Are You Still a Vegetarian?

August has hit & New Year's Resolutions have been long forgotten by many. Except me. I have this pesky habit of seeing my resolutions through until the end of the year. The question "Are you still a vegetarian?" has been asked a lot in the eighth month. My answer, "Yup. But I'm not going to stay this way!"

What I've learned a lot from this journey thus far:

Lesson #1: I miss Brats
Grilling out boca burgers is just not the same. For this fact alone I do not want to keep meat out of my diet forever.

Lesson #2:  CSAs are Amazing
A CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) is offered by local farmers to the buyer for a set amount per share. We bought a half share from Tomahnous Farm in Mahomet for $200. Every Tuesday for 16 weeks I go & pick up a bag of in-season produce. Lettuce, tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes, onions, strawberries, blueberries, pears, celery, kohlrabi, okra & more. This simple addition to our household has made the vegetarian diet easy during the summer months. You can learn more about CSAs here.

Lesson #3 Traveling as a Vegetarian Can Be Difficult
This one is especially true when you go to Wisconsin every other weekend where cheese, brats & beer are the staples. Granted I can have two of those three options, but it isn't the most wholesome diet. And picking a dish off most restaurant menus is tricky. I have been learning from other vegetarian friends during the year to make this easier. Burger King has a veggie burger on their menu. Who knew?

Lesson #4 Protein Comes in More than Meat 
Nuts, peanut butter, veggies & black beans are just a few. I will admit I can tell when my diet isn't balanced more now than before taking meat out of my diet.

Lesson #5 Don't be Afraid to Try New Recipes
Even if it means you start your kitchen on fire. For real. I was trying to make Fried Okra with Crispy Parmesan Coating & the oil must have gotten too hot. I took the lid off, oxygen was added to the hot oil & suddenly there were flames! Jarrod & I both acted quickly & only ruined dinner. If you would like to try some of the new recipes I have this year check out February, March & June's recipes on jessiemariestudio.com.

Training

This year I decided to train for the Illinois Half Marathon a bit differently. I enjoy a triathlon training schedule of swim, bike, run much more than run, run, run, so I signed up for the Olympic Triathlon plan through ActiveTrainer on active.com. 

Below you will see my training calendar from last month. Anything in green I completed, orange are workouts I skipped & the faces show up when I fill out a daily questionnaire about my sleep, fatigue, stress & wellness. Notice there is always a smiley face on Saturdays. Hmmmmm. Plus, I got a heart rate monitor for Christmas so inside each day I have been keeping track of those numbers as well. All quite interesting to a health geek like myself.

The workout with the best reward is my Saturday morning Spinning class. Cadence & I head out the door at 7:30AM. At the gym Cadence heads off to the playroom & I go downstairs to sweat for an hour. Afterward we pick up some free tea - real tea for Mommy & "pink" tea (sugar) for Cadence - & head home for Second Breakfast.

Are you training for an event? What tools do you use? And how do you reward yourself?

Using Patience to Achieve Balance

Working in a deadline driven industry you would think I would be numb to anxiety by now. Not the case. Instead, the feeling of anxiety has compounded since Cadence was born. I thought I was prepared. I really did. Prepared to successfully juggle parenthood, my job, freelance work, friends, family & all the other odds & ends of life.

I read an article in the May/June 2010 Communication Arts by Wendy Richmond called "Permission to Loiter," in the article she talks about watching the ebb & flow of your life. And that when you are able to leave "white space in [your] life" new & exciting connections will appear. I want to slow down & add white space into my life. I really do.

And because I want to find white space in my life, I've recently started a daily routine of watching my creative health - recording input & output - along with my physical health - eating right, sleeping more & exercising. I have learned the two go hand in hand. I've also started planning my week out in real time rather than in pseudo time. In real time I'm more realistic about what I can accomplish in a day, rather than in pseudo time where I believe I can accomplish a week's worth of things in one day. It has taken great patience to wait for projects on my to do list to be completed. But you know, completing the project isn't the real reward - it's the journey along the way.

This post was brought to you by M. Ward's album "Hold Time."

Illinois Half Marathon

I accomplished my second half marathon last Saturday here in Champaign-Urbana. I completed the run in 2 hours & 2 minutes - 8 minutes faster than my time at the Fox Cities Half five years ago.

After the Fox Cities Half I swore I would never run those 13.1 miles ever again. You know you should never say never. The accomplishment of this race is dedicated to (blamed on) my loving husband, Jarrod. He signed me up. Listened to me whine. Pushed me to train. Listened to me complain. Found running partners for me. Watched Cadence during my long runs on Saturdays. And most of all, he believed in me.

During my training for this race I never wore a watch. My plan for race day was to finish so I could get my Saturdays back from the long annoying training runs. I started the race with a 9:33 per mile pace group since that was the time I had been doing right after Cadence was born last year. I guess that pace was a bit slow for me since at one point the friend I was running with asks, "You are working, RIGHT?"

When we hit the 10 mile mark I eagerly looked at my friend if she wanted to speed up. We had talked about this being the point that we would break away from the pace group. We only had a 5k left. She told me to go ahead. And I did. It was nice to let my legs speed up to the pace they wanted to go. When the last mile came I thought to myself "this mile is for my training. For all those missed Saturdays with Jarrod & Cadence. For all the lunch runs when I would have rather been doing something else."

My new PR just shows what someone can do with a little pressured training from a loved one. Thanks honey!