So many things have transpired since the onset of the pandemia… More to come on that.
As I work the final phases of getting my first book published, there is this seesaw of excitement and hesitancy that keeps my soul young. Looking forward to sharing it with you all 🙂
Not too much exciting to share about today. I literally made the same thing today as I ate yesterday, and honestly, the tomato soup was much better! Just wanted to write this post to have a lapse in writing, but I need to rest my wrists/fingers as I was up researching and studying last night for my meeting with a publisher today. Looking forward to potential opportunities on the horizon, but shhhh for now, no need to jinx anything before anything gets started. Checking out to be up for my nephew’s b-day breakfast tomorrow. Make it a good one and hug a bit longer each embrace.
~Mai
Today went pretty well! The dishes I made today were actually really good. I am low key amazed at how well they turned out actually, and it also feels good to close the first week of homeschooling my daughter out on a positive note (she actually napped today, so that helped!).
My energy level was really good today, had a slightly sluggish half hour or so while I was making my (late) breakfast because I try to wait at least half an hour after I finish my warm lemon water to have my shake. Another thing I have noticed that I forgot to mention until now, is that my chest has actually been a bit sore (before you ask no… I checked twice). No stomach pains today, one stint of 3 second lightheaded spell, again, standing up too fast when I went to make my shake. I have been a bit itchy on my shins/front of lower leg area. It may be my eczema flaring up, or hopefully clearing out *crossing fingers.*
What I ate:
Breakfast: I had my favorite (so far) shake, my chocolate-covered blueberry. This has coconut milk, coconut water, cacao powder, hemp protein powder, frozen blueberries, cashew butter, spinach, less than a 1/4 tsp of stevia and I believe that is it. Really good and I love the consistency, it is less creamy and more viscous than the others.
Lunch: I made this super delicious creamy tomato soup from scratch and had never made it before, let alone had tomato soup since I was a child. There were very minimal ingredients and I could taste the hearty roasted tomatoes, but they were not one note. So even eating just a decent sized bowl of tomato soup was very enjoyable.
Dinner: I made a pretty basic salad and added some baked wild caught Alaskan salmon since that is what I made the family for dinner. I made just one small piece for myself, which was baked with just sea salt, pepper, garlic, and olive oil. Theirs was much better (I assume by the way my daughter hugged me and said, “This is the best food ever mommy.” I cannot make this up, I literally sat down to eat in tears…). But I added it to a green leaf & baby spinach base, cucumber, sunflower sprouts, avocado, and some ranch I made from a recipe in the back of the book. Now, it did not taste like the ranch I remember, so I will not call it that. But… I LOVED IT, and so did my family, including my 4-year-old! It was just raw and unsalted cashews (soaked for 4 hours in water, then drained), coconut milk, salt, pepper, celery seeds (I ran out, so I used 1/2 of what it called for, and replaced with celery salt), dried dill, garlic, lemon juice, then fresh parsley and chives just mixed in. I will likely use this dressing for the next 2-4 days of salads that I make. My fiance suggested dipping some salt & vinegar chips he has in it, so I will probably portion him out some for that.
Again, a pretty good and successful day! I will know for sure in the morning, but I am looking to start back on my working out tomorrow or Sunday after my nephew’s birthday festivities. I will say this, the more I get into this cleanse, the more I realize that I am going to adopt several of these recipes even after the cleanse has ended. They are too good not to and they are fresh and clean. I honestly may not even go back!
Well, let me not get ahead of myself. We will see how I can stay away from making bread, pizza, and my vegan heaven bars (named by my sister the first time I made them for her).
Looking forward to another good day tomorrow and will check in then!
~Mai
Today was a much better day than yesterday, thank goodness! I only had a few small stomach cramps that lasted about 15-20 minutes earlier this afternoon, which has been long gone. I did have a couple dizzy spells when I tried to get up too quickly, it was actually a good reminder that it was time to make dinner. We had a play date with the 1 other non-familial quarantine/pandemic families that have a green light to our home. My daughter had an absolute blast and she finally got a break from all the boys. She is only 1 of 2 girl cousins their age in the area, and there are only 2 more in general from both me and my fiance’s siblings. So I definitely had a busy one, but I had the energy to get through it. I am actually pretty tired right now after the day, cleaning, and working on my other projects, but it still does not hold a candle to yesterday’s fatigue. With all the hustle and bustle of a play date and the other meeting this evening, I did not get the opportunity to take pictures of my meals! But I did have the following:
Breakfast: Creamy blueberry shake. It was ok, but I definitely like all the others I made earlier this week way better. I think the cashew butter pairs very well with the cacao, hemp protein, and blueberries in addition to the kale – versus just the kale and blueberries alone. I think I will go back to the shake from yesterday, but just keep the chia seed gel from today’s recipe.
Lunch: I made a garlicky frittata, with 2 cups of kale and 2 cups of spinach, garlic, and shallots. When I have made this recipe in the past, I add vegan Parmesan cheese into it a few other seasonings, and I eat it with this awesome hot sauce. I also generally have paired it with some tater tots and whatever fruit I felt like that day. So, this was definitely a more plain version, but it was OK this time around.
Dinner: I had a pretty plain salad, one that I did not get from the book, but I ensured the elements are ones that I could have. I made my own basic tahini based dressing (sugar free stone ground mustard, organic tahini (just 2 ingredients), fresh lemon juice, organic tamari), raw unsalted pumpkin seeds, organic green leaf lettuce, 1 boiled egg, cucumber, and I know there is something else I am forgetting.
At this time, I am indeed still having urges to eat sugary foods, potatoes, making my bread and pizza, as well as cake. I really hope the urges die down fast and in a hurry! I have not noticed many positive changes to my skin, hair, nails, stomach line, and strength- but I expect those will come after another week or so, especially once I get back to my 100 squats & 100 calf raises daily along with my running regimen. What I can absolutely say is that I actually wake up these days feeling rested. Even yesterday when I was fatigued, I felt like I got enough rest… if that makes sense. Maybe it is the difference between physical and mental rest?
Cheers to another new day tomorrow and an awesome weekend planned.
~Mai
Whew, today was an entire day! I woke up feeling so lethargic & flat out just dog tired. Even after I had my shake, it took a little while for me to actually snap to and get a bit of energy. It was something I expected as almost every time I do a cleanse or fast of some sort, Day.3 is the WORST! I struggled with her homeschooling, struggled with doing too much activity, and even decided to take a few days from my daily 100 squats and 100 calf raises for September’s challenge. I even dozed off for about 15 minutes while my daughter slept, so it gave me a small dose of punch to last the rest of the day.
The beautiful thing was, all the food was good, I had leftover soup from yesterday, and I made the same salad again for simplicity. Bonus is that I can ensure that I actually used up the herbs before they go bad! I also got a mini break this evening when my daughter’s cousin came over for a few and they played together so I could take a small mental break. All in all, a successful day of cleansing this jelly belly. Just like the day went, this post is simple to conserve energy & I will check-in tomorrow.
I would say that today was a relatively good day, for a Day.2 of a cleanse! I had to get groceries this morning and hit a couple stores for some homeschooling supplies, so I did not get anything in my stomach until noon. Not the wisest choice after running around all morning for supplies, food, and a 4-year-old.
But I MADE IT THROUGH! And I am actually a bit too energized now, after midnight.
The meals today were actually really good and I am happy to add three new very good receipts to my repertoire. Honestly, that salad was so much better than I imagined. I think I am going to have it a couple more times this week, especially since I purchased a bunch of fresh herbs for it.
Breakfast: Chocolate Mint Shake (with mint chlorophyll and hemp protein powder).
Lunch: Curry fish soup (with Cod, leeks, and fennel).
Dinner: Amazing Green Herb salad (with olives, parsley, and dill).
I am feeling really good right now, and looking forward to a less hectic start tomorrow!
~Mai
Whew, today was a day for the books! Day after birthday party, starting cleanse & homeschooling on same day, as well as keeping up with my current month’s challenge (100 squats and 100 calf raises daily). But, happy to say I made it through!
There were a few hiccups early on due to me waking up late with a stomach ache and having no idea exactly what I was going to be eating today, but I survived and figured it out.
The cleanse I am doing this time around, I had not done before today. This is from a book I previously read and determined that I was absolutely going to try this. It is from the “Clean Gut” book written by Dr. Junger. Without going into too much of my PHI, several of the elements discussed in the book really hit home with me and I knew if nothing else, I should give it a try. If it proves useful, I will incorporate it into my yearly fast/cleanse cycle. For the most part, my yearly cleanses are based on fasts of some sort and just cutting out one to eight things. This specific regimen not only has you cutting out most things and only having a few clean options, it provides recipes in the back (which are actually tasty). There is also a list of supplements to take, and it specifies the breakdown of which to take with what meals, what to eat for your meals, and how to come off the fast.
I do not wanna ruin the book if anyone is interested in reading (I get ABSOLUTELY NOTHING from this post in the form of monetary gain or otherwise for my doing this), I simply figured that I would share my journey as I am doing it. I have actually been recording a few times a day to capture the recipes and such, but this is not the avenue that I will be sharing that on. Possibly on my Y.ou.Tube channel – I will splice some things together to take you on my journey.
Essentially, it is a 21 day cleanse, then a week or two to introduce back certain foods slowly. Breakfast is a shake (recipes in the back of book), lunch is soup, salad, and/or entree (recipes in the back), dinner is a salad. With breakfast and lunch, there are 6 supplements to take each meal, and lunch has 2. The first thing you ingest in the morning is a cup of water with juice from half a lemon, and the last thing at night is a magnesium supplement. Basically, you are stopping your ingestion of “bad” foods and potential triggers (dairy, nuts, high starches, gluten and other comment allergens), and build your gut health back up while supporting your body with tools it needs to process everything correctly.
I had an entire situation happen with me postpartum and had 2 rounds of antibiotics to take, one to fight a bad reaction to the first one, the second one giving me SEVERE side effects. Needless to say, everything was wiped out of me, I lost about 9 pounds in two weeks (and I am already only 130 wet…) and my gut was STRIPPED of everything. I had so much (vegan) yogurt, kevitas, kombucha, sauerkraut, and kimchi, but I did not think that alone would have helped me get back to a solid level of gut normalcy. I took some probiotics for women, but I still knew this cleanse will help get me much closer to where I need to be.
Day.1 down, and I am excited to sojourn down this path to healing from the inside out.
Each of these meals were actually VERY filling honestly. The only thing I finished to completion, was the salad. I feel light, I have had a small stomach ache that persisted since I woke up (not uncommon for me), and I was a bit tired mid-day, but typing this at almost 11pm, I am suddenly full of energy. Here is to wishing for the energy boost to last through the entire process and take off even after it is done.
Something I notice about myself, I a very slow to pull the trigger. I like to marinate on things for a long time, I like to make sure all of the details are just right.
Something I notice about my daughter (and parenting in general), there really is no wiggle room for this. My daughter is at that great toddler age where her interests are vast and her attention is fleeting. You know the time where you finally get into listening to the same song 8 times a day, just created a new dance routine and all of the sudden it’s “no, no, no, no, not that one,” *face palm.*
Yes, those are the times in which we are engaged.
Well, I may have found a great way to a happy medium. She begins her more pointed homeschooling on Monday. I wrote out a very loose themed calendar, with 4 potential themes a month/a theme each week, loosely related to the time of year and the three letters of the month. I say loosely because for instance, last month we were working on her letter “K” and this month, our first focus letter is “A” and whenever I ask her to write an “A”, the page typically looks like the doodles of a white supremacist child doodling on their page during their first propaganda lesson… KKK AK KKK AK
So, I have that calendar prepped as a back up of sorts. As a lead Preschool Teacher and Kindergarten Instructor, I was required to plan the month (or at least 1-2 weeks) in advance. Sometimes it worked out perfectly, other times, a week would go by before any of the topics piqued the attention of the children. It is actually kind of counter-intuitive to what I learned about early childhood education, as we were taught to create lessons geared towards a child’s interest. How do you plan a month in advance when that age group drop best friends and favorite toys just about daily. Granted it is really not possible to do that with 12-20 three-year-old children in your class anyway, but that is another story altogether. I just know that based on how she is feeling that day, certain activities will be more favorable to her.
So, I am gathering free resources from as many different organizations and businesses as I can while this CV still has the world gripped in its net, to create her lesson plans for the future. Free scholarly articles, subscriptions, content, books, etc. I actually have more actual lesson plans/ideas for her middle school aged learning, than I do for her start on Monday.
Because she is only four, where I live she is technically starting 2 years early, so I am starting her out very slowly so we can be all the way into a groove by the time we are required to be fully immersed in the process, legally anyways.
I am excited to see how Monday’s 1.5 hours of schooling goes and where her interests and imagination takes us. These are the last days…
~Mai
I just skimmed through a few of my old blogs and it warmed my heart to review the state I was in back when I first began this blog. It is a beautiful thing when you can look back and chart your growth, current and possibly continued struggles from that point in time, but also the success.
Since that initial blog post of me introducing myself, I have basically done all those things and more. It has been quite the thing to keep positive and forward moving with everything this year has birthed. The CV, fires from the Amazon, Australia, Hawaii, and all over California. Locust plagues. A shift in the focus of sex-trafficking, the racial climate (that has been in existence since the founding colonizers took over this land, but people are just now talking about it and its real effects all of the sudden), & holding people and businesses accountable for general NGAF. Dual storms over Texas. Coin shortages. Clorox wipes being wiped off the planet during the time we all need them most. Folks grabbing up all of the toilet paper, baby wipes, bread, and pasta. Many people loosing their jobs and businesses. An election with two candidates with supporters on each side hurling insults and seeming “evidence” of the other candidate having historical ties of various “ist” and “ism” communities. This is about 1/8 of everything that has and is being disrupted right now.
I am doing the very best that I can do to stay focused and doing exactly what I need to do to stay aligned with this forward momentum. I am looking forward to birthing a few of these projects I am working on mentally & in my lab, out into the universe. One hint, several of these have to do with writing ;).
I start another cleanse next week and I look forward to continuing on into our THIRD YEAR of the CHALLENGE page’s monthly exercises. I have also added some weekly cardio, that I plan on turning up this week as well. Looking to pair a cleaning of my internal (fasting/cleanse), physical (upping the CHALLENGE ante), & mental (writing, KonMarie the home, set up home office), for maximum results in them individually, collectively and beyond.
Also, our early start home schooling! 2 years early according to the state I live in, but I think a super slow start, early, makes sense with how my child engages with her world. I am surely looking forward to more art, lesson plans, scaffolding, mini-projects, science and math.
This is reading a bit like a check list of accomplishments, current events, and current projects – but after reviewing my posts from 2 years ago, being able to look back at something like this is very heart warming. And I always, always, think about the fact – that if you do not write your own story, others will. And it is IMPOSSIBLE to write another person’s story FOR them, no matter how well or long you have know them.
Most folks in your life, you simply have a few pictures of moments you recall of them. Others that may have been in your life for longer or more deeply, they may have a commercial or two. Some more inner circle – family, loved ones, siblings, parents, spouses, may have an episode. The only person that can do justice of retelling your motion picture, with behind the scenes footage, biography accuracy, and direct quotes is you. So every word, every click, every utterance via lips or fingertip – is me documenting my journey. It is about time we all told our stories, while we are living them to maintain the accuracy and passion of it all.
So here is to an explosive month and the synergy manifested from each of my concurrent focus areas!
Success!
So far here are the totals for this month:
Squats: 95Â | Push ups / Arm Raises: 6!
*So, my fiance just told me that I have not been doing real push ups! My arms are bowed too wide & not closer to my chest.. I am stunned, because that means that I cannot do a real push up *sigh*Â
Well, here is to trying to learn the basics again. Learning something new every day.
>Respectfully submitted<<Â Â Â ~Mai
August’s Squat Challenge was a success and my booty is 1,500 squats stronger! My daughter even joined a number of days and completed over 100 squats with me on her own volition! Such a beautiful secondary gain to being active and making the effort is the spark that others are able to draw on; our children, family, and friends.
I started doing challenges earlier this year and this one I just reached out and asked a few people if they wanted to join in with me. A staggering 10 people completed the challenge with me yesterday, and as of today – the group I created to house the monthly challenges has 23 members. I am so ecstatic to have such a large group of supporters and accountability partners!
I needed to be sure that I could post daily on FB before I jumped back on here, and I think for this challenge, I will also challenge myself to be sure to post on my blog in tandem with my FB posts. Â
So cheers to another challenge… another day… another month… another opportunity to perfect myself, gain increased strength, focus on my health, and refine my level of discipline. If you decided to join in, comment and let me know how you are doing. First post tomorrow will break down the image you see below.
>Humbly & Respectfully submitted<<Â Â Â Â ~Mai
So, the squat challenge is underway, Day.11 and 550 squats down! We are doing 50 a day for 30 days and I am loving how much support there has been as well. I invited three people to do it and there are about eight doing it with me, and several people caught onto a few other people – so there is like an extended squatting network going on right now! I absolutely LOVE IT!Â
I have actually already begun thinking about out / my September challenge and about half of the current “challengers” are going to continue the journey with me. The plan is to actually add another challenge on, but continue doing the current challenge as well. This will serve as sort of a foundation so I can stay active. My goal to to maintain my level of activity and gradually build it up, as to not overwhelm myself and make it seem like it is a chore. Also, I learned from my 90-day challenge that when I do not have an active challenge going on, it is SO HARD to stay motivated, so I pretty much just halted all exercises once that concluded in April.
Anywho, I look forward to seeing the progress through these next weeks and next months really, as I add more things in.
Forever evolving.
>Humbly submitted<<Â Â ~Mai
So, I have been on a hiatus, I took some time off of social media as I do periodically and it was great while it lasted!
Now, I am back on & am jumping into another challenge & have some new recruits joining with me. I will most likely try to record and upload daily for accountability purposes & so I can look back and see my personal growth / journey.
If anyone else wants to join us, my friends, family and I will be dong 50 squats a day. Any time, and way, any method, as long as it is daily and you do at least 50. I am going to start out really simple with basic squats & do as much as I can in the a.m. before I shower & go to work, and only do what I have left over when I get back from work. Honestly, the goal is to get all 50 done at the beginning of the day.
I am definitely going to stretch tonight, make sure I am limber again. I fell ALL the way off after my last 90-day challenge and am still psychoanalyzing myself how I can be SO DISCIPLINED once whatever innate on-switch is turned on, and completely apathetic when the switch is off. Do I have to actually challenge myself, compete with myself, in order to reach my goals? Not quite sure, but I am still mulling it over to make sure I am getting the most out of this life by understanding and figuring myself out as I continue to evolve.
T-Minus 7 hours until day #1…
~Humbly submitted *Mai*
