Enlightened Moves in your Kitchen Part 1

Enlightened Moves In Your Kitchen

I don’t want to date myself but…I vividly remember reading a lady’s magazine in the 80’s, featuring Christie Brinkley discussing her post-partum workout and dieting tips to stay in Supermodel shape and ready for swimsuit modeling season…her exact quote I’m not sure of but it was something like “now that I’m in my 30’s and I’ve just had a baby, I have to work out twice as hard for half the results.” To be honest I was very young when I read that but old enough to already feel the pressure of looks and weight in our society.  And here was the most beautiful woman of my childhood admitting how hard it was to look that way.  The quote should have been liberating but really it was terrifying.  To me women who looked “that way” just naturally looked that way.  I had no idea the lifelong effort that went into “it” or that “it” was an industry unto itself.

Fast forward many many years to earlier this year…awards show season and a very post-partum yours truly sitting on the couch watching one celebrity mother after another work the red carpet looking fabulous after having given birth a mere hour earlier it seemed in some cases…thin, glowing, put together, standing tall and happy…themselves.  And here I was sweating profusely, wearing torn yoga pants and a nursing tank top, still a good 40 pounds away from my pre-pregnancy weight, eating anything in my sight as I was constantly hungry from nursing my gigantic baby every 30-60 minutes it seemed for about 40 minutes at a time…you do the math…I don’t know, it seemed for a long time that’s all I did.  I certainly didn’t sleep.  And worse, I didn’t eat…well okay I did eat and I ate a lot but really I could only eat at very inopportune times. And I only had enough time to eat something that was already prepared.  Anyways…at this exact moment, I was trying to remember the last time I took a shower let alone really worked out or put on a real outfit, or looked amazing on a red carpet (ok, you caught me), or, more importantly; made myself dinner.

I recently read the accompanying handout for an online nutrition course given by my good friend and soul sister Amy Jo Gengler.  She’s an acupuncturist and nutritional counselor in Boston, MA (Amy Jo is the owner of Flourish Boston www.flourishboston.com) and along with being good friends for a long time…we’ve both always shared a love of talking food wine, recipes and nutrition.  For fun I read her handout she made for her students which was beautifully laid out and well put together and the part that struck most home with me and brought me right back to that horrible self-actualizing moment on the couch staring in shock at Claire Danes’ in a red dress was my friend’s fear of being unable to cook for herself…having someone else cook for you and losing that control of knowing what’s in your food and what’s being put in front of you at all times. There’s real power in cooking for yourself.

I too had that moment…sitting there in my stretch capris…doing “ab-work” a la o-Sel and Enlightened Moves Method during commercials because that’s literally all I had time for, crying because I couldn’t believe that I, of all people, hadn’t lost all the baby weight yet!  And I was remembering that Christie Brinkley quote as I was trying to increase my workouts and I came to and realized that I had to make my own food, I had to be in control.  It might sound silly but it is my absolute number one health, vitality and beauty suggestion to you: COOK FOR YOURSELF!  And I don’t mean making sandwiches!

Nothing is more nuturing than a home cooked meal, especially when it’s made with love. This phenomenon is otherwise known as the new popular quote we see all the time nowadays, “Abs are built in the kitchen”. 

I was so convinced that this was the key to me looking fabulous again that I was determined to find ways to be able to cook for myself.  Now, unless you’ve been a mother or prime caretaker of a very spirited infant this may not sound realistic to you but my baby literally would not sleep unless she was on me for the first 7 months of her life.  And even at night when she would lie down in her bed, next to mine…she’d wake up every hour like she was still a newborn for the first 9 months of her life.  Apart from this being very exhausting, it just doesn’t leave a lot of free time.  I would get her down to sleep and immediately run to the kitchen and chop veggies and onions and garlic and have them prepped and ready to go.  Then I would do my Enlightened Moves workout for the day for as long as I could before the baby would wake up then I’d go nurse her and rock her and about an hour later I’d have her finally back to sleep, I’d then run back out and saute my veggies and eat them with brown rice or quinoa or along side something leftover in the fridge.  Eventually the baby started sleeping more and my workouts became longer and my ability to start cooking something more interesting than a 5 minute veggie sauté increased. 

But that’s what I think about when I hear people say they can’t lose weight.  There’s a change that WE must be willing to make in ourselves, for  ourselves somewhere along the line.  Yes, we all need to exercise and eat right to be healthy and feel wonderful and fully ourselves.  But if you are trying to lose weight it’s quite simply math in a lot of cases…you have to expend more calories than you ingest.  There’s no magic…unless you count math as magic, which I most certainly do not. Trust me, you don’t even want to know what celebrities do to look a certain way on the red carpet during awards show season!  We mere mortals, without our 3 hours of personal trainers a day, without our multiple nannies and housekeepers, we who work our real jobs and have all our responsibilities…where’s our solution?  It’s in our kitchens and our living rooms!  And all it takes is a decision to take charge!  You can work out all day long and if you’re eating nothing but crap you’re workouts won’t be doing you much good.  And you can eat beautifully all day long and if you never exercise you’ll never have the proper energy to support yourself in this busy world let along look toned and hot!  We really do need to do both.  The good news is that you can do it all in your home!

First of all, the obvious thing you need to do is have a custom-designed fitness regime by Enlightened Moves.  This workout will be just for you and your goals be they weight loss post baby, toning up for a wedding, or just being your bad ass fabulous self! 

Then you need to commit to cooking for yourself most of the time.  If you have a job where you are away from your home a lot and have to eat at work or eat out all the time…poor baby we don’t feel bad for you and your glamorous life at all!  Just kidding!  OMG!  I know first hand how hard this is as my job used to be just like this! But it’s really quite easy to at least once a week make a big batch of something (like roasted veggies) you can keep in the fridge and scoop into a container and take to work with you.  A girl can’t live off prosciutto and wine alone, trust me!  At least not past the age of 23!

The easiest advice I can give you right here and now is to avoid processed foods when and wherever possible!  The hardfast rule used to be if it comes in any kind of package then don’t buy it but that’s not realistic anymore now is it?!  But try your best to buy whole foods, things that don’t actually require ingredients because that’s just what they are.  And try to eat this way as much as you can.  It may not always be possible but it will slowly start to become more and more possible as you start to allow it in your life.  Plus you’ll begin feeling better so quickly that when you do have a night of food decadence you’ll enjoy the treat as you should but you’ll long to return to your cleaner way of eating in the morning..

So yes, eat clean unprocessed WHOLE foods for as many meals as you can.  Drink tons of WATER.  If you’re prone to getting sick of the taste of water try adding lemon or lime or cucumber or mint etc to your water for extra flavor.  Eat SNACKS…and if you have to bring snacks with you.  I always have an apple or a baggie of carrots or something like this on me at all times.  I’m one of those people who is almost always hungry no matter what my diet is like so I’ve learned that I have to keep healthy food around me because I’m going to eat…there’s no stopping that so I’d rather eat a bunch of healthy snacks and not feel so terribly about it.  TREAT yourself!  If it’s your best friend’s bday and you want cake…eat a piece of cake.  You have to live your life.  But just be careful that you aren’t finding an excuse every day to have that little treat for yourself…this is my personal challenge.  I could rationalize sitting down and eating dirt for an hour if I really wanted to but I know myself so I give myself Mondays…I eat whatever I want on Mondays and I don’t think twice about it.  It’s a night off with my husband, we make dinner or order out or dine out.  We almost always have dessert and way too much wine and there’s all sorts of things being eaten that someone on a diet would shudder to think of eating but I do not even think about it.  This allows me to say no to cake every day when I’m out in the world being offered cake every day (what kind of life do I live?  One with toddlers and playgroups and clients working out and…cake) And I don’t feel deprived because I know that once a week I eat whatever I want. And try to have your last meal three hours before bed.  I personally always hated hearing that ol’ saying of don’t eat past 9pm.  For 20 years, I worked nights in a restaurant…life didn’t start til 9pm.  Rules don’t apply to everyone…but if you can avoid eating within that 3 hour zone then try to do so as it will help you digest more speedily the foods you’ve eaten without disrupting your beauty rest!

You’re probably thinking one of two things:  1) all of this sounds impossible!  It’s not…just think of your fabulous red-carpet walking celebrity friends drinking gross smoothies in the morning before working out for half the day…I’m not really asking you do to too much here!  Or maybe you’re thinking 2) is that really it lady?  That’s your weight loss secret?  Hmmm…mostly.  I can tell you other things too.  And I will.  But you’ll have to stay tuned. And read my more in depth foods to eat, foods to avoid post coming up and how to deal with cravings… But I will say that MOST of the general public experiences a lightening that they are shocked about from cooking and shopping for themselves and eliminating hidden sugars, salts, and starchy fillers that are found in processed foods.

Try it and you may be able to stop using the diet word yourself and just start eating real food while watching the belly fat and layer of pudge melt away.  Then when you want to tone and sculpt your new sexy self contact us and we’ll design a workout JUST for you and help you stay motivated in your living room as well as your kitchen!  And if you really do want to know how the celebrities look that amazing on the red carpet stay tuned as the next few blog posts will cover eating and exercising for Beauty!

-Carolyn