Don't fall into the Resolution trap.

It's a New Year and you are feeling like crap right?  Why? 
Well, because you went to a whole bunch of Holiday Parties or had big Family dinners that you likely don't have the rest of the time of year.

Then January comes and your clothes don't fit well and you are tired and feeling bad about yourself because you now have to think about going on a diet or something.

People join gyms first thing in January and then they start falling off a couple of weeks later when their regular life sets back in.

Why again?  Well because you are really getting sucked into Social pressures and the messages you get from the media.

I admit that I am not happy with my weight but it's because I don't have the energy to do all the things I would like to do and maybe because I can't buy the clothes I want to buy that will make me look good and professional but mostly because I think of my health and what it will be like in the future.

But I am not going to make a Resolution to go on a DIET.  Why? Because they only work for short term and they make you feel miserable and then you give up and gain more weight after you stop.  Don't believe me check the statistics.  It's a FACT.

How can you not feel bad about yourself when starting January 1st every TV show tells you how to lose weight.  New Year, New You.   Like you aren't good enough the way you are.   Every commercial is for a gym or some sort of weight loss centre or pill you should take.

January is also the start of Awards season in Hollywood where all you see is slim Celebrities in fabulous outfits with perfect hair, skin and bodies and if they don't have all of these things together they are judged on all kinds of TV shows including fashion shows, daytime talk shows and night time entertainment shows.   You feel like if these celebrities who all have style teams get judged and they have all the help in the world then what about you because you can't possibly look like that so you feel bad about yourself.  At this time I am watching a commercial about how people have an "I hate my body moment".  Yes we do.  But you don't have to buy into it.

Here's what I have learned over the year's doing makeup, being in a media related industry, working in the healthcare system and having my own weight issues.

NOBODY is PERFECT.... NOBODY!!....

Every single person that I have done makeup on has had some issues with the way they look.  Even those that most people would say are gorgeous.

If OPRAH who has all the money in the world to have personal trainers, personal chefs and whatever else it takes to lose weight still struggles and has teamed up with Weight Watchers because it's the 1 thing in her life that she hasn't been able to tackle.

If it was about money don't you think Oprah would have been able to fix it?

Here's the RUB...   Weight isn't just about weight.  It's about stress,  it's about self esteem,  it's about environmental issues, it's about general health, it's about the world we live in now.

If it was easy for everyone to lose weight there wouldn't be a billion dollar weight loss industry.

Here's the thing about the Weight Loss industry.  They succeed if you fail because they can blame you for not following or sticking to their program.  So you lose weight at the beginning and then it stops and you give up and then you gain it back and more and then you find some other diet to start when at the beginning of the year you feel the pressure from the media to be a better YOU and from friends and family to lose weight.

Yes, I am one of those people unhappy with my weight but I am not going to make a RESOLUTION about it.  Instead I will make a GOAL.

Here are my GOALS:

1.  Try and stay ahead of the game in my life so that I don't have the stress of rushing things.
2.  Keep life in balance as much as possible with eating, sleeping and living life.
3.  Eat well 80% of the time and eat whatever I like the rest of the time.
4.  Waste less food.  I am going to try and buy the best quality food and try to not waste any of it.
5.  DON"T BELIEVE THE HYPE.  Magazines are all Airbrushed, celebrities all have doctors, and a special team devoted to making them look the way they do.  They don't wake up looking like that.
Don't fall into the pressure that you have to join a gym or join Weight Watchers because Oprah says so.

I like what author Michael Pollan says about health ""Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
This makes a whole lot of sense to me.

It also seems to me that the way back to health is to go back to eating the way people did before we got sucked into buying a whole bunch of commercial convenience products.  While not ALL are horrible and there are a lot of foods that are more convenient now.  Things like Passata tomatoes which are just strained tomatoes.  The old way was using a food mill.   We buy bread but we could make bread if we had the time.

But if you are busy it's easy to just grab something from the freezer and heat it up.   I just tried a new boil in bag frozen meal.  It doesn't have any junk in it and I can say that it's a good alternative to the common frozen meals full of sodium and other preservative.  I will review it as soon as I try all the samples and write a post on it.

Yes I will struggle because I know that people judge me because of how I look and I learned that watching the way models I had done makeup for were treated.  Guys you should have seen what they looked like when they walked in before the makeup and hair were done.

I am also not going to join a gym,  the last one I went to just stressed me out.  I found myself getting annoyed by rude inconsiderate people and it didn't help me lose weight.
I have also joined Weight Watchers in the past and faithfully spent my money going for a year and when I stopped the weight came back and then some.

I am going to try and remember that all the media stuff is designed to shame you into buying into all this stuff.
My mom lived to the age of 88 and she never joined a gym and she never went to weight watchers and she was active until the last year of her life.  Why?  Probably because she ate real food and didn't go to fast food restaurants.  She cooked probably about 70% of her food from scratch and she was constantly moving, working into her late 60's and cooking, and doing other household chores for herself until she couldn't anymore.

My mom had more energy than I do and that's what I base my health on.

Life is all about Energy.  Do you have enough energy to live your life?  Well that's something I want to work on as my Resolution or GOAL.  To have as much energy as my mom did well into my old age.

My goal is to live better in 2016 than I did in 2015 and keep doing that.

The GOAL is to DETOX the things the things in my life that aren't good for me.

Green Goodness

Have you given up on your New Year's Resolution Diet yet?  Forget the diet.   Diet has DIE in it.  Why not GO GREEN instead.  Instead of thinking about things you have to give up eating why not think about adding better tasting healthy things to your daily meals.  Green foods are powerhouses of Goodness and they can taste great if you know what to do with them. Get your Green Goodness on.

I am not a fan of diets because you think about foods you can't eat all day long and then you feel deprived and want to eat those foods even more.  My New Year's Resolution is to eat more better foods to feel better.  People go on their crazy diets in January because it's the time of year when all of the high fat, high sugar and high sodium foods and alcohol start catching up with you.  You start to feel horrible and then there is the weather that makes you feel even worse.  It's cold so you don't go outside as much and it's dark so you don't get the much needed vitamin D.  And then there are the germs everyone is picking up from being stuck inside in dry heated and germ loaded stale air.  No wonder you feel crappy.  And then you get hit with all the after holiday cleanup and then the credit card bills..  Who wants to stick to a diet when you have to deal with all of this stuff.

Here's a better idea.   Eat more GREEN foods.

Start with Green Tea   

I love the taste of really good Green Tea.  It's high in antioxidants which are much needed in the winter.

Switch up your daily coffee for Green Tea or if you love your coffee then just add a cup of Green Tea to your day.  I drink a lot more green tea in the winter because it's very comforting and warm.   Some of my favourite Green Teas are NUMI  Organic Gunpowder Green which is what's in this cup of tea.

I also love Kusmi Detox Tea because it has a great lemongrass flavour.   I first tried the NUMI tea when I stopped into a coffee shop when I was at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah and it tasted so good that I grabbed a couple of packs to take with me.   I first tried the Kusmi tea at a consumer food show and learned that it's from France.  It's pretty pricey but it tastes great.  I know that Pusateri's and the Detox Market in Toronto carry it.   Try it and let me know if you like it.

I  decided to do this Green Post because I was watching the lovely super energetic Julie Daniluk healthy guru do a segment on the Marilyn Denis show.  Julie was making a hot green smoothie type of drink with spinach and I realized that I had spinach in my fridge that I needed to use so I decided to make a green Spinach soup that was kicked up with flavour and healthy things.

Here's my version of this GREEN SPINACH Soup

Ingredients:

2 cups of baby spinach washed

1 carrot

1/4 medium onion

2 green onions

2 garlic cloves

1 kaffir lime leaf

1 tbsp grated ginger

3 cups of chicken broth or water

1 bunch fresh parsley

salt and pepper to taste

hemp hearts for garnish

Directions:

In a soup pot boil the water or chicken stock.  I added some bouillon powder to water for flavour because I didn't have any stock handy but I didn't add much salt because the bouillon has a lot of sodium in it.

I grated the frozen ginger into the stock and added chunks of onion.   You don't need to worry about chopping because you will blend it after.

I added the cloves of garlic and then the seasonings of pepper and a pinch of salt.  You can add nutmeg or other seasonings if you like.

I took a vegetable peeler and just peeled strands of carrot into the soup.  Because it's think it cooks quickly.  You can use a box grater or microplane as well.  

I tossed in a Kaffir Lime leaf that I had in the freezer for some added flavour.  1 leaf is enough because you only want a hint of it.   Use it like you would use a bay leaf.  Let the soup simmer to extract the flavours and then remove the lime leaf.

Once you are happy with the flavour of the stock then add the spinach and parsley.  Cook until it turns an emerald green color.   Once it's the bright green color turn it off and either blend with a stick blender which is what I did.  Less cleaning up.. but if you don't have one then use a blender or food processor or your magic bullet.  Anything that will liquify it.

Pour into a soup bowl and top with a garnish of hemp seeds for added Omega 3's and crunch.   You can drizzle a bit of yoghurt or cream if you want a creamier texture but it doesn't really need it.  

Because of all the aromatic vegetables and seasonings this soup is packed with flavour and blending it will make it feel very hearty and smooth.

Let's move on to a Tasty GREEN GOODNESS SALAD

I made this salad after seeing a similar salad but using what I had in the fridge.

In an effort to eat more Kale and kick up my healthy vegetable quotient.   As I sit here with the sniffles and think I may be getting a cold.  I blame my subway trip with loads of coughing and gross people who spread their germs all over the subway.   This is the time to Green Load up on my body to fight it.

So here's my version

Ingredients:

1 bunch of Black Kale or whatever Kale you like

1 hard boiled egg

1 avocado

4 inch cucumber

1 green onion

1/2 cup cilantro

juice of 2 limes

1 tbsp olive oil

6 grape tomatoes

salt and pepper to taste and you can add hot sauce if you like it spicy.

Hemp heart seeds for garnish

Directions:

Strip the kale from the stems and chiffonade the leaves.. If you don't know what that means it's to cut into thin strips.  Wash and drain and add to a bowl and add a bit of lime juice and massage the kale until it breaks down and turns a bright color.   Set aside and make the dressing.

In a blender add the avocado, half of the cucumber, green onion, cilantro, lime juice and salt and pepper.  Add olive oil or water if you want a thinner dressing.  You can add lemon juice too.   Blend until smooth.

Mix a couple of tablespoons of the dressing into the bowl of kale.

To the salad add the grape tomatoes cut in half and cut up the remaining cucumber into half moons and add on top.  Cut the boiled egg into slices and put on top.

Add a bit more of the dressing on top of the garnishes and then add the hemp seeds.  You can mix when you are ready to eat.  

This salad will keep for a while so it will work great for a work lunch or potluck.

I didn't add any hot spices but I think if I do it again I will add a few chili flakes for a little kick.

You can add whatever vegetables you like or omit the egg and tomato for a truly green salad.   Make it your own way.   If you try this let me know what you did and if you make my version let me know what you think.