After a While

"Yield to the present Moment"




This post is somewhat of an extension of yesterdays, I guess I am just feeling rather philosophical lately.

I want to share one of my favorite poems, which is unrelated to food I guess, but my blog is called LIVE and eat abundantly, no? So in essence I can tie any thing in!

After a While

After a while, you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning
And company doesn't mean security,
And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
And presents aren't promises,
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open,
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,
And learn to build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans,
And futures have a way of falling down in midflight
And after a while, you learn
That even sunshine burns if you get too much.
So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure...
That you really are strong
And you really do have worth
And you learn and learn...
With every goodbye, you learn.

by Veronica A. Shoffstall


I think it most obviously applies to relationships, but really it is about life in general. Things fail and fall apart, life does not turn out the way you expect. Friends, family, significant others, and even strangers disappoint you on a day to day basis. But at the same time, people and life is out there exceeding expectations, surprising and inspiring you.


I have given up on the concept of "life plan," and believe more in a "rough draft of a life outline." I think you definitely should figure out what you want in life, and develop some form of plan of action to get towards those goals, but its not a hard and fast.

I am a firm believer in the Charles Swindoll statement (Maybe not the exact numbers but you get it...):

"Life is 10% of what happens to you, and 90% how you react to it."

and I will leave you with that.

Keep on living each day abundantly :)

Come what may?

I am feeling incredibly old today. Old and unsure of what on earth I want to do with my life.

I am getting really good at deciding what I DO NOT want to do, but I foresee this process of elimination business not being the best way to go about this.

So far in my life, I would say this past year has been the best year of my life. Not because it has been particularly good, in fact a very high percentage of the year has been very awful: I got rejected from the Dietetic Internship, my fiancé broke up with me, I’ve experienced several deaths of friends and family, dealt with weight gain and financial struggles, and overall been severely depressed for a significant part of the year.

BUT—as the cliché saying goes, “What does not kill you makes you stronger.”

I feel so much stronger, independent and adaptable now.

A year ago my life plan was: do dietetic internship (preferably down south), probably move back north, get married, working in clinical dietetics, hopefully work in Renal, and then once I had a better understanding of what I wanted to do go back for my masters in a field other than Nutrition that would compliment my practice, perhaps Public Health or Environmental Health, or maybe another Health Science. Who Knows? I also was a really big fan of the American Dietetic Association (ADA). I had served the Massachusetts Student Dietetic Association (MSDA) quite faithfully for the past few years and put a lot of effort into their initiatives to build connections among the Dietetic community, and help lobby for more rights and re-imbursements for dietitians.

And then, I was rejected from everywhere I applied. I was upset, but I had expected it. And although it may sound mean, I was happy that the majority of people did not get internships (the match rate was somewhere around 40% I believe), and know that I was competing against people with their Masters Degrees and years of work experience also made me feel a bit better – I’m young and inexperienced, I still have time!

I did, however, lose a lot of respect for the ADA. How could an organization leave some many people striving to get into the profession out in the cold? The fact that they allow so many people to go to school for dietetics, but then form such a harsh bottle neck for getting into internships just seems so unfair.

Of course, there are plenty of options to do without persay getting your RD (becoming a Registered Dietitian), but there are certainly much more opportunities, and often a higher pay scale with the RD.

On the plus side, I am not getting a bit more experience working, and doing the combined masters/ internship, and gaining all these fun new life experiences.

And in the mean time…. I will continue to try to figure out what the heck I want to do.

So in conclusion, this is a really long way of saying – I expect to have some future blogs dabbling in the various aspects of nutrition that I am considering.

Keep an eye out ; )

Pot Luck Ideas?

I am going to a family party/ potluck this weekend, and i have been instructed to make a main or side dish for 8 people....

these are non-nutrition loving, namely meat eating folks. Other people were specifically instructed to bring green, potato, and pasta salads, and deserts.

Any suggestions on what I should prepare??

Copy Writes?

Hello Blog world that I have ignored for so long,

You know what has been missing in my life that has been preventing me from blogging?

Homework....

I discovered I blog much more efficiently when I am procrastinating from homework.

So this post is not 100% food related, moreso blog related. I am currently taking an Online class about Online Nutrition Education, and the first assignment is lots and lots of reading regarding copywrites!
I thought this was especially pertinent since I am always afraid of using out peoples pictures on my blog, and always link back to their original source.

I know as an RD, I will eventually need to make teaching materials, and even as a TA I find myself question what I am allowed to use... It's all very confusing! and it doesn't make sense to have to reinvent the wheel everytime you want to teach on a certain topic.

So here's a link for some copy writing myths that may come in handy!

Also Useful is this article on copywrites of internet links! And good thing for me, it is not a copy write violation to link a website, since I do it all the time!

Best of luck blogging and not getting sued hahaha...
I'll hopefully be back soon.

J.

P.S I know I need to locate my camera because my last few posts have been very lack luster.

Vitamin E

So here is my recap of yesterday: its not nearly as interesting without the pictures....


1000 iu vitamin d
b-
8 am
1 cup nonfat plain yogurt
1 medium apple
3/4 medium mango
2 fo low fat milk
1/2 cup raisin bran
1 cup high fiber trader joes cereal

20 fo water
2 cups coffee
1 fo low fat milk
2 twin sugars

L-
12 pm
1 cup white spaghetti, no fat no salt added
1/2 cup plain no salt added tomato sauce
1 cup tossed salad (ice berg lettuce, grape tomato, cucumber)
1 packet balsamic vinegar
1/2 packet salt
2 packets Mrs. Dash

2 cup regular black tea (1 bag)
1 fo milk
2 equal
1 cup water

s-
3pm
7 grape tomatoes
2 slices multigrain bread
3 oz tuna salad- tuna, onion, celery, broccoli
honey mustard
mayo (full fat)
8 lorna doon cookies

1 cup decaf tea
low fat milk
1 twin sugar

1 calcium supplement (600 mg Ca, 400 iu vitamin D)

9pm
5 oz original frozen yogurt
2 tb strawberries
2 tb pineapple
2 tb fruity pebbles
1 tb chocolate sauce

10pm
2 glasses red wine charles shaw
3 fo vodka
8 fo light cranberry juice

I didn't do so good in regards to eating more vegetables...
I did analyze my food record for the 19th and 20th (up until the 3 pm food). I did pretty good on getting enough of most nutrients but I am always low on Vitamin E! (Which is sometimes surprising to me considering the sources are some of my favorite foods!)

Vitamin E is one of the fat soluble vitamins and is an antioxidant. It is important for immune function, cellular function, and is said to help protect against heart disease and some types of cancer.

Some good sources of vitamin E include:


Wheat germ oil (1 tb = 100%DV)
almonds
sunflower seed and oil
peanuts and peanut butter
spinach
broccoli

One of the main reasons I started drinking Almond Milk instead of soymilk sometimes is that it is 50%DV in 1 cup. My favorite kind if Almond Breeze unsweetened vanilla, only 40 calories in 1 cup! Though it is full fat... I just bought a new kind today thats Organic and low fat, so I will have to review that after I give it a try.
Some people are not the biggest fans of almond milk since it is a lot lower in protein in comparison to soymilk or other alternatives, but I generally get enough protein through other sources so I am not usually terribly worries about that.


For more info check out the fact sheet.

Whats Good, G?

Sometimes I like to be a little ghetto- Its the dirty woo in me.

But the real topic at hand is, yesterday I made myself a new email address, on Gmail. Namely because since I graduated from BU, it doesn't seem appropriate to go on using my school email address. Also, many people at work tend to use G-chat- and not that that is the best use of a government funding, but why should I be the only one to not be doing that?
i haven't actually tried it out yet, but I will be tryng out the various applciations of Gmail etc- so check me out-
jamieldoherty@gmail.com!

I was also talking to Jessica yesterday and we were discussing our binge eating problems and that writing down what we eat (or in my occasional occurrences photo-blogging!) And she had the idea to make a google document of the foods, since then you can access the document from any computer.

I thought this was a super idea- so I started mine this morning. We'll see how it goes!

Here's my recap from yesterday:
06/19/09

1 vitamin d 1000 iu

b-
1/2 cup yogurt
1/2 peach
1 small apple
1/2 cup raisin bran

s-
1 small danish with apricot? fruit filling and small drizzle frosting
1/2 cup cantaloupe
1/4 cup grapes

2 cups coffee
1 fo milk
2 twin sugars

l-
2 slices wheat bread
4 oz "chik'n"
1 packet dijon mustard
1 packet mayo

1 oatmeal apricot bar

s-
1/2 pound baby carrots
20 grams peanut butter

1 cup peach ginger tea
1 twin sugar

4 cups water

d-
1 medium banana
2 tb cashew butter
2 tb semi sweet chocolate chips
2 tb butterscotch chips

s-
1/2 cup nonfat plain yogurt
1/2 cup low fat vanilla soymilk
1/4 apple
1/4 mango
1/2 cup frosted mini wheats

2 calcium chews

I did pretty good with fruit- but my veggie intake was struggling! I guess I'll have to try to increase that today.
I also ate a lot of dairy etc. I don't know if its just me- but when ever I work out I alwasy get extreme dairy cravings, does this occur to anyone else? I don't know if its cause by some sort of weird electrolyte imbalance due to sweating. No idea.... But at least I'm working on my bone density!
____________

Let me know of any other fun G- features!

and until next time, keep it gangster- Holler!
(as a very white Bostonian - I like to over pronounce my R's so I don't get taken to seriously in my quest to be thuggin haha)

Map My Run

I have again been a horrible blogging slacker!

But without further ado-

Several things have occured: I turned 22, I moved to Cambridge, ... and that might be it?

Tonight is Friday Night, as of course as your standard 22 year old, I had a wild night planned! O wait- thats right- I work at 7 am.
So instead of wild parties- I decided to go for a nice little run.

I ran from central square, down Main Street in Cambridge, over by MGH, over the esplanade to Cambridge Street, and down prospect street.

I went about 5 miles, which for me is quite good. I'm not much of a runner. I have a lot of friends that are crazy runners, one of my old roommates was a marathoner so I became a bit disillusioned to what was actually a good distance to run, since she would be like, "O it was my light day, I only ran 10 miles..." and I would be so proud of myself for finally running 3 miles in a row haha. But We all have our own things. I am generally more of a gym person and like more variety - I love group exercise classes! but alas, my gym membership with BU expired, and now that I've moved its not in the most convenient location for me. I'll probably try out a gym around here eventually but for now I guess i can stick to running.

I like to use the website mapmyrun.com to plot out routes and see how far I go (also because I have absolutely no sense of direction and would inevitably get horribly lost without any sort of mapping tool.

Its also convenient just for mapping various distances, such as I've mapped how far my general walks are such as when I lived in Allston it was about 0.4 miles from my apartment to the T stop, and it was 0.6 miles from MGH to government center, so I knew on days I worked I generally got in at least 2 miles of walking from my commute, so I didn't feel quite as bad about sitting at my desk in front of a computer for 10 hours straight.

It also lets you save your routes, check out other routes people in the area have saved, look at races in the area, and calculate rough estimates on calories burned etc. Its a pretty nifty site, I suggest ya'll check it out if you have not already.

Do any of you guys use other mapping/ calculating of exercise tools?