My evil plan to fight fat

So last week I wasn't really successful at fighting fat. That's a first. But I was busy, guys. Busy, creating an evil plan. And training my evil laugh. HAHAHA. If you could hear me, you would know it's an evil laugh.

And these are the six rules, that my dangerous mind came up with this week.

Let me analyze those rules quickly. 

1. Booooring. Do I really need to analyze or explain. Any idiot knows eating things made from dough make you also look like a raw dough. Okay, maybe not everybody knows it. But it's true. My fat belly - exhibit A.

2. Alcohol and coffee suck. They might have some benefits in small quantities, but generally speaking they suck. And they make you acidic. Still I will probably drink one or two coffees this week.

3.  Don't eat later than 8 pm. The only time I have ever been able to lose weight was during the only 2 weeks in my life, when I didn't eat later that 6 pm. I will try it out now with 8. Might be hormones, but if you ask me, the reason for a weight loss when you set a time limit is the fact, that you simlpy don't eat as much as normally. Me for example, I eat every day something small or big whatever, later in the evening. If I cut that out - I will take in less calories than usually.

4. Five meals per day. Yes. Five. But small ones. Not big ones. Small. One of them (for me my breakfast) - freshly squeezed juice. The other ones - mainly soups & salads.

5. Yes it's good to have it all during the week. If I don't watch out for this rule, I would eat only meat. Every day. So having this rule is a way for me to create a balance in my diet

6. Come on! I don't have to explain why it's better to run than to sit on a couch. Okay maybe I am doing it right now, but an hour ago I was sweating in my living room using a high tech fitness equipment.

So today was a day for HIIT, tomorrow is running time. I think this time it might work out. Although at the end of this week I am at one food exhibition, where there is food thrown in your face at every step. And you have to eat. Otherwise everybody thinks you are weak. And a weirdo. So we'll see. Maybe abs in 1 month???

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Six signs you are fat

It's official. I am fat and I have to slim down. I wasn't quite sure until number six happened to me yesterday. I wasn't even mad. I had all the other signs for months, but I ignored them. Plus everyone was telling me I look good. Not fat. Good. Stupid idiots. I knew that eating like pregnant will make me look like one. And here I am. The fattest I have ever been in my life.

Do you know what I realized today? I have never had to lose weight in my life before. Okay I've always said I need to lose 2-3 pounds, because my belly was a little chubby and I didn't see any abs (not pregnant looking though). Or maybe just because I was thinking I would look better. I was always careful what I eat, not in a too obsessive way though - I was still eating pizza and pasta, that I've made, a few times a week, but I didn't eat sweets, fast food - just because I didn't want that.

During the last year and a half I stopped having these crazy thoughts, that I have to lose weight. So I said to myself - "YOLO, eat whatever you want, whenever you want it."

And there are a few things wrong with that sentence.

First someone slap me across my face for saying YOLO. In fact I am doing it now.

Second - "eat whatever you want". Really??? Whatever I want??? I have eaten so many things I thought I wanted during this year and a half. They never really made me happy and after I ate them I realized I didn't like them. But then I go back and buy that food again the next day. We're talking - donuts, croissants, cupcakes, sandwiches, potato chips, burgers, coffee...



And third - "whenever you want it". I have been eating nonstop. Maybe it's because I have started to work in an office - as soon as I sit down in front of that computer I need a coffee *that I never wanted to drink up until 2 years ago* and something sweet. And that's almost every hour. All the time. But that's not the only time when I want it - after work I have dinner, and always something else afterwards. And on the weekends you can guess - eating like there's no tomorrow.

So now that I am officially fat I need a plan and moreover I need boundaries. This will be hard.

Man I hate diets.

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HO HO HO

Merry Christmas! I know I'm about two days late for this but, from all my heart:

Merry Christmas to everybody on Earth! Merry Christmas to Santa Claus too! And to his helpers!!!

Next year bring me more gifts please. Thanx. I'm a good person. I can send you a certificate.

Many people don't believe in Santa Claus after a certain age, let's say - 7 years old.

Guess who's 29 and still thinks Santa is real.

I'll give you a clue - me. Hope this helps.

Enjoy this precious time.

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Chicken with Sauerkraut

O Sauerkraut, Sauerkraut.

Wherefore art thou Sauerkraut?

When I was a child I hated you passionately. 

As much as a child can hate something. 

You were my arch enemy. 

Wherever you were, I never wanted to be. 

The smell of you - a torture. 

The taste of you - an agony.

You are a true evidence, that people do change.
The grown me loves you passionately.
Mostly during winter.
You are one of my best friends.
Wherever you are, I want to be.
The smell of you - still not so great.
The taste of you - H E A V E N.
Sometimes I'm thinking to wrap myself with you.

Call me Shakespeare. Or crazy Shakespeare. I ate so many things with sauerkraut lately and these are the side effects. Among others (like flawless digestion). I just had to make a poem about sauerkraut. I was thinking of maybe making only a haiku, but please. Sauerkraut deserves more than that. So it's a poem.

I'm not quite sure when my obsession with sauerkraut started. Some people are addicted to cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, coffee, sweets, sports, shopping...BORING! My latest addiction is sauerkraut. Sometimes I sit in the office and just dream of sauerkraut dishes. Sweet, sweet, sauer day dreams. And honestly sometimes I google sauerkraut dishes. Weird things come up. Sauerkraut with seafood is one thing I can not imagine tastes good. But maybe one day I'll try it. After all wise Justin Bieber said "Never say never". I just googled Justin Bieber. I didn't want to write his name wrong and totally embarrass myself. I mean knowing what Justin Bieber said is not embarrassing.



When I was a child everybody used to make sauerkraut themselves. Not sure how my parents and grand parents did it exactly, but I think: you take cabbage, salt and water put everything in a container, close the lid, wait for about 3 weeks or more staring the container, not letting it get out of your sight and do a little ritual dance around it with some singing. And BAM! the sauerkraut party can begin.

For my dishes I bought sauerkraut. But I did the ritual dance anyway.

So to make it short: for this dish you'll need:

INGREDIENTS

500g/1lb sauerkraut
500g/1 lb chicken breast (diced)
1 cup dry bulgur
2 tbsp chilli powder
4 tbsp paprika
salt
olive oil/sunflower oil

DIRECTIONS

Put chicken breast in a large deep pan and steam at medium-high until cooked. Add all of the other ingredients and about 1 cup of water. Stir everything well and cover the pan. Maybe you will need to add more water, so don't get too carried away with other things. Cook, and stir from time to time until chicken and bulgur are ready - should take about 10 min. Make sure you put enough oil, because if it's too dry this dish does not taste this good. I think about 4 tbsp should be enough. When ready - take from the heat, move in a backing tray and bake in the oven for 5-10 min at medium high temperature. Then serve with bread or without. This will make so many portions, normally I eat it 3 days in a row. Happy three days.

 

I still can not believe I brought Shakespeare, Justin Bieber and the phrase "flawless digestion" together in this post.

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Whatever happened to...

I remember I started a vegan challenge about two months ago, that ended about 1 month and 27 days ago. So I succeeded to eat vegan for three days. A round of applause please! I had even started to write the food diary on the second day of the challenge and here's what I wrote:

"Who's vegan since yesterday?
- Meeeee!
Who's keeping their promises?
- Meeee!

Well almost, I promised to keep you updated on what I'm eating during this week daily, but I skipped yesterday. Ooops....and yes I did it agaaain - I forgot to take pictures of my lunches today aaaand yesterday. Because when it's that time of the day (lunch!!!) I become a big fat pig *grunt grunt* and as you probably know - pigs do not take pictures. They just sit in front of a computer and eat. They do! Seriously, I've seen them with my own eye of the tiger. 

To answer the obvious question, popping into your mind just this second - yes, this is hot millet with peanuts and banana, sweetened with some agave and flavored with cinnamon. You seem to be very observant. Probably not exactly the food that would make you drool all over the place now, and would chase you in your dreams later, BUT (and it's a big butttt) it could make you very pretty because it has so many minerals that are essential for good skin and hair like zinc, iron..... And don't we all just want to be very pretty?? 

Come on! Just admit it, it's a safe place here. Stand in front of the mirror, start banging your chest like King Kong and say I feel pretty, oh so pretty. Then put on a big fat Cinderella dress, a crown, take your vegan lunch and go to work. 

That's the way all of my days go. Living the dream ha? 

Yes so where were I with the diary - millet, banging the chest, Cinderella, work....ooooohhh yessss! Lunchtime!!!! Which as I told you was not documented in pictures, but looked something like this..."

...aaand now I can not even find the photograph of lunch. Anyway two very delicious recipes came out of this challenge.

Number 1 - The Burnt Vegan Burger-Balls.



What did I put in those??? It went down so fast, but I believe: lentils, onions, herbs, almonds, oats, sunflower seeds, *breathe in - breathe out*, peppers, garlic and cauliflower..... I had these burger-balls as lunch with a salad, but also just as a snack, for breakfast (ok not for breakfast).

Number 2 - The most beautiful peanut (not butter) bars *this of course is sarcasm - I can also see them*

I put peanuts, agave, vanilla, salt and some crunchy stuff inside. For the chocolate I melted dairy-free chocolate - stupid right. I wanted to prepare my own vegan chocolate with cocoa, agave and coconut butter, but I could not find coconut butter. And I didn't have time - so this is the result. And even though these are not that pretty in appearance, they are pretty addictive. I made them probably 5-6 times since then.

Next week I will make the burger-balls and the peanut-bar again, take better pictures and give you the detailed recipes. I hope the part with the pictures and the burning goes well this time.

As a summary I say eating vegan is not for me, as much as I appreciate the food - it is very tasty and healthier than non-vegan/non vegetarian (mostly because of the higher fruit and vegetables consumption). The limitations that I had, made me actually experiment with food more and this way I discovered new ways to use ingredients. My food horizon widened extremely. 

For example - using oats in a burger? Are you kidding me? Laughing in your face. But in vegan burgers? Oh yes! Those were crunchy (not because they were burnt), spicy, savory, I just loved them. 

The main reason why I can not be vegan, beside the fact, that a vegan diet lacks essential nutrients, is because you have to plan and prepare pretty much everything you eat. This for me is exhausting and might turn easily into an obsession, which as we all know is not that healthy. 

So next week expect another challenge, which does not go into extremes!

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My birthday and a present I did not expect

Never. Never in my life have I won something. Until the night of November 9th 2013. A great night in the history of the world - known as "The Night of the Necklace". And also as the night after my 29th birthday. 

Yes, I am 29 now. A magic number indeed. I don't know if I should be happy, having a panic attack, a nervous breakdown, get overmotivated to achieve all of my goals during the next year, when I will be...*30*... or just live life as it is. I think I will try the overmotivated thing, because I have things to achieve. And dreams should be followed. Being comfortable does not take you anywhere. Age made me wise, guys. My sister also got a little wiser, one day before my birthday. 

My mother had it all planed out - after all the fun she had giving birth to my sister on November 7th, she said to herself: That was fun, let's do it again in 4 years and 1 day. And BAM! I was born - blue, hairy, wrinkly - a little treasure!!! 

Happy birthday to us, and thank you mom and dad for everything!!

Maybe you've noticed in the pictures above - it's not a cake, it is an orange, that I have pinned the birthday candle into. You think that's weird? No, it's not. It's healthy. Birthday orange is the new birthday cake! But ok, I admit: the truth is - and if you know the calender, you can probably figure it out yourself - my birthday was almost 1 month ago. I took this picture about 1 hour ago. Do you think, that I can keep a cake at home for one month, no, even for one hour, and not eat the whole thing? I forgot to take a picture on my birthday and today here I was in front of a mathematical equation :

x + 1 muffin cup + 1 birthday candle + 1 lighter + hearty background + cartoonify = ART!

And then it hit me: x = orange. That is exactly how my brain works. It is totally not out of desperation. What do you think - I just grabbed the first thing I saw and stabbed a birthday candle into it? Please. 

Maybe editing the appearance of this blog during the last month has made me a little nerdy. Not that I wasn't before. But now I know how to edit the template like I have been doing it my whole life. I didn't like a lot of things about the layout before, so I customized some things - for example I centered the header, I removed that message - showing posts with label ..., Subscribe to Post (Atom) had to go too and I decided to make the header pink. I was back and forth with the pink, because I was thinking - this blog is about healthy eating and it should be green to promote natural eating, or blue - because it's a very common color to attract anybody. But my heart is with pink and I can not change that. 

I hope even men can appreciate this color. Print this message on a t-shirt and wear it proudly anywhere.

"The Night of the Necklace". This is how it all went down. 

My sister told me we are invited to some party, and because I'm going trough a Jim-Carrey-"Yes, man"-stage I said - Ok, let's go. I thought I will be kinda bored, because I don't like parties so much - it's crowded, you feel like everybody's half your age, nothing to eat...all that stuff. 

But then - we arrive there, and I figure out it's an event for girls - where people do your hair, your make up and you get a goodie bag. So that was pretty awesome - I only took the goodie bag though. Then surprise surprise - food and drinks for free! At this point - I AM IN HEAVEN! Try to hold me back! Sushi, here I come! And up until then I could never, in my whole, entire 29-years-life, eat with those sticks - no matter how hard I've tried it. To summarize - I learned it in 5 seconds. Result - not enough sushi for everybody else. 2-3 hours in I was so happy - I had a goodie bag in my hand, some drinks and my belly full of sushi. I knew that you could take part in some contest - take your picture with the jewelry you like and you could win it. And as half-full-glass as I am as a person, I was pretty sure that nobody will win this necklace and it's just a promotion trick. So I didn't want to take a picture, everybody else was trying like crazy. I filled out some card with my personal details. At the beginning I was thinking - data privacy and so on...but I mean these days if somebody wants to have my data, they probably already do. So I filled it out. And at the end of the night - my sister tells me, coming back from the rest room, they told her I've won this pearl necklace. Not exactly my style, but I felt happy like a child. It was the first thing I win in my life. So then I also took pictures with it. And then we stayed at the club and had some more fun. The Night of the Necklace was a great night. Best things in life come when you least expect them right?

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Best Food Diary Ever.

What do diary, dairy and diarrhea have in common? Beside the obvious - having a similar pronounciation?

Well just look at this picture and figure it out for yourself. (WARNING! Not recommended for people with high disgust sensitivity!)

No, this is not the food diary of a dog. Not even the diary of a rat. That would've been very happy rat, I'm telling you.

And even though in some pictures it might look like it, this is also not somebody's diarrhea (or vomit).

As much as I hate to admit it, even to myself and I'm really embarrassed and sorry that you had to see it - this is my food diary.

For over a week this month I've been taking pictures of pretty much everything I eat. Sometimes I forgot to take pictures because of my greediness - I had to eat sometimes very fast. But don't worry - you haven't missed anything healthy.

I was thinking of doing a food diary for this blog for a long time and I was so excited about that. I was sure that I can teach you one or two things about how to eat right while working full time.

Turns out I can teach myself something - my diet sucks!

It seems like I'm living off of coffee with milk and sweets. I've had three salads for the entire seven days!!! Three salads!!! No fruit, no juice, no fiber, nothing! Anything that wasn't sweet, coffee, or salad contained meat and fat. This is so disgusting, it should be illegal!

But making a picture food diary is definitely a good thing. I can recommend this to anybody. You see all of your weaknesses and you can try to get better. It's not just talking and knowing everything about food, health and sports (whatever that was!) and just being good to yourself and your body. It's all about putting this knowledge to practice.

Next week I will do another food diary. Without any dairy, coffee, meat and keep your fingers crossed - diarrhea or constipation. This time I will also keep you updated every day!

Now a challenge to you: make a food diary yourself and try to enjoy your day after all this diarrhea talk.

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Where were I?

 I've been back from my trip in Bulgaria since about what feels like 6 months, but is in fact just 6 weeks.

 Sorry I haven't been too active here, but you have to understand - I came back from this

 to this

Hello depression!

Seriously, I don't care how stupid, old and cliche it sounds - without sun, I feel like I'm dead inside. I'm neither a vampire, nor am I as stupid as Bella to want to become one...uuum oops! I mean I don't even know who this Bella girl is. What is she, like a vampire or something? I've never seen whatever saga she's in. Seriously, I haven't!

The point is - I'm human and I need sun and light to photosynthesize. Wait what? This last one may not be true - only fish photosynthesize. Duh!

And since I'm in the dark 24/7 I've noticed I do some pretty destructive things - like staying always in front of the computer, eating whatever I find, not doing any sports, not being able to concentrate on my work, not even writing here...a total winter depression.

I would've posted some more pictures from my vacation in Bulgaria, where I felt alive with every fiber of my being, mainly to cheer myself up, but unfortunately they were all on my sister's computer, which all of a sudden experienced the seven beeps of death (must be some patent of dell, it's very famous) and couldn't recover. So Summer 2013, I don't have you in pictures.

We did find one very nice beach though - with crystal clear water and no sharks. You couldn't get me out of that water for hours even with a tsunami. But it's all over. Now I'm back to crappy reality, which doesn't seem real at all.

In the 6 weeks I've been here I also did one week of a food picture diary, that will make you very sick when you see it. So yay! You have something to be looking forward for tomorrow.

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Avocado, chicken, spearmint salad

So during the weekend I bought a grilled chicken and guess what? I'm still eating it. Show me the leftovers!!!

There's no way in the world I would buy or prepare chicken just to make a salad with it. Too much work for a salad, and in these hot days I'm pretty allergic to work. Symptoms: many watery drops covering my body. Mainly armpits. Maybe that's sweat. How would I know, I haven't done a proper exercise for ages.

Wait! I'm lying, last week I did something, I haven't done for the longest time - I finished an entire 1 hour workout. Pretty intense at that. Three times last week. Maybe because I'm too scared that next week on the beach someone's gonna call Greenpeace to put me back in the water, where all the whales belong. Not on the moon, like one episode from South Park tought us. Wise men, those South Park creators!

This picture? Still salad - not a whale

The point is - I had grilled chicken leftovers and I made a salad out of those. And I used the avocado, I had in my kitchen for a week. And most importantly: SPEARMINT! Did not expect it, but this herb is just increadible in salads - so fresh and flavourful at the same time! Love it!

The result - Mmmhhhh, Alkaline Mmmhhhh!

INGREDIENTS

1 cup chopped chicken - white meat, grilled if you have, for a vegetarian version you can also use chickpeas
10 spearmint leaves
1 bunch of parsley
1 avocado (peeled and pitted)
1 cucumber
1 small green pepper
olives
olive oil
salt
juice of 1/3 lemon

DIRECTIONS

Like always with salads - eaaasyy. Chop all the vegetables and herbs, put them together with the chicken in a big salad bowl, add some olive oil (1-2 tbsp), salt, and the juice of 1/3 lemon and mix.

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Light summer salad

Yes, it's another salad! I don't know how you've guessed it - is it the picture or the name of this post? Or maybe it's just a gift - the gift of guessing.

Anyway it's so ridiculously unbelievably and unpleasantly hot, I just want to throw myself in a cold water somewhere, doesn't matter how dirty and stay there!!! Today I didn't even want to eat anything normal, I just had this salad and it was enough. Usually I would have this salad as a side to something - meat, grains, fish, but now...shame on me! OK tonight I'll probably eat something pretty serious, because nobody can beat Mr. Hunger, but for now I'm good.

I don't even think you need an ingredients list - tomatoes, cucumbers, dill, parsley, olives, some olive oil and salt to taste and you're ready!

Now I don't even have anything else to say, I'll look for some place to cool myself off!

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