26 and counting.
September 1, 2009
And the greatest love of all lives on.
Attn to all Runners
August 31, 2009
A runner’s dream:
http://www.mapmyrun.com/
Next Post
August 31, 2009
"When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky." Birthday countdown: 2 days
No excuses.
August 31, 2009
Judging from the changing weather here in Toronto, summer is coming to an end and it just blows my mind at how I can neglect my blog for 2 whole months! As most people are saying, it seems like summer was barely here before it left again but I am much too satisfied with it to complain. I’ve learned that the only thing you can control is yourself, it doesn’t matter if the weather is hot or cold, it is within our control to enjoy whatever comes our way. Life is full of changes and it is about time that we all embrace this simple fact. How much happier would we be if we accept the changes that take place in our lives instead of being afraid of the uncertain?
For me, I’ve had my fair share of changes this summer. Not only am I not a student anymore but I’m also living on my own for the first time. Who knew it could get so lonely? The self-proclaimed strong and independent woman finds herself craving for companionship way too often.
Is it the fact that the two most precious beings in this world to me are thousands of miles away? Probably.
Maybe it’s because I’m living in a place that’s clearly too big for me. Time to move.
Lastly, it’s probably because I’m still jobless despite the many praises I’ve gotten at choosing a profession that’s in “high demand” even in this recession.
The last point is where I would have to exercise patience and perseverance. Being jobless is the least of my worries, actually. Don’t get me wrong, it is a top priority but I’m in no rush to become a professional, further solidifying the fact that I am now an adult. I love nursing and all but those 12 hour shifts are killer.
In an attempt to stay “young” I’m signing up for another year of gym membership at Ryerson. Though annoying, it’s undeniably refreshing to be around careless young adults that seem to carry no sense of responsibility whatsoever. **BTW, being an alumni is absolutely useless to me if they can’t give me a good discount at the RAC.** I never thought I’d say this but I’m a little sad that I’m not going back to school in the fall. The feeling is so bittersweet. Lucky for me, I’ll still get to work out there. I’m going to tell you a little secret about myself, I love running/working out. I don’t have to force myself to go to the gym, it’s actually something I crave to do. It energizes me, makes me feel better. Now all I have to work on are my eating habits and then I can call my self a health freak.
Convocation
June 20, 2009
As I officially leave the student life behind, the inspiring speech which was meant to address the graduates of my program, quoted a student from Columbine highschool. I’ve decided to share that poem as I found it to be true and meaningful…
Paradoxes of Our Time
The paradox of our time in history is that
we have taller buildings,
but shorter tempers;wider freeways,
but narrower viewpoints;we spend more,
but have less;we buy more,
but enjoy it less.We have bigger houses
and smaller families;more conveniences,
but less time;we have more degrees,
but less sense;more knowledge,
but less judgment;more experts,
but more problems;more medicine,
but less wellness.We have multiplied our possessions,
but reduced our values.We talk too much,
love too seldom,
and hate too often.We’ve learned how to make a living,
but not a life;we’ve added years to life,
not life to years.We’ve been all the way to the moon and back,
but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor.We’ve conquered outer space,
but not inner space;we’ve cleaned up the air,
but polluted the soul;we’ve split the atom,
but not our prejudice.We have higher incomes,
but lower morals;we’ve become long on quantity,
but short on quality.These are the timesof tall men,
and short character;steep profits,
and shallow relationships.These are the times of world peace,
but domestic warfare;more leisure,
but less fun;more kinds of food,
but less nutrition.These are days of two incomes,
but more divorce;of fancier houses,
but broken homes.It is a time when there is much in the show window
and nothing in the stockroom;a time when technology can bring this letter to you,
and a time when you can choose either to make a difference
…or just hit delete ——————–
How to make soup (Russian style)
May 26, 2009
Ingredients
- 3-4 pieces of chicken thighs (or breast)
- 4 potatoes
- 2 carrots
- ½ red bell pepper
- ½ onion
- 250 g (1/4 – 1/3) of spaghetti pasta
- 1 bay leaf
- Salt
- Pepper
- Dry dill
- Parsley
Use a medium sized pot.
Fill it half-way with water and bring it to a boil.
Put chicken pieces in the water.
Once the chicken pieces are cooked, add the rest of the ingredients.
** The amount of salt, pepper, dry dill and parsley should be added based on your preferred taste.
Once the pasta and potatoes are cooked turn off the heat and let simmer for a few minutes.
Serve with some fresh bread (from the local bakery) and enjoy!
This soup is easy to make that will leave you satisfied in the end.
I would never have thought in a million years that I would have the guts to try something like juice fasting. Yet here I am, having survived three days on the fast and feeling even more full of life than before. I must tell you, that I couldn’t make it to a week but am proud that I have made it THREE days without eating solid food, surviving purely on juice. To experts, it’s amateur I know, but not bad for an amateur! haha. I’m proud and am looking forward to doing juice fasting again whenever my body tells me it’s ready for another round (possibly in a month or two).
The thought of quitting already popped in my head during the third day of the fast. The constant headache and hunger really got to me. I think I would have been able to continue for longer if not someone saying that I looked like a skeleton, meaning I’ve lost too much weight. Surely enough when I checked the scale, I have lost approx. 6 lbs within 3 days! This is not healthy at all! So that’s when I decided that starting tomorrow I will slowly start to eat again. I may have lost so much because I did not drink enough juice…I did not have the energy to make them and since the juices were not as tasty as food, I felt less motivated to actually get up and make the effort to think of a recipe, prepare, and make the juice. Juice fasting requires for the juice to be made from fresh fruits and vegetables, the preparation/clean up can be quite tedious, averaging out to 30 minutes per juice.
If you are a person who is always on the go or has a very hectic lifestyle, it may be difficult to do a juice fast although still feasible. Since I was lucky enough to be home alone for the week, I did not have the extra challenge of having someone else eating real food in the house. I did not discover any hidden consequences of juice fasting. Everything that occurred to me I had, more or less, expected thanks to the vast information about juice fasting on the internet. So I highly suggest to those that are thinking of juice fasting to get yourself informed first, to know how your body will react so you can prepare yourself in advance. If possible, I would even suggest talking to a doctor before and after, just to make sure if juice fasting is something for you 
.
I have no regrets with doing this challenge as I feel that I have at least tried something new while gaining valuable experience. I will recommend juice fasting to anyone that is trying to cleanse, lose weight, and improve self discipline or to someone that’s just looking for a great challenge. I did not get the heightened spiritual awareness I was aiming for, but I do have a newfound appreciation and awareness of what a powerful tool the mind really is. If you are determined, and put your mind to it, you are sure to succeed.
Juice fasting: Day 2 and 3
May 14, 2009
Day 2
On my second day of juice fasting, I woke up feeling great! My eyes were wide open and the sunny day and fresh morning air helped encourage my journey to improved self-discipline and possible heightened spiritual awareness. I started off my morning with watermelon juice which I ended up drinking throughout the afternoon. The headache came mid day and stayed until the late night….I would describe the feeling similar to when I would try to study and there’s some annoying background noise that would keep me from giving my 100 % concentration..well that annoying background noise would be my headache now. I began to fantasize about how great I would feel in a few days which got me through most of the day. I had a lot on my mind, job hunting along with my nursing licensing exam (really big deal) and graduation coming up but oddly enough these things did not seem as serious as they were before I started the juice fast. I knew I had some major studying to do but I just did not have the energy and that damn annoying background noise!
In the evening, as I was indulging on some weekly guilty pleasures on television, was when the major food cravings started coming. It may have been the cause of the multiple commercials centered on food (that looked oh so good at the moment) but it was probably just because of simple pure hunger. I’ve read that after three days, your stomach shrinks back to its initial size (the size of a fist) and that the body doesn’t really need the solid food, it’s just the mind telling the body that it does. So I tried to exercise some will power and tell my body that it’s the mind playing mind games but let’s face it…after 23 years of chewing and eating it’s a pretty hard habit to break. My fantasies about food were very peculiar…for example, I was thinking how great the frozen vegetables in my freezer would taste and I could pi
cture the carrots and broccoli freshly steamed and in a fork on its way to my watering mouth. Yes, I had more of these throughout the night and I just let myself get swallowed in them because it was actually quite enjoyable.
Evening recipe:
1 banana
1/2 orange
6 strawberries
Day 3
Today, which is my third day on the juice fast, I woke up early because I had to attend a job fair. I’m usually a morning person but found it particularly hard to get up this morning. I woke up with a slight headache but was too busy getting ready to pay much attention to it. I had time to make my cucumber and celery recipe but for some reason, this batch did not taste as good as the one I made on Day 1. I drank 1/3 of the juice and decided to just bring a bottle of water for the travel. My hunger could not be ignored and I felt weak. I was scared of fainting (paranoid much? lol) so I made sure that I was constantly aware of my body to notice any subtle changes that may take place. I finished reading The New Earth on the subway ride but found it hard to focus. I may have to reread the last chapter after this juice fast. I was able to converse normally with the professionals at the job fair but could not feel like my normal self. It did not help that it was lunch time and everywhere I looked people were eating. It was a nightmare. I was so tempted to break my fast and succumbed to my food cravings but somehow I gathered enough will power and got home in one piece and decided to take a long nap to forget about my hunger. I woke up only to feel just a bit better but felt even worse after tasting my worst juice by far. It was a veggie juice experiment consisting of: celery, sweet potato, tomato, cucumber and apple.
To be honest, I feel like giving up very soon. My special person told me I look like “skeletor” lol. It is taking a lot of effort to keep a positive attitude but if it becomes intolerable for me I will have no choice but to stop. It is true that I had a bad day today so I hope things will start looking up tomorrow.
Update: About to have watermelon and orange juice! Yum!
Day 1
May 12, 2009
Quite a few people have asked me why juice fasting? A juice fast is a liquid diet that consist of only juice and water. The juices are made from fresh fruits and veggies (so the body is still getting nutrients). Juice fasting is said to transform the body as it goes through various metabolic changes and experiences. Detoxification occurs. Since the body is not expending energy towards digesting food, it is able to clean out its system therefore releasing toxins from the colon, kidney, bladder, lungs, skin (to name a few) that have accumulated from a bad diet or unhealthy lifestyle. An article mentioned benefits of a juice fast such as: heightened spiritual awareness and relaxation of the body, mind and emotions.
I have survived my first day on the juice fast and surprisingly did not feel any side effects…but I’m sure I will feel them soon enough. I took a long nap in the afternoon, with the intention of conserving as much energy as possible lol. I was slightly hungry in the evening but it was a tolerable experience overall. Since I made too much juice my first try, I only used two juice recipes on my first day.
½ honey dew
Few ice cubes
Cucumber~Celery Cooler
1 apple, sliced
4 medium carrots,
greens removed
1 stalk celery1/2 lemon, peeled (optional)
1/4 medium cucumber, peeled
Healthy lifestyle choices
May 12, 2009
Leading a healthy lifestyle is vital to our overall well-being yet it is something that most young adults find difficult to do. After going through a stage of hard partying with excessive drinking and smoking and all other things that need not be mentioned, I have finally “woken up” aka matured and decided to lead a healthier lifestyle. Being in nursing school has given me lots of “eye opening” experiences as I was constantly exposed to sick,dying people. Diabetes, heart problems and cancer are the most common diagnosis (if not the deadliest as well) that I have seen as a student nurse. I think young people have this notion that they are invincible and that only the old get sick…well here’s a rude awakening for you young people out there…. I have seen young adults suffer in the hospitals because of their poor lifestyle choices and/or elderly patients that suffer because of the poor lifestyle choices that they have made that can be traced back to the beginning of their adulthood or even younger.
It truly is heart breaking to see a 50 yr old patient, who has emphysema, still continue to smoke.
So, I have come to the realization that I must break my bad habits before I become an addict of some sort. It’s now or never. Why wait to hear some bad news before making positive changes in your life? The first change I decided to make was to quit smoking and stop drinking pop. When I think about it now, it really is gross how much sugar there is in those things. And then I decided to start going to the gym which in turn helped me improve my diet a lot. I suddenly felt no urge to go to fast food restaurants and buy junk food every time I would see them (why waste the hard work I have put in the gym?). Along with all this, I became determined to make a conscious effort to become a more positive and open person.
I would love to take all the credit for the changes that probably saved my life but it is an undeniable fact that without the positive influence, knowledge, and genuine caring a special person has brought into my life, who knows if I will be at the same page I am today. So thanks special person
My slow yet steady progress is not always easy to maintain though. Running and working out feels great but I still get lazy and skip days if not weeks without going. I haven’t bought a pack of cigarettes in ages but funny how I can still call myself a “social” smoker. I have poor self control as I can’t seem to resist a good alcoholic beverage or a tequila shot when in that infamous party mode. Like come on, really? Are people really that boring that we need alcohol in our systems to have fun with each other?
Yes, I still have a lot of work ahead of me but let’s face it, that’s the beauty of it all. To keep on challenging myself with the purpose of striving to be the best person that I can be.
As I think of new ways to improve my lifestyle, I came across juice fasting. My old me would never have thought of giving up food as I am a person that just loves food. As I read more about it and its benefits though, I became more and more sure that this is something I would like to try. So for weeks, I slowly prepared myself (mentally and physically) and really thought long and hard if this is something I could really see myself doing. At first I wanted to do a juice fast for two weeks but most articles online only recommend 2 to 3 days of juice fasting and if a person were to do it for more than a week, they should go consult with a physician first. Thinking that 3 days is too short for my body to start feeling different, I decided to go for 1 week (7 days) on a juice fast. I will be recording my whole juice fasting experience here on my blog with my daily recipes!!!
I will now leave you with a picture of what my diet will consist of for the next week.
