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Brian's Bodacious Broccoli

2/27/2015

At the beginning of the year, my dear darling husband announced that he would like to mostly eliminate starchy carbs from our delicious dinners. The purple potatoes, brown rice, and occasional serving of polenta were making him feel suboptimal. Dinner for us is usually a lean protein (salmon, chicken), a huge salad, and a starch. We started subbing in other vegetables for the starch and two wonderful things happened! First, we liked better the roasted broccoli, cauliflower or romanesco we were having than the starch. Second, some natural weight loss and energy gain occurred.

Brian has mastered our favorite way to make broccoli which I am happy to share here. Be warned: it's addictive! The texture is crispy outside and tender inside. It's a little bit salty and absolutely delicious.

Brian's Bodacious Broccoli
Serves 3-4

2 broccoli crowns
3 garlic cloves
2 T olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 425 F. Wash the broccoli, trim the stems, and separate into florets. Peel and rough chop the garlic. You want bigger pieces of garlic so they don't burn. In a big bowl, toss together the broccoli, garlic, salt, pepper, and olive oil. Pour the contents from the bowl onto a sheet pan or cookie sheet so all broccoli florets are touching the pan and none are piled on one another. Be sure to take a spatula to the bowl and scrape out the last dregs of olive oil and garlic onto the pan. Roast for 25-30 minutes. It's done with there's a little bit of brown color on the tips and the underside has nice caramelization. Serve immediately, though it's also good reheated the next day.

Nutritional awesomeness: Broccoli is an excellent source of Vitamin C and fiber. The calcium it contains is more bio-available than calcium from dairy sources. It's also a good source of Vitamin A and iron.

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Chicken Found in Purse at Yoga Retreat

2/6/2015

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Originally posted on September 24, 2014

The weekend before last I went to easily one of the best yoga retreats or workshops I’ve attended. Facilitated by Melanie Elkin of Yoga’licious, the focus of the retreat was yoga as a conduit for understanding how our bodies feel when we stay small (“I can’t”, “I’m afraid”) and when we allow ourselves to expand and to shine. It also was about self-care. As in drop the excuses and the busy-ness and take care of yourself. Let’s face it, as women we tend to prioritize self-care right below a dental exam. And when we do allow ourselves that massage we desperately need or go to a yoga retreat because we need to feel connection in order to shine, boy oh boy, do we justify it.

We justify the expense of it and the time we are doing it. You don’t hear men doing this. I don’t remember my husband crunching numbers and scraping money together from various accounts for his much-needed time sailing, time spent for him doing something that feeds his soul. Why ladies do we do this to ourselves?

At previous yoga retreats, I can remember feeling pressure to conform, wear the correct clothes, do the poses perfectly, and eat the right way. This retreat was the antithesis of that, and I hope it becomes a trend in American yoga. Anything went as long as you were giving yourself what you needed. It was cool to be on your mat in the fetal position during one of the physical yoga classes as long as that was what your body was requesting. Everything was deemed perfect, including deciding not to do a pose.

There was a chef provided for the weekend, and he was great. The food was delicious, and it also happened to be vegan/vegetarian. This would have been fine, if that was what my body needed. However, it was a yoga retreat with physical demands held in a beautiful location where the daytime high temperatures happened to be 106 degrees.

What my body needed was chicken. Just under 24 hours into the retreat I knew that I was feeling weak, untethered, and anxious. The only cure was chicken. I voiced this need to my roommate, MC. It turns out another roommate, KC, also needed meat. There was a hitch in our giddy-up: both my car and KC’s car were blocked. Bless MC as she volunteered to be our getaway driver. Now, this did feel a little bit criminal, sneaking out of the yoga retreat and all its wonderful vegetarian food for meat, but we were doing it in the name of self-care. Seriously.

We found a great little market in the town where the retreat center was located, smoking their meats out front, with a deli counter in the back. KC and I were about to have our self-care needs met. However, we didn’t want to flaunt our treasures in front of the other participants, and so that is how I came to walk back into the yoga retreat with half a smoked chicken in my purse.

Oh that chicken! It was so flavorful with crisp skin, good smoke flavor, the right amount of seasoning, and terrific juiciness. I savored bite after bite. After eating about one-third of it, I stashed in the fridge. As I walked away from my chicken, the amount of energy and joy that overcame my body and my mind confirmed the success of following through on an expressed need.

In the name of self-care, I snuck out of a yoga retreat and ate chicken. And the best part is I could do that very act because of exactly what I was learning at the retreat: to listen to my body, to treat self-care as important, and to put my needs first without excuses or justifications.

Do you make excuses or justifications when meeting your needs? When was the last time you did something truly nice for yourself without feeling guilty about it?

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The Most Powerful Question to Ask Yourself When You Are Stuck

2/6/2015

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Originally Posted on September 15, 2014

You may be thinking the title is hyperbole, but I can guarantee it is not. We’ve all been stuck. It leads to futzing on the Internet, wanting to bag the whole idea, and frustration. We think we cannot move forward because of being told no, because of waiting for someone else to make a move, because our brain is not flexing its creative muscles. It is no fun being stuck and it is keeping us small and from succeeding.

I experienced this most acutely last November when my husband, Brian, took a job in California giving us six weeks to move across the country from New York State. His experience of the move was that we could relax in December because his new company was paying for the move, including packers. My experience of the move was much more complicated. I needed to complete the sale of my business. We had still-packed boxes from the last move I did not want to schlep across the nation, especially since we were downsizing our housing by half. I had a whole community to bid a fond farewell. I needed to train the new owner of the business. In other words, all I saw were loose ends and endless to do lists. What overtook my brain was an incredible sense of urgency. I consider a sense of urgency a really good thing, a valuable asset for a big move. Brian did not share that sense of urgency because his experience of the move was completely different. Not only that, he could not relate to my frustration, my desire to get it done, to get moving, to get going because hey someone else was going to take care of it.

I was frustrated and agitated. I was stuck. I called my stepmother, Deb, a retired high school counselor, to vent. She had the answer.

How does one get out of it? How does one create the ability to get unstuck?

You ask yourself, “How can I empower myself in this moment?”

My brain was in monkey mode so I kept asking her if that was it. She said take it for a test run and see what happens. I had been waiting for Brian to become motivated rather than moving forward on my own.

That one question was simple and it was brilliant. It was easy to remember. As is well known, moving is upheaval through and through. It was easier to manage the chaos with this question. Every time I felt stuck, I just asked what I could do to empower myself. Sometimes it was taking deep breaths, stopping banging my head against the wall, and doing a load of laundry or running a carload of donations to Goodwill. Just the sheer act of doing something, anything, helped to free me and create forward motion.

As a health coach, I rely on this question to move my health and my business forward. I give it to clients as a tool to liberate them from being stuck. What do you do get unstuck? Have you tried asking yourself this powerful yet simple question?

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That Time I Drank 5 Gallons of Green Smoothie

2/6/2015

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Originally Posted on September 5, 2014

You might as well know up front that I am not a big believer in detoxes or cleanses. I will certainly get into the why of it in another post. I do believe in eating a clean, whole foods based diet that does not require you to cleanse or to detox. The body naturally detoxes if you leave 12 hours between dinner and breakfast and get 7-8 hours of sleep.

You can imagine then that upon having my annual bloodwork done I was rather surprised to learn that my LDL was a tad on the high side (happily my HDL was on the way high side – winning!). This is another good moment to tell you that having dabbled with vegetarianism, I am an omnivore through and through. I do buy sustainable, hormone-free,
pasture-raised, belly-rubbed animal protein.

Yes, I am getting to the point. So my MD who is also a graduate of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (which is why I go to her) said we can fix my high cholesterol with some dietary changes. And I thought yes! Then she recommended a green smoothie breakfast and I thought NO. I love warm foods in the morning. Eggs and I are morning best friends, but, of course, they are likely the culprit in this LDL issue. Consuming lots of fruits of vegetables without anything else tends to leave me untethered and increase my anxiety levels, which I keep in check with diet. And it felt like a cleanse. I was skeptical.

I tried it anyway because I wanted to know how my body would respond, and I gave myself an out. If my anxiety levels rose, if I had fatigue, if I dreamed about eating a bucket of fried chicken by 10:00 a.m., then I would revisit this delightful experiment, create something better, and move on.

Here’s what happened: I had more energy, my skin looked the best it had in over 30 years (see: before adolescence), and I slept through the night. After being prescribed to do this for 10 days, I’ve decided I will continue doing it until my body tells me something else would be optimal in the morning.

Here is the recipe that worked for me. I have a Vitamix blender, which to be honest helps, as I am sure this would have burned out the motor on my old blender.

Molly's Green Breakfast Smoothie

Makes 40+ ounces, serves 1

This breakfast smoothie is meant to keep you satiated for hours and give you lots of energy. Don't let the amount of smoothie scare you; rather, consider it likely has the same amount of calories normally consumed at breakfast in a much more nutritious form. If possible, use local/organic vegetables.

Wash all fruits and veggies. Load the blender with the following ingredients in the order that they appear.

12 ounces coconut water

1 huge handful of spinach (about 2 cups)

1 inch piece of peeled ginger

1/2 apple, coarsely chopped (or low glycemic fruit like 1 cup of berries)

1/2 mango or 1 medium banana (or other high glycemic fruit)

2 stalks of celery, coarsely chopped

1 medium cucumber, coarsely chopped

Blend until smooth. May take a few minutes depending on the strength of your blender. Drink and enjoy!

And yes, if you just looked at your blender and thought that’s a lot of smoothie, yes, yes it is. Remember, you want something nutritionally awesome that is going to keep you satisfied for hours, fuel you through a workout, and not leaving you craving something you don’t even like in the first place.

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Brian's Bodacious Broccoli

Chicken Found in Purse at Yoga Retreat

The Most Powerful Question to Ask Yourself When You Are Stuck

That Time I Drank 5 Gallons of Green Smoothie

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Brian's Bodacious Broccoli

Chicken Found in Purse at Yoga Retreat

The Most Powerful Question to Ask Yourself When You Are Stuck

That Time I Drank 5 Gallons of Green Smoothie

Author

Archives

Categories

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