Thursday Three

1. This bar is gluten free, vegan, and amaaaazing:

I woke up late on Tuesday and had to rush to get to my workout class (if you miss it, they charge you $15!!!). I had this bar and some OJ and was pretty much good to go.

What I like about the Bonk Breaker is the texture. It's not as gluey as other energy bars, nor is it as sweet as date-based bars.

2. We finally took down our Christmas tree yesterday. I wrapped up all of the ornaments and placed them in our Christmas decorations bin - the one piece of organization in my entire house.

Every year we get a new glass ornament. This year it was a snazzy red VW hippie bus:

I'm sad to see all the pretty lights and baubles go, but I'm glad I made myself do it. Around here, decorations are liable to stay up for months after the actual holiday.

3. What is up with this whole worst-flu-season-in-10-years thing??? 2/3 of my department are sick. Some of them have the flu and some of them have a stomach bug. Last thing I want is a stomach bug. I have a fear of puking. Like, a real fear. And so I try not to do it. My record for not puking is 13 years - between the time I got the stomach flu in middle school and the time I got food poisoning in grad school. I'd like to break that record.

What the heck does a gluten-free vegan eat?

I'm on Day 19 of the PETA 30 Day Vegan Challenge... and so far, it hasn't been nearly as challenging as I'd expected it would be. The rundown on what I gave up:

Meat, including fish: This wasn't very difficult for me. I've never been all that hooked on meat, thanks to the section in my 5th grade science textbook on the hazards of food-borne illnesses (my mom wasn't too pleased when I came home and started questioning her cooking techniques...) On the rare occasion when I crave meat, it's always for a big, juicy steak, which is something I wouldn't want to consume on a regular basis anyway.

Milk: I've been drinking milk alternatives, especially almond milk, for a while now. Almond milk tastes rich and creamy (like milk) but not too sweet (unlike ricemilk), and it doesn't have soy's distinctive texture. No problems here, either.

Yogurt: I mostly miss the convenience of yogurt. It's a great way to get a substantial dose of protein, calcium, and energy in one little bowl. Soy yogurt is readily available, but again, I'm not a fan of the texture. Coconut yogurt is decent, though.

Eggs: Eggs on their own, I can take or leave. It's harder to avoid them in baked products or things like waffles and pancakes, but I just read labels a little more carefully.

Cheese: I thought I'd be craving cheese! I've never met a cheese I didn't like, even the stinky, goopy, blue ones. But I'm not hankering for it. Not yet, anyway. I'm most surprised by this particular aspect of my vegan foray.

Here are some of the things I've been enjoying during this challenge:

Fruits and vegetables, of course!

Almond milk. Oatmeal. Sometimes together.

Carb- and protein-rich basics

 A probiotic drink, since I'm not eating regular yogurt anymore

Earth Balance spread (a little goes a long way, and it's so good) and corn tortillas

I feel good and am thinking about extending the challenge another two weeks once this month is up. Am I ready to commit to a total vegan lifestyle? I don't know yet. I have another work trip (with non-veg coworkers) coming up this month, and although I will have access to a refrigerator and microwave, the kitchen situation is a little sparse. So I'm going to try the vegan thing in that situation and see how it goes. If it's too stressful, though, I'll reevaluate. I travel a lot, and as prepared as I try to be in terms of having snacks on hand and planning where to shop, it's not always easy to find food that meets the gluten free/vegan requirement. Nor do my traveling companions always have patience for what some of them see as pickiness.

Aside from that, though, I am 100 percent behind veganism in that it supports sustainability, a healthy environment, and animal welfare. And those reasons, too, have been part of the motivation making this challenge pretty straightforward.

Resolutions for the new year, and a treadmill workout

Happy 2013! Our New Year's celebration was quiet. We got the little man down to bed at a decent time and then we watched a documentary on Netflix called Deep Water. It's about a weekend sailor who decided to compete in a first-of-its-kind round-the-world sailing competition in the late 1960s. The ending was totally not what I expected; I couldn't believe I'd never heard of this guy before now.

We made it to midnight, but barely. Apparently we were not alone. As I checked Facebook, I saw a lot of "It's only 9 p.m. but I can't stay up any longer and by the way I'm officially old"-type posts. 

Resolutions: Do you have any? Or anything you want to do/change in 2013? My only resolution at this point is to keep up the activities and habits I took up in the last part of 2012:

• Continue going to Xtend Barre classes 4 times a week (I continue to love, love, love this class... Who knew I'd grow so fond of ballet and Pilates?)
• Find my next race. 5K? Half marathon? Trail run? Not sure yet, but I'm hoping that I'll decide on something close to home, and relatively soon.
• Finish up my 30-day vegan challenge! I'm on Day 16 (I think), and so far, so good. My only slip-up was when I ordered a salad at Panera and discovered too late that it had feta cheese on it. My least favorite cheese! Argh. I hate wasting food so I ate it anyway. More on the Vegan Challenge in the next few days.
• And lose a few pounds. I guess that one's new, but I don't want to get too caught up in thinking about it. I'm using the Lose It! app on my iPhone to track my calories and workouts. More on that in the coming weeks, too.

*  *  *

I'm one of those runners who is not too keen on running in supercold weather (and by "supercold," I mean anything less than 30 degrees F - since moving to the South, I've become a winter wimp). I ran on my treadmill instead and made up my own interval workout as I went along. I was pretty happy with it. There was enough variation to keep me from getting too bored. This would be easy to modify based on your own moderate baseline pace:

Easy Does It 60 Minute Workout:

* 5 minutes walking (moderate effort)

* 5 minutes 5.5 mph, 2 minutes walking

* 5 minutes 5.6 mph, 2 minutes walking

*5 minutes 5.7 mph, 2 minutes walking

* 5 minutes 5.8 mph, 2 minutes walking

* 5 minutes 5.9 mph, 2 minutes walking

* 5 minutes 6.0 mph, 2 minutes walking

* 1.5 minutes each of 6.0 down to 5.5 mph (9 minutes total)

* 4 minutes walking

One of the best decisions I made in 2012: antidepressants

I wish that eating well, running, and staying busy were enough to keep depression and anxiety at bay for me, but they aren't. Those are all things I've been doing for years, and still - for years - I had this constant, nagging feeling of Something is wrong with me. I planned my own funeral for fun. I wrote depressing entries in my diary. I made friends and lost them, over and over again. Something is wrong with me. I got angry and threw things. I cried while lying on the floor of the bathroom, light off, door locked. I quit things, changed jobs, viewed moving once every year or two as a perfectly logical approach to dealing with social discomfort. Something is wrong with me.

And yet throughout that time, I looked totally functional to most people. I went to school or work. I excelled in classes and in my jobs. I smiled, bantered, was personable. I maintained my relationship with my husband. I had a kid.

Few people outside my immediate family knew how much I was struggling. I didn't know how much I was struggling. Periodic bouts of exhaustion, near-constant irritability, and daily anxiety attacks were, from my perspective, just part of the fabric of my personality. And to a certain degree, one gets used to feeling bad when one has felt that way since her early teens. I had enough coping strategies in place (like working really hard, eating well, running, sleeping, zoning out, distancing myself from others if I might go all Jekyll-and-Hyde on them, etc.) that I got by, for the most part. As the years went on I also became adept at hiding what was really going on.

That's a common theme in mental health: hiding. Which is partly why so many of us who struggle with difficult mental experiences feel so isolated and alone. We don't want to embarrass ourselves, so we compensate by striving to look normal (or better yet, GREAT!); when we do furtively glance over the wall to see if there's anyone else out there, the place looks empty. In reality the mental health landscape is full of people struggling with similar things, all hiding from one another, afraid (often understandably so) to stand up and put it all out there. I think that's slowly changing. Finally.

I started therapy long before I started taking an antidepressant, a strategy that now seems somewhat backwards. Don't get me wrong: therapy has been invaluable in that it's offered a place where I can dig through my life and identify where, how, and why ineffective habits developed. It's given me tools: I've learned how to set boundaries, be nice to myself, combat negative thoughts, handle conflict, and be more assertive. I needed the therapy; it was one of the best decisions I have ever made. The problem was, implementing these strategies while dealing with full-on depression and anxiety was like trying to build a life raft while in the active process of drowning. 

Only after I got in touch with a psychiatrist, received a diagnosis (major depression and PTSD), and started on Zoloft (a relatively reliable, long-studied antidepressant used specifically to treat PTSD, among other conditions) did I realize just how long I'd been on the verge of being pulled under permanently. I'd gotten so used to treading water that I didn't know life's not supposed to be a constant day-to-day, year-to-year struggle. I did recognize that the bad times were growing progressively worse. By last January I was having the conversation with my therapist of, "I won't end my life. But I think about it. But I won't do it. But sometimes I want to just not exist," and him saying, "What you're holding onto is an emergency exit option. As long as that door is open, even just a little, you are in danger."

It's hard to describe how different my life is now that I am taking that little white pill every morning. Maybe it looks the same from the outside. I'm still doing what I've always done: working hard, running, putting time and effort into my relationships, challenging myself. But from the inside, it's like Extreme Makeover: Headspace Edition. My anxiety is still there, but I'm mostly able to manage it. I still get depressed, but I recognize the warning signs and know to take action before things get really bad. And all the techniques from therapy? Now I can actually put them into practice on a consistent basis. (Turns out, positive self-talk really works, if you can make yourself do it!)

Sometimes it's hard to remember what it used to be like. I do find myself wondering why I couldn't pull it together, why I made things so hard for myself. But then I'll read an old journal entry or think back to one of my earlier sessions in therapy, and I'll remember that I didn't do this to myself, that I was working as hard as I possibly could to fix my brain. I couldn't save myself no matter how much CBT, EMDR, or western meditation I did. A person with two broken arms might know everything about what it takes to construct a house; she might have all the tools, all the blueprints. But unless her broken arms are set and have a chance to heal, there's no way she's going to be able to actively use her arms to build it.

That's what medicine has done for me: it's put me in a place where my brain can rest long enough to (hopefully) get better. Sometimes I do wonder whether I will ever be able to stop taking Zoloft. Part of me believes it's just a temporary support beam, and that if I can just use this time to reconstruct and galvanize my way of thinking, I'll eventually be able to remove that support. Another part of me worries that if I ever stop, the whole thing will collapse. At any rate, I'm not ready to quit medication just yet. It's working for me; if it's working, why stop? The statistics also give me pause. Depression is one of those things where if you experience it a couple of times, you're likely to experience it again in the future, and it might be worse the next time.

Of course, every person's experiences are unique, and that's certainly true when it comes to antidepressants. I've read that for some people, they don't work; some people have side effects that negate the positive outcomes; other people do well on them for awhile, and then the medication loses its effectiveness. For all I know, Zoloft might lose its oomph for me, too. But for now, I'm just grateful that it's working. It's one of the best - perhaps the best - decision I made this year.

Marginally-Homemade Vegan Chocolate Nibbles

I have an issue with vegan energy bars, and it's that most of them (with the exception of Zing bars, which are my absolute favorite but which are expensive and not readily available around here) are date-based. Dates are tasty, but they're also texturally dense and very sweet. When you add to that things like dried cherries, walnuts, and agave, they turn into brick-like sugarbombs.

If I had to pick a favorite - Zing not included - it would be the Pure Bar:

The chocolate one especially. It doesn't really taste like a brownie to me, contrary to what the package says, but the cocoa cuts the sweetness a bit. The cherry cashew is... okay. When I'm desperate for a quick snack in the middle of the day, I'll eat one if it's the only carb-y thing around. 

But still... These things have heft, and once I eat one, I can feel the heft in my stomach. See? Dense, dense, dense:

However, they make a fantastic base for quick and easy chocolate nibbles. All you need is a bar and some dark chocolate. I use Trader Joe's: it melts well, and it's inexpensive:

Cut the bars up into little bite-size pieces...

...and then melt a few of the chocolate bars in the microwave. Heat on medium-high for 2-3 minutes, stirring once every minute.

Then just drizzle the chocolate over the bites. My five-year-old son did this part - his method was to dot each bite with a glob of chocolate. My method is to cover the whole thing (chocolate everywhere!), but I like how his chocolate dribbled over the sides. He did, too: he now fancies himself quite the pastry chef.

So easy, a Kindergartner can do it! (He loves stuff like this.)

I'll keep them in the refrigerator and have them as dessert for the next few days. Two or three bites are enough to make me feel satisfied and chocolate-happy.

This "recipe" makes Sandra Lee's creations look like food worthy of the French Laundry.

A Most Fantastic Present: The RunnerBox

I love giving gifts but I generally suck at picking them out. This is especially true when it comes to my husband, my parents, and my brother's family. I consistently end up finding stuff that *I* want, but for everyone else, it's a crapshoot. And although I'm loath to give gift cards, sometimes that's the best I can do.

My husband is one of those people who's hard to buy for because he doesn't want a lot of stuff. That's something I love about him, but it makes gifty holidays a little challenging. Things I do not buy for him:

• Clothing. No t-shirts, no sweaters, definitely no pants or shoes. I did manage to get him a running jacket he liked last year, but I was very careful to include the gift receipt and was pleasantly surprised when he did not use it.
• Power tools. I'm much more likely to wield a drill or a hammer than he is.
• Books. 
• Anything even remotely related to man-scaping.

Things I know he likes:

• Peet's Coffee. But at $14+ per pound, I'm hesitant to splurge for it.
• Gift certificates to running stores and Hammer Nutrition. Useful, but not very creative.
• Apple products. Too expensive. 

I was at a loss this year until I read a review of The RunnerBox at Yo Momma Runs. The RunnerBox is a subscription that entitles the recipient to a box of running-related goodies every other month. I  knew immediately that my running-addicted husband would love it. Staci of the RunnerBox team mailed the first shipment the day after I placed the order. When I had an issue with PayPal, Staci also got to work on the problem, resolved it within hours, and kept me posted. I had the gift in hand by Christmas Eve; I didn't have to do much in the way of wrapping it because it came with a gift card, a ribbon, and a little gift-topper. I definitely got the sense that these folks care about the quality of the product and customer service.

RunnerBox pics (Yo Momma Runs has more detailed ones):

The box came with lots of goodies, including tea, a reflector, gum, gels, protein powders, and other stuff that my husband is excited to try out:

I plan to steal some of these from him:

I've already stolen this:

This would be perfect for anyone who enjoys running, and particularly for someone who's new to running or training for a race. What great motivation! Plus, who doesn't love the anticipation of waiting for a present in the mail? :-)

A Very Vegan Christmas

Merry Christmas and/or happy holidays, depending on what you celebrate. Regardless, I hope you get to spend this time of year with people you love.

My parents are in town to help celebrate, and yesterday I made a whole vegan spread for dinner. (Today is Day 8 of my 30 Day Vegan Challenge.)

1. Acorn squash with salt, pepper, and brown sugar:

This was super easy. The hardest part was simply cutting the squash in half. Had anyone been watching me try to slice through this thing with a butcher knife, I would have probably given them a heart attack. Thankfully it all worked out.

2. Steamed mustard, turnip, and collard greens with sweet onions, grape tomatoes, and yellow squash:

I didn't use a recipe for this one. I just made it up as I went along. I heated up the onions, then the tomatoes and the squash; this lent some sweetness to the pan. Then I added the greens and steamed it all on low for about 10 minutes or so. It takes a while for these types of leaves to soften up.

3. Roasted beets, carrots, and brussels sprouts:

Another easy one. I coated the brussels sprouts and carrots with a couple tablespoons of olive oil and then sprinkled in salt and pepper. I did the same to the beets, but separately to minimize getting beet juice everywhere (still happened during the cooking process, though). Then I roasted the mixture at 400F for ~30 minutes.

4. Smashed potatoes:

I peeled the potatoes and cooked them in the microwave until they were soft. Then I squished them up using a potato masher and added Earth Balance spread (not too much, since it tends to be a bit oily) and almond milk (probably between 1 and 1 1/2 cups in total).

Also, I purchased a crusty loaf of bread for everyone else's enjoyment. I heated it up, sliced it, and slathered a piece of it with butter for my son. Kid looked like he was in gluten heaven.

Verdict: I thought it was fantastic; the best thing was feeling full and satisfied, but not stuffed. My mom said she loved it. My husband seemed to enjoy it, especially the potatoes. My dad... Not so much. This was not his idea of a traditional Christmas dinner. Or traditional Christmas anything, given that we do not go to church or attend a Christmas Eve service. I have to be really careful not to let myself fall into the "I never do anything right" thing with them.

But whatever. You come to my house, you get to eat my hippie granola food and do the holidays our way. In the end, I hope they realize that we do have common ground - not in food, not in spiritual beliefs or practices, not in income, but in family and in doing our best for the kids in our family.

Anyway, have a wonderful day! I hope you get to eat, and rest, and share, and get all of the things you need and at least a few of the things you want.