Mealtime Inspirations

I decided that while my son is staying with me for a while, he has to cook at least one dinner a week-more if he feels the desire. He didn’t object. One thing he learned though was that because I don’t use processed foods, he had to be a little more creative. I have more than 100 cookbooks [yes, I'm one of those, but I use them all], he used the internet instead though; I was ok with that-I do it too. Last night was his night and it turned out pretty good.

He made a sausage, potato, sauerkraut skillet with onions, garlic and carrots. It was fast and simple and filled our bellies perfectly. If you want to give it a try, all you need to do is slice and brown smoked sausage or your favorite kind of sausage, or use chicken or for meatless use beans in place of the meat. Add diced potatoes and stir fry until golden, add sliced carrots, onions and chopped garlic and 1 cup of broth-simmer until carrots are tender. Enjoy!

Hope and Inspiration

Hope in my opinion is when you make a heartfelt decision to make changes, personal changes in this case, and expect positive results no matter what the price. Hope is when you don’t give up. Hope is keeping your chin up and always having a foot forward despite the speed bumps and road blocks that you may encounter.

Inspiration-the energy you feel when you decide on something, read something, hear something or see something. Inspiration brings energy that catapults you toward something you’ve dreamed about doing.

My hope is to inspire you to reach out toward your deepest, innermost goals and dreams.
With a little guidance you can begin your journey to your own personal hopes and inspirations

Crawling Under the Table

Well, I didn’t necessarily crawl under the table but I feel like sometimes that’s where I am. For the most part, for the past week plus I’ve done pretty well food-wise, I haven’t snacked at night or much during the day either; but I don’t feel like I’ve made a lot of progress. Progress though isn’t only a physical aspect, progress comes in many forms and one form of progress I have made is no nighttime snacking. It may not feel like much of a feat today but as time passes and days and weeks go by it makes a difference-so that in itself is progress.

I’ve eaten breakfast every morning and it has felt good. I’ve eaten a healthy lunch for this entire week of homemade chicken soup, loaded with a variety of vegetables- that helped me eat less at dinner time and I didn’t feel the need to snack while watching TV unwinding for the night.

Weight loss isn’t easy but it doesn’t have to be difficult either; all you need is true commitment-you’ve got to truly want it. When you get honest with yourself and decide that you’re ready to make changes, weight loss will follow. Don’t look for a weight loss plan that will melt pounds away immediately because they’re not usually a healthy plan. Learning how and what to eat for you personally is what will lead you to long lasting changes and goal success.

Want to know what will work for you or how to get started? Ask me! Dawn@InitiateWellness.com
Here’s to our good health!

Daily Grind

I posted an article about the daily grind in my business blog, it’s more about how to get out of the feeling of being in the daily grind. Today though, due to a few reasons that I’m aware of, I feel in that exact fog.

Things on my mind right now are in this order:
1- Life is often too short
2- It’s up to me to do everything I can to keep my body healthy
3- It’s up to me to follow my dream, my passion, and my wishes because no one will hand them to me-never mind a silver platter!
4- Help as many people as you can with whatever your strengths are
5- Love Deeply

I want to be here for a long time, a very long time. While I’m here I want to live, love and laugh. I want to be helpful in every way I can and I want to inspire as many people as I come in contact with.
What are your aspirations? What do you hold close as your deep passion?

What Does Food Mean to You?

Food means something different for each of us. For me it means satisfaction, indulgence, self-complimentary ( I think I’m a pretty good cook), savory as in savoring the positive moments in life because I had many negative moments throughout my life, gorging on second helpings because of past limitations, my excuse for eating more than I need is often ‘because it tastes good’ the real reason? I’m not quite sure yet but I plan to work it out, and I”m sure if I keep thinking about it I will come up with more examples of what food means to me. The answers I gave so far are almost certainly a result of my past; food becomes comfort, memorable, self-sabotage, it’s social, it’s personal, it’s public, it pleases, it displeases, it even simply fuels our body but it’s rare that we think exactly that when we are eating.

We relate food to who we are, who we were and who we want to be. We use food as a tool to bury feelings, to celebrate feelings and to blame our shortcomings on. We often rate ourselves by our commitment to what we eat, how we eat, why we eat and we let food define us.

Once we can understand and accept the reasons we treat food the way we do, once we really get to the bottom of our relationship with food we can develop a new relationship with food; we can let food be our friend instead of our enemy. Food feeds our cells, it fuels our body giving us energy, balancing our moods, our blood levels, sleep, making our health the best it can be given that we eat the right foods and the proper amounts on a regular basis. As Hippocrates said many years ago, “Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food”.

The next time you feel particularly connected to a certain food in a sort of disconnected way, stop yourself, go deep inside and try to relate how the particular food makes you feel when you eat it. There’s no right nor wrong about it, it just is and that’s okay. Slowly you will be able to better control the way you relate to and treat food.

Self control is easier when your mind and body is busy...

I was deep into my work today and didn’t think about food until my stomach growled ‘feed me’. Hunger felt good. We too often eat for several reasons from it’s breakfast, lunch or dinner time-even though we ate a big snack 10 minutes ago or because we’re meeting friends and that always involves food; a restaurant or at someone’s home, because we’re bored, watching TV, and many more so-called reasons.

I skipped breakfast, bad practice, because I was running a little close for work so decided I’d eat after my first client. Immediately after the client I began more work putting food off again until the growling began. I made a sandwich of ham and loaded it with spinach. That was my lunch which held me surprisingly until dinner. Remember, my mind was pre-occupied with work all day and it was a welcomed relief.

3:30 PM came around and I knew I needed to make a dinner plan. I rummaged through the refrigerator, reached for organic stewing beef I had, browned it in a large Dutch oven, added a dark locally brewed beer and some Italian herbs and simmered it for a few hours. It smelled delicious and warming. About 1/2 hour before serving I added potato chunks, carrots, celery, onion, 6 cloves of garlic, and simmered until the potatoes and carrots were tender; I tossed in a half bag of peas, warmed them and we enjoyed a warming, healthy hearty meal. The beef was fall apart tender and the entire meal was fast and simple to put together; I could continue working while it simmered gently.

Another day comes to a close with food choices under control and satisfaction with myself. I look forward to tomorrow, I look forward to inspiring you to follow your dreams, your goals and intentions and find great success and self-satisfaction too!

A New Week _ My New Attitude

After a busy weekend away I’m back and ready to go; as a bonus, I gained an hour if only for a day!
I took time to catch up on chores and writing for my business today but I didn’t let my intentions get lost in the shuffle. I had a healthy breakfast of 2 eggs and pumpernickel toast; I could have done without the toast but I didn’t. I ate a small lunch-a sandwich, that means 2 more slices of bread and I drank a good amount of water all day. You’re waiting for my dinner confessions right? Ah well, nothing bad there, I stuffed boneless chicken breasts with chopped parsley, chopped dried apricots and crumbled Brie, baked them with potatoes and steamed Brussels sprouts. I had one small portion of all except the sprouts.

I’m planning on having a simple chicken veggie soup for lunch and with dinner for the rest of the week. I’m also planning on doing a detox as promised to you and myself; join me or ask how you can do a simple detox, I can guide you.
Smile, share some love!

Stuck in a Mind-Body Discnnection

In the recent few weeks I’ve sort of disconnected my mind and body from each other-yogis understand what this means; in general it means that your mind isn’t relating with your body as it would when you’re fully balanced. When your mind and body are in sync, it’s a pretty great feeling.
Today is Friday. This weekend I will be busy helping family so meals and self-care will not be in the forefront [meals and food in general not consuming my thoughts might be a good thing]. Sometimes distractions are useful as I mentioned in my last post! While busy, I’ll do my best at making healthy choices and portion control and I will absolutely focus on drinking lots of water as my one healthy constant.

Starting on Monday I’m going to buckle down and refocus my work, my mind-body connection and change my food habits for the better. I’ll make an outline for daily do’s and don’ts, food lists, exercise, yoga and meditation. Meditation is a powerful tool and easy to learn-the key is to keep doing it.

I’ll check in during the weekend when I can and in the mean time, consider what changes you want to make in your life and let’s create change together!