Healthy Life Lessons

I don't feel so chipper this Monday morning because the weather has been too F-ing HOT! This heat and humidity in May is not cool (no pun intended).  Fortunately, they are predicting somewhat cooler temps for this week. Anyways, on to things that do make me happy.  Here are a few of my favorite things as of late. The first is my Veggetti: Its now the 3rd...no 4th spiralizer I've bought.  The first I got on Groupon for like $10 and its not great. The second was a supposedly good one, one of the big kinds with several blades, from Loblaws and it did well for a bit but eventually my monstrously strong hands broke off all the handles. The next one was about the same price but a different design that I found on Amazon.  It turned out to be great for juicing and grating but not for spiralizing.  It doesn't secure the veggie and when you turn the crank, it just flies across the room. Fabulous. Finally, I decided, on a whim, to buy the Veggetti.  Its small, designed only

    Okay, before I start this review, let me be upfront about the fact that I didn't do my homework ahead of time so perhaps my perspective started out a bit biased due to my expectations. I was expecting to love this book and hoping it would be just the thing to share with many of my male clients. If there is one thing I have come to see with more and more clarity over time through both life, and my work as a therapist, its that conventional gender stereotypes are destructive to us all.  I used to think it was only women and gay men who suffered because of them, but really they do no one any good.  They lead to power imbalances and financial inequalities, relationship problems, violence, sexual dysfunction, shame, and stigma. I was raised to highly value gender equality and social justice but over time I have begun to see the current state of things in this area as worse than I once did.  Its not that things have necessarily gotten worse for women - although I would argue,

You have nothing to fear but fear itself ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt Yeah, so I will admit that I am not much of a risk taker.  Of the physical kind, anyways.  While I am happy to test my limits in the gym any day (I'm still feeling those deadlifts I did Sunday in my butt!), I am rather averse to most dangerous activities.  Even as a kid, risk wasn't for me.  After years of gymnastics and trampoline, I quit both when I was told I'd have to take it to the next level in terms of what I was willing to do. To be honest I could never do much more in gymnastics than walk on my hands, but I did get to the point of doing twists and front and back flips in trampoline.  But doing double flips? Nope, I was out of there. And I only down hill skied once, and that was one time too many. While I am generally not at all an overprotective parent, I do get super nervous about the girls' physical safety.  Just last week I was battling in the playground with Little A because she wanted

Yesterday Adam and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary.  Wow, that's a long time! It doesn't seem like its been that long...let alone 16 years since we met and started dating!! I consider our marriage one of my biggest achievements, if not the biggest.  Why? Because few people are lucky enough to find an amazing partner - the North American divorce rate is around 40%!  I also found him at a relatively young age, as I was 25 and he 23 (about 18 in woman years) when we met.  Nowadays a lot of folks aren't tying the knot until well into their 30s, at least not the well educated in big cities.  These are the people I usually see in my office struggling with infertility due to age.  Even sadder are the unhappily single people I see.  Don't get me wrong, I don't think I 'earned' Adam, I think I was just really lucky.  After all, a lot of it has to do with luck and chance in terms of meeting a beloved one.  But I do credit us both with growing and matu

Okay, I know for sure I have a winning recipe when its vegan and Adam loves it.  That does not happen often!  As soon as we started eating this meal, he commented several times on how good it was, and wondered if the cauliflower was actually potato.  Ha! I've been dreaming up this one in my head for a while.  BBQ is one of the big food trends here in Toronto, and being the protein lover I am, its very tempting.  The only problem is...its far from healthy! It doesn't have to be, but its mostly red meat and the sauces are generally full of sugar.  Sure, a lot of them offer pulled chicken or BBQ chicken, but the sauces are still sugary, and they are usually served with white buns and not very healthy side dishes.  So I reimagined a BBQ meal that is both vegan and low-carb.  Oh, and also sugar-free too! Real meat provides so much unctuous flavour because of the fat and the carmelization you get when you cook it.  Because I was using a vegan meat substitute ( Soy Curls , whi

  I can't tell you how many times I've thought I should write a book.  A cookbook. A novel. A diet book. A book about infertility.  But I know how much work goes into writing a book and I've never really had the guts to really try it.  However, that's just what my friend did and I want to share with you all her hard work! One of the most amazing things in my life is the incredible network of women I met through my infertility experiences.  Only a handful I have met in person, but Nicola Rinaldi, the first author of this book, is one of them! She has just published, No Period. Now What? We met up in Boston when Adam and I visited a while back.  One of her co-authors, Stephanie Buckley, I met there too!! Nicola is actually the founder of the online support network I am a part of and she is one seriously impressive woman! She has a PhD and is mom to 3 adorable boys. The book is on hypothalamic amenorrhea (HA) and may be the only book out there dedicated to this

I know, I have a bit of an apple addiction. I hoard them, I eat tons of them, I adore them, they are ranked up there as one of my favorite foods. Not all apples mind you, I am discriminating.  You can definitely keep Macintosh, Granny Smith (except I loved them during both my pregnancies), and red and yellow Delicious apples to yourself. But nothing gets me more excited than discovering something produced by Mother Nature that I haven't yet tried...in particular new varieties of apple.  So despite being very disappointment that the market where I regularly get my beloved Mutsus was out of them, I was intrigued by a basket of a variety I'd never seen or heard of before: Ligols? Definitely not locally grown, these had stickers saying they are the product of the E.U. European apples? That's unusual.  Normally our apples are either Canadian or from the U.S.  Well, I had to try these, of course. I did a little research and discovered, for the most part, they are grown in

I have been so busy trying to keep up with the book review requests I've been getting, I haven't been able to share with you all the amazing books I've been reading during my sacred book time (in bed every night before going to sleep!). But believe me, I'm still reading every night, and over the past few months I have read a slew of fantastic books.  Unfortunately, the list has gotten so long I just don't have time to you catch up. But fear not, I have two fantastic books to recommend, which just happen to be the last few I finished.   The first is Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan (I also recently read The Children Act by him which is also good).  I thought I would hate this book because it involved spy stuff and MI5.  I am not generally drawn to that kind of thing, but boy am I glad that didn't stop me from reading this one! I am not actually going to tell you much except that I adored it, and the ending had the best twist ever!!   The other one isn'

  So did you have a Mother's Day Brunch yesterday?  We didn't, because as Big A once told people when she was about 3, "We don't celebrate brunch in our home." Like it was some religious thing, ha ha! In reality, I think Adam and I look at like, "Why would we eat only 2 meals in a day, when we can have 3?" If I had to identify one thing in common most of my clients with food or weight issues have, its not eating enough quality food at breakfast.  They either don't eat at all, or they don't eat enough, or they just eat some sort of high carb item like a bagel.  The result is that at some point later in the day their body retaliates for failing to fuel it properly and they get cravings, mood and energy dips and/or extreme hunger and inevitably end up indulging in high calorie, low nutrition foods like chips, candy baked goods or chocolate.  It then becomes a vicious cycle as they end up full of shame and guilt, and wake up the next morning

  As we move into Mother's Day Weekend, if you are a mom requesting a sleep in opportunity, than this book may be for you.  The occasional sleep in can't compensate for chronic sleep deprivation and it is critical to make adequate sleep a priority.  Not just for moms, but for everyone! If you are a regular reader of this blog, than you know how important I believe sleep is.  Its equally as important to physical and mental health as proper nutrition and exercise.  As someone who spent many many years suffering from insomnia, I know this from first hand experience!!! For this reason, I was happy to agree to review Arianna Huffington's new book, The Sleep Revolution .  Ms. Huffington is founder of The Huffington Post, in case you are not aware.  I must say, given that my politics and hers differ greatly (although apparently she has moved towards the left since she was married to Michael Huffington), I am surprised by how much I liked this book.  I would not expect a co

Okay, so this is the last of the DVDs I got from Cathe. Its another good one! This one has 3 half hour workouts.  The first is 30/30 (30 seconds HiiT, 30 seconds rest), the second is 40/20, with 3 1 minute breaks, and the third is a Double Wave Pyramid (HiiT intervals increase in duration, then 1 min rest, then back to HiiT with intervals decreasing in duration). Workout 1 (30/30) I love this workout and its super tough! The warm-up is classic step, and, again, it reminds me how awesome step is.  Why its fallen out of fashion in the fitness industry I don't know, its a fabulous workout, and fun too!  Yes, if you have never done a step class, you'll have a learning curve with this, but if you really don't like it, you can always do your own warm-up and just go directly into the workout. You need the step for the whole workout, and the intervals are very challenging.  Again, if you have a home gym, buying a step is a worthwhile investment.  They are very versatile

I make myself giggle these days when I think about how much dairy I now consume. For years I had to keep it to a serious minimum due to lactose intolerance.  It went away when I was pregnant with Big A, came back with a vengeance afterwards, went away again during my pregnancy with Little A, and seems to not have returned.  Lucky me! Now I'm making up for lost time, especially when it comes to cheese.  Goat, blue, feta...you name it! I especially love cheese in a salad and this one is so awesome.  Its actually got 2 types of cheese in it: goat cheese, crumbled over top, as well as quark, in the dressing. Quark is a soft cheese that is incredibly versatile.  It has a consistency almost like cream cheese, but is very low in fat, sodium and calories and high in protein.  Yeah baby! Its great for sauces, frostings, baked goods, etc. I love the sweet and tangy flavours in this salad, and the colours are gorgeous too!  This is happy food for me, I get excited just thinking abo