No sugar challenge starting Monday Jan 23rd

Ok confession time, i friggen love my "healthy/cleaner" sugars stevia, maple syrup, honey and even molasses from time to time. I crave sugar a fair amount and make sweet but healthy treats for my week every sunday. I have noticed that i have been adding more and more stevia to my morning coffee lately and craving it even more. What spurred me on to challenge myself to a 7 day no sugar challenge was reading Tosca Reno's article on sugar today, she calls it the white poison, the legal cocaine (since it's so addicting). Check out her article here. I also started following Gracious Pantry, a blog full of clean recipes on twitter a few months ago and noticed lots of "no sugar challenge" recipes being posted. So i am tweaking her idea of the no sugar challenge and putting my own spin on it. But if you guys want to join me here is the link to her challenge here for recipes and ideas.

What has spurred me on to do this is the fact that i can't workout right now due to my injury so i want to make sure i treat my body right and give it lot's of clean good nutrients to help it heal and hey a little challenge will help keep me motivated and inspired while i heal and prevent me from getting down due to not getting my workouts in.

I tweeted about this on twitter to see how many of the Tone It Up girls i can get involved in this to help keep me on track and keep me accountable. Plus it's so much more fun doing something with a bunch of friends and girls who love eating clean, working out as much as i do.

Ok so here are the rules (many adapted from Gracious pantries challenge):

1.No sugar of any kind even clean varieties (brown rice syrup, honey, maple syrup, agave (which im questioning the healthy-ness of lately due to how its refined and processed), molasses, stevia, organic cane sugar, sucanat. Check your labels sugar can be hidden in a lot of foods. Maybe this challenge will help me kick my ketchup habit! Here is a complete list of the names sugar can hide under as well as the actual names.

**No sugar means no added sugar. So sugars naturally occurring in milk, yogurt and fruit is ok. So when you are looking at your nutrition labels look for actual sugar not just the % of sugar.

Update:
**I am trying to recover after my injury as well so i will need my protein powder still which has a little stevia in it. So i have decided that this is ok since it's vital for me to get my protein so my body heals as quickly as possible. So you can choose to still use your protein powder, or even use plain. I am choosing not to spend my money on plain Sun Warrior protein since i have vanilla already. This challenge is meant to reset your taste buds and detox from sugar/stevia but i feel the small amount that is in my protein powder won't steer me away from this goal.

2. 3 servings of fruit a day. Fruit is great for you in it's whole form. Juices even pomegranate are delicious but don't have the fiber content fruit does in it's whole state so your body digests it the same as processed sugars.

3. Drink one tone it up inspired smoothie a day to get lot's of nutrients in and making eating no sugar a little easier. If you put fruit in your smoothie it counts towards your 3 serving limit for the day.

3. No drinking juices even natural fruit ones since they act like regular processed sugar does in the body.

Remember as the Tone it up girls say "You can do anything for 7 days". That being said though i may extend it to 14 days depending on how i feel after the 7 days:) The Gracious Pantry challenge is 2 weeks. But i wanted to try it for one week first as it doesn't seem as difficult and i have a feeling we'll all want to continue after a week!

Who's in? Comment and sign up below in the comment section so i can make a list of who's in to keep us all accountable!

Listen to your body

Listening to your body, easier said than done most times. I thought i was a lot better at it since i have suffered through a few injuries over the years and once had to take 3 weeks off the gym to let my body heal because i kept pushing through the pain. Well i sort of learned not to push myself running wise, kinda. I fell at work VERY hard on Jan 3rd. The parking lot was very icy and i knew it. I was wearing my new awesome winter boots (practical footwear for our atlantic canadian winters) and i was shuffling along the ice, clearly not salted! UGGG. And bam i fell so hard on my left hip. I couldn't even get up for a good 5 minutes. Three ladies rushed over to my aid, all wearing heels of course (ironic). They picked up all my bags (yes i bring a lot to work my lunch cooler, my purse, my laptop and a bag with my shoes to wear inside since i am smart and sport my awesome super warm winter boots).

I was in a lot of pain after i slowly went up to my floor where i work. The first thing i did was call the chiro to get in to get looked at. I knew something wasn't right. I had a lot of pain and pressure at my belt line of my pelvis from left to right. So off i went to the chiro and turns out i knocked my pelvis out of alignment. So good thing i went right away! 

I didn't run until Saturday that week and thought i gave myself ample time to recover. I still did some pilates, yoga, abs and upper body work. Saturday i set out for a 18km run with Stephanie. And during the run i felt pain where my SI joint was. Something i never heard about before. Steph knew about it as her hubby used to play football and has had issues with it before and her brother still plays and has had issues with his too. This is a common issue/injury for football players since they get hit and fall so much. Their SI joints get shoved out of place and sometimes it can take a lot of therapy to get it to stay back in. I only felt the pain for about 10 minutes and ran through it. 

Us runners think we can run through pain which is our downfall more often than not. While yes it's true you can run through some pain but more often than not we need to let go of our egos and just friggen stop sometimes and listen to our bodies already! But again easier said than done. Runners are a special breed and stubborn at best. So i kept working out and pushed it too much. I ran hills a week and a half ago with Steph and omg the nagging pressure on my belt line wasn't good...but it didn't hurt so i didn't stop, the next night i did some awesome plyo workouts called POP cardio and POP HIIT by Blogilates blogger/pilates instructor Cassey Ho. Who is awesome at kicking your ass by the way. So check her out if you haven't already. Her workouts are WAY harder than they look and you can do them at home or anywhere! SCORE! 

Anyways back to me and my ego getting in the way. I felt pressure and pain while i was doing the plyo stuff and worked through it and told my chiro and he said that wasn't good and to stop. He said no running, leg work or jumping. Ok i can handle that. Well even though i was "taking it easy" for me what i was doing for my modified workouts created a chain reaction affect of issues in my body. Yesterday i was in so much pain EVERYWHERE. My pelvis keeps getting pulled out due to spasms in my SI joints as well as my Q3 (located in the lower part of your spinal column). So working out was making my body really start to freak out. Due to the imbalance of my pelvis being out my mid back/spine/vertebrae started to get a lot of pressure and hurt a ton and then that made my ribs cranky and caused pressure all the way in my upper abs/ribs. As well due to my lower back issues in my Q3 my obliques were freaking out too and then the front part of my pelvis too...i never knew about the muscles under my pelvis but holy moly after having them pressed on i know they are there now! Now this is what i understand from my chiro. May not and probably isn't totally correct. It was a lot of information to digest but i want to understand what is going on with my body. 

So that being said i had to take yesterday and today off work as sitting in a chair all day is killing me. And just contributing to my slow healing as well. So i am now being forced to take time off from working out until i am healed up. I don't know how long it will take. I am hoping not too long. I am permitted and advised to stretch and foam roll my tight muscles out and do some light yoga as well as plank, side planks and bridge pulses. But honestly i don't even want to work out at all right now. I am scared i'll set myself back more. So for the next few days i'll be stretching and foam rolling but i think that will be the extent of it until i feel better! I am not in as much pain as i was yesterday so that makes me positive.

The lesson i have learned from this is that i need to take time off from the get go when i get injured. I need to listen to my body more or it will totally freak out and start a chain reaction of hurting in other ways. Yes it sucks taking time off from what you love and your passion. But the amount of time off at the beginning will save you having to take an undetermined amount of time off later. Better to heal first and work out later. Then work out now and heal for what feels like eternity later. While i am better at taking time off and not pushing through as much as i was i still need to work on listening to my body more from the get go.

First the salad beast now the skillet beast

One of my Tone it Up girls calls her salad's salad beasts since they are so huge and choc ful of veggies. You can never eat too many veggies right? Well today i had my yummy post run skillet and it was huge so it's now called the skillet beast. Basically a skillet with a crap load of veggies! Need to get rid of soon to be too old to eat veggies? Make a skillet beast. Haven't been so great at getting your minimum 3 servings of veggies in lately? Make a skillet beast. Have a super insane craving for copious amounts of veggies? Make a skillet beast. You get the picture.

Skillets have made me fall in love with eggs. While i first had to douse any egg dish i have in ketchup, ya i know not so uber healthy, i am finding that i am using less and less ketchup lately (as in only the last 3 times i have had skillets, i had two this week). So here is the recipe if you too want to enjoy the skillet beast. Best had after a killer Saturday or Sunday morning workout since they tend to be longer than your average during the week 45min- 1 hr long sweat sessions. I did a 18km run this morning with my running partner in crime, Steph Patterson. So i was hungry and needed something to fuel me back up and what is more well rounded than a skillet beast? Protein, veggies and carb loaded exactly what a runner needs after a killer training session.

The skillet beast

Ingredients:

• 1 large potato
• Copious amounts of the veggies you want
• 2 eggs (or more if you desire)
• Grated cheddar or cheese of your choice (optional)
• Ketchup (optional)

Directions:

First off you will cut a potato into hash brown cubes and fry it up with some EVOO (extra virgin olive oil) yah healthy hash browns that satisfy your cravings for hash browns and fries! I add a little sea salt to mine since i need the extra electrolytes after a big run and some pepper too. (I cheated and cooked my potato in the microwave for a bit so they basically just had to brown/crisp up).

Next chop up whatever veggies you want/have on hand. Today i added red pepper, mushroom, broccoli and onion. Wait until the hash browns are close to down, fairly crispy and then fry them up with a little EVOO and once they are cooked a bit add 2 eggs (or more if you want) and scramble them in with all the veggies.

Once the egg is cooked add your hash browns on a plate cover with your skillet mixture and sprinkle with shredded cheese and add ketchup if you desire!

YUM. Epically huge and delicious. ENJOY!