Hello! Hope everyone had a nice weekend! I was super busy and did not get online even once! I am not complaining because school was amazing this weekend. I never thought I’d say school was fun! I am going to do a recap of my day Saturday and save Sunday for tomorrow’s post. I had lots of yummy meals and also wanted to share some of what I learned! It will be a nice refresher for me and I’m sure most of you are interested in the topics we covered.
On Saturday I woke up and had to grab something fast for breakfast and run out the door. There is no snacking allowed in the theatre so I downed a cottage cheese mess on my way to the subway.
I added cinnamon, Stevia, banana, and Kashi cereal. I loved it with the cinnamon and Stevia but don’t think I can eat it anymore! Missy and cottage cheese do not agree. I haven’t been eating much dairy lately so I don’t think it was the smartest breakfast. Oh well; at least I know now.
In the morning we covered high carb and low carb diets. I like the fact that the school believes in bio-individuality. This means that people’s food choices depend on their gender, age, DNA, climate, and lifestyle. While one person may feel great with a vegetarian diet, another person could need meat to feel good. We are learning about all of the dietary theories and are able to choose which one works best with our body. Our teacher makes everything very neutral so no one feels bad about eating meat or feels weird for eating raw. We are learning the pros and cons of each of the theories.
High Carb: Pros
High Carb: Cons
- Won’t work for everyone
- Some gain
- Some lose
- Blood sugar levels
- Indigestion
- Gluten
- Phytic Acid
I had no idea what phytic acid was before class but learned that brown rice contains phytic acid. My teacher was eating a ton of brown rice and had perfect health except for extremely low zinc levels. He learned that the phytic acid was binding with the minerals and leaching them out. To prevent this from happening, soak your brown rice or cook it with wakame or seaweed.
We also spoke about macrobiotics. It is a way of living with respect for physical, biological, emotional, mental, ecological, and spiritual order of our daily lives. We learned about yin/yang and that everything has its polar opposites.
We spoke about lifestyle suggestions:
- Give generosity of yourself
- View everything and everyone you meet with gratitude
- Live happily
- Sing a happy song every day (we all had to sing “Row Your Boat” after!)
- Treat yourself to quiet time
- Exercise
- Scrub your skin
- Less jewelry
- Reduce chemicals in soap, shampoo, perfume
- Keep home in order
- Plants for oxygen
- Chew food well
- Less TV
- Give thanks before and after each meal
- Be on good terms with people
- Learn to make an enemy into a friend
I really liked all of these suggestions. Singing “Row Your Boat” with 1100 people in a theatre definitely made everyone much happier!
Next Andrea Beaman, author of The Whole Truth spoke. She teaches the art of cooking in a fun, easy, and simple way and was featured on Top Chef. She showed us how easy a brown rice vegetable stir fry was to make. She suggested making a lot on a Sunday night and then turning it into a wrap, porridge, or rice pudding later in the week!
Lunch
I met up with about 20 other women at a restaurant called Gabriel’s. It was basically a brainstorming lunch to come up with business ideas and to simply share our stories about why we were there. I have no pictures since I did not feel comfortable pulling out the camera in front of 20 people I just met! We all got the pre-fixed menu. I had:
Appetizer: Toscana Soup. Italian Sausage, Beans and Kale in a light Tomato Base.
Entree: Seared Tuna Salad, Horseradish Cream sauce, Watercress, marinated Cucumbers
Dessert: Strawberry sorbet
Everything was delicious and it was great hearing what everyone had to say!
The afternoon was all about marketing and building our business so I won’t bore you with that!
After class there was a meetup for drinks at the Dream Hotel. We all met in the Ava Lounge which is a beautiful penthouse suite bar. I started with a Lychee Martini (3 by the time I left!)
It was really nice inside!
We had a beautiful view of the city.
Some lovely girls I met…
It felt like a blogger meetup! Who else would pull out Kale Krisps and Edamame at a bar??
Around 8:00 at night, I finally left. 3 martinis was enough! I met a few other girls from California and New York so we decided to go to dinner at Blossom! There were 6 of us so we almost got one of everything!
Appetizers:
Quinoa Salad:
Red quinoa, red and yellow peppers, cannellini beans, mango guacomole, lemon vinaggrette.
Autumn Sweet Potato Rolls (Raw) ~
Serve Coconut noodles, jicama, carrot, red and yellow pepper, scallion and avocado with an almond ginger dipping sauce
My first plate:
Both appetizers were delicious! I loved the sweet potato rolls! I also split Butternut Squash soup with another girl. It was thick and perfect!
Entrees
Moroccan Glazed Tempeh ~
Glazed tempeh in an eggplant-chickpea stew with red bell peppers and sweet potato topped with a creamy fennel-black olive relish
Zucchini Linguini (Raw) ~ Almond pesto, cherry tomatoes, portobello mushrooms, kalamata olives, v-parmesan cheese
*Gluten Free
Plate of spinach, sweet potato fries, mushrooms, and brussels sprouts!
Four Onion Risotto ~
Roasted acorn squash, swiss chard, sweet potato crisps
My first plate!
I loved everything we got! I’d say my favorite was the zucchini linguini and the vegetable plate! I never knew if I liked tempeh either but this dish was extremely flavorful! Everything was heaven!
Dessert was soy cookie dough ice cream!
I had 2 of the bowls. Another girl got the Chocolate Peanut Butter Shake. I was slightly jealous.
2 other girls got a green juice and blueberry shake! So pretty!
We also tried a raw cinnamon raisin oatmeal cookie! So good! Oh..we also tried the chocolate cake which surprisingly was not good. It tasted like a fake Hostess cake so we sent it back. Everything else was amazing and I will be back there soon!
I got home at midnight and woke back up at 7 on Sunday for more school! Long day! I will save Sunday for tomorrow but it was another great day! All 1100 people in the room are so happy and passionate about their health so it is just a great environment to be in.
I am off! Have a great day!
P.S. I found out 5 minutes ago that I am going to FitBloggin!!
Tags: Cocktails, cottage cheese, ice cream, Institute of Integrative Nutrition, Restaurant Review, soup
It slid right off my plate! It might be a good thing because I didn’t want to eat all three pizzas in the first place! Two was definitely plenty but I tend to eat things just because they are there.
