Day two

After doing a light weight-training session yesterday as well as a medium-light cardio session, today I'm going even easier so that tomorrow I can start to pick up the pace a little.
I started the morning with my usual 10-15 minute yoga session before breakfast (this is something we do every day).
We went for a 2 mile walk after breakfast, and we painted all day (gotta do that, too!).
We had an early dinner and then a couple of hours later, I did a light one hour session of ashtanga-based yoga. If you've got the great fortune to have access to Steve Ross's fantastic yoga show, "Inhale", you must try it! He makes it so fun and not so serious, but you still get all the benefits.
Now, off to a good night's sleep because there's more to do tomorrow!

Easing back into regular life after the IMC

Boris and I are back from being two of the faculty members of the 2009 Illustration Master Class, a week-long intense illustration workshop put together by fellow artist and fitness enthusiast, Rebecca Guay. The IMC is a first class Happening. We all gather at Amherst College and spend a full week of 12-plus hour days (starting at 10am and going on until at least 10 pm--most people stayed until about 1 am every night, some even later), drawing, painting, critiquing, listening to lectures from top professionals in the field. It is intense and emotional and everyone who participates seems to love it!
The intensity of the experience is physically draining and it would be true craziness to just jump back into my regular exercise/fitness routine without easing back in slowly and thoughtfully, in a way that wouldn't leave me too sore to continue my workouts later in the week.
Rebecca thought it would be a good idea if I wrote a log of my daily fitness habits,
so here's what I'm doing fitness-wise today:

First thing upon getting out of bed is a short 15-minute yoga session, especially focusing on stretching the muscles along my spine. The mindful breathing that defines yoga is perfect for starting the day with a balanced state of mind, connecting body with mind.

Breakfast is next, then a short walk around the neighborhood (about a mile) just to get some daylight, fresh air, and blood flowing. Just connecting with the day.

After a cup of tea and a few e-mails, we're off to the gym. First today, we do 30 minutes of cardio exercise. Boris likes the stationary bikes and elliptical machines today, I choose a nice, easy run on the treadmill. I start off with a minute or two of walking, then get to an easy pace. But after turning on my ipod, I start to go a little faster and, before I know it, I'm kind of flying along with The Clash. Oh well, so much for easing in. Whatever! It was a great run and I got rid of the cobwebs in my muscles.

After cardio, we do weight-lifting. On a day like this, I just want to hit every muscle group lightly and keep moving constantly. Fortunately, the gym is pretty empty today, so I can pick whatever I want to do. It went like this (one set each exercise, all sets are for 15 reps, light to medium weight, no more than 30 seconds rest in between sets):
Leg extensions (quads)
Lateral pulldowns (lats, biceps)
Seated rows (lats, biceps, and full back)
Deadlifts with dumbbells (full body, emphasis on legs)
Lunges with resting leg on the exercise ball (legs, balance, core)
Shoulder presses with dumbbells (shoulders)
Upright rows (shoulders, biceps)
Hyperextensions (lower back, core, butt)
Bench press (chest, shoulders)
Bicep curls (biceps)
Kneeling crunches with weight (core)
Regular lunges (legs, butt)
Pushups (chest, core, quads)

So the idea here is to make the blood jump from upper body to lower body, back and forth, sideways, all over the place. Move fast, thinking of what you're going to do next while you're in the middle of an exercise. If someone takes the machine or station you had your eye on, forget it and immediately pick something else. This is a good idea if you're new to weights or, as in my case, coming back from a week or more of rest from the gym. You won't build a lot of muscle if you do this consistently, but if you're just looking for general fitness and conditioning, it's a great way to go.

Around 3pm I do a 15 minute meditation, focusing on my breath, just keeping my head screwed on--not too tight and not too loose!

After dinner, we go for another walk, this time about 2 miles. This keeps your metabolism up while letting your stress from the day out.

That's about it for today. Good night!

Cool Mind Trick From Another Dimension

The next time you find yourself in a situation that you feel is less than your favorite thing (let’s say, doing any kind of paperwork, a boring meeting, waiting in slow traffic, things like that), pretend that you are an alien being who exists in some other dimension where your reality is entirely different from ours here on Earth. So now, you, the alien, are in your own dimension and you’ve gone to an amusement park where one of the rides is that you get to pop into the body of some random person on Earth and experience whatever situation they are in for 15 minutes. And here you are! Suddenly, you become aware of your new living, human body (in the other dimension, you only exist as a bunch of electrons or something) and all the cool things it can do. All the things around you would be so amazing and new. Even filling out tax forms would be such a thrill! I know you’re probably thinking, “It would have been better to pop into a different person for my 15 minutes”, but you wouldn’t think that way because you wouldn’t be comparing it to another experience.

This is something I like to do just for fun sometimes when I want to taste a different reality, but I was reminded of it the other day when Boris and I visited with our friend and fellow illustrator, Dan Dos Santos, his wife Cristina, and their two sons, Uno and Kai. Uno is about 2 and a half, and he got the most amazing happiness from helping Dan measure cups of water to make rice. For him, this was a great adventure, filled with risk and reward. That’s the kind of other-dimensional thinking that can make a person’s life so much more fun! It’s not the task you have to do, it’s how you’re thinking about it.

Whatever is going on, just think of how rare it is that you would have a chance at this very moment!

Stevia Experiments

Stevia is a South American herb with a sweetness that’s 300 times greater than sugar. Since Boris is from South America, it was no surprise to me that stevia comes from his homeland—being the sweet guy that he is and all! He’s waaay more than 300 times sugar’s sweetness! Anyway, I’ve been intrigued by stevia for some time now because I’ve read that it’s actually good for you. As hard as it is to believe, stevia actually helps stabilize blood sugar levels. This is amazing considering the terrible things sugar does to our blood sugar balance. So I tried a few products (mostly protein powders and drink powders) that were sweetened with stevia and didn’t like the taste. The best way I could describe it was like electric licorice. But, since I don’t give up easily, I thought I’d get my own stevia and see if I could make it work for me.
I bought a bottle of pure stevia extract called SweetLeaf Stevia Extract made by Wisdom Brands, about .9 oz for about $10. After realizing how little you use in recipes, I figure it will last me a couple of years.
There was another brand that looked like it had way more in the bottle (about 4 oz.) and cost about the same, but after looking closer at the ingredients (Boris’ suggestion), I realized that they had used a filler to pump it up. I thought that if I want to investigate this stuff, I need it to be pure.
After a couple of quick experiments, I came to realize that the trick to using it is not to try for an end product that is super sweet. Just use enough to bring out a sweet taste that balances with the other flavors. The usual substitution with sugar is 1 cup of sugar equals 1 teaspoon of stevia, but I would recommend that you use maybe 1/3 or ½ of a teaspoon of stevia per cup of sugar instead. That means that if you’re putting it in your tea or coffee, you would just put the slightest dusting on a spoon.I made a small batch of oatmeal cookies and some coconut tofu pudding and they were great! I tried another thing that was really crazy that I won’t tell you all the details about, but it involved frozen celery and a blender and it was horrible (although Boris claims he liked it)! So here are the two good recipes I’ve made so far:





Sugar Free Oatmeal Cookies 10 cookies
¼ cup brown rice flour
¼ cup barley flour
1 cup rolled oats
Pinch salt
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground cardamom
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup walnuts
1 ½ Tablespoons flax seeds, ground
¼ teaspoon stevia extract
Optional: ½ cup chocolate chips
2 Tablespoons canola oil
½ cup vanilla almond, soy, or rice milk
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray a cookie sheet with Pam or other spray oil.
Mix all ingredients except oil and milk. Stir in oil and milk. Spoon onto oiled
cookie sheet. Bake 15 to 18 minutes until lightly browned around edges.

Coconut Tofu Pudding Serves 4
12.3 oz. box Mori-Nu Silken Tofu, Firm
½ cup unsweetened shredded coconut
¾ cup unsweetened vanilla almond, soy, or rice milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 teaspoon stevia extract

Put all ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth and creamy. Use more or less
almond, soy, or rice milk to get it to the thickness you want. Adjust stevia amount to your
taste. Refrigerate for a few hours before serving. It will thicken a little more in the
refrigerator and the flavors will blend and mellow.
This is great spooned over bananas or other fruit.

Sweetness!

I seriously love sweets but, unfortunately, I get addicted to them very easily. If I have dessert with sugar more than a couple of days in a row, I’m hooked. It only takes me a couple of days without it to unhook again, but during those days, I’m totally fixated on Kentucky Derby Pie and Raspberry Linzer Tarts. I don’t use the word “addicted” lightly because that’s exactly what happens. The fact that table sugar is so refined makes it into an actual drug that brings a response to a person’s brain chemistry similar to an opiate drug.
Speaking of refined, two other sweeteners come to mind that should be discussed. Splenda (or sucralose) is a non-caloric sweetener that is derived from sugar—they’ve replaced 3 hydrogen-oxygen molecules in the sugar with 3 chlorine molecules. According to a Duke University study, using sucralose causes the beneficial bacteria in our intestines to be diminished greatly, which is a very bad thing. Our intestinal bacteria is an extremely important part of our immune system, protecting us from all kinds of infections as well as cancer. It’s understandable that Whole Foods is refusing to carry products that contain sucralose. Good one, Whole Foods!
Another sweetener that goes on the Really Bad List is high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). This is possibly one of the most destructive “foods” introduced into the system and is likely the main cause of our current obesity epidemic. When you ingest this crazy stuff, it goes directly to your liver and immediately turns into fat. For real. It also increases ghrelin (a hormone your body produces that creates feelings of hunger) and decreases leptin (a hormone that your body produces when you eat food that makes you feel satisfied). That’s insane! It’s like taking a drug where its sole purpose is to keep you addicted. To top it off, recent studies show that samples taken of foods with HFCS have mercury in them! Ewww! Mercury! That’s truly bad stuff.
Some sweeteners that are safe to use (they won’t cause huge spikes in blood sugar levels and they are natural) are brown rice syrup, barley malt syrup, and an herb called stevia. The best thing, though, is fruit—not juice, not fruit rollups, definitely not Froot Loops, just real fruit.

Here’s something for when you want a sweet/slightly salty/crunchy dessert:

Crunchy Snack

1 corn tortilla (much better for you than flour tortilla)
1 tablespoon natural, unsweetened peanut or almond butter
2 big, fat fresh strawberries, sliced

Toast the tortilla just until it’s crunchy (not brown) in a toaster oven. Let it cool until you can handle it, then spread the peanut or almond butter on top. Top with the strawberries. Please eat this over a plate or you’ll be decorating the floor with it.

Mental Programs

Wow! Amazing news about cells! I’ve been reading Candace Pert’s book, “Molecules of Emotion” and I’m starting a revolution in my mind! Did you know that each one of your cells is like a little brain that stores memories and communicates with all the other cells in your body through an intricate system of chemistry that makes the Internet look as primitive as smoke signals?

You can put this system to work for you just by knowing this—because once you know this, you’ll be communicating that knowledge to all the cells as well! That is, once you involve your conscious brain, you can think thoughts and make decisions that will affect not just your mood and energy levels, but things like chronic pain, blood pressure level, your immune system, and your overall health and well-being.

This is a huge topic with an infinite number of ways to put it to good use, but let’s start with using it to help you stay motivated to stick with a healthy lifestyle. The choices you make every minute of the day that determine what you would call your “lifestyle” have been put in place by you because of the chemicals in your brain that make you happy, your endorphins. Your response to seeing a pile of French fries vs. a clean, green salad is similar to the way the filing system in your computer works. You make associations with foods, experiences, etc. that you’ve had before and every time you have that experience and think the same thoughts, you reinforce a “default” response.

Often when people start a new fitness program or diet, unbeknownst to them, the deepest part of their mind thinks that it’s going to be a temporary situation. They haven’t yet created a new “default” response to their new choices. So how do you reprogram these default settings? First you have to very gently and very seriously ask yourself about what kind of pleasure you may be getting from your previous habits. This isn’t just the obvious stuff like, “Well, French fries are just superdelicious!” Because if you know that they’re bad for your health (and they really are!) but you continue to choose them anyway, you’re going against goals you’ve set for yourself and you’re going to end up feeling bad about that choice later. So you’ve got to really get into the deeper parts of your mind and ask why you’re not taking your new goal seriously.

Then, of course, you’ll need to create positive mental associations with the things you’ve chosen to be your new habits. For instance, while you’re eating something healthy or sticking with your plan to exercise, make a point of thinking about how happy you are to be doing something so good for yourself. Over time, the association will be automatic.

By approaching your system this way, you will develop a clear communication with your body and your subconscious mind that will become easier and easier to make use of.

Dinnertime!

No, these wolves aren't having dinner! I just took a break from working on painting these wolves to make this dinner for Boris and me.

Baked Tofu Dinner

This mixture of tastes and textures hits the perfect balance. When you eat it, you'll feel balanced, too!

1/2 cup short grain brown rice
1/2 cup hulled barley (with the bran intact)
Sprinkle of salt
1 1/2 cups water (if you're using a pressure cooker) or
2 cups water (if you're cooking grain by traditional method)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 dried shiitake mushrooms soaked in 1/2 cup hot water for about 15 minutes, sliced (save the
water you used for soaking)
1 cup fresh asparagus, cut up
1 cup fresh dark greens such as kale or collards, chopped
Sprinkle of salt and pepper
8 oz. package teriyaki or other flavor baked tofu
1/2 ripe avocado, sliced
10 cherry tomatoes, cut in half

Rinse rice/barley mixture and drain. Bring salted water to a boil, cook grain according to your preferred method.
In a skillet with a lid, saute garlic in the olive oil on medium high heat until it just starts to brown at the edges. Add vegetables and water from shiitake mushrooms. Cover skillet and let vegetables cook until tender for about 8 to 12 minutes, adding more water as necessary.
While vegetables cook, place tofu on pan sprayed with Pam or other cooking spray oil and broil until lightly browned.
Put the cooked grain on your plate, with your vegetables and tofu arranged around the sides, top with avocado and tomatoes.

Now you can eat your dinner and get back to work. Yay!