Yoga + Dog = Upset Poodle

Music: Lana Del Ray "Born to Die"
Eating: Nothing O_O

So it's been awhile.
That's probably because I've been to ashamed to post anything.
I started so strong. Then it fell through.
But we're back on the right path!

I pretty much had a a massive relapse, eating cheesecake and ice-cream for breakfast lunch and dinner one day. Even though there was a bag of frozen tropical fruit sitting in the freezer.
It's dairy, I'm a sucker for dairy.
But there is one thing I enjoy just as much, and that's Asian cuisine. Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Thai, you name it I probably like it. Lucky me, they use a lot of vegetables in their cooking!
We have a few Asian markets here in State College, so I took a trip to one and got some daikon radishes, a head of cabbage, a kabocha pumpkin, and some konnyaku (sp?). I managed to avoid buying a bag or two of pre-made dumplings, even though they are so madly delicious. That was some serious will power right there, you have no idea.
So I spent my Monday shopping, followed by commandeering the kitchen and cooking most of this (the kobacha is still sitting in the fridge awaiting it's fate).
Courtesy of Justbento.com, I had a plethora of recipes with which to work with!
The bag of organic carrots I got three-ish weeks ago got peeled and turned into spicy sesame carrot sticks. Which even my fiancee, who doesn't care for carrots, says "They're not bad."
The radishes got boiled within an inch of their lives than paired with a miso sauce. We're taking our time eating those. So if anyone has a good recipe for daikon, feel free to share it.
Half a cabbage and a handful of raisins got stir fried and yummy-fied.
Did you know that konnyaku is good for you? Supposedly it is, but when prepared with a bit of olive oil and garlic it tastes like you're eating chicken fat. Weird, but there it is. Definitly requires something else paired with it to make it constantly edible.
So those have been in my lunch all week. However it doesn't stop me from trying to empty out all the cookies in the house when I get home. The last of the ice-cream went bye-bye last night, so now there's just koala cookies to go.

But other than the, by my terms, insanely healthy lunches I've been eating this week. Something amazing happened today. I spent twenty minutes doing yoga. YOGA! Sorry, it's just I didn't fall asleep half-way through like I've done in the past. Thank youtube for your collection of morning yoga videos. That was pretty cool though, I can just do a search and pick something out for each new day.
Although I must say, doing yoga on the floor when your dog keeps dropping their toy on you or tries to lick your face makes for a very awkward session. The worst was when doing downward dog (where you're on hands and feet and your butt is in the air) Clara, my poodle, decided to lie down half under me. Trying not squish her was a good motivator for me to hold the pose. But she wasn't so thrilled when the pose was done.

So that's where we are now. We're doing good, at the moment. I'm plotting on starting a small garden for next spring. I'm not sure if I can get a jump on it now, it's kinda late to be planting things, isn't it?

Groceries... Attempt the first

So just to recap, this blog isn't about losing weight.
It's not about how best to get the body of that Victoria Secret model who looks so cute in the pink pjs.
It's about getting a healthy lifestyle. Now if I happen to get a swimsuit model figure along the way, I'm not going to complain.

So I made a grocery list. I don't normally do this, unless company is coming and I have to whip up a culinary masterpiece. Kinda hard to make a masterpiece when all you normally have in the fridge is three bottles of iced tea and something that in a past life might've been a lemon.
But made a list I did, and the fattiest thing on there was cheese, mozzarella if you want the gritty truth. But this was flanked by such healthy things as spinach, carrots, tomatoes, an avocado (I hear they're fatty, but it's all good fat. So for taste sake, we'll be going with it.) A few packs of tortilla wraps, some turkey and fat free ham cold cuts, and shirataki mushrooms filled up the rest of my cart.
With my bundle of nutritious food, we headed for the checkout.
Then I realized yet another thing, I'm just realizing things left and right these days, eating healthy is expensive!
I suppose I should be completely honest. I did take a quick peak in the icecream isle. But I was good! I only walked out with two containers of Ben and Jerry and it was Greek yogurt to boot. That doesn't count as bad, does it?
Sixty-five dollars later I was the proud owner of four bags of groceries.
My usual sixty-five dollar purchases usually have me walking out with double this amount of bags. But I suppose that's the price we pay when we want to stay healthy.

Arriving home, and after the initial bout of dogs jumping on me in joy that I'd returned, I put the groceries away. There is just something immensely satisfying about seeing a fridge stocked with healthy foods.
But trying to find something to snack on becomes much more difficult. Which I guess is a good thing?

There has to be a start somewhere

Music: Britney Spears-Till the World Ends
Eating: S'mores Pop-tarts (last pack in the house, thank goodness)

I could waste your time telling you all about me, but I won't... to much. Let's talk about why this blog is here instead.
Last night I had a dream. I dreamt (lets pretend that's a real word) that I was going out for a run. I was wearing my cute grey and purple yoga pants, white running shoes (which I don't own a pair of), and some sort of athletic tank top (also don't own one of those). It was a lot of fun, and was exhilarating.
Then I woke up.
I remembered that last time I went "running" in the real world, and it wasn't a Nike commercial. But it did have a very profound effect on me, the dream that is. It made me think of how anything that could be termed as exercise has been non-existent in my life, on any regular basis, since high school phys. ed.  It also made me sit up and notice that my diet of cookies, pop-tarts (oh how I love thee), Velveeta cheesy skillets (yums), and ramen noodles is not the type of diet that promotes a healthy body.
I work as a pet groomer, and as many of you might not be aware, it's a physically demanding job. Dogs don't just hop into the tubs wagging their tail. You have to get them there. It's stressful, and hard work but I love it. But that doesn't mean my body loves it.

So let's take stock, no real exercise, no healthy food and a stressful job... How am I still alive?
That's what I wondered as I lay in bed this morning as the sun shined right in my eyes.

Something needed to change. As I watched my Standard Poodle Clara bounce around the apartment, I thought: how could I steal some of her energy? But since I'm not a scientist or a wizard from a book, I couldn't come up with anything that would work. 
Seeing as how that option wasn't open to me I realized the un-pleasant fact: I'd need to change my diet and have to put some sort of work-out routine into my life, or I wouldn't have much of one.

That is what this blog is about... took a long time to get to the point, yes?
It's a way for me to track the changes. I hope that someday I'll be able to say "Clara and I went for a run, and we both got tired at the same time." At which point I will realize I have reached Wonder Woman fitness level and just need to maintain that. But getting me to go for a run, willingly, is going to take a VERY long time.
So step one? Grocery list!