Monthly Goals: Assessment of February 2013

How did this month fly by so fast!?

It's been pretty intense, although I had reading week to recharge a bit, it was midterms and assignments galore before and afterwards.

Fitness-wise, I didn't attain my goals 100%. I got into the squat challenge pretty hardcore for 15 days, took 8 off then started again. It's amazing how just 100 squats a day makes a difference! My legs are so much stronger and my butt is looking pretty good if I do say so myself! I'm probably going to continue with the trend, but giving myself one day off from them because I did feel like a recovery day would do me some good at some points.

As for the push up challenge, I finished week 1 and part of week 2 of it. At that point I was feeling actual pain doing them and needed to reassess doing them. My form might be less than perfect or my shoulders are too tight are the conclusions I've come to. I will be trying it again, but just starting at a lower level and making sure my form is correct.

Have I said I love rock climbing??? I stayed true to my goal of a minimum of once a week, even going 4 times during reading week. I've improved a lot too! Gone up a few levels and attempted a few really difficult climbs. The running I wasn't as motivated for.

Raw has been going very well! I've fine tuned as I wanted to and am feeling amaazing. Hitting 60 days tomorrow is almost surreal with the struggle I've had in the past. I am still eating overts basically every day, but have taken out most nuts, seeds and spices other than for special meals. This surprized me the most cause it really just happened organically, where I didn't even set a specific intention for it, it just happened that I didn't want it anymore. There are still some things that aren't perfect, like I have been having issues getting good quality fruit, so I'm not eating as much as I should be. But with mangoes coming into season, that should sort itself out soon!!

Spiritually, I have explored a few new ways to dig deep and connect through various methods, including meditation. Although it hasn't been consistent enough for my liking, I think that the balance I've managed in other parts this past month will enable me to concentrate a bit more on it now. Yoga is going to be more of a priority as well.

Emotionally, I'm still going through a few roller-coasters. I'm still going with the flow and dealing with issues as they come up. I've had a lot of body image stuff come up lately, stuff that's been deeply ingrained for a very long time that I feel needs to be purged and figured out so that I can move on. I've come to realize that although I don't regret anything about my life path because it has led me to where I am today and I am very grateful for that, I am still holding a grudge towards myself for having compromised my health as much as I have. Learning to forgive myself is going to be a process. One that I need to undertake to move forward.

My vivid dreams still come and go, but they are less and less attached to people of my past and more towards vague experiences that aren't quite clear.

So it's been a pretty good month I'll say. I'll be writing about my goals for the next one in the next few days!

Much fruit and love! <3

Monthly Goals: February 2013

In keeping with my New Years resolution to blogging more consistently, I thought that having a beginning of the month post to lay out what my goals are for the following 30 days. Some of them will be related to my NYR's (which can be found here), some will be improvements to what I'm currently doing and steps towards achieving other personal goals of mine. .

First off this month, fitness-wise I'm going to be starting two new challenges. The first one is a 100 squats a day challenge, pretty straight forward and simple. I'll be doing my 100 squats in one set and I have a goal of being able to accomplish them in under 2 mins by the end of the month. Right now I'm sitting at just about 3 minutes to finish them up with a few short breaks of a couple seconds to shake out my legs. Last night, after I did them, my legs were dead, since on top of them I went rock climbing for 2 and a half hours!

The second fitness challenge that I've started is the training regiment to complete the 100 push-up challenge. All the details for that one can be found here. My initial test results was 15 military style push-ups, which to me was a bit of a disappointment really, since I was so sure I could do 20! So, it's probably a good thing that I've finally decided to start the challenge, not to mention all the perks of regularly doing push-ups and other chest exercises. The program usually takes about 6 weeks to complete and is really easy to follow with training 3 times a week and taking all of about 10 minutes or less to do.

I'm going to continue going to rock climbing at least once a week, striving for 2 times and running 3 times a week. I think that concentrating more on fun activities and challenges is really helping keep up with a healthy fitness regiment. Changing it up often keeps me interested and motivated.

Diet-wise I am doing really well with staying raw and low fat, I'm at day 34 today (which is the longest I had been previously) and am well on my way to accomplishing the 90 days (min) that I set out to do in the New Year (Yayyyy!). This month I'm going to fine tune a few things that I feel will help me gain more out of being raw, I'm going to try to eradicate all added salt from daily use and reduce my overt fats to a couple times a week max instead of everyday, just to see how that feels. My salt addiction has seriously been one of the hardest things for me to break, so I'm trying to find alternatives to get me through the initial cravings and the rebuilding of my taste buds (which I believe takes 7 days?).

Spiritually, I want to be consistent with my Meditation and Yoga practices. I always feel at my best when I practice them both for a minimum of 20 minutes a day, if not more. Not only does it seriously help with recovery from rock climbing and running, I find it therapeutic to just take deep deep breaths and concentrate on bliss for those few moments every day. It even helps me the stay in that state for more of my regular day.

The biggest challenge I've had in the past few days is emotional. I've been a bit of an emotional roller coaster to the point that I barely understand myself whereas other moments are so crystal clear it's almost scary. It hasn't been easy and its quite the adventure. I feel like it's something of an emotional purging or something that'a happening, where I'm going through some motions that are damn uncomfortable to get to the other side where I can achieve better balance and clarity (or something, I'm not there yet). I'm basically trying to go with the flow and determine what exactly this all means at this point without attaching expectations.

I've been having incredibly vivid dreams about my past. People and places that I used to be attached to in no specific way. There are some recurring dreams, or themes really and it's been difficult to really determine where they're coming from or really if it has any meaning at all. I guess time will tell.

All in all, it's been a pretty intense month and I'm looking forward to seeing how this one turns out.

Here's to another month of discovery and challenges!

Fun Fitness: Rock Climbing!!!

Sometimes, when you think exercise, it's with a sort of excited dread where the results are definitely what you want, but the means may not be all that exciting. I've gone through that time and time again.

Now I want to redefine my fitness regiment. It's SUPPOSED to be fun, exciting and addictive. It should be thought of as a time in your day where you get all worked up to face an awesome challenge where pushing yourself to new levels is accomplishing goals and getting you to be proud of yourself.

For some people, going to the gym does that. I've been that person once or twice. 

For many others, that just doesn't cut it.

Well let's change our attitudes and find something that gets your heart pumping and makes you happy AND fit!

I have a few activities that do this for me, one of the newest is....

ROCK CLIMBING!!!

I am seriously addicted.

The pics are actually from my first time at a rock gym, in Toronto. I absolutely love going there and have yet to find an equivalent here in Ottawa, but I am definitely working on it. 

I have this tendency to prefer activities that use my lower body strength  and even though legs are definitely used in rock climbing (apparently I don't use them enough, working on it!), it does require quite a bit of upper body strength. The soreness the next day is quite satisfying!

I've been top roping mostly, which does require a partner. But even if you don't have someone to go with you can go bouldering. Bouldering, which I've only really tried once, is just as awesome and in my opinion more difficult than top roping. It's a killer workout and has you concentrating much more on technique from the get go. 

I seriously recommend going to try it out, who knows, you might get as addicted as I am!!

80/10/10: The Raw Food "Bible"

My first introduction to the raw food lifestyle was from the well=known and popular 30bananasaday.com crew. AS much as they're forum is absolutely amazing for newbies and veterans of the lifestyle alike, I found that it really was essential for me to read the book that cemented it all. Besides being a wealth of information on why choosing this way of eating is the best, it's a great guide on how to transition, what to eat and how to succeed long term.

I call it the "Bible" of raw foods beause it really breaks down the lifestyle to the basics and explains in easy to understand terms how our bodies work and why a carbohydrate based diets works best for the human body.

As much as it advocates being a raw food fruit based vegan is the ultimate way to fuel our bodies and minds, it isn't strictly advocating it. The secret lies in the ratios of macro nutrients over time of 80% or more carbohydrates, 10% or less protein and fats.

After having experimented with this lifestyle for the past 2 and a half years, I can definitely say that I feel the best I ever have following that macro nutrient intake, even better when it's high or completely raw foods based.

The book comes with a high recommendation not only from me and the 30bananasaday.com crew, but from most of the raw community as well as the author of "The China Study" (another recommended read of mine of which I'll talk about in another post). It has basically everything you need to get started on thsi path to amazing health, along with the many online resources that are growing every day written by advocates of the lifestyle. 

I volunteer my personal copy to anyone who wants to check it out!

New Year, New Beginnings.

When a New Year comes around, I have a tradition of setting up new goals to accomplish for the year. They  could be seen as resolutions, however I don't see them as such because they usually don't fall into the same categories as what most people would set as new year's resolutions. 

One of my goals this year is to be much more consistent with blogging, as this last year has definitely been an on and off habit. I've learned to be more fluid with it but at the same time have learned how exactly I can attain my goal without getting too rigid about it, since I used to set myself to a specific schedule of when I was going to post and how many times a month, etc. Now I just want to flow with my inspiration but still keep myself accountable to writing often.

Another one of my goals is to accomplish 90 days straight raw, using my own variation of the 80/10/10 lifestyle. I've been flowing with this lifestyle on and off for 2 and a half years now, succeeding at many 30 day stints. I find that I need to take it to the next level and committing myself to a much longer time period. I feel amazing after 30 days and want to find out exactly how awesome I will feel after 3 times that amount of time. 

My other goals include: completing my University degree, becoming a certified personal trainer, beginning my registered holistic nutritionist course,  completing a 10 day Vippassana meditation retreat and starting a YouTube channel. There are more that are more personal and don't really relate to this blog. 

I use the New Year as a reference time point to set myself new goals for the future. However I do think that taking the time at any point during the year to set goals and reassess old ones help me stay on track for what I want to accomplish is paramount to my successful completion of them. 

Here's to a great year to come!

Getting Deep: My eating disorder.

I'm writing this under the influence of a few random things: the height of my hormone issued low, gifted to me once a month by a few issues relating to disbalanced hormones related to my cycle, what I hope to be the end of a binge day, and some deep self reflection on things like, where I'm at, where I want to be and both the things I want as they are and the ones I want to change.

I have an eating disorder. Have for a very long time.

It comes around now and again. At least now I've come to the point where it isn't overwhelming my mind at all times of the day. It has affected other parts of my life of course, like body image and self worth, which was hell when I was a teen, but now I know the true worth of who I am and value it much more than what I think I look like.

That was a major turn around point for me. And I think that it can be for anyone else that feels this way.

I've come to a point where I feel like I can beat this. I thought I already had, but that was more me trying to convince myself than anything else. I feel like as long as every time I fall, I kick myself in the ass and just get back to what I know is best, I can maybe just be satisfied with the physical part of me. I think that having stopped beating myself up every time I don't do it perfect, every time I stumble, that getting rid of feeling guilt or regret over what I eat, was one of the most loving gifts I ever gave myself. Of course, it still happens, but I tend to catch it quick enough before it does any damage.

When I look inside myself, I love what I see, even the flaws, even the less than pretty things about myself. I would love to feel that way about my body, and hey there are even some moments that I almost do! There are moments that I forget, I forget that I have these kind of thoughts. I forget that I used to let them control me.

Now most of the time, that's how it is. It's nothing but a memory. But sometimes the thoughts come back. I fall, I tumble and I'm hard on myself for letting it happen. But then again, they happen less and less as I heal, as I face my fears, as I learn the deep down whys of it all. Instead of hiding away from the feelings, sometimes I let myself feel them, explore them as if they weren't my own and I begin to understand them, soothe them and tuck them away in a place where they belong: the past.

I am so grateful to have discovered the raw vegan lifestyle. As much as the food aspect of it work wonders for me, it's the rest of it that has helped me the most. The opening of emotions, the raw feeling that makes you feel everything instead of numbing it all. The deepness of emotion. The love that opens up your heart to so much more than you ever thought possible. The change in perspective about what actually matters is huge. It's an awakening that scares most people, I actually think that it's what has most people permanently falling off the wagon. Because most people would rather be numb. I was once upon a time, one of them. But I seriously wouldn't go back if someone offered me all the riches of the world.

Now I know who I am, I know (mostly) what I want. I know that sometimes I have weaknesses, sometimes I'm strong and sometimes I don't know. But what matters the most is that I will never give up, I will always be kind and I will always get back up. After all, there is no such thing as can't. No impossible.

Woodstock Fruit Festival 2012

Wow.

Now 2 days after the last day of WFF 2012, I'm still awed by the amazing vibe of such an incredible event. First off, many many thanks got to the people that made it all happen. Micheal Arnstein started it all and many others made it the incredible life-changing event that it became. They are the true pionneers of this movement and deserve so much gratitude and appreciation.

I'm going to try to find the words to describe it. I don't think there's truly words to do this, EPIC comes close but it misses the deep connection, the crazy positive vibes, the out-of-this-word amazing people, the durian parties, the inspiring and inflamming talks...

I went there not exactly knowing what to expect. I wanted to connect with like minded people, learn as much as I could, do some personal work involving decisions on what I was going to do next and other things. I did all this and more, I truly discovered what I wanted, I discovered what a true community is, what it feels like to be truly accepted and accepting of everyone around me. It's an incredible feeling to know that, to feel that.

At WFF, there is a sense of how the world really should be. That simple, and that amazing.

I think that the event is truly leading the way to change. I strongly suggest to anyone who is anyone, no matter your background, diet, views, and feelings about the lifestyle, to sign up and see what it's all about. I say this because it's a place of true discovery, where everyone is invited to be exactly who they are and nothing else. To try something that may seem INSANE. I thought it was. Then I tried it. And I am never turning back.

I spent my day training with the likes of Dr. Graham, Ellen Livingston and others, barefoot hiking, swimming in the lake, having picnics for every meal on the grass, listening to speakers on so many topics, stargazing, playing and discovering. I got high on Durian, and bonked, sounding like a insane person because I wasn't getting enough sleep (too excited and too much to do, but that was just me ignoring my body's limits, a lesson learned!). I slept under the stars one night, a night definitely to be remembered.

Although I forgot to take pictures, I have so many memories permanently engraved in my mind.

So, now I say, I hope to see you all there next year.

Actually, I'm expecting it!!!