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
- Fiber
- Nutrients
- Energy
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!!
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What a great weekend!!! Such delicious food!
It’s interesting to hear about all the nutrition info you learned.
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I found the “less jewelry” an interesting thing to add to that list. But then I thought about it, and realized that one of the first things I do when I get home is take off all my jewelry before I sit and relax for the night… interesting!
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Exciting stuff! I’m way behind so didn’t know you’d enrolled at IIN. Look forward to hearing more about it! I also got to try Blossom for the 1st time this weekend and it was such good stuff.
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Damn girl! that is a serious plate of yummy eats! Im jealous!
and congrats on FitBlogger!
Im going to BlogHer this year! yay!
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I thought the business building/marketing stuff was really interesting; I’m surprised some past students have complained about not enough coaching and support on this topic! I feel really well-prepared to start marketing myself out as a health coach this year (I’m going to wait until my schedule dies down and I’ve lost a bit more weight before working with clients). What’s your plan? E-mail me if you don’t want to share on the blog just yet
Also, congrats on FitBloggin! I’d love to go but unfortunately it is the same weekend as the NYC Half
Maybe I’ll get to the Healthy Living Summit this year!
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Missy Reply:
March 8th, 2010 at 2:08 pm
I haven’t decided yet exactly! I’d like to start seeing clients as soon as we are allowed! A few girls were also talking about developing their own food product and I would love to help them market it since I basically do that with the blog now!
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Oh, and one more thing: I thought the macrobiotic diet principles were really interesting! Since I heard Gwyneth Paltrow used to swear by it I assumed it was probably nonsense (no offense to her, but any diets celebrities swear by are usually really strange), but it actually makes a ton of sense. My dog LOVES it when I sing to him, so I’m definitely going to start adding that to my daily routine
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Ahh I am so jealous of your school
Kind of wish I had signed up for it! What are you going to do with your certification afterwards?
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Missy Reply:
March 8th, 2010 at 2:09 pm
You should sign up next year! There are no more live classes though but distance learning sounds really great too. See above about the certification (not sure yet haha)
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Cocktails for lunch! You are my kind of friend! Oh yeah, the food looks great too;)
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The cottage cheese mess sounds/looks so good! I don’t know why I’ve never tried it.
ALL Of your food looks delish! Especially the quinoa salad. LOVE love love quinoa! And of course the CD ice cream. I would have had 3 or 4 bowls.
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That sounds so interesting/fun!!
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Hey Missy! What a fun weekend! It was so great meeting you! I’m sitting at my desk now drooling over all our delicious eats from the other night
I absolutely love your website, and wowee, you already have a health coaching section!!
See you in a few weeks!
xoxo
Linds
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Everything looks delish!
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Wow-everything looks just amazing! It all sounds so delicious! And the nutrition school sounds like something I would love! I wish I could have signed up early enough to do it this year. I’m glad you’re having so much fun. Lychee martini’s are fantastic -aren’t they?
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Wow what a great weekend! your school sounds so interesting, I am so glad that you are really liking it =) thanks for sharing some of things you learned!
Congrats on fitbloggin!!!!! you must be so excited!
all those eats look delish AND healthy! you can’t go wrong with that =)
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WOW what a delish weekend!! that tempeh looks amazing and those desserts! AHHH!
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YAY!!! I’m going to FitBloggin’ too! Can’t wait to meet you
Your school sounds so interesting. I am a HUGE believer in bio-individuality (even though I never knew that’s what it was called, haha). Sometimes it can be difficult being a healthy living blogger because it seems like there’s one “best” way to eat/exercise, and I don’t find myself fitting into that mold. And I always assumed that most nutrition schools would be that way. So to hear that yours goes over all different ways of eating and how each person is different is very cool to me!!
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oh my god blossom looks SO good! seriously i would have walked out of blossom like 50lbs heavier haha. how could you not want to order every single thing on that menu. yum
school sounds amazing! i’m so glad you’re sharing all of the cool infor you’re finding out
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omgg so many good eats in this post- i am so jealous!! & that school sounds really really interesting.. i look forward to hearing more info
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omg I would kill to be there! that food looks so amazing! the school sounds awesome, i am sure you will love it even more as time goes on! too funny about kale chips and eddamame being put out on the bar haha…thats great!! Im so happy that you are enjoynig it and also looks like you are meeting some awesmoe peeps!
xo
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Your schoolin sounds so fantastic!! Bio-individuality? I have not even heard of that! So regarding the phytic acid, yeah, it binds minerals, but did you know it’s also an antioxidant? It also helps to lower blodd sugar. So while there are some issues with it, it’s also a healthy component. this is why TOO MANY carbs, is not good, but carbs in moderation, is KEY!
Looks like you had a very exciting weekend. I want to try those kale crisps, yum!
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all of that food looks delicious! wow! quinoa salad looked the best to me. glad you are enjoying school!
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I love your blog. Thanks for sharing. I am studying nutrition longdistance.
You can go at your own pace. I do miss the interaction you have with great people. Keep up the good work.
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oh blossom, how i love thee…school sounds so cool!! learning new stuff about a subject that you are passionate about…awesome!
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The class sounds interesting. I can’t wait to see what other topics you cover.
I want that acorn squash dish!
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