Wow - What Real Women Look Like

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Huge thanks to POMATOJUICE for mentioning this site:

www.mybodygallery.com/

Ever see something somewhat randomly that just drops you in your tracks and makes you think ... really think ... about something? This is one of those. You can plug in a height and weight and see what real women look like.

First I plugged in my current stats and saw this group of pretty attractive people. First thought: Obviously these women are lying about their weight. NO WAY she weighs the same as me!

Second thought: Holy crap. This is exactly the point of this site. We are so hard on ourselves! We (or at least I) focus on the cellulite, the 'huge' thighs, the parts we don't like. But when you see a picture of someone else, you skip all that. You see a beautiful, healthy person.

This is from the website. No idea on its accuracy, but it's totally believable:

"A recent study found that 95% of non-eating disordered women overestimate the size of their hips by 16% and their waists by 25%, yet the same women were able to correctly estimate the width of a box."

That is scary. Why are we so hard on ourselves? I'm going to go home and upload my own photos. I love this project, and I love the realization I just had.

There's a good chance I will never truly love my body. But I can at least have a healthy respect for it and let go of my mental image of this ginormous obese slob. I'm not.

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Kitchen Staples

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

I'm stealing this idea from someone who did this recently, who I think stole it from somewhere else, but I like the idea. What are the things you pretty much ALWAYS have in your kitchen? Here's my list:

Avocados
Cherry Tomatoes
Canned Black Beans
Bananas
Hemp Bread
Almond Butter
Broccoli
Hummus
Tortillas/Pitas
Tofu
Whole Wheat Pasta
Frozen Falafels


I should probably also mention:
Garlic
Onions/Shallots
Salt & Pepper
Olive Oil

Of course there's other stuff in the kitchen, but those are the must haves on every grocery list I ever make.

Yesterday's food:

Breakfast: More fruit! Banana, cantaloupe, grapes. The almonds and pecans I ate over the course of the day.


Morning Snack: Hummus and the last three pita chips.


Lunch: Not pictured - black beans, corn, tomatoes, and avocado

Dinner: More Kitchen Sink Pasta, of course!


I also polished off the rest of the Annie's chocolate bunnies, but scarfed them down before I remembered to take a picture.

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Almost Human Again

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Now that it's TUESDAY, I'm finally starting to feel like a normal human being again after Saturday's nonsense playing in the trees. I tell you, it's been a very long time since I've been this sore! Part of me feels like a total badass, but the other part of me feels like a total fool for still being sore. :) I want to go back and see if it gets any easier, but at $50/visit I know I won't be going all that regularly. I will go again this summer though for sure.

Anyway, yesterday's food was OK.

Breakfast: More fruit, of course. Cantaloupe and the last delicious mango.


Mid-morning snack: Yogurt. This stuff is like strawberry superglue. SO thick. Not particularly fond of it. I'll go back to my regular Whole Soy yogurt just as soon as they have it in stock again.


Lunch: More Kitchen Sink Pasta


Afternoon Snack: I couldn't resist these.


Dinner: Miso soup and two avocado rolls. This is a photo randomly plucked off the Internet and not my actual meal.

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Food!

Monday, June 17, 2013

I've been on a fruit bender lately. I just can't get enough! I have traditionally sucked at choosing mangos but somehow I managed to pick two of the most perfect mangos of all time at the store.

So here's Friday:

Fruit - nectarine, banana, and mango #1:


And nuts:


Lunch was half devoured before I took a picture, but it was a falafel and hummus wrap and grapes:


Dinner was pita chips and tabbouleh. It was supposed to also be the hippie loaf I made but I'm having a hard time getting through it. I also made balsamic roasted tofu and had two slices of that, but it isn't pictured.


I already discussed Saturday's unphotographed food in my last post.

Yesterday was more unphotographed fruit and nuts for breakfast, the remainder of the pita chips and tabbouleh for lunch, and then I made this monstrous vat of what I lovingly call kitchen sink pasta. I went to the farmer's market and the grocery store, so this concoction includes:

Shallots
Garlic
Mushrooms
Yellow Squash
Zucchini
Broccoli
Snow Peas
Cherry Tomatoes
Balsamic Roasted Tofu
Olive Oil
Whole Wheat Rigatoni
Basil
Nutritional Yeast

Here's the whole pan, AFTER taking out a whole bowl full. This'll feed me all week. Get used to seeing this picture.



I also found fresh lychees at the grocery store! I was super excited even though they're outrageously expensive. I picked up about 12 of them and ate 6 of them for my dessert. They're SO good!


I know it's against my hippie local sustainable ways to get these little suckers all the way from china but OMG SO GOOD. I became obsessed with these when I lived in Singapore as a kid and we just don't get them on the east coast of the US very often so I had to indulge.

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I'm Part Monkey!

Sunday, June 16, 2013

I didn't take any pictures of my food yesterday. I am really bad at this on weekends and off-schedule days, it seems. I had fruit and nuts for breakfast, then rice and beans and maduros at a Cuban place for lunch, then a thai chopped chicken salad without the chicken ... and french fries for dinner. And three ciders.

But the fun part of the day! I went zipping through the trees on this ropes/obstacle course with zip lines. SO FUN!

Here's a video of someone doing one of the courses we did, but far better and more efficiently than I did it. :)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=blqi4_hNZEA

That ladder at about 41 seconds into the video nearly killed me! I don't have much upper body strength and that ladder is all upper body because you're going down it and it's swinging around like a mofo. My friend actually fell twice trying to get down it (the safety harnesses work!) and she got pretty banged up in the process. I was really struggling and with about two rungs to go I slipped, too. However, I landed with a thud on the platform and was able to move on like it never happend. My friend thought I jumped down, so I figure that means it was totally on purpose. :)

I don't know how to classify that as exercise on SP, but let me assure you it was 3 hours of INTENSE strength training! My shoulders and arms are pretty sore today, and some of the obstacles on the first course we did were huuuuge steps for my little legs so I did about a hundred lunges too.

Here's a picture of us before we started ... when we were still smiling and acting stupid.



And here's a picture of the quite impressive set of bruises I have on one arm. Though, to be honest, the last (first) time I went there last year I was completely covered in bruises, this is a significant step up!



Last time we did two green courses and this time we gradated to a blue course, which really was significantly harder. We did the easier of the two blues and while it was definitely a major challenge WE DID IT. Now I want to tackle the other one ... though maybe I'll start with a less challenging green one as a warmup. We picked the hardest and longest green course as our starter, which was probably a mistake in hindsight.

So fun and now I want to go back! Well, in a few days when my arms aren't screaming at me anymore.

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