do you find yourself rambling a lot? If you have made changes in the way you eat, did you find them affecting your taste for foods? And last but certainly not least… are you obsessed with mugs too or am I the only one?

There is no failure unless there is quitting!

- Me (I guess. I don’t know whether I’ve heard it somewhere 

but I always say this… see? Rambling again!!!)

 Love,

Elisa

Breakfast Soy Bread

Good afternoon everybody!

Today I finally took a day off work, it feels so good. I don't even remember when was the last day I took off...

It's a lovely sunny day here and it really lifted my mood. So to celebrate I decided to make myself a breakfast bread. I love starting the day with something yummy, especially if I bake it myself.

This recipe is very healthy, light and packed with protein. Eating a mainly vegetarian diet, I'm always concerned about getting enough protein and this bread is just the perfect breakfast for me. It would also make a great post-workout snack.

So on to the recipe.

Breakfast Soy Bread (adapted from here, it's both in italian and english) 

Note: I really need to learn how to have better lighting for my pictures!

Ingredients:

• 160g soy flour
• 1 tbsp flaxseed meal (optional)
• 2 tbsp coconut flour (optional)
• 2 tsp of backing powder
• 70g pure fructose
• 300g apples cored
• 4 egg whites
• 2 tbsp plain yogurt

Directions:
In a large bowl wisk together the dry ingredients (soy flour, coconut, flaxseed, fructose and baking powder)

Then take the eggs and separate the yolks from the egg whites (later on I'll show you what to do with those yolks... since I really hate wasting food!)

Roughly chop the apples (I ended up using one apple and a quarter) and proceed snacking on the remaining apple ;P

Now the best thing would be to have a food processor to puree the apples, anyway if you are like me with no proper processor thingy just impovise and use a hand blender.

Note: to avoid the hand blender not actually blending the apples (true story, happened to me the last time I made this bread. As you can see I'm not what you would call a pro in the kitchen!) I suggest you blending half of the egg whites (if you already use all of the egg whites, you risk them foaming up waaaay more than you want them to. Again: been there, done that!) with a little bit of the apples. Once pureed, add the remaining apples a little bit at a time and blend your little heart out and eventually add the rest of the egg whites.

You should end up with something that looks like this

Then take your bread tin and cover it with baking paper (to make it sick to the tin a little bit better, wet the backing paper and make sure you squeeze all the eccess water out).

Mix dry and wet ingredients together (I did put the yogurt, it's under the apple/egg mixture)

And pour it in the tin

Now bake it for 40mins at 150C with alluminum foil on (make sure you don't wrap it too tight) and then another 25 mins with out the foil.

Here it is the finished product

It's a little bit denser than your regular bread but I really love it with coffe or tea!

Notes: 
* You can really play with this recipe, you can add chopped fruit to it (I once added pineapple and it was lovely), raisins, chocolate chips and you can also change the apples for other fruit. I tried it with bananas and also with unsweetened apple sauce (perfect if you don't have time to puree it yourself) and they both worked great.
* If you don't have fructose, feel free to use regular sugar (I don't usually use regular sugar because, suffering from migraines, I find it that it can give me really bad headaches)
* You can also use vegetable yogurt if you like.

Let me know if you tried it and whether you modified it and how. I'm always looking for suggestions :)

***

While I was busy baking look what someone else was doing...

This one really cracked me up (he was actually yawning)

***

What is your favourite thing to have for breakfast? When making some new recipe do you always sick to it  or do you usually change it up? I sure know that for the life of me I can never sick to a recipe!

Love,

Elisa

Change Is In The Air

Hello everybody!

I've had some minor setbacks these last few days. I'm going through some pretty big changes, something that has been on my mind for quite some time but have actually never had the guts to do. And now it's happening all so fast, it's hard to keep up with it all. I'm keeping my fingers crossed it will all turn out ok, it's terrifying and exciting at the same time. I know none of this makes sense right now, but I'll explain it all better in a couple of weeks tops when, hopefully, it'll be all a little bit clearer to me too!

Change requires a lot of strenght, more strenght than I've ever imagined, patience and faith that everything will eventually be fine.

I promise you my next posts will be a lot more uplifting.

For now I'll leave you with a couple of funny pictures of my lovely furry creatures. When I am having a sad day they always find a way to make me smile!

Sun lover Menelao,

yogi Piccolo,

and explorer Panda.

***

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But the is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life and in change there is power.

Alan Cohen



How do you deal with change? Is it something you are afraid of? Are you the type of person who remains stuck in a situation (even though you know it's not doing you any good) until you can't take it anymore? Or are you the type of person who can easily embrace change?

Love,

Elisa

28-Day Challenge

Good evening everybody!

I was a busy bee at work today, running around like a mad woman.

The highlight of the day though was this:

Has the sun ever looked so beautiful? If I didn't know it was Jannuary, I would probably think it was spring! I guess it made the day a whole lot more bearable.

So, while I was crazy busy working, my cats were busy tanning...

...and bird watching!

Lucky kitties!

The lovely Menelao kept coming towards me while I was trying to take pictures of him.

I guess he prefers cuddling rather than modelling!

Enough with the kitty talk for today ;)

***

This afternoon, while looking at the calendar, I realized... 28 days till the end of the month, this could be the perfect time for a 28-day challenge! I'm coming out a pretty long period of slacking when it comes to exercize and eating right, you know, there's the holiday season and then there was the flu and then just mere and plain excuses. It's time for me to kick my own ass back into gear. So, since it takes 21 to 28 days to build an habit, for the next 28 I will be focusing on building back those habits that kinda got lost down the road.

Here are my 28-Day Challenge's goals:

* Exercise 5 times per week:

[Source]

Exercising is pretty important for me, it's not only about the calories, it keeps my energy high throughout the day, improves my mood, decreases my headaches and it automatically makes me eat better. A win-win situation, right? Well sometimes, especially at 6am when I wake up to exercise, all these very valid reasons seem to magically disappear and a warm cozy bed looks much more appealing...

* Eat 5 smaller meals instead of 3 bigger ones:

Eating 5 smaller meals is so much better for you, it spikes up the metabolism, it doesn't leave you starving between meals and it's much better for your energy levels.

* Drink 2/3 liters of water per day:

[Source]

Well, water is just downright awesome for us

[Source]

* Do house chores at least 1h per day: 

It can be anything but keeping things clean and organized simply makes me function better!

***

Have you ever done a 28-day challenge? Was it helpful? Do you want to join the challenge? What are your goals?

Love,

Elisa