Moderation is not my strong suite.

What do I mean by my title? Well, I've always been a bit of a black and white thinker. When I was younger, I'd either not practice for a few days or practice for 5 hours at a time, never taking a day off. I wanted to "lose weight" and was diagnosed with anorexia. My eating fluctuates from quite clean to pretty unhealthy every few days or weeks. And when I exercise, I either don't do it for a week at a time, or I do it every day for an hour or two. Case in point, yesterday I wanted to go out for a 30 minute jog/walk (which I am now calling a wog!) and it turned into about 1 hour and 45 minutes. Haha, I did the 30 minute wog, but I also did 25 minutes of expresso bike (racing--so sweaty after this!), 20 minutes of leg strength training and another 25 minutes of walking.

I need to work on being able to do more things in moderation. Even the little tiny things that I catch myself doing, such as only setting my A/C in my car to either be THE coldest or THE hottest (when I get too cold). I never set it in the middle, until I've made myself start doing it (for moderation practice!) and it was actually very uncomfortable for me.
What about you? Are you and all-or-nothing thinker? If so, in what ways does that manifest itself? And how would you like to get better at that?

But onto the food. My recent love is eggplant. It's so easy and so good. I slice it width-wise and rinsed the discs in saltwater then stuck them in the oven with EVOO for 20 minutes (?? I don't remember how long I baked them--sorry!!) But afterwards, I almost used them like bread (loving the texture!) and topped them with lunch meat (free range, grass fed, humanely raised turkey meat). Like this:


And this:



(with butternut squash fries)

I finished the eggplant, but I bought another one, so expect to see it soon. :)

I had my go-to snack of PB and carrots at some point. (On my camera, maybe from Thursday?)

And for the past two nights I've treated myself to the WF salad bar because it's the ONLY thing that has sounded good and (confession) I was tempted to just skip dinner, which I knew was NOT a good option. So I figured that spending a few extra bucks to be good to myself was definitely worth it.

Here's the first night's salad and the second one was similar.

-spinach
-organic dandelion greens
-red bell peppers
-Parmesan cheese
-2 chunks of vegan chicken stuff (mid left)
-balsamic tofu (upper right)
-curry tofu (lower right)
-quinoa salad (bottom middle)
-and my FAVORITE, poppy seed tarragon (??) chicken, the purple-ish stuff on the right! This stuff is sooooo good! It has almonds in it to and I'll probably be picking some up just to make sandwiches with.

Now for three different mornings' breakfasts:

Which is:



And the second day was similar, with half a peach:


Diced it and saved the other half.

Then I decided that bowl of cereal and yogurt needed something else...Carob chips!!

Much better! :)

And my breakfast today was DELICIOUS!


I had one slice of healthy homemade banana bread (recipe follows!!) with ~1/2 C cottage cheese and the other half of my peach from yesterday.

Here's the lovely loaf of banana bread, with the inaugural slice already having been cut and shared by me and my boyfriend. :)

And here's the recipe:

3/4 C honey (the recipe called for Splenda)
3/4 C flax meal
5 ripe bananas
1/4 C skim milk
1/4 plain yogurt (the recipe called for 1/4 C sour cream)
2 tsp eggwhites (I used one regular egg's egg white)

2 C whole wheat pastry flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Pre-heat oven to 350.

Mix together the first 5 ingredients.
Combine the next 3 ingredients in a separate bowl, then stir into the wet mixture.
Pour into a regular (large) loaf pan and bake for 1 hour, 10 minutes or until a knife comes out clean.

~~~~~~

There you have it. It's super easy!! I'm not exactly a baker extraordinaire, so if I can do it, I'm sure you can, too. :) And it's delicious! Even my bf liked it and I didn't tell him what I had done to make it more nutritious!

OK, check this out for a free sample of Dandy-Lyon bites, an impressive raw foods snack.

I know there are several giveaways happening in blog land, but I don't have time to hunt them down. I'll try to post again tonight with those. Right now though, I'm off to shower then go to and help with the registration event for one of the music programs where I teach and I'm teaching a private lesson at home later today.

I hope everyone is having an excellent Saturday!

It all evens out!

After yesterday's (perfectly OK) sugar-fest, my body KNEW it needed protein, veggies and healthy fats and it let me know about it, loud and clear. I am really proud of myself for having gotten to the point where I honestly don't freak out over certain days being more nutritiously dense than others. Today was an excellently healthy day. Yay for nutrients!

I woke up craving veggies, so I made an omelet with zucchini and part of a purple onion which I sauteed in olive oil.

Topped with full fat cheddar cheese:

With coffee.

Slathered in organic salsa for some extra veggies. (Lycopene, anyone?)


After teaching a lesson, I got a massage! Then I came home to teach another lesson, after which I grabbed this very quickly. It's from the salad bar at Whole Foods:

Chick peas with feta, red peppers, onion, and parsley. So good!

And I grabbed a peach for the car:

Then I taught again, this time at a student's house, and stopped by the pharmacy on my way home to try and get the antibiotic, but it turns out my doctor's office never called them, even though *I* called this morning to make sure they were going to do that. Argh.

Oh well; at least I came home to a delectable dinner! I made a huge salad!


This included:

-spinach
-tomato
-sauteed cabbage/onions
-avocado
-last of the turkey lunch meat
-tofu soaked in Ken's Asian dressing

And for "dessert" I had these sweet potato fries with organic ketchup:

Now I'm full and my boyfriend is coming over to hang out on a rare free Thursday evening!

Chocolate cake should be its own food group.

Good news! I got to hang out with both of the guys I had mentioned yesterday. And I'm so relieved over knowing that my friend is not upset and my boyfriend is still my boyfriend! Seriously, how am I so this lucky as to be in a relationship with him?! I honestly feel like I don't deserve him--like I'm not good enough for him--but he assures me he feels the same way, so it's working out well. :)

And thank you for your sweet comments! Reading them really helped me to be reassured that it would work out and it IS working out, so that's amazing!

Breakfast today was similar to yesterday:



1/2 C oats
1/3 C pumpkin
1 fig
sprinkling of carob chips and soy nuts
tiny bit of MixMyGranola (mostly for the chia seeds)
1/2 C cottage cheese

About half way through the bowl, I realized that I would still be hungry after I finished it, so I bulked it up with some more cottage cheese and a spoon of PB.


I had an interesting day food-wise yesterday. I was honestly fairly upset all day so I was making myself eat. Thankfully I had a lunch date with a friend, so we ate at a local conservatory's cafe. They had fresh healthy food and it was really INCREDIBLE! (Plus, we got to eat outside in reasonably warm weather!)

I had their citrus salmon salad with orange sesame dressing on the side (I used about 1/2 the dressing; it was tasty but I have no idea if it was full fat or whatever. I don't mind one way or another though.) My salad came with a slice of cheesy bread (fairly oily, but good) and had a bunch of pine nuts and orange slices over top of fancy mixed greens, cucumbers and tomatoes. Yum! And then my friend and I split a piece of French Raspberry Chocolate Cake!! Holy YUM!! This was way beyond incredible! The frosting was almost as rich as the inside of truffles! And the dark chocolate-y goodness just surpassed description! I wish I had pictures of the salad and the cake for you all, because they were beautiful and so, so good!

Anyway, I had that lunch late, around 3, so I went straight to teach from 4-6:30pm and play a religious service from 6:30-8pm. After the service, there's always a reception and I snagged this PB brownie:

You all know that I feel really strongly about having NO foods off limits and I want to enjoy all things, just having an emphasis on nutritious foods. I didn't feel too bad eating this because I essentially didn't have dinner. I ate the brownie and didn't feel hungry, so instead I went out with my friend (the non-boyfriend guy) and I had two Magic Hat #9 beers and later on with my boyfriend I had a Yuengling Black and Tan. OK, yes, I know that my food yesterday was heavy on the "social" side of things...and I'm just fine with that. I won't do that all the time (don't worry, the beers were spread out over about 4 hours) but I don't see anything wrong with it and I'm so grateful to be at a point in my life where I can enjoy food and drinks with friends and not still be letting ED control me and make me second guess myself. I did a little bit of exercise yesterday which felt good. I just ran two miles at my gym and at night I did a bunch of push ups. (30ish? Not all at once though.)

There are a few giveaways going on in blogland:

Don't forget to enter my PB Loco and bars giveaway.

Iowa Girl Eats is having a giveaway of her favorite products, including Barney Butter (!) here.

Live, Laugh, Lyss is giving away a bunch of delicious bars here.

Erika at Peace and Peanut butter is giving away some PB2 samples, a Gnu bar, and a freedom beads bracelet here.

AnAppleADay is giving away salsas and sauces here.

I just designed my signature to end my posts with. I hope you all like it!