Healthy Habits I've Grown On

Lately it's been on my mind that I do a number of things differently than many Americans, or maybe just to a greater extent in some cases.

On a related note, when people ask me how I stay in shape or how I'm "so skinny," I generally don't know what to say other than, "Uh, I run? And ride my bike places?" and sound thoroughly unhelpful.

Take this all with a grain of salt, because it's coming from a woman currently 15 weeks into her second pregnancy and a couple of pounds heavier than I ought to be so far.

But I thought I would try to gather a list of the things I do that seem pretty distinct from the habits of many of the people around me who seem to struggle with overall health or with weight issues.

Another disclaimer: I completely get that we're all made differently, we all have our different struggles health-wise, and I can only understand health from the posture of my own body and mind. But I hope you can find something about this list inspiring.

1. I eat eggs for breakfast almost every morning. I get the sense from others' discussions that most people eat carbs for breakfast - cereal, oatmeal, bagels. There are many things with added proteins, often in the form of soy or whey, but they're still carb-heavy granola bars or sugary shakes. Two eggs and a slice of multi-grain toast pretty well fills me up, and I don't get "snacky" again for 3 hours or so. Plus, scrambled eggs or eggs made into an omelet allows me to squeeze another serving of vegetables in - usually baby spinach. Sling it in the pan before you pour in the eggs. Add sliced garlic if you're feeling adventurous.

2. I do not steer clear of fats but I try to limit sugar. I get much more of my caloric satisfaction from fats than I do from sugars. I always cook my eggs in butter. I don't skimp on the olive oil when making pasta, etc. I have whole milk yogurt - but plain so there's no added sugar. I often use the yogurt like you'd use sour cream (and usually on my eggs . . .). I don't shy away from cheese and peanut butter. And I put heavy whipping cream in my coffee - but NEVER sugar. Like even the best of us, I can't stay away from the brownies and pop-tarts, but I don't overdo it. One pop-tart, not the whole pack. And I've been gradually decreasing the size of my ice cream bowl over the years so that now, I use a tiny cup that holds maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of a cup of ice cream, and I feel finished with ice cream when it's gone.

3. Flavor, not calories. I LOVE all foods that pack tons of flavor but don't necessarily add tons of calories. I have at least 5 different hot sauces that I'm in love with (Sriracha and Frank's Red Hot top the list), and I put pickled jalapenos on just about anything. I'm big on curries, sauces, grainy mustards, olives, and pickles of all kinds (see #5: kimchi). I reach for vividly-flavored salad dressings that don't have lots of gunk in them. I frequently make my own vinaigrettes with mustard, balsamic, lots and lots of fresh herbs (or dried, in the winter), salt and pepper, and extra virgin olive oil. I'm never shy with the spice rack. Brussels sprouts have whole mustard seed and a glaze of balsamic vinegar and brown sugar. Kale or collards are braised with several cloves of garlic and red pepper flakes. Frozen veggies get a combo of spices that mingle well with whatever we're eating - roasted cumin and smoked paprika when it's burrito night, garam masala and curry powder if we're having an Indian curry, marjoram/basil/thyme if it's italian-themed.

4. I never drink my calories. Unless you count alcohol, which I drink one serving of a couple of times a week (when I'm not pregnant, of course) and the heavy cream in my coffee, I don't drink anything with calories in it. I make a point to drink three large glasses of water before lunch and 3 or 4 more in the latter part of the day, and I have coffee twice. Again, I do have calories in my coffee - I order my cortado with half and half instead of milk, and like I said, I use heavy whipping cream in brewed coffee - but I never drink it with any syrups, sugars, etc. Never soda and not even juice because it's just straight sugar. I just can't get behind "juicing" because it gives you the direct shot of sugar without the fiber to slow down digestion enough to get the full benefit of the vitamins. No point in the calories in my book.

5. Daily probiotic foods. I make my own plain, whole milk yogurt and my own kimchi and have at least a serving of each every day. I think it helps me digest everything else and keeps me healthy and keeps my bowels happy. And happy bowels make happy people. Your gut flora can even determine your mood and stress levels. Science!

6. Veggies with every meal. I eat vegetables every time I eat. I eat vegetables first. We eat processed foods like Digorno pizzas and Marie Calendar pot pies (maybe once or twice a week), but we always add whole food to them in the form of a salad or a side of veggies. I keep frozen veggies on hand to add to those one-skillet frozen pastas (you know, the Bird's Eye ones?). I often use the fiber to help me feel full before I even start on the rest of my food. Almost every lunch I pack for work starts with a big salad - and no iceberg for me. I pick colorful lettuces and baby spinach and try to add as many different colors as I can - baby bell peppers, carrots, snap peas, mushrooms, radishes, beets - whatever I have in the veggie drawer. And I pick dressings that, again, don't skimp on fat but contain very little sugar. Did you know that small amounts of sugar hidden in savory foods can trigger our cravings for sweet foods? Agh! I frequently have a similar salad before dinner, and if I don't, I've prepared two different vegetables to have with whatever protein and starch we're serving. I try to stick to a sort of formula I've read about: half the plate should be veggies (and half of that should ideally be a leafy green or a cruciferous green veggie, like collards, kale, broccoli, and brussels sprouts) and the other half should be starch and protein. And I count things like corn, black beans, and potatoes or sweet potatoes as starches - NOT VEGETABLES. And like I said before, I try to squeeze in a serving of veggies with breakfast, too.

7. Physical activity is a way of life. I go for at least two walks a day at work. I also try to run on my lunch breaks a couple of times a week. I bike as transportation; that means that instead of sitting behind the wheel, I'm burning calories (and saving gas, and protecting the planet . . . ). When my kiddo and I are playing together, we do lots of hiking, biking, trampoline jumping, going for walks, and running around. I don't shy away from carrying him around the house, rough-housing, throwing him on the couch, crawling around on the floor with him with his trucks and cars, and so on. And I've found that I truly enjoy running, so I do it. I switch up my workouts, sometimes running slow and long and sometimes running sprints up and down the block, sometimes running on the road and sometimes only on the trail, sometimes running with epic music and sometimes hearing all the things around me, sometimes running with the dog and sometimes running while Ambrose rides his bike (or, before he learned, with him in the stroller). Even more simply, I don't ask others to do physical things in my place. I don't ask my son or husband to go get things for me. I don't ask someone to carry something for me. I step up on a ladder instead of asking someone to reach something I can't. I firmly believe that my fierce need to be independent contributes to my health.

8. I don't tell myself I can't have things. I simply tell myself to have the good things first or to somehow balance out the not-so-great things. I'll eat ice cream after dinner, but I eat salad before dinner. I'll have a pop-tart in the afternoon, but I have to go for a run sometime during the day or have my espresso black instead of with a bunch of delicious steamed half and half. I can have a snack while watching a movie, but it's not a bottomless bag of chips next to me on the couch; it's a given dose of salsa, and when that's gone, the chips get put away. There are always trade-offs for my indulgence, and I can tell by how I'm feeling if I'm letting things get out of balance. Finally, I don't overdo it. I don't eat until I feel sick. I don't need two donuts because I know I'll feel crappy afterward and one tastes just as delicious. I can keep a Nature Valley high-protein chocolate peanut bar in my desk drawer because it only has 6 grams of sugar - a Snickers has 27 (TWENTY. SEVEN.). I promise, the granola bar is actually as delicious. I always try to find the granola/protein/snack bars with at least as much protein as sugar and a decent dose of fiber. I'm also a huge fan of make-your-own snack mix, and my favorite combo is pistachios, dried cherries (vitamin A and melatonin!) and bittersweet chocolate chips.

9. I don't stress-eat. When stress is really getting to me and making me grind my teeth at night and snap at my loved ones, I reach for the things I know are helpful - in my case, getting in a long run, doing 30 minutes of yoga instead of hitting the snooze for 30 minutes (thought I do that really often, too), reading a book I love, or finding a guided meditation or guided hypnosis on youtube or iTunes to listen to before bed. That being said, I DO eat when I'm bored or as a method of procrastination. I try hard to recognize when I'm doing this and insert another activity, like a walk, writing in my journal, or reading. However, this is one of my big struggles.

10. I tend to associate with people I admire and whose habits I want to absorb. I am attracted to people who I perceive to have certain kinds of power, and I perceive good health habits to be a kind of power. My husband is very physically active, and his bicycle commuting and running are two of the big things that attracted me to him in the first place. I am blessed to have many friends and family to spend time with who encourage me to be active, eat well, and keep everything in balance. I spend more time with people who make me want to be better and less time with people who seem to bring out my less healthy habits.


Those are the things that have been occurring to me lately. I have been wanting to "publish" them in case anyone else finds them helpful. I've had the great good fortune to have been brought up with many of these habits or to have learned them from the healthy people around me. My mom made us Kool-Aid when we were kids, but she used half the sugar it called for. We weren't allowed to keep super-sugary cereals in the house but instead had multi-grain cheerios and homemade granola. Dessert was only for if you ate all your dinner, and it was in modest portions. Treats were rare and were assigned an emotional gravity, like a special family trip to TCBY after dinner or ice cream after a doctor appointment. We wouldn't just sit in front of the tv with a bowl of ice cream. We often took family walks after dinner. And I grew up hiking and biking and running and playing outside with my family and friends; tv time was usually for when it was too dark to play outside.

In short, I know I learned my habits gradually over the course of my life, and now I'm lucky to have them be intrinsic. It also helps that I LOVE vegetables and feel unhappy and out of whack if I go two meals in a row without something green. But I also firmly believe that with small and intentional changes, tackled one at a time, anyone at any stage of life can form new habits. So I hope you've found something helpful or thought-provoking in these paragraphs. Be well!

Design + Coffee = Happy Geek-Out

What follows are photos of our new coffee maker, the manual and deliming device (a simple coiled metal wire), and a box of filters. The art for the manual and filter box is some of the best product graphic design I've seen, and the coffee maker itself is so simple and effective it's been in use in diners and now homes for 50 years. This is largely why I am a designer. How I feel right now is how I want to make other people feel: communicated with in as clear a language as a handshake, by someone who cares enough to shake your hand with intention and humanity.

Estimation

Joy and Graduate Design Research

          What I talk about when I talk about this research is joy. What joy is, is times of feeling intimately connected to the world around you and the people in it. I know the solemn, intentional joy of being alone and feeling that connection with clouds and sunlight and plants and pavement, being part of all of that. But what this experience has been so full of is the distracted, unselfconscious joy of feeling connected with other people. What has happened is, I have made friends. These people who don't have houses or apartments, who I used to feel estranged from, even afraid of - I think of them when the weather is bad, and I visit to see if I can help. I dream about some of them at night. They have winked into being in the constellations of people in my life. I’ve experienced devastation with them, watching them stare around, lost, at the waste of the meager structure they had to their days. I’ve seen their ability to be human even in that situation, to be so angry and scared yet to be able to step back and say, “I don’t hold it against them; they’re just doing their job.” I don’t care who else they are, or what else they are, or whether they could find work if they tried harder, or whether they could get housing if they’d just go to a case worker. I suspend judgment during my time with them, the same way I do for other friends. I don’t listen because I have to; I want to listen. Laughing at a story they tell me, or shaking my head in disgust at the injustice they are facing, or watching the creases at the corners of their eyes as they smile, reflecting my smile. The gradual process of being accepted as someone they can talk to, someone they can trust, has thrilled me more and more and more deeply in each instance of contact. I want to be part of their meetings, their informal gatherings. I am hurt if I think I have hurt them. I don’t romanticize our relationship or think that I mean the world to them, but I do not take for granted the glory of their recognition. Taking the time to cultivate a relationship so that when you see someone, you smile at each other and greet each other happily, is the most joyous thing we can do with our time. It is not the most productive thing; productivity is also part of this but belongs to another realm. It is not the most economical thing or the most helpful thing (though some may argue that it is). But connecting and being joyful in the bond is the most important thing for a healthy human being to have, of this I am sure. What they have given me over the course of these months of work is not something I can talk about academically. I hope for them. I trust them. They have changed me so. The feeling I have now approaching a campsite is as night is to day with the feeling I had approaching the first time. Hesitation is now confidence. Fear is now excitement. Uncertainty is now command. I know what to say, how to look them in the face and not be so aware of our relative positions in life. If I drive up in my car and they sit on a railroad tie with all their belongings in a backpack beside them, it doesn’t matter because our relative positions are pretend, formed by stories we tell about the value of money and of objects. We are adjacent and joined by the only position that is real between two humans: two simultaneously beating hearts, a whole history of experiences that we begin sharing the moment our brains look out through our eyes, meeting. I read once that you know everything you need to know about a person the first moment you look into their eyes, if you are paying attention. It’s true, because all you need to know about them is that they are a person and all they need to know about you is that you are one. We know exactly how to acknowledge the light, the soul, whatever you would like to call it, that shines back at us. We pretend not to know in our fear and doubt. Once we have practiced and learned to let the fear and doubt go, all that is left is the joyfulness of transfer, of empathy. I can see your emotions in your eyes. I care about the state of your mind. Once that is in place, everything else falls easily into a natural rhythm and formation. Then if your friend says, “Can I have $1.50?” and you say, “Yes,” and hand them two dollars because you don’t have coins and they say, “Make it three,” and you say, “No,” and they say, “Okay,” neither of you have lost anything in the exchange. You have both been honest about what you need and what you are willing. It is as simple as meeting at a coffee shop with an old friend. You might both offer to pay. One of you might offer first and insist. One of you might find yourself short and ask for a favor. We take these small moments in stride because we trust ourselves and we trust our friends. You can understand and use the trust you have in people who don’t have a house in the same ways. You are unafraid to say things like, “You need to leave me alone now,” or “I have to leave.” You are unafraid to admit that you have no cash, and you are unafraid to admit that you do but you need it for something later. You are unafraid to say, “I can’t help you with that,” or “I think I know someone who could help you out.” You’re unafraid to hug them or cry or apologize or turn away or do any of the other things people do with one another, because you have become unafraid of your own vulnerability around them – which is really what we’re all afraid of. The precariousness of our own position. That their homelessness will negate the legitimacy of our own standing. It doesn’t have to. You can have your own life and love it and not give it all away. They understand. They really do. And that is magic.

The best thing we can do for each other is cry together

On Monday, midmorning, in a cold wind, I visited the camping grounds under I40 as I frequently do, to say hello to the people living there. This day I was investigating who was camping and whether they had a need for firewood. A friend had offered some extra she had from a felled tree in her backyard. I approached a group of five who stood and sat around a green metal barrel with a fire in it. I hadn't met any of them, so we introduced ourselves with smiles. After confirming they yes, please, definitely needed firewood, the man closest to me offered some labor and then volunteered some personal information about his recent experience. He was speaking of extremely difficult things - loss of a loved one, violence, prison - but he spoke with an uplifted chin and the unmistakable air of a person with hope and a plan. As he talked and I listened, the cold wind blowing into my face began to make my eyes water. I felt one tear then another trickle from the corners of my eyes, and, embarrassed, I tried to wipe them away without his notice - but after a few more moments his eyes began to water too. Amazement bloomed in my chest as more tears flowed down my face and then two spilled from his eyes. Neither of us acknowledged it with our words, but as he talked, we stared into each other's faces and cried with stillness and silence. Then my tears were no longer from cold but with a concentration of raw empathy, the kind of thing we don't have to force or be taught. We see each other's real-ness and acknowledge it in each other. Nobody said, "I'm sorry." Nobody said, "I feel pain." But there was pain, and there was sorrow, and there was the knowing that all of that was going to be fine. We smiled at each other with the saline drying on our cheeks. I said goodbye and walked to my car, new.

A Thoughtlet [or a tiny thought]

The other day I saw a train going the opposite direction trains usually go on this particular track. Disoriented, my first thought was, "Why is the train going backward?"
It's like that. When I see something happening in a way it doesn't "normally," meaning in my familiar experience, I probably tend to assume it's wrong or backward. But things go different ways. People know where they're going. They just have a different aim in mind than I can see.

Happy Birthday Ambrose!

Happy Birthday Ambrose!

My foray into fondant; I made it from a recipe I got here:

http://www.wilton.com/recipe/Rolled-Marshmallow-Fondant

 Because it is such a great book (and Ambrose likes to poke his fingers through the holes in the fruits) and because when Ambrose was wigglin' round inside me, he made me a Very Hungry Caterpillar and now he is a Very Hungry Caterpillar too, I decided to theme the party on that marvelous work by Eric Carle.

On Saturday, he at through one piece of chocolate cake, one ice cream cone, one pickle . . . 

The Beautiful Butterfly as a clothespin-tissue paper refrigerator magnet.  Party favors for the little kids and grown-ups.  (As a side note, my unbelievable husband stayed up with me till one in the morning watercolor-ing all those wings.  I do not deserve this man.)

Party time!  Nice day on the patio.

Babies everywhere!  The other two are the children of two of the other girls in my Centering Pregnancy group at the Lisa Ross Birth and Women's Center.

I mean, really?  Can he get any cuter?

Give.  Me.  That.

Om-nom-nom-nom!

That's avocado frosting and banana oat cake.  Recipes here:  http://allrecipes.com/recipe/avocado-icing/  http://www.homemade-baby-food-recipes.com/healthy-first-birthday-cake-recipes.html

That's delicious.

 I made "hand kites" from napkin rings varnished with olive oil and beeswax.  I got the idea on etsy.com and the process from another blog: http://gsfool.blogspot.com/2011/08/ribbon-hand-kite-tutorial.html

Loves playing with his Grandpa!  I think it was a successful party.  We also passed around a book for everyone to write to Ambrose about his first year.  And I'm already excited about what I will do next year!  What an awesome day!