Recipes to Try

Breakfast: Super Seed Oatmeal

Serves 2

Ingredients

1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats (not quick or instant)

1 1/2 cups unsweetened vanilla soy, hemp or almond milk

1 apple, peeled, cored and chopped

1 cup frozen blueberries or mixed berries, thawed

1/4 cup raisins

1 tbsp raw sunflower seeds

1 tbsp ground flaxseed

1 tbsp ground hemp seeds

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Directions

Cook oats according to package directions, using soy milk instead of water. Mix remaining ingredients together and stir into oats.

Dinner: Goji Chili Stew

Serves 6

Ingredients

3 cups diced plum tomatoes or 1 (28-oz) can no-salt-added or low-sodium plum tomatoes

1 lb frozen broccoli, thawed and chopped

10 oz frozen chopped onions, thawed

2 1/2 cups corn, fresh or frozen

1/2 cup goji berries

2 large zucchini, diced

4 oz chopped mild green chilies

4 tsp chili powder, or more to taste

2 tsp cumin

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 1/2 cups cooked pinto beans or 1 (15-oz) can no-salt-added or low-sodium pinto beans, drained

1 1/2 cups cooked black beans or 1 (15-oz) can no-salt-added or low-sodium black beans, drained

1 1/2 cups cooked red beans or 1 (15-oz) can no-salt-added or low-sodium red beans, drained

Directions

Cover and simmer all ingredients, except precooked (or canned) beans, for 20 minutes. Add beans and heat through.

Dr. Furhman's Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

Serves 12

Cake

1 2/3 cups whole-wheat pastry flour

1 tsp baking powder

3 tsp baking soda

3 1/2 cups pitted dates, divided

1 cup pineapple chunks in own juice, drained

1 banana

1 cup unsweetened applesauce

1 cup raw beets, shredded

3/4 cup raw carrots, shredded

1/2 cup raw zucchini, shredded

3 tbsp natural, nonalkalized cocoa powder

1/2 cup currants

1 cup chopped walnuts

1 1/2 cups water

2 tsp vanilla extract

Chocolate Nut Icing

1 cup raw macademia nuts and/or raw cashews

1 cup vanilla soy, hemp or almond milk

2/3 cup pitted dates

1/3 cup brazil nuts or hazelnuts

2 tbsp cocoa powder

1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

Preheat oven to 350°F. Mix flour, baking powder and baking soda in a small bowl. Set aside.

In blender or food processor, purée 3 cups of the dates, pineapple, banana and applesauce. Slice remaining 1/2 cup dates into 1/4-inch pieces.

In large bowl, mix sliced dates, beets, carrots, zucchini, cocoa powder, currants, walnuts, water, vanilla and flour mixture. Add the blended mixture and mix well.

Spread in a 9 x 13-inch nonstick baking pan.

Bake for 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

For the icing, use a high-powered blender and combine all icing ingredients until smooth and creamy. Spread on cooled cake.

When You Need Support--Find It

Because I need support, I signed up for this awesome program.

Here are the rules for the Maintainers' Health Competition, otherwise known as The Sisterhood of the PLC. For those of you who have been doing this competition already, note there are a few minor changes listed below. 

Pay $30 for four weeks of competition and declare your goal weight and eating plan to me via text/email. 

Pay by the end of the day today, March 18th. You can pay through PayPal  or email me your eating plan of choice (see below) and your weight you are striving to maintain (for example, I am following Weight Watchers and my personal goal weight is xxx).

*SCORING AND SYSTEM FOR WINNING*

Everyone pays their $30 at the beginning. Every person wins back her $30 for having kept all the rules throughout all four weeks. You get one freebie day each week for each of the following rules: Exercise, Journal, Water, Sleep, Veggies, and Communication. There are no freebie days for the Meal Plan rule, but you do get 2 free meals each week. Each meal has to be consumed within a 1 1/2 hour period. There is no freebie day for the Weigh-In rule except what is outlined below in the Weigh In section. For each rule that is broken (beyond the freebies built into the competition) you lose $10 of your $30. Once you lose your $30, you are not required to pay up for any additional broken rules, you're just out your money and ineligible for winning money from the pot. All "lost" money from breaking rules goes into the pot and will be disbursed evenly at the end to those who have kept all rules throughout the competition or have earned back all their money lost throughout the competition.  You can earn back your lost money the following ways: 1. Completing an extra two hours total of exercise in a one week span will earn you back $5. You can do the additional 2 hours at one time or break it up throughout the week, but this has to be in addition to the required 20 minutes a day.  2. Eating an additional cup of veggies every day for an entire week will earn you back $5. This means you have to eat at least one cup of veggies on your "free day" from veggies. Thus, no one is out money unless they break rules and fail to earn back the money by completing the above requirements. The 9 rules are listed below.

RULE #1: Maintaining Weight

Everyone in this competition has the goal to maintain her weight. Starting weight is the weight you decide is best for you to maintain. You'll need to declare this to me, but you don't have to share it with everyone else if you'd rather not. The original goal weight you declare at the beginning will be your goal for each week. You need to weigh yourself every day each week and average your weight for the week (Add up your weight from each day divided by 7) to determine what weight you maintained on average for the week. If that average weight is equal to or less than your goal maintenance weight, you have successfully kept Rule #1 for maintaining weight. If it's higher, then you lose $10 for breaking this rule. You'll want to choose your goal weight wisely. :) 

RULE #2: Meal Plan

Follow a meal plan every day--just pick a type of meal plan and stick with it--could be counting calories; low-carb; 3 sensible meals plus 2 snacks; 5 meals consisting of a protein, a "good" carb, & a healthy fat; Weight Watchers; no sugar, wheat, dairy, etc.....For each day you deviate from the range you've established in your plan, you lose $10. For people doing the calorie counting plan, you've broken this rule for that day when you go 100 calories above your range or below 1100 calories. Note: If you follow Weight Watchers, due to the Weekly Point allowance, you only get 1 Free Meal each week instead of 2 Free Meals.  (I’m using the Fitness Pal ap on my IPad and will consume a maximum of 1600 calories a day and burn 300-400 calories through exercise. I know that my four mile run burns about 400 calories. My goal is an average of 1200 calories a day.)

RULE #3: Exercise

Exercise at least 20 min. per day (In addition to your free day off, you can combine 2 days into one—do 40 min. in one day instead of 20 min. on two different days—but you can only do that once a week)

RULE #4: Journal

Write in a journal every day; it does not have to be shared with anyone—can be emotional writing (how you’re feeling, why you’re eating what you’re eating, etc.) or a food/exercise journal (how you feel when you eat certain things or do certain exercises), weight watchers food journal, etc. 

RULE #5: Water

Drink at least 8 cups of water a day

RULE #6: Veggies

Eat at least 3 cups of veggies a day--tomatoes count as a veggie and you can drink V8 or something like it for 2 of the veggies but have to actually eat at least one veggie or make your own juice. (For veggie recipes, visit my pinterest food board at http://pinterest.com/kristinetate/food/) 

RULE #7: Communication

Communicate with at least two other competitors daily--that means 2 points of communication each day, which can be through Facebook, a text, a phone call, an email, etc.

RULE #8: Sleep

Sleep at least 6 hours a night - or if you have a newborn/kid with night terrors situation/etc. just make sure you have a six hour stretch after going to bed and before getting up in the morning.

RULE #9: Daily Weigh-In

You’re required to weigh yourself daily.  You can weigh more than once a day and can use your lowest weight of the day for that day's weight, but don't be obsessive with the scale! You are allowed two freebie days from weighing in throughout the entire four week competition but it has to be on a day you legitimately forget to weigh or don't have access to a scale. And only one weigh freebie can be used in a week period. Both cannot be used in the same week. You cannot take your highest weight of the week and drop it or anything of the sort.

Rule #10: Reporting

Each week you need to report to me your week's average weight and if/how many mess ups you had that week. The week goes Monday through Sunday and you need to report EACH week by Monday at 6pm PST. Failure to do so will result in a loss of $10. 

The Six Steps to Effective Change

I serve in a leadership position in my church. Because of this, I get to visit local churches and listen to the stake presidency give a different talk on the same scripture each week. Last week I wasn’t feeling very good about myself. I couldn’t find the notebook I usually bring to church to take notes so I grabbed an old one off my shelf. When I settled on the pew and opened the notebook, I saw that it was from five years ago and the struggles that I had five years ago I still struggle with! In fact, if anything things are now much worse. About the time that depressing realization hit, President Brennan held up a little card that has our stake goals written on it and said, “You may wonder why our goals are the same this year as last, but until we have seen real, measurable improvement we need to continue working on our goals.” And it hit me, I don’t need to be sad or discouraged, I just need to have measurable improvement.

I need to change and fortunately, years ago I took a workshop on how to create effective change and according to the class, you need six things:

1.       The belief that it’s worth the cost.

2.       Knowledge—you need the knowhow.

3.       Friends who love you and support you.

4.       A changed environment (because right now, your environment is perfectly suited for your current lifestyle.)

5.       A reward system.

6.       An action plan.

I’ll admit I struggle number one the most. Ten years ago I successfully lost the 15 pounds I had gained with my twins and I kept it off for many years. But after the weight loss, other than dropping two dress sizes, my life wasn’t really any different. The people who love me love me whether I’m big or small. I still have the same chores to do when I feel ambitious and the same books to read when I feel like lounging. And so when life got busy, crazy and stressful with a houseful of teenagers combined with a four year long stint as a relief society president I regained the fifteen pounds plus nine more.

But now the last of the teenagers are walking out the door. My life isn’t busy, crazy or stressful—in fact, at times it’s boring and empty. Instead of a noisy tribe sitting down at the dinner table, it’s usually just me and my husband. I need to decide what I want this next chapter of my life to look like…how I want to look and feel and I decided that I need to leave this depressing middle-aged slump and abandon the lumps that have grown around my middle. Is the size 6 important? Not really. I could set down my battle with lumps, turn my generous backside on it, walk away and say I don’t care. But somehow the depressing slump and lumps are connected—I need to abandon the slump and get excited about my new (somewhat empty) life and fill it full to the brink. By pulling myself out of the depressing slump—I will also get rid of the twenty pound lumps.

So—recommitting to my six challenges necessary for effective change, here is what I did and what I’m doing.

1.       A belief that your goal is important. See above.

2.       Knowledge—you need the knowhow. Although I feel like I’ve been a student of weight loss for many years, I recently committed to a daily reading of health books and articles. Even if it’s only one page a day and even if I don’t totally agree with the diet, just getting into that “my body is a temple and needs proper love and nourishment” mind frame is important for motivation. I also made a doctor’s appointment—just to keep it real.

3.       Friends who love you and support you. I have this in abundance, but I need help so I recently found an online challenge group of dieters that communicates daily and signed up for the next session that begins on March 18^th. So excited.

4.       A changed environment (because right now, your environment is perfectly suited for your current lifestyle.) We have a cupboard full of granola bars, nut bars and fruit snacks. Since these snacks are for my teenage daughters to take to school and since once I eat one granola bar I want to eat three, I moved the entire contents of that cupboard to the trunk of my daughter’s car. One granola bar isn’t a problem. Three granola bars tell a different story. I bought protein bars for when I need something sweet. Unlike the granola bars, I can’t eat more than one protein bar without feeling ill.

5.       A reward system. This is another struggle. I have a hard time rewarding myself without guilt, maybe because I already think my life resembles a pleasure cruise. So I borrowed something I saw on Pinterest. I took two pretty glass cylinders and put twenty pennies in one. With each pound lost I move a penny into the other cylinder. Not a penny is lost or spent—only pounds.

6.       An action plan. My plan is simple. 1200 calories a day. Actually eat sixteen to seventeen hundred calories a day and burn 400-500 calories a day. I’ve been a runner most of my life and my four mile run is a little more than 400 hundred calories, a five mile run is 500 calories. You get the picture.

Did you notice how the action plan is the last—and actually the least important? Life and weight loss are really just head games. 

The Rice Experiment

For the last three weeks I’ve been talking to cooked, white rice. You might think that I don’t have a lot to say to rice—we don’t have a lot in common and I really only like rice when it’s smothered in teriyaki sauce—but I’ve been whispering compliments and loving words to the jar of rice with the red band around it’s lid and insults and hateful words to the jar with the blue band on its lid.

I started this because my friend did it and I was shocked by the results, (which were more dramatic than mine, because she did it for a longer period of time—I ended mine early because of travel plans) so I tried it myself. My husband, ever the skeptic, pointed out that maybe I tended to spit when I speak harshly, so after my first time of rice-talk session I was always careful to hold the jars away from me and not spit. Maybe my sessions of kind words were longer than the hateful sessions and therefore the lid was off for a longer period of time? I don’t know. I think it was about even. I tried to be fair.

Friends asked if it felt good/cathartic to vent on my poor rice, but it really didn’t. In fact, it was just the opposite. I always end the sessions feeling badly and a little apologetic toward the abused rice—even though I know it’s just rice and doesn’t have feelings or emotions. Being mean makes me feel—mean.

What lessons have I learned from my experiment?

1.      When I’m mean or unkind I’m hurting myself, maybe even more than I’m hurting anyone else.

2.      Rice or mold can’t understand my words—just as like someone speaking another language can’t understand my words—so it has to be more than the actual stringing together of sentences—it has to be a combination of the tone and the intent. And maybe it’s just the thoughts? I don’t know.

3.      From now on, I will always be more mindful of my negative thoughts and words. I will speak to others and myself with love, kindness and compassion.

What does this have to do with weight loss? Quite a bit, I think. I tend to be my most critical and hateful after standing on the scale or in the dressing room at the mall. Should I abandon the scale? Stop shopping? No. What I do need to do is stop the negativity. If the numbers on the scale are up I need to be honest and reflective about that—was it the birthday cake? The sodium from the Chinese food? A skipped work out? And were those choices—whatever they were—worth the pound or two? Surprisingly, the answer to that question might be yes. Be honest and yet be kind. These thoughts are helpful. Harsh words/thoughts are not (remember the rice.)

I would love to hear scientific theories explaining the results of my rice experiment. Can someone learned in the ways of bacteria explain this to me? Although really, I  don’t need to know why—I don’t need to understand the power—I just need to respect it.

Losing Penny on Amazon

A cooking show diva in hiding,
A literature professor writing genre fiction,
An admirer who wants more than the tasty morsels a cooking hostess is willing to share—
A dangerous recipe for romance in the town of Rose Arbor.

Cooking show diva, Penny Lee, loses fifty pounds, and gains a stalker. To avoid the attention of her most devoted follower, Penny concocts a plan: while pretending to take a culinary tour, traveling the world, collecting recipes and posting them on her blog, she hides at a remote beach house in Rose Arbor, Washington, where she spends the summer compiling her cookbook.

When English Literature professor Drake Islington is offered the chance to spend the summer at a remote beach house where he can write in peace he happily accepts, never dreaming that he is a pawn in a match making scheme. His encounter with Penny promises a a delicious summer, until uninvited guests arrive forcing Penny and Drake to cook up a scheme of their own. When Drake’s mother, a stalker and a donkey named Gertrude join the mix, the town of Rose Arbor sizzles with another tale of romance and suspense.

http://www.amazon.com/Losing-Penny-Rose-Arbor-ebook/dp/B00B8BRPFI/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1359609139&sr=8-16&keywords=kristy+tate

The Watcher, the Wild Child and the Dictator

We all have voices in our heads. Freud called them the Id, the Ego and the Super-ego. Clinical psychologists refer to the negative voice of an eating disorder as “Ed” and help anorexic patients learn to recognize Ed and determine that Ed is not their friend. Martha Beck in her book The Four Day Win, refers to three head voices and calls them the Wild Child, the Dictator and the Watcher.

The Dictator loves you and wants you to be your very best self. Give her a face and voice—she’s probably wearing a suit, carrying a briefcase and she has hair tightly pulled back into a bun. She knows all sorts of facts, figures and calculations, but she’s mostly concerned about your figure. She’s a master at calorie counting and she knows exactly how many miles you need to run to burn off a doughnut blow-out.

The Wild Child also loves you and because she loves you, she wants you to well-fed and happy. She can’t deny you anything and she hates to see you hungry. She needs to feed you emotionally as well as physically and she believes that any pain can be soothed with sweets. Recognize her, give her a voice and a face. She may look like a hippie, but chances are she looks like your favorite Aunt Martha—the one who slept with a full candy dish beside her bed.

The Dictator and the Wild Child are at war. They are not friends, although they both love you and have only your best interests at heart. Imagine them beside you, each trying to sway you to their unique points of view. Listen to their voices and learn to recognize them for who they are and the desires they’re trying to fulfill. And as you watch them, you realize that THEY ARE NOT YOU.

 The real you, the you that Dennis Deaton in his excellent book, The Book on Mind Management, called the thinker of thoughts, or in Freudian terms—the super-ego—or the you Martha Beck called The Watcher. When you come to recognize who you really are, you can understand that you are not dominated by the Dictator nor are you manipulated by the Wild Child. You are you, the thinker of your thoughts, the watcher of your actions, and ultimately responsible for all of your decisions.

This is scary…And freeing…And scary.

And so I challenge you to listen to your thoughts. Learn to recognize the voices in your head. Take the time to listen to the real you. When you learn to love and respect her, your years of yo-yo dieting will end.

A Rant from the Top of the Barbells

I didn’t accomplish what I set out to do with this blog and this book. I had hoped to use the blog as a marketing tool for my novel, Losing Penny, thinking that as health conscious internet surfers stumbled across diet tips and recipes on my blog, that they might also be interested in reading Losing Penny. I also had a more personal agenda—I had hoped that as I posted weight loss tips and veggie recipes that I would stay motivated on my own personal path to optimal health and skinny thighs.

That didn’t happen. For a glimpse of what did happen, you have to read the ending of Losing Penny—which I love by the way, and since I don’t want to spoil the ending…I will leave you with this one important weight loss tool. To enjoy your life and optimal health—you have to love and appreciate your body. That’s it. That’s the take away message I wish I could shout from the top of the barbells at the gym and post on giant banners in front of weight loss clinics worldwide.

If you hate your body, if you say or even think cruel or unkind things about your body, you will never be at peace and you will never be healthy. I don’t care if you have the means to hire chefs, personal trainers and a team of plastic surgeons—if you don’t nurture yourself with proper amounts of sleep, exercise, healthy foods and gratitude for the amazing gift of your body—you will be at war. And guess what—you will lose…and I’m not talking about body fat.

I will now climb off the barbells and stop ranting. I don’t want to be a Julian Michaels, screaming in anybody’s face. I don’t believe in screaming—unless grave bodily harm can be prevented (but wait—maybe it can.) I don’t believe in punishments. I don’t think negativity ever works…for long.

The other day I got two beautiful magazines in the mail. My teenage daughters picked up the Bride magazine and asked where they had come from and why. I didn’t know, but I think they must be somehow associated with my credit card, since they had my full and legal name on the packaging label. It took me a few moments to get what kind of magazine the second one was—it wasn’t a bridal magazine (like the first) home décor or fashion. Mid way through, after numerous advertisements for cars and jewelry I found a picture of two beautiful models—male and female—sitting in a yoga pose on the beach. Make 2013 The Year You Achieve All Your Dreams—the caption read. And since I like yoga and the beach and dreams, I turned the page—only to find five pages of advertisements for plastic surgeons.

I know plastic surgery can nip and tuck our outsides, but I also know it can’t fix what’s going on inside our heads. And that’s where real optimal health has to start. If you think weight loss is all about bellys, bottoms and biceps—you’re wrong.

It’s a head game. And you will never win if you don’t learn to love your greatest opponent—yourself.