Sunday, May 31, 2009

Confession Time

...because who doesn't love a good revealing discussion of personal things on a blog? I know I'm a big fan of reading about more than just food in other people's lives! Veganism is only one facet of my existence, and I want this blog to reflect my life rather than just my food, so I'm going to start talking a bit more about my quest for a healthy lifestyle, rather than just my experiments in the kitchen (believe me, there will be plenty of that too!).

Before I get into all that shenaniganifery, let me apologize to my 1 loyal reader (hey, roommate Amber!) who chastised me for my lack of updates since returning home for the summer. Sorry. It's not that I don't cook anymore, but as soon as I get home from interning (an hour and a half commute each way, don't get me started on Northern Virginia traffic) I'm exhausted and either forget entirely to photograph my latest culinary adventure or just simply don't have the patience to set up a decent shot. I just want to eat and go to bed! I've become horrifyingly lazy in these last three weeks which leads me into my newest adventure...getting healtheir!

If that seems like a fairly broad statement, well it is. Not that I'm totally unhealthy now, but believe me, I need to do a good amount of work before I'm in decent shape. See, I was never an athletic girl--I was a choir-singing, dance-team member, drama kid. And while all of those things allowed me to have a great amount of physical activity, as soon as I graduated high school a problem set in. I never learned how to "work out"...I just didn't have the discipline that someone who ran track or played soccer had to do a daily workout and frankly, I just didn't care all that much. After I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, I fell over the fine line between sickness and health and basically let myself go, until I made the transition to vegan (almost exactly a year ago!), when I started caring about what foods I put into my body. Now I try to eat healthy (most of the time) and work out sporadically (a few times a week), but I'm not pushing myself very hard. I'm not trying to work out more to lose weight, actually, I'm perfectly happy with my current weight, even though my BMI tells me I'm techincally underweight, but I don't trust a chart, I trust my doctor who tells me I normal for my height and build.

What good is an online calculator, anyway? All they do is make people obsess more about their weight and focus less on achieving what's healthy for them (sorry for the rant.) Now, my next step in this quest for self improvement is to get on a regular workout schedule...despite my hectic work schedule. I'm not starting off super-ambitious because I don't want to get burned out, but I definetly need my ass-kicked a little bit.

Who better to do that ass-kicking than miss Jillian Michaels herself? I just did the first workout of her 30-day shred, and I was definetly sweating. I am going to do the 20-minute workout each day and either a 20 minute jog or 40 minute walk, depending on how ambitious I'm feeling.

Sorry for that super long blog :) I hope everyone is enjoying this beautiful weekend weather.

PS: T-minus 15 days until I hop the pond for my study abroad trip in SCOTLAND!

~Monica

2 comments:

  1. i just want you to know that i near flipped my you know what when i saw you blog, and i know you can do what you have set out to do. yay for being healthy (now only if i could be too lol)

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  2. oh thanks girl fraaand. I hope that I'll be back up to doing food posts as well, tomorrow I'm thinking Blueberry muffins? They'll be epic.

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