Author: Stephanie Quilao

 

Chocolate with rice krispies is one of my favorite chocolates, and believe it or not, it’s hard to find a dark chocolate version. I also love Quinoa because it’s tasty and is a protein-packed grain. So, when I saw this Alter Eco Dark Chocolate Midnight Crunch with krispy Quinoa, I was throwing confetti. Okay, not literally, but in my head a parade was commencing.

And this krispy Quinoa dark chocolate might as well be the perfect Noshtopia snack because not only did I have to refrain myself from inhaling the whole thing in one sitting because it was so delicious, the bar is:

• GMO-free
• Vegan – therefore dairy and egg free
• Soy-free
• Gluten-free
• Emulsifier-free
• No artificial anything
• Organic
• Fair Trade Certified

On top of all that goodness, the cacao and Quinoa is from Bolivia, and the bars are made in Switzerland which in my book is major awesomeness because I have always had really good Swiss chocolate experiences.

The next Alter Eco flavors I want to try are Dark Mint and Dark Velvet. Have you tried the Alter Eco chocolates…thoughts?

 

I spent a very lovely Spring day at one of our local farmer’s markets this Saturday. Over at Noshtopia Phoenix, here is a pictorial of the cool things I saw at the Old Town Farmer’s Market.

 

And here is a very simple and healthy Fettucine dish with garlic, hot house tomatoes, and pine nuts I made using the very cool looking handmade Decio Pasta, a local Phoenix maker. This dish is so tasty and simple and uses 5 ingredients minus garlic salt.

 

This is totally a cocktails kind of conversation. Here we have a Spicy Ginger Mojito and a Cosmo, sweet and zesty. @jenmyronuk has gotten me totally hooked on the Canadian show Being Erica. I’ve been literally glued to Hulu.com on my laptop watching episode after episode.

The premise of the show is that Erica Strange is a 30-something-still-trying-to-figure-out-where-her-life-is-going who thinks her life is screwed up because of all the bad decisions she’s made in her life. Dr. Tom, a “therapist,” shows up in her life, has her write down her “regrets list” and then gives her a chance to literally go back in time to those pivotal moments so that she has the opportunity to make a different choice.

The learning twist is that she retains her present day knowledge when she goes back in time, and she can use whatever she learned in that “going back” experience to help her in her present day situation.

I put the word “therapist” in quotes because we are not sure exactly what Dr. Tom is: an angel, left over of the 4400, magician, human with super powers… Who knows. He does however, have the power to manipulate time in order to help Erica in her therapy. The Sci-Fi junkie in me loves this angle of the show, time travel and life strands.

It’s no surprise I’m wildly fascinated with this show because the over-thinker in me likes to rewind to my own past and go over what happened, analyze all the red flags, and wish I had done something different. Many of Erica’s “regrets” are things we can all relate to like:

• Dating {insert the name of the asshole}.
• Not standing up for yourself  to {insert name of bully}.
• Making the safe choice versus the choice your heart wants because you’re afraid of risk.

Being Stephanie

So now, of course, Being Erica has gotten me thinking about my own regret list, and if I could do an episode called Being Stephanie, what is one pivotal moment I would go back to and make a different choice?

It was 2000 and I chose money over love. If I could go back, I would chose love. Here’s what happened.

My marketing career was on fire. I was at a hot startup in Silicon Valley, and had pre-IPO options. The company went public and the stock kept rising and rising, and even split once. I was on my road to becoming a millionaire, the first in my family. In 1999, I dated this guy, we’ll call him Eric, not his real name. I’ll call him Eric because he kinda looks like actor Eric Stoltz, whom I’ve had a school girl crush on since Some Kind of Wonderful.

I met Eric at a tradeshow after party, and thought he was really cute in a little boy trapped in a grown man’s body kind of way. He was so sweet and constantly looked at me like I was the most gorgeous thing he’d ever seen. He always made me feel that way…beautiful. And our physical chemistry, oh boy, it was very intense.

At the time however, I wasn’t looking for anything serious, I just wanted to have fun and have some awesome sex. I was young, skinny, rich, and living the fast career life, and was pretty much good with that….for now. I thought I had plenty of time for something serious later.

The unexpected

Eric lived in another state, and that was okay with me because I had a pattern of dating guys who lived in other states like Connecticut and Texas. Looking back, in real therapy, it was part of my intimacy issues where I would create literal distance between me and my guy. It was years before I actually dated someone who lived within a car drive of my house.

What started out as something just fun and carefree turned into something more serious and substantial. I fell in love with Eric….a total surprise to me. But this love was different than anything I had experienced because Eric was the more mature one between the two of us. He was the one who wanted to “talk.” I just wanted to have sex. I’d joke about how sometimes it felt like I was the guy in the relationship and he was the girl. Emotionally, most women want a man who wants to “talk” and here I was feeling so highly uncomfortable with that because I was a clam, emotionally.

Long story short, one day I broke up with Eric because of some lame excuse that it just wasn’t working out. The truth is that we had our bumpy issues like any other couple but there wasn’t anything that couldn’t be worked out….especially too if I had just opened up to him and talked to him about what was really going on in my life. I really hated my job and how people treated me there so I was constantly complaining and in a bad mood, but also, Eric was the first guy I really dated since the boyfriend rape, and I never told him about that because well, I hadn’t even admitted it to myself.

The truth was that Eric was just too good to me and I couldn’t handle that. Nope, I was more comfortable with the asshole unemotionally available types, than with the emotionally available “I’m here for you” types. I’d spend years in therapy disecting the whys. I did learn that a big part of my attraction to the asshole types was because with someone emotionally unavailable, I too could be emotionally clammed up. Intimacy goes both ways, and my relationship with Eric was the one that really made me see for the first time my own intimacy issues.

Decision time

Eric and I then went through this period of being on-and-off, being friends, getting back together but then not really. One of his big issues was that we lived too far apart. At the time, I wanted another chance so badly, that I offered to move to where he lived. I had always wanted to move somewhere other than California anyway. What that move would have required though was me quitting my job and giving up my pre-IPO options which at the time, I was only 7 quarters into my 16 quarter total vesting period.

Eric said to me that if I quit my job and moved that I had to do it for myself and not for him or us. His reasoning was that if he and I didn’t work out that he didn’t want me feeling bitter and resentful that I gave up my pre-IPO options for a shot at us…a future of togetherness that may or may not happen. It was a really good point. So, I had to think about that pretty hard because when he said that to me, one of my initial reactions was that I would be really pissed if that happened…or would I.

After thinking about it, I decided to stay in my job. I wanted the money, and not just the money but the idea of being a millionaire. He and I couldn’t make it work romantically, but we did stay friends through the years, and eventually I did tell him about what happened to me with the other boyfriend. Even to this date, Eric is the only boyfriend I have had an amicable break up with….amicable meaning there was none of me ending up in tears and therapy because of the guy.

What happened after making the choice

I did go on and become a millionaire. I bought a fancy car. I traveled to glamorous places and stayed in high end hotels and ate at 5 star restaurants. I could buy whatever I wanted. I also was the most miserable and self destructive in my entire life which I shared many of those adventures on Back in Skinny Jeans.

I don’t regret that Eric and I didn’t work out because things do happen for a reason. I do wonder though had I moved would we have gone on and gotten married and had kids or maybe we still would have ended up broken up. What I regret is that I chose image over what my heart wanted. At the time, I was more in love with the image of being a millionaire so I could look like I was some kind of hot shit. I felt like I failed and disappointed my parents when I didn’t become a
doctor, so being a millionaire was something I thought was even better.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to be a millionaire, it was my reasons for wanting it….so I could feel important like I was a better person because I “made it”…meaning the money.

I also thought that being a millionaire could somehow erase what had happened to me with the assault. My big learning lesson was that of course it didn’t or never could, and the only thing that would have fixed what was eating away at me was to talk about it and heal it. Outside stuff can never fix the inside stuff.  I ended up having an emotional breakdown and going on medical leave from work, but it was the chance for me to fix in my life what was broken which is how I ended up here today blogging about my experiences to help others in their own journey to feel less alone and stigmatized. You can have a better life!

After that experience with Eric, I have always chose love whether it be with lovers, career, family, and friends. You can always make money and get a job, but those great loves come along so rarely, time with your friends and family slips away, and you can never buy or get time back…at least in our reality.

As I take a sip of my Mojito, I say, always choose with your heart 🙂

It’s St. Patrick’s Day and instead of writing about what I did last week in the going sugar little effort, I thought I would do something sweet for all of you. The idea was inspired by @SarahElizD.

Here’s a wallpaper you can use on your iPhone or you can just print it out and stick it anywhere you need some motivation to help you stay on your sugar weaning ventures. The model of this card follows the theme of my iPhone app: Back in Skinny Jeans: 25 Motivational Nudges to Help You On Your Weight Loss Journey.

As you know, and I can attest with those of you weaning off the sugar, it sure ain’t easy especially when you have the emotional attachments to sugar like I do.

So the theme of this card is to take the action to go and do something that feels sweet to you like hug someone or tell someone you love them versus eating something sweet like cupcakes or Ginger-O’s in my case, to help you feel like you have sweetness in your life. This tiny action can help start you breaking the ties of using food as an emotional coping mechanism.

We’re all about the tiny actions are better than zero here!…So how’s your sugar weaning week been going?

I’ve decided to conduct a photography experiment for 6 months. I’m going to ditch my fancy Nikon D50 DSLR for my iPhone 3GS camera for 6 months for all my food photographs on my blogs: Noshtopia and Noshtopia Phoenix. Yeah, it’s a pretty big deal.

But to give you a quick idea of why I’m doing this, here’s a little fun game. Here are two photos I took of the same sandwich sitting at the same table.Guess which photo was taken with the Nikon D50 and which one was taken with the iPhone 3GS.

Photo #1

 

Photo #2

 

Did you guess? Right away, yes you can see a difference in the sharpness like in the ridges of the crust of the bread. And you should see that kind of difference because in Photo #1 the D50 is 6.1 megapixels and in Photo #2 the
iPhone is only 3 megapixels. But, for everyday blog use, the quality is pretty darn
close, and both pictures look good. Unless two photos like this were put side by side, would most people even recognize a significant difference? Yes, the photo pros and purists would, but would most blog readers?

Isn’t this move counter-intuitive?

In the world of food photography, this kind of move would seem almost like going backwards. Most people start with point-and-shoot pocket cameras and move their way up to the DSLRs like the Nikons and the Canons because you can take stunning food pics and get fancy with the lenses, lighting, and software applications.

To move up the blog food chain, you must have awesome food pictures pure and simple. Some of my favorite food bloggers with stunning photography include: 101 Cookbooks, No Recipes, Kitchen Bloody Kitchen, and Matt Bites. These folks got the mad photo skills.

 

Over the past couple years, my food photography has gotten better, and I’ve really enjoyed beefing up my skills. This pumpkin yogurt parfait is one of my best Nikon pictures. It’s pretty amazing what you can shoot when you have a DSLR with a plethora of choices for lenses. And then there is Photoshop, so the possibilities become even more endless.

But, as much as I love my Nikon, as a food blogger who loves to take pictures of everything, the thing is heavy, you need a big purse to carry it in, and it’s really hard to be discreet about taking pictures especially in stores and restaurants. Also, equipment can be very expensive especially lenses which can easily cost as much as a month of rent.

 

When I got my iPhone 3GS in August 09, I was quite stunned by just how good this 3 megapixel camera can take photos. The above photo of coffee beans is one of my best iPhone pictures. All the pictures I’ve taken on Noshtopia Phoenix were taken with my iPhone camera like these photos of lunch at the Greene House in Kierland, and lunch at the Herb Box. Besides the good quality of pictures I can take, the iPhone is much smaller, lighter, and I can be discreet to the point where no one would even know I was taking pictures.

Why I think the switch will be fun

I do care about taking awesome looking food pictures for my blogs, but I don’t care that the quality has to look like I’m a professional food photographer because I also have no aspirations to be at that pro level. I just want to have pretty pictures to show what I’ve eaten or seen like this bowl of yummy Fresh & Easy caramel popcorn.

 

I also kind of like the idea of taking pictures from a mobile phone because it’s relatable on an everyday level. How many people take pics with their phone cameras?…like way more than DSLRs I’m guessing.

In terms of photography equipment, by taking food pics with a mobile device, the playing field becomes a bit more equal because now the photography becomes more about having a good eye versus having the best equipment.

A pro photographer taught me that what makes a photographer truly awesome is not their equipment but their eye; how they look and “see” a picture. The ability to see a good picture is where the talent comes in. Talent lies in the skills not the tools. So for example, someone like Annie Liebovitz will always take good pictures no matter if  you give her a disposable or the most expensive of cameras simply because she has an amazing eye.

With the mobile phone cameras like the one on the iPhone, there are no lenses, filters, or even flashes to be added. The only way to get fancy is via software like desktop photo software like Photoshop or with an iPhone camera app like Best Camera. But still, even with photo enhancing software, the original picture still has to be decent which goes back to your eye. In this photo taken at Cartel Coffee in Tempe, I used some filters in the Best Camera iPhone app to create this cool B&W.

 

What I’ll get out of this experiment

I think there are three big things I will get out of this experiment:

• The challenge of being able to take some of the best iPhone food photographs out there in the blogosphere really excites me.
• I will get to work on how I “see” pictures because I cannot rely on lenses or the aid of the DLSR menu choices.
• I get to start positioning myself as an iPhone food photography enthusiast especially if my photos get better and I can help teach people how to take better iPhone food pics.

Most importantly, I think this experiment will be fun. So far, I can’t stop taking pictures with my iPhone, it’s almost becoming obsessive. Anyone who has eaten out with me has experienced this first hand.

So, between now and September, all the pics on my blogs will be taken with an iPhone, and I will share tips and insight along the way. If you have any iPhone photo tips, please share or let me know, and I will be happy to share with everyone else. Let’s get snapping!

 

I love the flavor of kettle corn because it has that sweet and salty combo. Traditional kettle corn like the stuff at street fairs piping hot from the vat is awesome but can get really caloric with the fats and sugars.

So, given that I’m in the midst of going sugar little, I was so excited to see this Lite Kettle Corn at Trader Joe’s. Why I think this popcorn is filled with snacky awesomeness:

• Easy portion control: There are 6-bags in a pack, and each bag is one serving size at 110 calories. Just one bag will satisfy an afternoon craving.
• The sugars are 4g.
• Total fat is 4g which is 50% less than than Trader Joe’s regular Kettle Corn.
• The ingredients are simple: popcorn, sugar, sunflower oil, and salt.
• It’s gluten-free and low sodium.

What I think is impressive too is that to make a Lite version, Trader Joe’s didn’t start using artificial ingredients to cut things down, they just used much less of the same. Seems like a logical thing to do, so what if more food manufacturers did the same?

 

I was inspired by this fabulous looking Lentil Soup with Chorizo and Potatoes over at CookThink to make a healthier and less spicy version. I say healthier only because instead of using pancetta, I used kale.

 

This soup turned out better than I expected, and has become one of my favorites. I love the idea that you can use different kinds of sausage to vary the soup.

Ingredients (makes 4-6 servings)

 

• 2-3 sausages cut into small pieces depending on how meaty you want your soup. I used two because I wanted the veggies to play a bigger role. Also, it’s better to use fresh sausages from a meat counter versus pre-packaged sausages because the meat is looser and creates more of a chunky look in the soup.
• 1 small yukon potato, cubed
• 1 cup red lentils, rinsed
• 1/2 small onion diced
• 3 cloves of garlic minced
• 2 tsps chopped fresh thyme
• 1/2 cup shredded carrot
• 1-1/2 cup chopped kale
• 3 cups chicken broth, salted
• 2 cups water
• 1/2 small lemon
• salt & pepper to taste
• EVOO

Let’s Get Cooking:

 

• At my local Whole Foods, they have chopped kale and shredded carrots at the salad bar, so I just bought a small box full.
• In saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium heat and saute the onions, garlic, and thyme until the onions are soft.

 

• Add in the chicken sausage, potatoes, chicken broth, and water. Bring the soup to a boil and then simmer until the potatoes start to get tender, about 10-15 minutes. Stir occasionally.

 

• Add the lentils, kale, and carrots, and cook until the lentils are soft, about 5-10 minutes.
• Squeeze the lemon juice into the soup, and add more salt and pepper to taste.

Voilah you’re done! Enjoy!

Note: All pictures were taken with an iPhone 3GS

I’m now one month into this going sugar little journey where my goal is to get down from eating about 80g of sugars/day to around 25g of sugars/day, the American Heart Association’s recommended daily dosage. I picked the AHA’s guideline mainly because my family has a history of heart disease and 25g sounded like a doable number to me. So far, I know I have been consuming less sugar than I was before but I’m not sure exactly by how much because I haven’t measured the amount yet. I think I’ll do that at week #6.

I’m slowly weaning off the sugar versus going cold turkey because frankly I think cold turkey only tastes good on a sandwich and that kind of change is just too severe. As a small example, while in SF on a day out with pal @dianev, we were just ordering drinks at Blue Bottle Coffee and I really wanted a vegan mocha, but opted for a vegan latte instead because it has far less sugar. I literally started getting the shakes. Now you would think that would be the caffeine shakes but oh no! No, in this case, it was sugar withdrawal shakes, and for that brief moment I could feel my addiction to sugar.

If I went cold turkey, my Inner Resistance Monster would have a field day, and just crank up the sugar cravings even more intensely because I’ve learned with my psyche that the second I tell it any form of, “You can’t have… or No {insert food} allowed,” a battle of the wills starts to rage and I end up caving in and not only succumbing but more often binging on the forbidden food.

By doing a slow wean, I can make tiny changes without pushing too far out the comfort zone crossing into deprivation territory. I think too that maybe it’s just the inner rebel in me that just doesn’t like to feel constrained in any way, so that part of me will start to lash out and go, “Oh no, we’ll show you who the boss of you is missy!”

So far, in 4 weeks, here are some things I’ve learned about my relationship with sugar:

• My sugar cravings are worse after 7pm. In the morning, I have no desire for sugar at all. In fact, the idea of sugary cereals or syrupy waffles makes me a bit cringey. BUT, I can easily have a bowl of frosted corn flakes for dinner. Although, I’ve been trying out this organic fruit, nut, and seeds muesli by Dorset Cereals that has no added sugars. The only sugars are from the raisins and sultanas.

 

• To me, emotionally, sugar = love. That is my emotional attachment to sugar because I equate it with sweetness whether it be in life or in a tasty danish.

• Gawking at beautiful pictures of desserts online like at Food Gawker, in a magazine, or even standing in front of the counter at the Whole Foods bakery actually helps curb my inclination to get something for real.

My guess is that on some level the brain can’t tell the difference between reality and a visual, so by allowing myself to gawk endlessly at the sugary goodness, my psyche feels like it’s getting satisfied. I could be completely off base, but all I know is that one of the tactics that works for me for not buying an actual chocolate chip cookie is to just go stare at a bunch of beautiful cookies like the Cookie-of-the-day at Martha Stewart.

• It is pointless to fight my cravings when they do come because what happens every time is that I suffer and end up eating way more sugar than had I originally just found a compromise. So now, when the cravings come, instead of depriving myself, I negotiate. Like the other day, when instead of getting a vegan donut with my latte, I got a small slice of vegan chorizo pizza.

So that was my week with the sugar wean. How was your week?

Mom’s homemade lumpia and chicken adobo. I LOVE Filipino food!

Since starting my sugar wean to go sugar little, I have started looking at more foods marketed, “sugar free” or “low sugar.” One of my favorite foods is a PB & J sandwich so naturally I am now looking for jams, jellies, or preserves that contain basically only the sugar in the fruit.

That got me thinking when I started seeing these 0g of sugar “sugar free” preserves. So, I tweeted asking any RDs out there, and even expressed my fear in this tweet:

“My fear is that it’s 0g of sugar cuz there isn’t actually enough real fruit left. It’s all chemicals:( We’ll see.”

It turns out my guess was correct. One of my RD friends, David Grotto author of 101 Optimal Life Foods
which btw is a very handy resource of a book because it talks about real food, responded with this email to me regarding the label of this particular strawberry preserves sold at a huge low price box retailer:

Okay, here’s the scoop on the
strawberry preserves. As you can see in the ingredients, water, and then strawberries,
predominate the list of ingredients. What’s first is most.

However, there
are only 8 grams of sugars in an entire cup of whole strawberries so the
preserve is starting off with one of the lowest sugar containing fruits on
earth. Then, by adding Splenda, thickeners and “flavors” to the
preserves, enhance the texture and flavor to make up for the lack of sugars and
frankly, lack of strawberries, too!

Also, there could be about .5 grams of sugar per serving which
allows the manufacturer to legally round down to “0” grams of
sugar. No biggie as long as you don’t eat the whole jar. 1 tablespoon of
preserves should go a long way. That, in a nutshell, is how they can get away
with saying “0” grams of sugar.

To extend my fear, I go to another well known national jelly, jam, preserves brand and look up their “sugar free” strawberry preserves, and on their label they state, “adds a trivial amount of sugar” which is a * reference to the strawberry ingredient.

So, in other terms, the real fruit is trivial because they can create a strawberry preserves experience with artificial ingredients. The red is a food dye. The sweet is an artificial sweetener. 

And there you have the answer. So, I ask. Would you rather be eating an artificially made strawberry preserves with 0g of sugar or to have a smaller amount of pure fruit with some sugar?

Personally, I am going to stick with the real fruits, and just cut back. I don’t want to dollop a tablespoon of a lab coat concoction on my PB & Jelly sandwich.

 

I saw this beautiful Shaved Brussels Sprout Salad with Fresh Walnuts and Pecorino salad over at epicurious, and just had to make it because I rather fancied the twist on eating Brussels sprouts. I have never eaten them shaved before. But of course, I had to add my own twists to the salad because I can never follow recipes exact, and I made it for 3 servings versus 6.

Plus, the commenters on the recipe had some really good tips, so I incorporated what some of them had shared. I have to say, this salad turned out far more tastier than I imagined and was like a coleslaw.This recipe is also a great way to introduce a newbie to Brussels Sprouts or someone who’s hated them before but is willing to be open minded. Cheese makes everything better 🙂

So, here is my twist:

Ingredients (serves 3):

 

• 6 large Brussels Sprouts (if you use smaller sprouts you might want to add 2 more)
• 1/3 Braeburn apple peeled and cut into little pieces (or use your favorite sweet red apple type. Use green apple if you want tartness, but the recipe is better with sweet apple.)
• 1/2 cup lightly toasted walnuts (toasted walnuts adds a more nuttier flavor to the dish versus plain walnuts.)
• 2 tbsps shaved pecorino (use less cheese for a lower fat version)
• 1/4 squeezed lemon juice from a fresh lemon
• 1 tbsp olive oil

Let’s Get Cooking:

• Steam (boil in small amount of water) the Brussels sprouts whole for exactly 3 minutes. Any more than that and the sprouts start to get too soft. You want the sprouts to maintain a little bit of stiffness like cabbage. The epicurious recipe called for the sprouts to be raw, and I think Brussels Sprouts are just way too bitter raw which is one of several reasons many people don’t like this vegetable. Steaming helps to mellow out the flavor of the sprouts.

• Take the Brussels Sprouts out of the steamer and put them in a bowl and chill them in the fridge for about 15 minutes or until cool to the touch. You don’t want the sprouts hot because the heat will melt all the cheese. Plus, when you shave the sprouts you want them to be cool to your hand.

• To toast the walnuts, again because I’m simple and don’t have a toaster oven, I heated the oven to 390 degrees, and put the walnut pieces on a baking sheet and cooked them for 2 minutes. Any more than that and the nuts will start burning.

 

• The recipe called for the use of an adjustable-blade slicer like a mandoline or food processor. Because I have nothing fancy in my kitchen, I did it the old fashioned way and just cut thin slaw like pieces with a sharp knife on a cutting board. Steaming the sprouts also makes them a bit softer, so using the knife will be easy. Be careful to not cut your fingers.

 

• In a mixing bowl, put in the sprouts and pour in the olive oil, squeeze the fresh lemon around, and mix well. 

 

• Toss in the apple pieces, toasted walnuts, and pecorino, and mix well.

Voila! You’re ready to chow.

Note: all pictures were taken with an iPhone 3GS

This is week #3 in my journey to go sugar little and wean from my over consumption of sugars.What I should be ideally craving is this a mango and strawberry spinach salad which has sweet from the fresh fruit. This salad is all healthy goodness.

 

BUT, what I really am craving is this, a Scharffen Berger mini cake. hmmmmm, yum!

 

So straight out, I have to say that weaning from sugar is proving to be MUCH harder than when I weaned myself completely off Diet Coke which took 2 years. Diet Coke was like crack to me, that’s how addicted I was, and thankfully today, if I take one sip of the DC I get instantly illin’.

I’m not even trying to wean myself completely off of sugar. I’m just trying to get down from eating 80g of sugar/day where I was before I started this journey, down to the American Heart Association’s recommendation of 25g of sugar/day. The more I think about or I should say experience the cutting back of the sugars, I can say that thing I have noticed the most is my emotional attachment to sugar which I started talking about last week.

We have no emo attachment to Diet Coke but cake = love

I think this sugar wean is much harder than the Diet Coke wean because Diet Coke was never a food that gave me any kind of emotional comfort, I just liked the sweet fizzy-ness. I gave up the Diet Coke because I wanted to eliminate artificial sweeteners from my daily eating. I found fizzy alternatives in things like carbonated water and low cal drinks like Izze-Esque. 

As I mentioned, Grandma Rose passed away last Sunday, and I flew back to California on Thursday. Her memorial was on Friday night, and the funeral was on Saturday. Besides seeing my folks and immediate family, I got to see plenty of my aunts, uncles, cousins, and their children (the great-grandchildren).

Being in California is stressful for me because seriously, the longer I’ve been away, the more I’m convinced that there is just some weird intense energy in the Bay Area that just does not jive with me. I love my family and friends here in CA, but I really do miss being in Phoenix right now. I don’t go back for awhile longer because my mom, aunt, and sis-in-law have birthdays coming up so I figured I’d stay a week longer. Plus, I’m hanging with one of my BFFs @dianev and it’s fabulous to be with my friend for a few days…not to mention is she is an awesome cook.

So, we go kaput

With the stress of everything, over the weekend, the whole sugar weaning thing completely went kaput, I’ll just be straight honest. One of my aunts who lives in Rome Italy brought some Italian chocolates with her and it was game over. I ate the foreign delights with such fervor hoping maybe it would help curb the angst I was feeling over the weekend….which it did. Chocolate = comfort.

 

Besides grandma passing and being in California, I was feeling angsty about being one of the few left of the cousins who are not married, have kids, or even at least a significant other. What makes it tougher is that I’m also the 3rd oldest of the 40 grand-children, and now the oldest who is without kids, husband, or SO.When I’m away from the family it doesn’t get to me, but when you’re in situation where it feels like you’re stuck on Noah’s Ark, well it gets to you.

There were several times, I really started feeling like the spinster aunt, and what I did notice is that when those feelings flared up, I also started intensely craving a cookie, some cake, and at one point, I couldn’t find anything sugary except a can of regular Coca-Cola and I drank half the can. Oh yeah! I haven’t had regular Coke in years, and I drank some during my sugar Emo fit and scarily it did help calm me down….At that moment, I really saw how strong my emotional ties were to sugar.

Instead of judging myself and starting with the negative self talk which only makes me feel worse, I took a more productive road and said to myself, “Look, mess happens, and you’re under enormous stress right now. So, you had a bad day. It’s alright, tomorrow is a new day…and besides back at the hotel you could have raided the vending machine and you didn’t so that’s a positive :)”

We focus on the positive and what we did right even if it was something small because it’s better than zero. And remember as I mentioned yesterday in Do you over-think?…we can always course correct along the journey.

So, how has your sugar weaning been going?

Indulge me while I share a proud auntie moment. At Grandma’s post funeral luncheon of Chinese food, one of my 4 year-old triplet nieces Alyssa picked up chopsticks for the very first time, and started eating like she’s been doing it for years.

Many adults cannot eat with chopsticks the very first time they hold them in their hands, and Alyssa is just 4. The more I cheered her on, the more she ate with the chopsticks. Seriously, I was blown away…and it was pretty darn cute!

 

I am a classic over-thinker…or as the optimist in me likes to call it, “highly detail oriented.” My mind can process and analysis huge amounts of data in seconds. I will think of things that most people or no one would think of…or maybe even should think about.

Being highly detail oriented can be really good like at work when you’re under the gun and with a project and need to literally pull a rabbit out of your hat. But then, the over-thinking can be not so beneficial when it starts driving you (and others) crazy like for example, during my diet mentality days, ordering lunch from a menu would go something like this:

Me: Okay, what can I have that doesn’t have gobs of calories, carbs, or fat, and make me feel like I’ve ruined all that exercise I did today.

Her: No…I don’t think so…Only if you workout an extra hourr.
Me: Well this looks delicious and I can get the steamed version.
Her: Oh hell No

Me: I should eat salad. What do they have in salad? Oh, nothing looks good. I’m so damn tired of eating spinach and ice burg. Screw it,today you get to splurge, well splurge a little but not too much because you have that family thing next weekend and you want your tummy to look flat in that sun dress we just bought on sale.

Her: No way not that….Are you serious about the flat tummy thing?

Me: I wish we had the metabolism of a Brazilian model.
Her: Uh-uh!
Me: Possible, if I do extra cardio AND do weights…Man, I wish I had my Pilates teacher’s abs. I bet she doesn’t eat this stuff.
Her: No she doesn’t.

Me: OMG! That dish totally reminds me of Spring 2001…Why can’t they make this with rice or coconut milk? Don’t they know not everyone can have cow or soy milk?

Her: You’re taking too long. Why can’t you order fast like Stacy?

Me: Damn milk! That reminds me I ate too many tacos at the office luncheon, and didn’t run it off today. Couldn’t stop fantasizing about Dr. McDreamy this morning.

Her: Hmmmm, he is indeed a hottie. Guys like that want thin girls.

Me: Okay, why do you always make me feel like crap?

Me: No stop it! You’re not the boss of me, I won’t be guilted. Okay, pick something light and healthy, yet tasty…Okay, how about this….

Her: …No, this is better
Me: Alright, you’re right, back to that…We’ve got it now!

[To waiter:] “Yes, I’ll have the Won Ton Soup. That’s it. Thank you.”

Mind you, all that information got processed in mere seconds like in the time you could sneeze and blow your nose kinda fast. And yeah, ordering a bowl of soup should not or ever be this complicated. And yes, if this is how my brain used to operate just ordering a simple lunch, you can just imagine what would happen if I had to make major life decisions like move states, get married, buy a house, or take a loan out to buy a car. 

What over-thinking leads to

I found that over-thinking my eating and body stuff just created more anxiety and stress for me…and mind you way unnecessary amounts of stress and anxiety. I would analysis what I ate and then analysis the consequences and ramifications of what I ate. That kind of behavior on the extreme end not surprisingly can lead to disordered eating which I have grappled with in my life.

Besides eating, over-thinking also led to analysis paralysis where I would think about something so much, that I would think myself into procrastination or into fearful waters where really there were no monsters except the ones that I created in my thoughts. 

Magic can happen when you empty the brain of thoughts

I know that many of these monsters were imaginary because there were times when I just felt the fear and did it anyway, as the book goes, and guess what? Yeah, none of those scary things I thought of ever happened. In fact, many wonderful things would happen that I could never have imagined like my social media career.

Four years ago, I started blogging about wanting to wear my skinny jeans again not thinking anything deeper than that, and that blog catapulted my life on the web far faster and deeper than the three other blogs I had created at the same time which all had business plans and strategic initiatives in mind.

I’m learning that the more you have to plan and think about something, the likey it is that you need to just jump in and start doing and stop with the over-thinking, and let yourself be open and surprised because this is how magic can happen in your life.

I did that when I moved to Phoenix. I didn’t really think about it too hard, and in fact I really didn’t have much of a plan. I just knew I wanted to move out of California, and I just decided that I would figure things out along the journey. So far, in the six months since I made the decision to move, moving to Phoenix has been not only one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life, it’s been a really cool adventure! 

The mantra that helps me manage the over-thinking

One of my favorite trains of thought, and something I have started incorporating more into my life which has helped me go much lighter on the over-thinking:

You can always course correct later. Just pull the ship out of the harbor and get sailing.