an education

Did you know that there's protein in swiss chard? Seriously!  There're ten grams of protein in 3 cups (uncooked) of swiss chard. I never would have guessed that.

I'm learning so much now that I'm tracking my food. I honestly didn't know that vegetables could have that much protein. Mushrooms have a lot too.

Okay. I'm done. I just wanted to share my amazement. 10 grams of protein! In CHARD. Chard, people.

-Jess

p.s. quick recipe: heat 1 tsp. sesame oil in skillet. Add 3 cups chopped Swiss chard. Sauté till wilted. Add one egg and scramble together w/ chard. Turn off heat and stir in a small can of mushrooms. Add soy sauce to taste. Enjoy! V. yummy, filling and (apparently) filled with protein*. Go figure!

*And not just because of the egg. There's actually more protein in the chard than in the egg. Seriously: so weird. 

Personal Training with Jackie + pull-ups

Yesterday. Looks like it might be just one workout this week for me - yipes! All I can say is our heat wave just did a number on me. I felt awful all week: eyes dry, headaches, ick. I don't do heat well.

But I ate well this week, so that's good. I feel like I'm still learning what "normal" eating is like for my non-pregnant, non-nursing self. I didn't know much about nutrition until I got pregnant and started researching it, and now (this month? next?) it's been a year since I stopped nursing. So, six years of learning about nutrition while nursing and/or pregnant, and now a year of learning how to feed just me. I'm getting there. But I'm still amazed at how different what my body needs is from what my mind (and mouth) want. It's said over and over again, but our culture (particularly advertisements) lead me to expect that I should be eating so much more than I really should. As I try to put the principles I've learned into practice, I'm finding it odd and hard, and I'm surprised that I'm surprised at that.  I guess what I'm really getting at is that this is the first time I've really taken this knowledge ("calories in < or =" calories">It's just really weird, realizing that everything they say about our eating culture is true. (And, when you think about how our culture simultaneously idolizes skinniness, it begins to look downright S&M. Unhealthy on both extremes at the same time.)

Hope this is okay to share. It's just been on my mind a lot as I've been working on learning how to feed myself when no one else is literally sucking calories out of me! (Now, figuratively sucking energy - that we can talk about!) 

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

food journaling

I started food journaling again yesterday. I haven't done that since I was losing pregnancy weight, but it really was the tool that always helped me during those periods. And, since Christmas, I've been about five pounds heavier than I like being. 

Five pounds isn't much, I know, but it is the difference between some of my clothes fitting comfortably and all of my clothes fitting comfortably, and I like my clothes fitting comfortably. :) Anyway, enough to say: I know food journaling works for me, and I also know that now is an appropriate time for me to use that tool.

The fun thing is, this time, for the first time, I'm food journaling online. I remembered that once I tried to sign up with Sparkpeople to use their food journaling software, but they didn't let me because I made the mistake of telling them that I was nursing. Oops.

But, I'm not nursing now, so now I'm using their site. I gotta say, it's a ton of fun. For someone like me (and I'm not saying you should do it if it's not your thing, or not the sort of thing that's helpful to you), all the charts and keeping track make it into a game, and I'm really enjoying myself (must be that J). It's also really interesting, because you can do things like look at a pie chart of your daily calories by the food they came from. It really emphasizes how few calories most produce has!

I had to turn LOTS of options off when I signed up though. No, I don't want your emails. No, I don't want to join the message board. No, I don't want to measure my waist. No, I don't want to keep track of how many glasses of water I drink. No, I don't want you to plan a strength-training routine for me. But I was impressed by how many options there are, and how customizable the software is. You can even track non-weight-related goals, and I'm thinking of using that feature to keep track of my page count daily (writing-related goal).  (I should mention, for those who might be interested, you can turn off any of it you want to, so you could use, say, the goal-tracking part without using the calorie-counting or weight-tracking.)

Anyway, this seemed like an appropriate place to share this. I usually just keep track of exercise stuff here, but I thought I'd mention a food thing, since it really is the other half of the equation, at least for me.

-Jess