An ongoing love affaire with all things fashionable, tasty and fun

Posts tagged “Run

Links You’ll Love

Health & Fitness:

Sweet potatoes are a great addition to any healthy diet so you should definitely try out some of these nutritious recipes from Shape Magazine – 10 Healthy Sweet Potato Recipes.

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OhSheGlow’s Fall Detox Salad is a must try – Filled with Brussels Sprouts, carrots, apple, celery, sunflower seeds, and raisins, it’s as nutritious as it is delicious {also check out this salad as part of the Thanksgiving Recipe Round-Up}.

Eating well and living a healthy life doesn’t have to mean giving up all sweets and desserts, you just need to make healthier, smarter choices when you want to indulge – Try FitFluential’s Five Healthier Desserts which include amazing choices like Raspberry Chocolate Chips, Dark Chocolate Nut Butter Pretzels, Fruit & Yogurt Parfaits, Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes/Muffins, and Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries.

Do you want model-worthy skin? Refinery 29 has the goods – The Surprising Secret To Model-Worthy Skin.

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Finding a great, healthy snack that you love and that’s easy to make is wonderful – One of my favorites recently is Choosing Raw’s Cinnamon Caramelized Cauliflower.

Fashion:

Interested in spicing up your daily makeup routine? It’s always fun to see what other beauty products are out there and the sort of routines that women go through on a daily basis, so let’s check out how blogger Trop Rouge has set up her makeup routine – Makeup Monday.

Top 9 at 9: A Model’s Must Haves with Lonneke Engel gives you all of model Lonneke Engel’s Fall 2012 picks – From workout gear to sweaters to what her favorite shoes are for Fall.

Ulyana Sergeenko’s dramatic, eye-catching clothes are the perfect pieces for this dreamy Moscow-based photo shoot in the most recent Carine Roitfeld Fashion Book issue – Moscow Walk.

Oxblood is everywhere for Fall 2012 and if you’re not sure whether it’s the trend for you, trying beauty products and nail polish are great choices – 3 Chic Ways To Do Burgundy Beauty.

The Fall 2012 Collection for J.Crew is pretty phenomenal – It’s filled with great outerwear, fun, printed pants, and killer accessories. And none of those accessories are better than the Lulu Frost’s Capsule Collection – Shop It Now: Lulu Frost For J.Crew Holiday.


Alterna-Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is one of the few days a year that has a set menu, and while each family has their traditions, the basics are fairly common: turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, pumpkin pie…

What about mixing things up this year? You don’t have to go crazy or change every single memorable moment of Thanksigivings past, but you could add a new dish or two. Even one that’s – GASP – healthy?

Here are some delicious, easy recipes that you might be interested in adding to your traditional holiday table. Maybe you don’t even have to tell your guests that they’re low in the salt, fat, butter & sugar that Thanksgiving is known for. Maybe. That’s between you and your conscience.

Sides (my FAVORITE part of Thanksgiving):

Baked Butternut Squash w/ Cranberries from Eat, Live, Run

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Cinnamon Sweet Potato Chickpea Salad from OhSheGlows

Savory Pumpkin Quinoa from The Wannabe Chef

High Protein Garlic Mashed Potatoes from OhSheGlows

Carmelized Brussels Sprouts from Eat, Live, Run

Cornbread Dressing with Tempeh Bacon, Cherries and Portobello Mushrooms from Peas and Thank You

Entrees:

Vegan Lentil Walnut Loaf from OhSheGlows

Sprouted Grain Stuffing with Field Roast Sausage from Peas and Thank You

Mushroom-and-Spinach Lasagna  from Rachel Wilkerson.

Pumpkin Chili from Rachel Wilkerson

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Seitan log from Hungry Hungry Hippie

Desserts:

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Vegan Pumpkin Cheesecake (5 ingredients) from Blisstree

Pumpkin Pudding & Chocolate Mousse Parfait from Choosing Raw

Vegan Pumpkin Pie Pudding from Choosing Raw

Pumpkin Gingerbread w/ Spiced Buttercream from OhSheGlows

Vegan Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls from Eat, Live, Run

If you’d like to brush up on your cooking basics, head over to The Wannabe Chef for instructions & tutorials, from dicing an onion to dairy-free mashed potatoes to making your own ice cream and bread. Or check out the Huffington Post’s take on a Vegan Thanksgiving here and Vital Juice’s Skinny Thanksgiving Side Dishes here.

 

Enjoy your Thanksgiving!


Doughnuts!

Raise your hand if you like doughnuts…

That’s what I thought.

While I’ve never really thought about making doughnuts before I decided to give it a try when I saw Jenna’s Glazed Cake Doughnuts recipe on Eat, Live, Run. I knew that they would never look as good as Jenna’s, which is a little discouraging, but with 9 ingredients and a proposed time of 25 minutes, I figured even I might be able to pull it off.

During a lull at work I ran out to the Sur La Table in the Ferry Building and picked up this doughnut tray.

Glorious right? Right!

On my walk home from work I picked up milk (they were out of buttermilk) and eggs, so I was ready to go by the time I got home. Just as Jenna promised it was quick and easy once you assembled all of the components.

Tiny adjustments: I used 2% milk instead of buttermilk (not my fault!), earth balance instead of butter, gluten-free flour and rather than go with the glaze I dipped the doughnuts in melted earth balance and rolled them in cinnamon sugar.

Side notes: (1) Don’t be discouraged if you don’t use a pastry bag to put the dough into the tray, it looks messy but they fluff up. (2) Because these aren’t flipped, mine ended up a bit striped, pale on top and golden brown where they were in the tray.

But they were a success! Perhaps too much of one actually, my boyfriend ate close to a dozen and gave himself a stomach ache…


Motivation

 

Personally I find an external motivator to be great incentive to keep up with an exercise regime. I wish I could say that I have all the internal motivation that I need in order to meet all of my goals, but unfortunately I don’t. Sometimes on days when I’m tempted to skip my planned workout, knowing that I’ll have to admit my failure aloud to someone else is usually enough incentive to push through.

Usually. 🙂

I’m registered to run the San Francisco Half Marathon on July 31st and haven’t run consistently for months, so I need to begin training, um… Now! It just so happens that one of my best friends is training for the Death Ride (which I lovingly call The Ride of Death) a 129 mile bike race with 15,000 miles of climbing through the Sierra Nevada’s near Tahoe. Her race is July 9 and although we’re training for different types of races in different cities (she’s in Sacramento), she has been acting as an unofficial sponsor and motivator for my last-ditch training efforts.

Monday mornings I email her my proposed workouts for the week (subject to scheduling changes) and each morning I send her a confirmation of what I accomplished the previous day. I’m going to include various types of exercise in my training program in addition to running, specifically circuit training and Pilates.

Below is a draft of a proposed schedule for one of the weeks of training:

Monday:

  • Run to work (1.3 miles)
  • Mini cardio session (2 miles stationary bike & 1 mile elliptical trainer)
  • Pilates Mat class (5pm – 6pm)

Tuesday:

  • Jog to work
  • 15 minute circuit training workout
  • Run (pm)

Wednesday:

  • Walk to work
  • High intensity interval training on the elliptical
  • Pilates Mat class (5pm – 6pm)
  • Yoga Flow (6pm – 7:15pm)
  • Walk home

Thursday:

  • Walk to work
  • 25 minute circuit training workout
  • Run (pm)

Friday:

  • Jog to work
  • 15 minute circuit training workout

Saturday & Sunday – Rest & stretching (maybe a massage if I can be convincing enough) and long walks or a hike

Hooking up with a workout buddy who you can share your plans with or a like-minded friend who you may not workout with but who has similar goals, can be a great motivator.

If the idea of sharing your workout goals/plans with someone else isn’t appealing, or if you’re just getting started and want to hold off until you feel like you’ve made some progress, there are other external motivators that may help you when the odd lazy day rears its ugly head.

(1) A kick-ass play list can do wonders. Put a super charged playlist on your MP3 player or blare it over your computer/sound system. Everyone has their own style and different beats that get them pumped up, and I personally refresh my Nano weekly, but here are some artists/bands that never fail to get my heart rate going, regardless of my mood: Panic! at the Disco, Fall Out Boy, Chemical Romance, Finger Eleven, Breaking Benjamin, My Darkest Days, Jason Derulo, Lady Gaga, Bon Jovi, K$sha, Katy Perry, Beyonce, Sean Kingston.

(2) Sign yourself up for a class on a day when you don’t think that you can make yourself do a work out. You’ll feel guilty not showing up after having reserved a spot in the class and even guiltier when you see the charge on your credit card! The two days of the week that are the hardest for me to get off my booty are always Monday and Wednesday, so I’m getting into the habit of doing at least a Pilates class at Glow Yoga  each of those days. And now that I’m getting to know the other students and the instructor, there’s even more motivation not to play hooky!

(3) If you have a movie or a book that you find extremely motivational, that can be a great way to get yourself going. If hearing Jillian’s commanding voice shoots you out of your seat, start your workouts with some Shred, even if you don’t plan to do the video it can give you the push you need. Personally I’ve found that popping in a dance DVD before my 5:30pm after-work runs or reading a few pages of Born To Run are a sure-fire way to get myself going.

(4) Finally, one of my favorite pieces to read when I need to stoke my motivational fires is The Better Man, about the (then) 75 year-old fitness guru & health nut Don Wildman (my friend Jim sent me this YEARS ago and I saved a PDF in case of emergencies). This always gives me the kick in the pants that I need to get off of the couch.

Good luck getting yourself onto the trail, treadmill or into the gym. Make me proud!