my fitness routine // nourishing my body

I've been getting quite a few questions regarding my diet, in conjunction with my workout routine, so I thought I'd talk about that for a sec (give y'all a break from TxSC posts!).  I knew that I'd need to be mindful of what I ate in order to see the results of working out.  For most of my life I've just eaten whatever I wanted, and my metabolism let me do that, but I also never felt like I saw big results of any workouts, even when I was on the basketball team and ran track and field in high school.  At the beginning of the year I decided I wanted to make a shift towards eating a more local, plant based diet, and to be more mindful of what I was putting in my body overall, not as a weight loss effort, but as an effort to be healthy and nourish my body in a good way.  I read a few books and watched some documentaries and it gave me the push I needed to put the effort into being intentional about what I put in my body, rather than just eating whatever.  I haven't ever been much of a fan of fast food, especially since starting college, so I didn't really have to give up fast food, or junk food like chips and soda since I wasn't eating it to begin with.  I've been trying to eat less meat, which has been difficult because, well, I like it.  But something I've decided is that if I'm going to eat meat I'll do my best to eat local meat that was raised in a humane and healthy way.  We've got some great resources here in Tacoma in order to do that, at the Farmer's Markets, the Tacoma Food Co-Op, and Tacoma Boys.  Our CSA share is only for produce and eggs, so we've definitely be eating more veggies and less meat simply because meat is rarely in the house.  Nowadays the most meat I eat is consumed when we go out to eat.

In terms of my "diet," I prefer to think about eating as nourishing my body.  The word "diet," while perfectly fine as a word on its own, has so many knee-jerk reactions and brings with it too many preconceived ideas, so I prefer not to use it.  "Nourishing my body" is much more descriptive to me of what I'm seeking to do when I eat.  When I think about it in that way, I can't over or under eat, and I also have to be intentional about what I eat.  So, for instance, instead of saying, "oh I have 1,500 calories I can eat today" and then using those calories to eat Doritos and Diet Coke, which will do a terrible job of nourishing my body, I not only have to think about the amount of food I put in, but the quality of that food as well.  And really, you need to be nourishing your body when you're doing an intense workout program.  You have to give your body what it needs to repair itself and fuel you through your workouts.


 


It can be confusing to figure out what exactly you need to fuel your body.  How many calories do I eat? Do I pay attention to the nutrition info on packaging? How often/when do I eat?  I used Insanity's Nutrition Guide as a reference for some things, but for others I tried to use a more common sense approach.  The Insanity Nutrition Guide gives meal plans and such which you can follow super strictly if you want, but I felt like it made more sense for our life and budget to eat in a way that was similar to those meal plans but fit better for what we typically like to eat.  I used their calorie calculator to figure out a ballpark for what I should shoot for when determining my daily calorie intake.  For women they suggest this formula: 655 + (4.35 x your weight in lbs) + (4.7 x Height in inches)- (4.7 x Age in years) Then you take that number and multiply it by a number based on your activity level (1.2 for sedentary, 1.375 for lightly active,  1.55 for moderately active, 1.7 for very active, and 1.9 for extremely active).  Then you can add or subtract 500 calories from that number depending on whether you're looking to gain or lose weight.  I'm sure there are many ways to calculate what your daily calorie intake should be, and I'm certainly not a dietician, but I found that I personally felt that I could definitely nourish my body based on that formula.

I tried to eat about 5 small meals throughout the day, in order to keep my metabolism up.  I'm not doing that very strictly these days, especially with traveling and not having a regular schedule, but when I was going through the full 2 month Insanity program, I was pretty good at eating 5 smaller meals a day, rather than 3 big ones (or even just one or two... ). I found it was very helpful to use an app like Lose It! or My Fitness Pal in order to track meals and know what I was consuming throughout the day.  Again, I'm not currently doing that, but I really liked that method of keeping track of things.  My phone is with me almost all the time, so it made it easy to enter my meal info, even when I was out.




In terms of what exactly I eat, that's where I get super practical.  Reading In Defense of Food really solidified this idea in my mind.  One of the things he mentions in the book is that you should eat food.  Like real food.  Fruits, veggies, stuff like that.  Not stuff in boxes that has been made with chemicals or in a plant and has nutrition info on the side.  One of his good rules of thumb was that if your great grandma wouldn't recognize it, don't eat it.  Another "rule"?  If it makes health claims, avoid it.  Real, whole, healthy food doesn't need to make health claims, it's just good for you because it's what your body was made to eat.  I try to keep that in mind when eating.  There are a lot of diets out there, like Paleo, that somewhat also follow this type of philosophy.  Going back to our roots before there were diet and food "trends."  I try to ignore the fact that my great grandma and ancestors ate lots of seal and whale fat... probably not the "real" food that will get the results I'm looking for.  Although, if I'm trying to stay warm in the Aleutians, those definitely are the results I'd look for.  Bring on the whale blubber!  I digress...

A lot of work out nutrition guides recommend avoiding alcohol if you're trying to tone up or lose weight, simply because, even though it doesn't feel like it, alcohol has a ton of empty calories in it.  I tried my best to cut back on alcohol when I was doing Insanity really hard, but one of my favorite quality time things that Dan & I do is to walk to a favorite watering hole and chat over a drink or two, so I wasn't super crazy about cutting out drinking completely.  Again, just being mindful and intentional.  Alcohol isn't great for the body anyway, and drinking before doing any kind of work out is an awful idea.  I accidentally had a beer before a workout once and I felt so lethargic and lazy and could barely make it through my workout.  Yuck.

Anyway, to sum things up, I'll do this bullet point style:

Eat to fuel your body.  Nourish it.

Figure out the amount of calories you require to nourish your body.

Use those calories to eat real whole foods.

Eat them frequently and in smaller quantities.

prom!

Prom was amazing.  So amazing that I have too many photos to share, so I'm gonna do it in two posts.  First thing's first: the outfit.  I got this dress at the Lulu's swap on Friday and I'm SO glad I snagged it.  The dress I was planning on wearing to prom didn't fit quite right and even though I tried it on before leaving for TxSC, when I put it on again in Austin, I realized it wouldn't do well for any dancing situations until I hemmed it and fitted the bust more.  So I wore that dress to dinner, but then switched into this sassy little number for Prom!  I'm so glad I did because it was the perfect dress for the evening.  It's one of those things you put on and you're like, "Oh yeah, I'm definitely a bombshell tonight."  So funny how the right clothes can really just make you feel like a million bucks.

 


dress/lulu's via swap :: shoes/courtesy of modcloth :: necklace/francesca's collection photos taken by moorea 

I really enjoyed that this year's party theme was Prom.  I think it allowed people to feel like they could enjoy themselves, rather than feeling like they needed to be networking and meeting brands.  I had way more fun hanging out with people, meeting new people, and dancing my feet to shreds on the dance floor.  There was a dance competition during the night and Julie, Amanda, Mallory, and I all were picked as finalists after the first round and were going to compete in a "dance off" 30 minutes after the first competition, but 30 minutes turned into 2 hours and we never did the dance off!  We just kept dancing because we thought the dance off would be any minute, so we just ended up dancing like crazy for two hours.  It was a blast though.  You can actually see us dancing in the background of Elsie and Emma's video from the night!

The craziest thing that happened at Prom?  My actual prom date from freshman year in 2002 was there.  It was the most bizarre moment.  He was there with his wife who is a new blogger, and they live in Texas now.  Meeting your prom date at Prom themed party, who you haven't seen since high school, from Anchorage Alaska, at a blog conference party in Austin Texas... is just too weird.  I haven't talked to him since 2005, so it was certainly a crazy serendipitous meeting!

saturday afternoon

I am a night owl.  Dyed in the wool.  100%.  Going to Austin meant I was two hours ahead of Washington time, so when I woke up at 7:30 AM, I was really waking up at 5:30.  Honestly it wasn't that hard because everything felt so exciting and I think that anticipation helped with the waking up process.  I'm pretty much a dead person when I fall asleep, and waking up seriously feels like I'm being raised from the dead.  All that to say that I'm glad I had that shock to the system in Austin of waking up way early, because the next day after TxSC we got Dusty and now I'm up at 7:45-8:45 every morning.  I can't remember the last time I woke up that early this many days in a row without school or a job forcing me to do so.   We make our coffee as pour-over so we only make one cup for each of us, but having one of those coffee machines that you can set to automatically start in the morning sounds awesome now.

This outfit I actually wasn't planning on wearing for TxSC, I had brought it for Monday when I was traveling home.  Saturday morning, though, I was standing around preparing for my workshop to start, and about 20 minutes before my workshop was going to start, I sneezed and the strap on my dress broke!  It was one of those things where you're like... Really?!  Now?  So I ran back to my room (thankfully the workshops were being held in the same hotel where I was staying!) and switched into this outfit.  On Saturday I wore four outfits.  I felt like Beyonce with all my costume changes.  It was fun though.  This "costume change" wasn't planned, and actually the other one wasn't really either but it all worked out.  I got to wear a weeks worth of outfits over one weekend!

 


dress + shoes(similar)/courtesy of modcloth :: hat/courtesy of tittle millinery necklace/moorea seal :: bag/courtesy of bali ELF :: photos by Moorea After I led my workshop Saturday morning I went back to my room and crashed.  I had a bit of FOMO, but I wanted to be super intentional about allowing my introvert self to recover with some alone time, especially since Prom was that evening and I wanted to be able to stretch into an extroverted version of myself for that.  So that meant I needed to force myself to be in a quiet, dark hotel room for a while.  Well, I didn't really do very much forcing, I felt like a limp noodle after my session and basically just melted into bed with my laptop, and scrolled.  After a couple hours I felt recharged enough to go out with Moorea and Chelsea to a small event hosted at the Hotel San Jose.  We got to sip on some Sangria and cooled off with popsicles, which was so refreshing while sitting out on a patio in 102º heat.  I could've eaten at least five.   When we were there a girl came over from another table to ask where I got my hat because her husband loved it.  I was excited how many compliments my hat got and how many people asked about it, because I got to tell them about Tittle Millinery!  Teagan, the gal behind Tittle, custom made this hat for me and it's by far my favorite hat.  I think at least three people asked where I got it, so hopefully she gets some hat orders!  This particular hat isn't in her shop, since it was custom, but she does custom orders, so if you see a hat you love, maybe on Pinterest, you can have her make you one, and it will fit you perfectly because she takes your measurements and everything.   Moorea, Chelsea and I all got our photos take by an Austin street style photographer right after taking our outfit photos at the Hotel San Jose, so we felt pretty fancy.  I was shot by a street style photog in NYC once in the tents at Bryant Park and once in Seattle by Pike Place Market, but I never found either of the street style websites, so I was never able to see the photos online.  It's fun to actually see myself on a street style website!  Whenever I go to a city where there are tons of interesting people with cool style it makes me want to be a street style photographer.  I've tried doing it in Tacoma, but it's super difficult!  Major props to those who can do it and do it well!

here + there: austin edition

Austin is one heck of a photogenic city.  Also, a delicious city.  So many amazing restaurants and bars, I think I would need at least a month to fit everything in!  Next time I go to Austin I really would like to stay at the Hotel San José.  We stopped in there for a few drinks and appetizers on Saturday afternoon and it was just so beautiful and peaceful.  I think for next year's TxSC I might try to bring Dan and it'd be a blast to stay at the Hotel San José for at least a couple nights.

Every drink I had in Austin was amazing.  The drink in the top image is a Watermelon Jalapeño Margarita from Garritos  So refreshing and interesting.  I'm typically not a huge fan of tequila drinks, but I do enjoy them when they are complex and well crafted, and this one certainly hit the spot.  Plus, when in Rome!  I also got the Mexican Martini at Garritos and rather enjoyed that as well!

Anyway, if you ever have the chance to visit Austin, I highly recommend it.  I've been three times now and I've enjoyed it every single time, even in August when the temps are consistently over 100º.  It's definitely one of my favorite cities. 

 


 

 



 

the remix archives // mint polka dot

Well, I still have tons to share from TxSC, but it's Saturday and I haven't done a remix archives post in ages!  Honestly it's become hard to remember which remixes I've featured and which I haven't.  I've had this dress for about a year, and it was a perfect light and breezy summer dress, though I did style it once in the winter paired with tights and boots.  The first outfit is still my favorite, and that outfit was actually inspired by Austin!  I took those boots to Austin this last weekend, and I wore them with an outfit on Saturday, but then the strap broke on my dress so I had to go change and none of my other outfits went with the boots.  Oh well!  The boots had been hiding in my Winne's closet (which is still serving as shoe storage from when we moved), so I haven't even thought to style them in the past few months.  Now that they're in my actual closet again, maybe I'll pull them out, especially since fall is more boot-friendly in the temperature department.