Culinary Journey

For whatever reason, I sometimes get squeamish talking about food, weight, and fitness outside of a few choice people. The reason is, different things work for different people. Few fitness programs or eating plans can be applied to multiple people without personal adjustments being made. I think the cornerstone to good health (the part we can control) is learning about ourselves and what we like, first and foremost. What healthy foods do I like to eat? what unhealthy foods do I like to eat and when do I usually eat them? what form of exercising do I actually like to do and what time of day is best for me? We are the only people who can answer these questions.

These thoughts come as I make some big changes this year. I scrapped my old workouts for others that have me challenged and energized. Most importantly, I swapped my old way of eating, which was often unplanned and half-hearted, for the kind of eating that requires me to do dishes four times on a Saturday (not an exaggeration). I decided to educate myself, to review my eating and make a plan for my health—the kind of plan that involves a lifetime of learning and loving to cook, eat, and to keep moving. Every day is a game of chess that I play with myself: finding a delicious recipe and making it healthy or finding a dessert that makes your mouth water but has only natural ingredients.

So here is to the adventure of finding our personal path to health, our own road to renewed energy and sustained eating. And if you'd like to be a part of my adventure, I have created a new page on my blog for Clean Eating, which is my new philosophy. Every week I try new recipes and will report!

Blinders

Sometimes I find myself walking around like the saddest horse there ever was: Black Beauty. I walk heavy footed with blinders over my eyes, aware only of my own frustrations. But as soon as I take off my blinders and spend a few minutes adjusting to the new bright and unselfish light, I can usually see someone who's feeling the same or worse than me.

As a single gal, some activities are just more lonesome. Going to the Saturday night session of stake conference, for instance, or a too-long Sunday afternoon. And while I actually do "alone" pretty damn well, I'm not immune to moments where I wish things were a little different. Last week, in light of those activities I mentioned, I decided to look around for someone who might be feeling the same as me. Not surprisingly, I found someone. A phone call led to a simple pre-stake conference dinner (simple, because I'm still learning to cook), someone to sit next to at the meeting, and then the idea to take a long walk together on Sunday afternoon. Two people were helped, and one was me.

The fact is, the world is full of people, despite our sometimes feeling alone. And the second we unfold our arms and raise our eyes, we can usually see someone to wrap our arms around and someone to make eye contact with. The simple gesture of removing our blinders and seeing past what we often think is most important (a.k.a. ourselves) helps us to see what is always true: there's someone needing something more than you.

Laundry Night

Last night, after a workout so brutal the gym owners walked around wiping sweat off the floors while people dripped from their pushup positions, I took a pealed orange, a fresh copy of The Hobbit (a first time read), and a huge bundle of clothes to the local laundry mat. Being able to do four loads of laundry in under two hours is quickly becoming my new favorite thing. I like the quiet time to read, and if that ever gets old, I look out of the huge frosted windows at the people walking around.

Few people who come to the laundry mat know each other, but quick relationships are formed in sharing quarters, borrowing dryer sheets, and like last night, working on the broken change exchange machine. I laughed with strangers as we pooled together our money so that a designated runner could go to another laundry mat to get us all quarters; we laughed again when someone new walked into use our change machine and it began to miraculously work. The four of us—an old woman in pink sweatpants, a young Asian student, a recently immigrated Kenyan, and myself—stood around the folding tables talking about the weather in Utah, the culture and the religion, and how hard it is to go to school and work at the same time. Outside of the laundry mat, I would never have told my life stories to these people, nor heard theirs. Still, for a night, we enjoyed our unexpected conversations with the hum of the dryers as background music.

The truth is, every day when we walk out our doors, we have an opportunity to experience something new if we want to. They may not be the experiences we were hoping to have—in fact, they may be nothing short of weird. But I am starting to believe that the weird and the unexpected add the most color to life.