New Year, New You... Blah Blah Blah..

Are you tired of hearing NEW YEAR, NEW YOU yet?   

It's only January 8, 2017 and I am already tired of hearing it on every TV channel I turn on the TV and walk by a Newsstand and you will see it on every cover.  I admit that I was guilty of perpetuating this in the past in blog posts and I even wrote said article for B Magazine a free Beauty magazine that was available in TTC stations many years ago.   It's about this time when people are already starting to get tired of going to the gym and they start dropping off.

It's kind of stating the obvious that we all want spectacular lives all the time but is it realistic?

After a couple of months of celebrating with food at Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas dinners or even Hannukah food traditions and then add all those work events and other family and friend get togethers and Potluck's that all revolved around eating massive quantities of mostly high fat, sugar and salty foods.  How many of you are feeling snug in your clothes now?  Yes I bet a whole bunch of you unless you have a crazy workout routine everyday if you had the time.

But as soon as the Calendar turns to January 1st, you are expected to put down that fork and pick up dumbbells instead and hit the gym hard and get in the best shape of your life instantly because last years version of you wasn't good enough.  You have to be a smarter, fitter, younger version of yourself and you also have to have more money to be seen as acceptable in the North American Society.

Would you tell the 2 year old pictured above that her 1st year of life wasn't good enough and now that she is 2 she needs to become a NEW person and be better and look better and do better.   Well of course not, so why are we so hard on each other and ourselves as we become adults?

I don't know about you but I try and be a better person everyday and it's a struggle.  I have my own high expectations of what I thought my life would be like but it turned out to be very different than what I pictured in my head when I was a teenager.  I am hard enough on myself that I didn't achieve my goals and I don't particularly appreciate the constant media messages that I am a failure because I don't have the perfect body, family, friends, home, job.    If everyone had all of those things there wouldn't be any homeless people on the streets.  It's just not real.  Nobody can have it ALL.. something gets sacrificed somewhere.  

Every year I say to myself that I want to be fitter and healthier because every year when I am at TIFF I feel the effect of me being out of shape when I have to run up the stairs at Roy Thompson Hall. But every year I seem to gain more weight and have a bit less energy.  Well I know better but I also have a highly stressful life trying to find work and keeping up with my blog with not a whole lot of help.  Age is creeping up with me and after a couple of falls this past couple of years and not always eating clean while going to all the food events it takes a bit of a toll and I really feel it at the end of the year when I stay home more and hibernate.

My goal this year is to try and up my cleaner, healthier food quotient.  I started my week off at work with Green Tea and a fruit and nut oatmeal and I always have a bottle of water with me to stay hydrated.  The Builder's bar is to carry with me when I am starving at work or out and about so that I have something to grab quickly.

In the winter because there are less festivals and events to go to I go back into my kitchen a lot more.  I go back to what I did way before blogging started and that is making more things like Chili, Sheppards Pie, Stews, and roasted vegetables.

I used to do a thing called veggie Sundays when I was at home with my Mom and brother.  Sundays were always a day when nothing much was happening and I would watch cooking shows on TV or get bored so I would go into the kitchen and start to cook something and then would end up cooking a whole bunch of vegetables because I was trying to use things before they spoiled or I would start to prep a vegetable and then have some left to make something else.  One thing usually turned into 3 or 4 things at least.  Even though yesterday was Saturday I did that again and made Baba Ganoush, Roasted Red Peppers in Garlic Oil, a Vegetable stock and a roasted tomato jam.  Now I have things in the fridge to make or eat quickly.

I need to get back into this habit of doing prep at least 1 morning or day on the weekend to have things ready to eat quickly during the week.   More Batch cooking for less time in the kitchen and also less cleaning up time.    Cook once eat twice or more.

Here is my 1st TIP to start your new Year Batch cooking. Make this recipe if you have these things:

Fridge Clean Stock

1 medium onion cut in quarters
1/2 of a leek, use the green parts that normally get discarded
1 to 2  carrot roughly chopped in a couple of pieces
2 Bay leaves
2 Tbsp of fresh parsley
2 to 3 celery sticks.  Use the interior or ends that you would throw out.
1 tsp peppercorns
1/2 tbsp salt - add more at the end if needed

Optional:  add garlic, parsnips, ginger or other things that will add flavour or you might want to use up.

Fill a stock pot half way with water and add the vegetables.

Bring water to a boil and then turn down to a simmer on medium low heat.  Cook for at least an hour or more or until all the vegetables have lost their color and are falling apart soft.

Pull out the vegetables and you could either blend them into the soup or discard for a clear stock.

Put the stock into plastic or glass containers and let cool and then put into the fridge.  You can freeze the stock in plastic containers or even in ice cube trays for instant stock to add to stir fry's etc.

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.