Tuesday, November 24

Hello everyone! I had another nice day of healthy eats, maybe more calories than I should eat, but it's all healthy so I'm not too worried(I think). My breakfast was oats with agave nectar, cinnamon and some unsweetened apple sauce. I also had some decaf coffee made with sugar, half skim milk and half water.
Lunch was actually Niaz's lunch box which he forgot to take to work this morning. So the serving size is a little larger than I usually eat. So my meal was chickpea cuke salad and a good serving of mashed potatoes. Yum!

A while later, I had dessert: leftover bread pudding. That was the last of the pudding :(

After my meal, I relaxed for a while because the lunch was weighing heavy in my tummy :) Instead of studying, I watched a movie....I felt like I needed a break :) So three hours of "Outbreak" later, I was ready to get started on my cardio. I did interval training on my treadmill, 10 minutes at 4 mph and then 5 minutes of 5.5 mph. I repeated this interval four times....so basically I did cardio for 60 minutes. It was good to sweat like crazy after such a long time :) I then quickly started dinner: cauliflower pulao, dill-cuke yogurt sauce(raita) and some roasted Jerusalem artichokes(or sunchokes). While the chokes were roasting, I showered. After my refreshing shower, I was ready to sit down to a hot, yummy dinner. The best part of the dinner was surprisingly the roasted chokes. They were a-MA-zing!! Soooo creamy but still crispy at the ends. I'm thinking of buying them again next week at the farmer's market. This buying seasonal vegetables at the market is working out really well for me...I feel like I'm eating more vegetables and trying new things. The cauliflower, dill and the sunchokes were all from the farmer's market. In fact, the cauliflower was organic to boot. So for my dinner, I had a little of each dish I made.

A while later I had dessert. Niaz brought some wallaby's yogurt from his workplace, so I had that pear flavored yogurt with a cut up bosc pear and 2 tbsp of whole grain granola. It was super yummy!

And that's all from today! :)

Monday, November 23

Hello everyone! I'm back to posting my regular eats and I couldn't be more excited about it :) I really want to make a huge improvement in my eats and exercise and posting about it here eeryday will keep me on track(hopefully). Please, please, as I mentioned in my previous post, call me out on any unhealthy eats. I need to be very, very careful about my food from now on. I've already gained ~4 lbs and increased my body fat by 4% in the week and a half I took my medication. The medication clearly mentions weight gain as a major side effect, so it's not just my eats the past week that caused this change in weight(although, I am sure, it had a little bit to do with it too).
Anyway, I'm starting new. I'll be eating as much wholesome food as possible and try to avoid processed foods. I will also do strength training three times a week and cardio 5-6 times a week. All the best to me!!
Ok, let's start today's eats. For breakfast, I cooked some oats with cinnamon and agave nectar. These aren't instant oats, but I also don't need to cook it for a long time. I just nuke it for ~4 minutes and it's done!
After breakfast, I went to sleep. I haven't been getting much sleep the past few days, so I;ve been trying to grab as much naptime as possible. I woke up super hungry from my nap. Yeah, sleeping consumes a lot of energy! ;) I quickly threw together a salad I often make, chickpea cuke with mint. The salad is on my food blog here. I was either super hungry or the salad was extra delicious....but whatever it was, I really enjoyed my freshly made salad(with mostly organic ingredients from the farmer's market).

I also had some reheated mashed potatoes afterwards.

Dessert consisted of a piece of dark chocolate.

An hour or two after lunch, I brought out my workout book and had a good strength training session. I hit every major muscle(except for outer thighs). My strength has gone down considerably. I couldn't do chest presses with two 8 lbs. I had to move down to 5s. Oh well, one step at a time. I had a juicy persimmon for a snack after my workout.

After I was done with my snack, I started dinner which was bean and chard soup(from Williams Sonoma site). While the soup was bubbling away on the stovetop, I did a brisk walk on my treadmill at 4 mph for an hour. I quickly showered afterwards and sat down to a hot, delicious dinner. My eats have been very tasty lately :)

I had this nice bowl of soup with a tbsp(and a bit more!) of parmesan sprinkled on top. I did not make any major changes to the recipe, except for using fresh lemon juice at the end. But I did have to cook it for more than the hour specified for the beans to cook properly. I actually moved the soup to my pressure cooker after an hour to speed up the process.

Dessert afterwards was leftover bread pudding.

I also had some honey roasted almonds an hour later.

And that's all for today! I think I did pretty well with respect to eats and exercise today and feel very good about it too :) What do you guys think?

Memorable Meals

Hello everyone, I'm back! I am feeling much better now. The medicines are finally kicking in(taking 20 pills a day was key.....rolling my eyes). I am doing a combination of Atarax, Benadryl and Prednisone and it seems to be working as of now. Of course, we still need to diagnose what's going on. I have a whole bunch of doctor's appointment in the next two weeks. Hopefully somebody will be able to figure it out. Ok, enough about the sickness....let's talk memorable meals I had during my absence here from the blog. Thursday morning I had an early blood test and after spending a whole night without sleep, my tummy was grumbling like crazy(especially after giving 5 vials of blood!). So we stopped by a halal deli/cafe to get some grub. Niaz ordered eggs, hash browns and steak.
I ordered french toast(I always go for the sweeter option!).

Friday night, I finally showered because my foot was doing much better. This occasion called for some grocery shopping because I had zero fresh food in the fridge. We went to Costco where we bought some fresh baguette and salad ingredients. I made a super yummy salad of micro greens, jicama, tomato, cucumber and an apple. For dressing, I used olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, s&p. I also sprinkled on some sliced almonds and parmesan cheese. The salad went great with the baguette slices to scoop up the leftover dressing at the bottom.

Saturday morning continued to be mostly worry free(with respect to my foot), so I cooked some more. We brought cockles the day before from Costco, so I made some Roasted Cockles with Curry Cream Sauce. For sides, we had cheddar mashed potatoes and roasted asparagus with shallots.

The cockles were awesome! I couldn't believe how tender and flavorsome they were. Roasting it for a just a few minutes was the key. It ensured the cockles wouldn't get tough.

Will you believe it if I tell you I've never made mashed potatoes before. I've only had it on two occasions before...and they were just a couple of bites. So I was in for quite a surprise when I made these potatoes....they were super creamy and delicious! The addition of cheddar cheese and dill took it over the top.

The asparagus.....oh, the asparagus. The BEST asparagus I've ever had, seriously. They were deliciously crunchy at the tips and moist and tangy everywhere else. The addition of lemon zest totally made this dish.

I had quite a feast for lunch.....it was the perfect way to make my comeback in the kitchen :)

Since we bought the baguette from Costco, it is understood that they didn't just give a single baguette. Nope, they gave double baguettes.....very long baguettes, I might add. Since baguettes need to be eaten in a day or they go very stale, I decided to make some baguette bread pudding on saturday night. I used a recipe I found on Williams Sonoma site. I subbed fat free milk(added a third of a cup of cream that I had leftover in the fridge too) and added some chocolate chips. Even with fat free milk, the pudding was FABULOUS!

Look at how golden brown it turned out!

I, of course, had a piece right away. But in my opinion(and I am weird that way), pudding is always better chilled. But every recipe for pudding I come across says to serve warm or room temp. Whatever.

I also took some non-meal pictures that I thought were interesting. See those bowls of fruits? I LOVE them. The mandarins are for Niaz(I'm allergic) and the pears are for me. Seasonal fruits and veggies make a beautiful tablescape, don't you think?(Niaz was having a phone meeting when I took this picture)

He very soon got bored of his meeting and did this :)

Ok, that's the best recap I can do about good meals I had in the past week. Of course, there were many more meals...but none of them were interesting enough.

Also, I've decided to come back to regular posting of my eats. Please, please, call me out on crazy foods I eat from now on because I have to be EXTRA careful with all the pills that I'm taking. Two of the medications I'm taking has weight gain as a major side effect. One of them even specifies that the gain is around the trunk.....siiiigh. So I need to be careful about my meals and also exercise regulary(which I can thankfully do now because my foot isn't swollen or as itchy anymore). So........this is kind of a new beginning for me. Please send good thoughts my way!

Hiatus

Hello folks. Sorry you haven't see any posts here lately. I'm still dealing with my health and have no time(or inclination) to do daily posts. I've been loving each and every encouraging comment you've left behind though, but despite that incentive I've decided to take a break from blogging my daily eats. First and foremost, nobody in their right mind would call my eating healthy as of lately, and since my blog claims I "try and live a healthy lifestyle", I feel like I'm mis-directing you with pictures of my unhealthy eats and mentions of no exercises for days and sometimes weeks.
I haven't cooked, cleaned, laundered(or showered!!!) in three days. So you can imagine the crap I've been eating(frozen fried food, lots of junk and take-outs). I've been avoiding staying on my feet to prevent them from heating up(hence, no showers either) and this means no standing for 30-60 minutes cooking or doing dishes or folding laundry. Everything is piled to the roof. I miss healthy home-cooked meals terribly. I wish my mom was here to cook up something healthy :(
Anyway, hopefully, I"ll be back in a few days(weeks?) once I've dealth with evefrything going on in my life. I'll try my very best to come back with healthy eats and wonderful exercises. Thank you all once again for the love and support you have showered on me!

Old Lady Hubbard

Yup, that's who I feel like. The past couple of nights I've been experiencing swollen and extremely itchy feet. Last night, it went to the extreme and I didn't sleep the whole night from itching. You read that right....the whole night. I called my doctor at 3:30 a:m to ask what to do. I considered a trip to the ER but knew they would inject steroids(prednisone and the like) and if my doctor wanted any tests done later, it would produce false results. So I restrained myself....and made do with soaking my feet in cold, cold, cold water....with ice, lots of ice. So basically, I was propped up on a chair with a throw wrapped around my upper torso and my feet in achingly cold water all night long. Trust me on this, it is NOT a pleasant experience. Try just washing your feet with ice cold water in the middle of the night after your body has warmed in the comforter. It will take your breath away for a few seconds...that's how awful it is.

So after a night of no sleep, my feet finally calmed down some in the morning. So I slept for a couple of hours. I got up around 11:30 and immediately took an appintment with my doctor(allergist). I then brushed, ate breakfast and got ready to go visit my doc. I spent over three hours at her office because my case was so unique she called in some experts to evaluate. She even brought in the chief of medicine who was just as baffled as the rest. Nobody knows why this happens to me every fall and winter. They have just been calling it seasonal urticaria and treating the symptoms. Since this is the fourth year this is happening to me without a proper diagnosis, my allergist took a more head-on approach and recommended I see a slew of doctors: a hematologist, a rheumotologist and a dermatologist. She also prescribed a bunch of tests that I was only too happy to google and see why they were being performed. So I'm being tested for:

1) Quantitative Cryoglobulin Level: This test is most often done when a person's symptoms suggest a condition associated with cryoglobulins(abnormal protiens). Cryoglobulins are associated with several disorders, including those that affect the skin, joints, kidneys, and nervous system.

2) SPEP: The serum protein electrophoresis (SPEP) test measures specific proteins in the blood to help identify some diseases. Serum protein electrophoresis is most often done to screen for a disease such as multiple myeloma, macroglobulinemia, or amyloidosis. It is also done to find the cause of hypogammaglobulinemia (HGG), a condition characterized by low levels of gamma globulin antibodies. HGG can make a person more susceptible to infection.

3) IFE: Electrophoresis is used to identify the presence of abnormal proteins, to identify the absence of normal proteins, and to determine when different groups of proteins are increased or decreased in serum.

4) ANA: Antinuclear antibodies are a unique group of autoantibodies that have the ability to attack structures in the nucleus of cells. The nucleus of a cell contains genetic material referred to as DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). ANAs are found in patients who have various autoimmune diseases, but not only autoimmune diseases. ANAs can be found also in patients with infections, cancer, lung diseases, gastrointestinal diseases, hormonal diseases, blood diseases, skin diseases, and in elderly people or people with a family history of rheumatic disease. ANAs are actually found in about 5% of the normal population.

Now that I've bored you with enough mumbo-jumbo, let me get to the point. I mentioned on my post(with lots of hives pictures) that I've been taking atarax for all this....well, while it is good and all in preventing the symptoms from happening(although this year it seems to have taken a hike), it comes with a drawback, a HUGE drawback for me. Simply said,I gain weight while taking this medication. Last year, when I took it for 5 1/2 months, I gained 17 pounds. I was 98 pounds in mid October 2008 and I weighed in at 114.8 mid-March 2009. And trust me, I was eating right, exercising, doing all the right things. The weight just would not get off while I was on it. As soon as I stopped the medication, the weight fell off in 6-7 weeks. And guess what? It's only been a week since I started atarax and I've already gained 2.5 lbs. Although I agree my eating hasn't been the best the past few weeks, a sudden gain in a week is highly suspicious, especially if you all remember, I did a body fat compariosn just a few days ago while I was still eating crap(and would have gained weight if it was from the eating itself).
So anyway, I'm feeling pretty down right now with all this going on(even spent a few minutes on self-pity and boo-hooing a little). Just imagine this scenario: I spent almost the whole day at the hospital today . I woke up, had breakfast, got ready to go to the doctor's, was there for a couple of hours, came home, ate lunch, went to another hospital for blood tests, then went to the pharmacy to get medication and finally made it home at 8:30. And I'm not even close to done. I have another blood test tomorrow morning at a hospital that is 45 minutes from where I live. And then I have to go back to my allergist in a week. In the meantime, I have to get appointments with a hematologist, a rheumotologist and a dermatologist. So as you can imagine, life is going to get busy around here, especially with my semester coming to an end(which means projects and presentations).
Annnnyway, I have still not come to the point though. What I mean to say by all this is, I have to kiss workouts goodbye for a while. My foot is so swollen, I hobble when I walk. So forget about jumping around for exercises. I'm sorry ladies, but I won't be doing a regular workout post anymore. I'm really sorry but you guys will have to keep going on your own :( I will hopefully join you all in a few weeks when my foot is ready. I'll still try and post my eats though(which were CRAZY today, by the way......I guess I handle stress with food, lots of food!).
So, that's what's going on in my life.

P.S: Sorry for the long winded post.