So my birth sister said to me a little while ago that things are easy for me because I was the bravest person she knows. Brave, are you kidding me? I have spent years being afraid of everything, and how did I handle it; by diverting the attention away from me with humour or doing something else better, something I knew I couldn’t fail at. I am not brave I just know that if I want a fulfilled life I need to push past my fear, put on my” big girl” panties and deal! There is no science to it; you just have to do it.
This brings me to my fear and apprehension for today. Jesse my trainer has talked, or should I say encouraged me to do this workout competition through his gym. I was excited about it until today. Today I am terrified. Tonight we do the fitness test and tomorrow is the beginning photo shoot. Crap! I couldn’t sleep last night worrying about it. Why am I scared, nothing really changes other than I work out harder and it is still with Jesse who I am comfortable with. So what is my problem? I think it is the word competition that is freaking me out because as much as I say I want it for the workouts and the changes in my body, I also want to win. I do not want to fail and I am entering uncharted territory for me. Competing in an athletic competition, me, Sally King, the girl born without a “sports gene”? What the hell was I thinking? Things like this are for athletes, not me. This is my brothers domain, mine is in the kitchen…right? Well apparently not, apparently now it is for me, Sally King, girl born without a “sports gene”. Well here goes, this is me pulling on my “big girl” panties and dealing. Jesse says I am an athlete now. I guess I am going to have to take his word for it, what else can I do? He has not led me astray before, so I will have to just trust. Gee, my “big girl” panties don’t look too bad, too bad they are spandex. Stay tuned as I will keep you posted. Until next time.

So a few weeks back I went on a grocery tour with a group of high school students and it was fun, because they are always fun but it was also sad. It made me think. It made me glad that I did what I did with my kids when I did it. The major objection when I told them things was 2 fold. I) they don’t care what it does and 2) their Mum’s don’t cook. They don’t care what the food does because they are at the age when they are invincible and nothing will happen to them and frankly health food tastes bad, at least that is what they have been lead to think. Unless you have been forced into an epiphany about food such as getting sick or being overweight or other issues. Where is the incentive to eat vegetables? Vegetables have been given such a bad wrap because there are so many people making them horribly.
I loved my mother but a cook she was not. She cooked the life out of vegetables and they were awful. I wish that I could cook for people vegetables my way and they could see how great they could be. My kids love them. We also need to get over the thought that you need to steam vegetables it makes them disgusting and there is nothing wrong with a little olive oil and stir frying them and adding other wonderful ways of adding flavour to them. In order to do this we need to get over our obsession with fat. Fat has been so demonized in the world and hasn’t that worked out well for us? Did you know that very often when you take the fat out of yogurt that they have more calories than full fat as they have to add more sugar and other crap to make it taste good? I buy full fat yogurt and add a little maple syrup or honey or stevia and cinnamon and often my own fruit. Tastes way better and better for you.
Remember people, eating well is a lifetime thing not a short term thing to get thinner. Dieting does not work and nor does changing the structure of how nature made food. It is called “Frankenfood” and it is never good for you. I will say it again whole foods, from scratch nothing from a package. And to get kids to eat well it has to be a lifetime thing something that is normal for them, not something to try and introduce when they are 16, you have to start as young as possible. At that time of their life they are so resistant to change and unless they have health issues or weight problems it is very hard to get them to change. It can be done but you need to make it interesting.
I never fed my kids “kid food”, KD, alphagettis, that kind of crap so they never knew the difference and they never acquired a taste for it. We have always made our own salad dressings and mayo and so when we got really die hard later in their life they were not resistant to change. Do my kids love green smoothies, probably not, but they know that there is no choice and that they feel better when they have them.
If your kids are 16 and you want to change them and you feel it is too late, it is not! I think that if you talk to them and explain why and make food interesting and appeal to them where they are at you could have success. Is it easy…no, but it is worth it.

You know we as women tend to put ourselves last on the priority list, if we even make the list some days, I wonder.  Lately it has been that way for me.  I have been very busy with meetings and home schooling and the house and, and and.  It never seems to end and an interesting thing happened yesterday that I want to share.

I went for my workout with Jesse.  I had the 15 minutes to think as I was driving there and I knew that I was tired and kind of quiet when I got there.  Jesse puts me on the treadmill and leans on it and starts to chat as we usually do while I warm up.  He looks at me and says, “Okay what is going on, you’re about to cry”.  And dammit I was and when someone says that you well up.  He pushes STOP on the treadmill, grabs a 30lb weight vest throws it on me and grabs my coat and says, “Come with me”.  We head outside and he says “sometimes our souls need attention more than our butts”.

So we proceeded to walk fast and talk and really talk.  I felt so much better, I was sweating like a pig, out of breath (so frankly I still had a good workout) and yet I had attention paid to my heart and my soul.  I felt great.  Someone cared, listened and offered great advice.  We went back into the gym and proceeded to work out really hard.

This got me thinking, (trust Jesse to do it to me again), I am always so worried about feeding and nourishing our bodies that I don’t really think about our hearts and our souls.  Turns out that yesterday that was what I really needed way more than I needed a green smoothie at that moment.

I am learning that getting fit and healthy is really 3 pronged body, mind and soul.  Each being just as important.  Before when I was overweight the feeling that I was experiencing would have sent me to the refrigerator.  I would have stuffed my face, maybe cried (probably not though as eating stopped me from crying and facing my sadness and that was usually the goal shoving the feelings down with the food).  I would have felt terrible after, certainly no better and I would have consumed a ton of calories and the guilt and self loathing would have been huge.  What a productive way to handle things.

Now I had someone to talk to while I was getting major exercise.  The feelings were dealt with, the body moved and the soul, well, I felt free and I know that sounds dumb, but I did not go away feeling I had the weight of the world on my shoulders.  I finally get it, you have to nourish everything body, mind and soul.  Which frankly was a good thing as I came home to Tyson puking all over the floor.  Life goes on.  Until next time.

I was over at a girlfriends a couple of weeks ago and she said that she hated her kitchen and hated cooking.  I listened and then pondered for a second and thought, what I can say.  Inside I was screaming to agree with her!  Finally I chucked up the courage and said, “I don’t blame you, I would hate cooking in this kitchen too”.  She said that she couldn’t get organised to get meals cooked.  Again not surprising. 

Lately with the fast pace life that people lead the kitchen has become the ignored room.  We have too many other things to occupy us.  The other issue is when the kitchen is neglected so is the cooking in said kitchen.  When I have to do something, I always say it had better be in a pretty location.  For example, I hate laundry, it is the bane of my existence!  I told my husband that if I have to do this loathsome job I want somewhere beautiful to do it.  Our neighbour when he saw our new laundry room said, “This is the most pretty laundry room I have ever seen!”  I could not agree with him more.  Everything seems better and easier in a nice surrounding.

At this point you are probably say, “Sally I don’t have the money to do a complete kitchen remodel”.  I get that, and that is not what I am suggesting. I discussed in a previous blog about the kitchen being the heart of the home and yet the kitchen seems to have had a heart attack as of late.  It is just a place to walk through; store things like your dishes or packaged food.  No one seems to spend a lot of time there.

Well if you don’t have a beautiful space and more importantly an organised space I don’t blame you for not wanting to be there.  To me food is love.  My kitchen needs to reflect that love and therefore, I have spent a lot of time making an organised, easy to use and beautiful space.

If we don’t get back in the kitchen to nourish our families, who will?  Surely pizza joints and hamburger joints cannot do as good of job as we could and yet we let them.  I want to show you that putting a healthy and nutritious meal is quick and easy, and contrary to popular belief we are not regressing back to the old ways where women were chained to the kitchen.    It is like that with any environment,  when your surroundings are cluttered so is your mind and it is very hard to get motivated.  When you cannot find something quickly it makes you want to throw in the towel as it all seems like too much effort.  This could be true for any room.  If your bedroom is cluttered or disorganised than you can have trouble sleeping. 

I am not saying that this is always the problem, but very often it can be and if you take a little extra time and make sure that everything makes sense in the kitchen and baking is with baking stuff and pots are with pots and everything is easily accessible it will cut your time in half, I can assure you.  You don’t need to spend hours in the kitchen like I do, but we really need to get in there and get back to making whole foods, from scratch and nothing from a package.  Who knows you may just like it.  Until next time.

So I just watched a news story about losing weight on Global and man it frustrates me.   They say that as women get older even with exercise it is hard and near impossible to lose weight even when eating the ‘standard North American diet’.  Here is the problem people, the ‘standard Northern American diet’.  There is nothing good about this diet and it should be avoided at all costs.  It is making us sick and fat.  When is that going to sink in?  Processed food is the problem.  I was at a conventional grocery store last night and I wanted to see what is in these so called healthy yogurts that have no aspartame, no fat and no added sugars.  You know the ones that are advertised all the time.  Well guess what people they do have sugar in them sucralose and Splenda which is no better than aspartame.  There is no way that this is good for anybody and I have said it before if low fat worked I would not have been 300lbs and trust me I was.  Just because it does not say the actual word sugar does not mean there is none in there.  Sucralose is sugar and so is Splenda and if you actually looked at the process used to make Splenda, you should cringe.   It is a huge nasty chemical process that should be avoided with a 10 foot barge pole.

  Now repeat after me, ‘whole foods, from scratch as close to nature as possible. In the words of Michael Pollen, don’t eat anything that does not rot. Grass fed beef, free range chickens and eggs, no antibiotics or hormones, and lots of fruits and vegetables and trust me you won’t have a problem.  Nothing from a package.  Drink water not pop.  And also importantly move.  You don’t have to run a marathon, just go play that WII with your kids or go for a walk.  It doesn’t have to be big just consistent.

 None of this is new; it is just forgotten in our fast paced world.  Go back to the old ways they worked and clearly what we are doing is not working.  Until next time.

You know the old saying; the kitchen is the heart of the home?   Well I want to address this again as I feel that sentiment is dying and it makes me sad.  When I was a kid my Mom worked full time and I was always jealous of my best friend Sandra because her Mom stayed at home and she would come home to the smell of cookies baking or supper in the oven.  I came home to an empty house and I really hated it.  Now don’t get me wrong my Mom was awesome and I loved her dearly but we were very much trained that eating was just a means to an end.  We had supper together every night as a family and she cooked with all the food groups but there was just something missing.

Things have progressed even further down since I was a child.  Kitchens are very beautiful nowadays but they are hardly the ‘heart ‘of the home.  They seem to be a place to store things, packaged food, the microwave, whatever can get food in our stomachs quickly and nourishing be dammed.  I spend a lot of time in the kitchen and I do not feel as though it is a prison sentence at all.  I love it.  I certainly did not learn this from my mother she was usually working or sewing or doing one of the many other things that she did so well.

You see my Mom was a powerhouse.  She was amazing and no matter what she thought of it never occurred to her that she couldn’t do it.  She just did it.  Failing was not an option.  She was on every committee and board and in her mind she was doing her part to change the world, and food and cooking was just a means to an end.

In my mind, I want to change the ’current’ world from my kitchen.  I wonder what my Mom would have thought.  She always said that I was to follow my dreams, and be a trendsetter and not follow them.  She did not care what people thought and I really admire her for that now.  Is it wrong that I want to get people back in the kitchen and around the kitchen table as a family?  We need to talk more eye to eye and face to face.  We need to nourish not just our bodies but our hearts and minds.  We need something to believe in and have faith in.  No matter what that is for you it can often happen around the kitchen table.  We need to take back the ‘heart of the home’, the kitchen.  It needs to be the gathering place at the end of a long day.  I am not saying that women need to get back in the kitchen.  I am saying that families and friends need to get together in the kitchen, cook something from scratch, talk and laugh and commune with real food and real conversations.

My Mom has been dead for 27 years now and there is still not a day that goes by that I don’t think of her.  Man, do I wish that we could sit down at the kitchen table and talk, I mean really talk.  I would love to know if she is proud of me, even if I want to change the world from my kitchen, starting with my boys and working out further.  I guess the thing I have realised is that there are many ways to be a trendsetter and going out in the world is just one way. 

My kids are going to come home to the smell of cookies baking and supper in the oven, and I hope they will know that you can accomplish anything you try, as long as you try.  I want them to know that they need to “Be the change they want to see in the world” and that can be from anyplace they choose.  I want them to be fearless and do something that scares them everyday (not stupid dangerous stunts), but real things that will make them sleep at night from exhaustion and satisfaction.  I have to go now as my cookies are buzzing, my point is made and I have the world to change!  Until next time.

The thing that I am realising is that so much of life is a mind game. You know I have always struggled with the thought that "you can if you think you can". I mean I want to believe that it is true and I try to think positively if you will but there is this "bulllshit" meter in my head. The second I try to think, "yes, I can do this"; something goes off in the back of my head and says, "bullshit"!

This has certainly been true for sports or for anything physical for that matter. I always thought that I was different. There was just something wrong with me. My brother was good at any sport he tried. No matter what it was he was a natural. We were both adopted so consequently I did not have his sports genes, if you will. It was hell being an overweight kid with a handsome jock brother who was Mr. Popular. If I heard it once, I heard it a thousand times, "You're Graeme Dick's little sister?" (Said with a look of shock and horror on their face and in their tone of voice).

I have carried this baggage with me my whole life. I am no good at sports or physical activity so I am going to be good at other things. And good I was, everything I worked at I made sure I was the best. I was very competitive in my career and always got to the top.

This baggage also lead me down a path of getting to the top of the scales – 300lbs to be exact. Hey, I go big or I go home! So I lost the weight, but I knew if I was going to keep it off I had to change my thinking and I also had to move my body, more than I was; frankly, a lot more! I started working out but felt a month ago that I needed to ramp it up a bit or a lot! These thoughts lead me to Jesse, my new trainer.

I met him at a health show, and really I had no intention of ever hiring a trainer that day. It was not something I was thinking about. I saw him and something drew me right to him. At the time I did not know why. He is super buff and extremely good looking, exactly the kind of people that I avoid, like the plague. I would never have had the nerve to go up to him before let alone tell him I want only you to train me and be quite clear about it.

This has turned into quite the thing. He has pushed me in ways that I never thought of before. I am doing things that were unheard of for me and it never occurs to me that I can't, well most of the time. There are still those old messages in my head but I find myself pushing through them and trying anyway. Jesse never makes me feel embarrassed or stupid or pathetic. All the emotions I felt before whenever I tried anything remotely sporty. He is kind and supportive and tough when he has to be, and frankly he has to be with me, if I were being honest. I am sure if he is reading this he is laughing out loud right now. He understands that lasting weight loss is a mind game and nothing else. Well I suppose there are a few other things but generally if I decide I am going to keep the weight off and really work at it I will. I knew how to lose weight I just didn't know how to keep it off. Frankly, diets are stupid and completely ineffective. I was living proof. I feel so blessed right now in my life. I have a husband who loved me at 300 lbs, and is not remotely threatened now that I am not, kids who I adore and adore me and now I have this other man in my life who is taking my body and my thinking to another level. Hey, he even wants to teach me to golf. I don't know, he's good but I am not sure he is that good! Until next time!