I’ve decided to challenge myself to drink one smoothie a day till the end of the year! I know it’s too late to take on 365 days of them, but at least it is a leap year.
Here is day one’s smoothie: Spinach, grapefruit, and pineapple! 💪
This is the first day I’ve run into where I flat out did not want to go to the gym. Its my time of the month, I’m all bloated and brain foggy, and my body begged me not to go. The problem is I’m trying to get out of that habit, and get into healthier habits to take care of myself. So I came up with a compromise, instead I would do some intense yoga- and I’m so glad that I did!
I’ve been wanting to get back into yoga, the last few times I tried to it was too low intensity to give me a good enough workout, so I added “intense” to the google search and found this lovely video:
I have to be honest here; I wasn’t able to make it through the whole thing, and I had to modify a few poses because I’m just at the beginner level. But when I was done I felt great and this totally got me back into it.
I really felt awesome during it and after the work out, I forgot how much I love yoga too.
So now I guess I need to get a mat again and incorporate yoga into the schedule! Compromises are good!
That’s really all for today, I don’t have much else to say.
❤
Your friend,
Emma
I’ve wanted to try black bean brownies for forever and finally manned up and made them. After doing some research I found a recipe from Chocolate Covered Katie here. The reviews were great and I figured it was worth a shot. When I was dumping the ingredients into my food processor I was excited and hopeful.
After mixing everything in the blender I was a little surprised and became skeptical, I think I was expecting it to have more of a retried bean texture, bean skins were everywhere and you could taste the beans in the uncooked batter (I had to give it a try). I did the version where you add in more maple syrup to avoid 2TBS of sugar- gotta make this sucker clean- and did the minimum amount of chocolate chips, which were dark chocolate. I crossed my fingers and popped this baby in the oven.
The house started smelling like real brownies were baking, which lifted my spirits a bit. When I brought it out of the oven (excuse the fork pricks) the grainy bits were still there but it looked better than they had in the beginning. I held my breath while waiting for it to cool.
The beany skins gave it an odd and the coconut oil made them greasier than I was expecting. They smell like brownies but don’t taste enough like them, however they taste healthy in a pleasant way and have a great after taste. They are fantastic when you think of them as a healthy desert made with black beans and chocolate, but are too much of a lie to be called brownies. Adding walnuts and mini chocolate chips after blending the batter together could help save the texture. All together I’d give it a 3 out of 5 stars, and am willing to try to make them with a different recipie- maybe one that involved blending the beans differently, or mashing them so the skins aren’t such a big deal, and adding flour or eggs or something the beans can lean on for a better texture.
That’s all I got for today, soon I’m making breakfast cookies 🙂
❤️
Your Friend,
Emma
Art from Chibird
So I think I’ll lead my next blog post with this.
It’s so difficult for me to love my body right now. I know it’s not enormous, but I think I see it in my head as fatter than it actually is. Whenever I notice a roll or fat of any kind- even if I’m alone- I get embarrassed and start out-right hating my body. This is something I know you’re not supposed to do, but it’s honestly how I feel and I’m working on changing that. It is not easy for me to think of myself as beautiful right now, I feel like it would be a lie, and I’m not about to lie to myself. I’m going to start thinking positive thoughts like this illustration suggests but if I’m not comfortable thinking “you’re beautiful” then I’ll just work on other ones like “wow you did a great job” until I can bring myself to more specific body-positive thoughts. Baby steps, right?
Today I’m making chicken tacos and am going to sign up for the gym. I’m obsessed with Chobani flips right now too.
I’ll add some pretty chicken pictures + recipe later today too.
(Edit: that chicken did not go according to plan- it was good but not pretty. I will next time though!)
❤️
Your friend,
Emma
It’s the second day of 2016. It’s time to start the journey of learning how to love yourself. That’s my one and only New Years resolution, and I figured I would try to start a blog to be more accountable and have a place to post recipes, inspiration, and other random stuff so I can be more accountable for my health and figuring out how to love myself this year. It’s not that I hate myself or anything- I know I’m a good person, but I seem to love everyone in my life but myself. I’m a nursing student and want to make a career out of loving and caring for others. Last semester was my first of actual nursing classes and I kept on hearing how important it is to take care of yourself so you can then take care of others. The more I thought about it the more I realized that I’ve been putting forth a bare minimum in taking care of myself and never really formed habits to do that. All my life I’ve either been focused on others or academics, and now it’s time to put some “me time” into the equation too.
I’ve always loved writing, art, and cooking. So this will be a jumbled mess of all three, along with posts on my progress. I’m going to try to focus on healthy recipes and turning unhealthy dishes into healthy ones. There will probably be fewer posts during the semester but that won’t mean I’ll be gone forever.
So there, I finally started a blog, let’s see how this goes
❤️
Your friend,
Emma
You Do You; Embrace Yourself. 