What Have You Learned?

Good morning!

Thank you so much for your wonderful comments in my 10k race recap! :)

Surprisingly, my body isn’t too sore this morning. I attribute this to the ice bath (brrr!) I had shortly after getting home, oodles of chocolate (hell yea!), stretching, and of course some healthy eats.

I ended up having a great day yesterday! I think I was running on endorphins all day long (and copious amounts of green tea!). I finally got around to designing my OSG business card. My new cards will have Glo bakery on one side and OSG on the other side. I ordered them from Print 100. I have been using Print 100 for the past year and I am super happy with their service, free shipping, turnaround (2 weeks), and quality.

For dinner, I whipped up an avocado and tomato salad with mixed greens…

and my Better than Bottled Balsamic Vinaigrette.

And for the main I tried my hand at making roasted apple and acorn squash soup. It sounded delicious and I had a CSA acorn squash to use up!

Mmmm!

Roasted Apple and Acorn Squash Soup

Adapted from B.C. Tree Fruits

Ingredients:

• 2 small apples, cored, cut into pieces
• 1 acorn squash, cut in half, seeds removed
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 clove garlic
• 4 cups vegetable broth
• salt & pepper, to taste
• Parsley, to garnish
• Few sprigs rosemary, chopped finely

Directions: See this post for directions.

It’s squash season!! :)

Mmm squash flesh. ;)

After pureeing the rest of the ingredients, I added the chopped squash and mixed:

This soup was good, but it wasn’t my absolute favourite. If I were to make this again, I would use less apple and more garlic. The apple taste was a bit too pronounced for my liking.

I really enjoyed the chunks of squash in it though. Instead of blending the entire soup, I blended everything except the squash and then I just chopped the squash and mixed it in. It had a great, chunky texture!!

I also added a bit of rosemary and that was a nice flavour in there too.

After dinner I polished off this entire box of Vosges Naga Mango (Dried Mango + sweet curry + dark chocolate). Oh my gosh was this ever delicious! Whoever thought to pair sweet curry, mango, and chocolate together is a genius!

What Have You Learned?

[image source]

Seeing as today is the first day back to school in our neck of the woods, I thought it would be a great time to reflect on what we have learned during our journey to health!

Here are some things I have learned along my journey:

• I should strive to be a Size Healthy and not a specific number
• If I honour my hunger signals and cravings, I won’t feel an urge to binge
• There is no point to compare myself with others. It is much more fun if I strive to improve based on my previous accomplishments.
• If I am not happy in my career, I will always have a big piece of my happiness missing and my heart will feel a void.
• My body is not the worthless piece of junk I thought it was, in fact, it is capable of so much more than I thought!
• Use quotes to inspire when you need motivation.
• Eating a vegan diet makes me feel at peace
• Take a chance on YOU. What have you got to lose?
• The goal weight I had set for myself previously was NOT my happy weight
• A ‘Happy Weight’ is probably not going to be the size of a magazine model for most people. Finding your happy weight may mean that you have to accept the size your body was meant to be at.
• Some days will truly suck. There is no way of avoiding this and it is totally normal. There will be days you overeat and feel crappy, fall off the exercise wagon & lose motivation, or have personal health problems to deal with. When I accepted that these experiences were part of the normal ebb and flow of life, I was able to move on quicker and not beat myself up for it.
• Sometimes chocolate is always the answer (like last night!)
• You only get one body and one life, make sure you treat it well and make it a happy one
• Recovering from years of disordered eating took much longer than I thought and is always an on-going process
• Surround yourself with POSITIVITY, good friends, and family. Read uplifting things.
• There are many potholes along the road to recovery. If you trip up, dust yourself off, put on a band-aid, and keep going FORWARD!

What have you learned along your journey to health?