I'm not sure if this post belongs on Becoming Me or Reason in the Rhyme.
It's about lifestyle changes, which puts it here, but it's also about wrestling with what I think, which would put it over there. Maybe I'll post it in both places.
It is Day 9 of Lent. It is also Day 19 of an unrelated health "challenge" I made up for myself. Present Me is now suffering at the hands of overachieving, all-or-nothing Past Me. I'm beginning to be slightly miserable. I will either break soon, or have a breakthrough soon. Here's what's going on.
What I Gave Up for My Own Eight-Week Challenge:
- "white" grain
- candy
- dessert
- unnecessary/excessive processed food
- eating directly from containers
Now, true to my tattoo, this challenge is riddled with asterisks. These are general principles I'm sticking to as much as I can. Will I have an Appalachian Cookie Company cookie when Gabe and I go to Boone for the weekend? Absolutely. Have I been eating white rice? Yes. These are "more like guidelines than actual rules," but I've been sticking to them very well on the whole and I'm proud of myself. It is getting easier and easier.
What I've Given Up for Lent:
- Facebook
- Instagram
- YouTube
- non-Christian music
- non-Christian podcasts
- solo Netflixing
- Poshmark/Mercari
The big asterisk to this list is different: In no way do I think these things are "bad" or "wrong" or "sinful." I don't intend to give these things up for life, and I don't think that I should. I have just been feeling called for a long time to strip my life of distractions so that I can get my focus back on my relationship with God.
I am one of the most distracted people I know. The mental habit of being distracted has started to feel almost like an addiction. I can't stop being distracted. If I'm watching TV, I'm also on Facebook. If I'm making dinner, I'm also listening to a podcast. If I'm having my quiet time, I'm also making a to-do list on my phone. If I'm in a meeting, I'm also sending an email.
It's not just that I like to multitask. I do, but lately the feeling has been more akin to an addiction, a compulsion. I can't just do one thing at time. It makes me restless. My mind cannot settle.
When that started to happen in my quiet time and I could not make it stop, I knew I needed some kind of mental reset. I decided to strip my life down to the basics and then add in only the things I intentionally wanted to keep. I ended up with a list of ten things that I then ranked/prioritized. If #7 is going to prevent me from being able to do #5, I try not to do it.
The things that didn't make it onto the priorities list—because they didn't come to mind when I put on the lens of "basics + things I definitely want to keep"—are the things I'm giving up for Lent.
(I modified the music and podcasts thing. I didn't think to put "music" or "podcasts" on the list of priorities at all because those aren't things I sit down and do for their own sake; they're things I do while doing other things. Since Lent is supposed to be about refocusing on God, I added Christian music and podcasts back in.)
The results have not been what I expected.
Since I'd have no other options, I expected to gladly fill the voids with prayer, reading the Bible, and journaling.
Looking back, I don't know why I expected this. Humans have never been ones to think, "Hey, you know what, let's do something hard instead of something mindless."
My quiet times have not deepened or lengthened. I do not know that I pray a ton more than I did. I do think that listening to Christian music has done a lot for my mood and mindset; that one has actually worked the way I'd hoped it would.
I dunno. It's kind of what Pastor Matthew talked about a few months ago: It's not enough to uproot your weeds; you have to plant Jesus in their place, otherwise 1) the soil erodes, or 2) more weeds grow.
For some reason—some weird form of stubbornness—I have so far chosen to uproot the weeds in my life, but refused to plant Jesus in their place. The result has been voids of bad attitude, boredom, and real sin that happens to fall technically in the realm of fair game during Lent.
I've been told that my Lent list is too extreme, like an overly restrictive diet doomed to fail. I get that. Maybe that's true. I just have trouble seeing how there is a bad way to replace things with Jesus. I have trouble seeing how any amount of sacrifice is too much when Jesus literally gave it all.
My thought process is not holier-than-thou. I wish you could hear my head-tone. It's just simple, sarcastic math in my head. There is nothing I could do that would be more than God deserves. (Again, I want to stress that I don't think it's sinful to have "non-Christian" hobbies or elements in your life. This is something that has been on my heart and that I'm doing for a season to try to rewire my chronically distracted brain.)
Even as I wrap up this post, I don't know what I'm going to do afterwards. I would like to do something healthy like pray, journal, read the Bible, read books, go for a walk. But what I really want to do is goof around on my phone in the ways I still can, like sifting through photos, reading through Notes, checking email, etc.
I honestly don't know what I'll do.
~Stephanie
This mug cake is an ACTUAL. GAME CHANGER. I used to get borderline depressed because the only chocolate cake that satisfies me is from Garibaldi, which is Gabe's and my Valentine's Day restaurant, and one cannot just go get that cake for no reason, because IT MUST RETAIN ITS SPECIALNESS.
But I found a way to cheat the system. I give you, a mug cake so delicious it borders on miraculous:
Ingredients:
- 1/4 cup of flour (you can also do 1/8 and fill the rest with protein powder and it works fine)
- a generous 1/4 cup of sugar
- a generous 2 tablespoons of unsweetened coco powder
- 1/8 teaspoon of salt
- 1/4 cup of water
- 1 tablespoon of olive oil
- 1 tablespoon of butter
- 1/8 teaspoon of vanilla
- mini chocolate chips (I dunno, like half a tablespoon?)
Method:
- Mix the dry ingredients all together. I use a fork.
- Mix in the wet ingredients. Stir til smooth.
- Add in the mini chocolate chips.
- Microwave for about 1 minute and 5 seconds, give or take.
- Top with syrup if you're an outrageous chocoholic like myself.*
Macros (not counting chocolate syrup, not using protein powder)
Calories: 588
Carbs: 80.5g
Fat: 29.5g
Protein: 5g
Is this good for you? Absolutely not. Is it good? Absolutely.
~Stephanie
* This is "one serving," but is actually too much for me to enjoy. I like to either half everything, share with Gabe, or eat it anyway and then regret being born for the next hour.
Gabe and I are good at a lot of things. Consistently eating leftovers is not one of them.
When we first got married, we didn't have a regular grocery shopping day.
Today, that thought blows my mind. Did we just wait until we had no food in the apartment, and sometimes that happened on a Thursday, sometimes a Monday?
I also remember not planning meals ahead of time, which—again—blows my mind now. I would buy general ingredients, and then decide what to cook on a daily basis. In addition to causing me stress when I had to meal plan every twenty-four hours, this caused us to waste a lot of food. Veggies would wilt before we used them; we'd have too much chicken left over and end up throwing it away.
Now, Tuesday is grocery day and I go to the store knowing what I'm going to cook every night so that we buy only what we need. But those changes have been in effect for years. I want to talk about the latest evolution in money-saving meal planning.
(This isn't even a tip for people—just a step in my Becoming journey—because I'm fairly sure I'm the last person on earth to have this revelation XD)
Only cook the meat you need, and freeze the rest.
For some people, this might not work the best because they will actually eat leftovers or do meal prep. However for us, it has been a game changer.
We rotate through several different proteins: chicken, ground beef, ham, ground turkey, eggs, sausage. I used to cook a whole pound of ground beef if the two of us were having tacos. We would never eat all the meat, and would rarely remember to go back and eat the random serving of taco meat left over. I used to cook the whole half ham thing when we had ham. Same deal.
Lately, I've experimented with just about halving the amount of meat I cook per meal. Somehow—maybe it's a loaves and fishes thing because God knows we're poor again—we feel no less full, and our meat budget goes twice as far.
Doing this, I rarely have to buy more than one or two types of protein a week, and yet we still eat four or five types throughout that week. This change, along with other similar food prep changes (using what we need, freezing the rest), have cut our grocery bill by about 15%.
I know this is a small thing, but it makes me feel strangely empowered when I save us money and keep our lifestyle good. It makes me feel like a Proverbs 31 woman.
And who wouldn't want that?!
~Stephanie
Before we dive in, let me be clear, lest my employers think they pay me too much:
Do I love and recommend all of these supplements? Yes.
Do I buy them all regularly? Absolutely not.
But here are the supplements that I've really enjoyed over the course of my amateur fitness journey, in case you're looking to try something new.
Bowmar Nutrition
Protein powders in this order: Blueberry Cheesecake, Birthday Cake, Frosted Cookie. (Those are the only three flavors I've tried.)
Price: 1lb tub is $35; 5lb tub is $70 (If anyone ever wants to go halfsies on one of these, lemme know.)
Collagen: Good for joints, hair, skin, and nails, and it's a little extra protein for you.
Price: $35 per tub
Pros: The Bowmars are SERIOUS about their quality. (I follow them on social media.) They will not put out anything they're not completely satisfied with, and they have incredibly high standards. The products aren't cheap, but they are not overpriced. They also have really creative-but-still-appealing flavors, including Key Lime Pie, Caramel Apple, Dulce De Leche.
Cons: The products are very expensive, and Sarah Bowmar's personality is really abrasive and hard to take. I think maybe she's one of those people who are shy so they come off really nasty and sarcastic to avoid getting hurt? Or maybe she's just a Yankee (sorry, Yankees)? She swears that she's actually nice, and also a Christian, but I gotta say, she would not win me over for Jesus.
Random Recipe: 3-Ingredient Protein Pancakes:
- 1/2 tsp. of baking powder
- 1 egg
- 1 scoop of protein powder
Scivation
Blue Raspberry BCAAs: To be fair, these are the only BCAAs (branched-chain amino acids, which help with muscle recovery) I've ever tried.
Price: $20, on Amazon.
Pros: Insanely delicious. Makes working out more enjoyable because you get to drink this between sets.
Cons: Honestly, I don't know if these help me with muscle recovery or not, but I also don't take the "recommended dose" (one scoop's worth drunk during your workout, one scoop's worth drunk after your workout) because I'm too cheap to go through the tub that quickly.
1st Phorm
Opti-Greens 50: Opti-Greens has 11 servings of vegetables per serving. Gabe and I only do half a serving each because we're poor, and honestly 11 servings a day seems like overkill.
Price: $60 a tub
Pros:
1) Tastes pretty good for powdered grass. I'd say it tastes like unsweet green tea with a hint of berry.
2) This is also THE ONLY SUPPLEMENT GABE WILL TAKE. He says all protein powders "taste like protein" (what does that even mean?) and even declared the BCAAs above were "too sweet." Are you kidding me?
3) Works beautiful voodoo on bloating and digestion.
Cons: Extremely expensive.
Let me know if you try any and like them, or have other suggestions to share!
~Stephanie
Switching it up today with just a recipe :)
One of my New Year's Resolutions was to "eat more veggies." I've tapered off some since January, but I absolutely eat more veggies than I did this time last year. Mainly I make sure to incorporate a couple of servings into breakfast, either by making an omelette, or the following.
I'm not really sure why I'm posting this or calling it a "recipe," because 1) it's ridiculously simple, and 2) most people probably won't even like it XD But here goes.
Hardish Boiled Eggs on Toast and Zucchini and Spinach Stir-Fry
- 2 eggs
- 2 slices of toast (I use Nature's Own Sugar Free Whole Grain)
- 1 cup sliced zucchini
- handful of spinach
- butter to grease a pan
- salt, pepper, garlic, red pepper flakes
Macros: 295 calories, 24C, 15F, 23P
For those of you just wanting the recipe, you really don't need it. You assemble this exactly the way you'd expect. Now, if you want to keep reading, brace yourself for the anecdotal story of how I make it. *evil laughter*
(Fun fact: This year, I discovered that I like hardboiled eggs not boiled for approximately half a century.)
The magic choreography of this breakfast goes as follows.
Return from the gym. Hang up keys, put away shoes, plug in bluetooth earbuds to charge because God forbid they not be fully charged when I need them.
Put two eggs in a pot of water on the stove and turn the burner on.
Put two slices of bread in the toaster oven, but don't turn it on.
Unload the dishwasher, leaving out a plate, a fork, a sharp knife, and the cutting board.
Get out the tiny frying pan and put it on a burner.
Using the left out fork like a barbarian, slice off some butter and put it in the pan.
Slice zucchini. Put it in the pan. Season with salt, pepper, garlic, and red pepper flakes. Top with a handful of spinach.
When the egg water is juuuuust about to boil, say "Hey Siri. Set a timer for four minutes."
Thank her when she gets it going.
Turn the zucchini-and-spinach burner on. Nudge the stir-fry around and watch in fascination as the spinach shrivels before your eyes.
Turn the toaster oven on.
When the egg timer goes off, the stir-fry is probably done. Take it off the burner if it is. Leave it and continue to poke if it isn't. But definitely...
Move the egg pot to the sink and run cold water over the eggs for a minute or so.
Peel the eggs. Pray you get ones with the shells that slide right off rather than the ones that cling to the whites and leave you with a mutilated 2/3 of egg left.
Toast is done.
Plate toast.
Plate stir fry.
Place one egg on each toast and chop with a fork.
Season egg toast with salt and pepper.
Eat while doing a Wife of God devotional ;)
~Stephanie
