Creatine!!!
A while back, I decided to do a 12 week program focusing on preparing for a pretend physique show because I want to learn. When I learn, I like to share because it helps me remember. I had looked up creatine and many other performance …
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Broccoli Cheeze Soup
The rainy season is here, that means it’s time for soup! Featuring my favorite veggie of course. 😉
Everybody was WILDFIRE fighting…
Okay, maybe not everybody is doing it, but I am getting ready to start my first season. To say I’m a little excited is an understatement. It’s going to be REALLY hard work. Long, hot days. I’m going to stink like a sweaty camp sock, and I’m going to get to hike to work EVERY DAY! Plus, I’ll be helping one of my favorite places, the wilderness. I’ll also be helping keep fire from spreading into communities. (If you haven’t watched the Paradise Fire documentary on Netflix, I highly recommend it.) It won’t be easy, but it will be way more rewarding than slinging drinks!
I want to give all you worriers out there a little peace of mind. The BIGGEST thing stressed during training was safety. Having more than one escape route is huge. Also, having a fire shelter and knowing where to deploy it was too. My crew boss has been fighting fire for over 20 years and hasn’t had to deploy his fire shelter. The most common cause of death fighting wildfire between 1998 and 2006 was heart attacks, with vehicle accidents coming in second. That made me feel a lot better knowing that the likelihood of me dying, yes I’m a worrier too, is pretty low. Check out the video at the bottom to learn about fire shelters, it is the actual training video I watched in my class. Fire shelters are a little scary and a little cool all at once.
Some of you got to follow my adventures on the John Muir Trail in 2018 and that trip helped shape me into the crazy person that I am now. I got a Garmin Inreach+ to be able to track my location on that trip and I’m excited to use it to map my travels this summer. If you’d like to follow along and see where I’m out fighting fire, just click HERE and it will take you to my map. I’ll only have it turned on when I’m working, so if you don’t seen any activity, I’m not there yet.
I don’t know when I will be called out to go, but I’m sure it will happen any day now because the temperatures are rising and humidity is getting lower. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions, if not, I’d love your prayers. ❤️
My Vaycay in Turks and Caicos
Before this year, I’d never heard of Turks and Caicos. But I gotta say, I’m glad I was able to go!
Baby It’s Cold Outside, Bring On The Hot Cocoa!
This cold weather has me wanting all the hot cocoa, hot cider, and hot tea. Snuggles by the fire. Warm fuzzy blankets. You know, all the basic stuff. Part of eating healthy and trying not to eat all the things chocolate and holiday inspired means I’ve been creative with how to enjoy some of the simple pleasures of the season. Hot cocoa being one of the most important.
How do you like your hot cocoa? I’m all about the marshmallows on top, or the whipped cream. Sometimes I’ll add in a little bit of peppermint extract, or throw in a candy cane. Word is adding a little peanut butter is all the rage now. Which I gotta say I think I could get behind because I’m definitely on team peanut butter. When I lived in The Dalles, I would get a peanut butter coffee drink from a little coffee shop. It was a blended drink, but it was definitely the same concept of deliciousness.
My easiest clean “hot cocoa” is pretty simple. It’s basically a hot protein shake. When I make this cocoa, I use unsweetened coconut milk instead of water. You’ve also got to make sure that you actually enjoy your protein shake. There are lots of not so tasty ones out there. One thing to make mention of when doing this is to warm up the milk, then add the protein. Some protein shakes have other things like probiotics that basically die when you cook them.
My other go to method of cocoa also includes a bit of protein. I really enjoy using the Unsweet Protein Milk by Silk. There is an unsweetened vanilla one too. I try to be intentional with everything I eat having a nutritional purpose, other than just calories. The milk has 10 grams of protein per serving which is a pretty good bonus. The cashew milk in this makes it extra creamy which is perfect for cocoa. One of my other preferences is no sugar and because the milk is unsweetened, you’ve got to sweeten up the cocoa powder otherwise it’s pretty bitter. Monk Fruit Sweetener is one of my favorite substitutes because it has zero calories. Combining these two ingredients in my hot cocoa definitely satisfies my sweet tooth, and leaves me feeling guiltless. I hope you enjoy the recipe too!
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serving
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Ingredients
- 1 cup Silk Unsweet Protein Milk
- 1/3 cup water If you make this hot water it takes less time to warm up the milk.
- 2 tbsp Cocoa Powder Try using dark chocolate cocoa powder, or cacao powder, for different flavor profiles.
- 2 tbsp Monk Fruit Sweetener
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract You can skip this ingredient if you find the Vanilla Unsweet Protein Milk.
Ingredients
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Instructions
- Heat the milk and water in a small saucepan.
- Add all other ingredients into the saucepan and whisk together until disolved.
- Heat to desired your desired temperature and enjoy.
- Best drank from your favorite coffee cup, or your most festive cup, of course!
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chickpea Cookies
Do you love cookie dough too? But maybe you’re trying to be better with what you’re eating? These cookies fall into both categories and are so yummy!
Potato Leek Soup
Creamy or chunky? I like both, in this potato leek recipe I shared both options. Creamy is great with crackers or bread.
The Benefits of Hot and Cold Showers
The only time I enjoy a cold shower is when the temperature of my house is hotter than the water in my shower. Or if I’ve been doing yard work on a hot day, my allergies are killer, and a cold shower helps mellow out the itch that grass gives me. Here I am though, claiming the importance of hot/cold showers. I just gave myself a dose of hydrotherapy this morning, needless to say, I’m feeling awake!
On a more serious note though, there are so many benefits to taking hot/cold showers!
- Improved circulation
- Decreased swelling and inflammation
- Increased range of motion
- Reduced muscle soreness
- Improvement in muscle strains
- Helps flush out waste in the body
- Good for your skin
- Increased energy and mental awareness
- Better mood
You may have noticed that fighting depression, and increasing brain health, has become a slight obsession of mine. Sounds like hot and cold showers are great for brain and body! #winwin
How Does It Work?
When you transition from a hot to cold shower, your body turns to survival mode. Just like hiking in freezing weather, when you get cold, what’s the first thing your body does? It shuts down blood flow to your extremities and focuses all the energy on keeping your organs and brain functioning, keeping you alive. Turning back to warm water helps to get your blood flowing again, by taking all the blood that was sent to your core and pushing it back out to the rest of your body. It basically creates a “pumping” system.
- Hot – Increases blood flow. Helps muscles to relax and causes connective tissues to become more flexible. This may help with arthritis, strains, sprains or muscle spasms. Immediate effects of heat include reduced stiffness, pain, and muscle spasms.
- Cold – Reduces blood flow. Cold is usually the first thing recommended with an injury. This helps reduce swelling, but also inflammation.
Just in case you were wondering, because I had to look it up myself, what is the difference between swelling and inflammation??? Inflammation is a chemical response by the body. Your body sends white blood cells to a particular area to protect your body from a foreign substance. This protective process can actually cause pain, and if it’s a continual problem can even wear down cartilage at the end of bones! Swelling, can be caused by inflammation. It can also occur other ways, like crazy elevation gain on a hike, or in an airplane. Now we know. 😉
Ready to try it? Let’s get started!
(First and foremost, please talk with your doctor about this, especially if you have any substantial health problems, or have a recent injury.)
Step 1: Get nice and cozy in your hot shower, if it is hotter than a hot tub, that’s probably too hot. Give it about 5 minutes of enjoying the heat before moving onto step 2.
Step 2: You have two options here, you can either slowly transition the water from hot to really cold, or you can make the change drastically. You want to stay under that cold shower for a minimum of 30 seconds. Get your head cold, your face, your armpits, really cool that body down.
Step 3: Go ahead and get that body warmed up again for about 3-5 minutes.
Step 4: You can get out now if you’d like or if you’d like to really get your blood flowing you can repeat the process a few more times, try for 20 minutes. You could even end on a cold note, just depends on the immediate benefit you’re looking for.
Does this process remind you of anything? The first thing that came to my mind when I learned about hot/cold showers was going to the pool. Did you ever go swimming and then go get in the hot tub, then jump back into what felt like an ice cold pool? #cannonballmaster Oh memories. It’s funny to think about how many things we did as children that were actually good for our health. Maybe all the stress of work, sitting around, and not playing in the pool is what’s making us so old?
If you are struggling with depression or anxiety big time, you can even take a couple of showers a day. Try taking a morning shower to help wake you up and then an evening shower to help calm you down. It’s weird how that works, the cold gives you shocking wake up, but at the same time the hot gets your circulation flowing. Taking a cold shower also lowers your body temperature helping slow you down at night when you are getting ready for bed. I don’t know about you but I sleep my best when the room temperature is a little cooler.
Are you ready to take the plunge???
Peanut Butter Dip
I forget a lot. Let me rephrase that, I get started down the rabbit hole of sweet tooth goodness, and forget there are healthy snacks that suffice my sweet tooth just fine. It’s been a down the rabbit hole kind of six months. Today I …