Eat Play Love

Tomorrow will mark the end of week 3 of my Whole30 Challenge. I am surprised it has gone by so quickly. I am completely thrilled with the place I have arrived in just three short weeks. I have found there is an initial knee jerk reaction when discussing food choices with people and my opportunity for discussion is limited because of that knee jerk reaction. Food is linked to lots of emotions and holding onto, which I very easily relate to. Right now I am in the WOW THIS IS AMAZING LET'S TALK ABOUT FOOD stage of Whole30 and I love when I find others who want to openly talk about how they eat.

So what have I been eating? Fresh food is the simplest answer. If it comes in a package (other than say, berries) I'm not eating it. Packaged and processed foods haven't touched my lips in 20 days.

BREAKFAST Aka Meal1:
 Yes salad for breakfast. That's one of the biggest changes I've made, craving greens at Meal1 (saying Meal1 helps avoid the common pitfalls of what your brain th…

The Alarming Truths About GMO video is a part of the Label It Washington Proposition I-522 which is going to vote in November 2013! I personally enjoy how many of the pro-GMO bullet points are directly addressed and debunked. This is the first in a weekly post series summarizing and linking through to articles I read on GMO crops and labeling initiatives happening around the country!



Accompanying article for more information:
Research Reveals Previously Unknown Pathway By Which Glyphosate Wrecks Health

Mother's Day always seems to pry open the floodgates into the memories I keep tucked away from my childhood. My mother gave birth to 3 boys in 4 years and I came along much later, when the youngest of my brothers was five and a half years old. In the majority of my childhood memories, I find myself by my mother's side. My brothers were school age when I was a baby and as the reel plays over and over in my mind, I am always my mother's sidekick.

My mother had a very natural way of making me feel special as a child. When I recall the simplest of gestures, they always bring a smile to my face. Sometimes it was how she'd press a penny into the palm of my hand and nod to get a handful of Chiclets gum from the machine on our way out of the Italian Market. Or how she'd always leave a bowl of rice aside for me when she made stuffed peppers, so I could enjoy it with sugar and milk. Every birthday cake came from her oven. I don't believe one night passed when my mother w…

Sometimes the ball starts rolling with a pair of jeans that don't easily button. My mind quickly reasons that they must have accidentally been placed in the dryer, of course shrinking them a bit. Truthfully the dryer excuse doesn't quite answer why my shirts, heck even my underwear, aren't quite fitting the same either. I go through weeks of mental torture, avoiding mirrors, wearing leggings and dresses, or the Boulder staple stretchy yoga pants. I am well versed in the typical avoid, avoid, avoid behaviors until one day, I pulled the scale out from under my bed. I dropped all of my clothes to the floor and stepped on with my eyes closed. My right eye opened first, peaking at the number just above the tips of my toes.

A number, I was finally ready to digest. I wrote the number down on a piece of paper, knowing there was no way I would allow it to grow any larger. I will admit, it made me sad, but it also was the swift kick in the ass I needed to motivate myself to change m…

Back in March I was contacted by an ad agency that works with Nintendo. What felt like moments later,  my entire family was on a conference call with the creative folks behind an ad campaign they had in mind for the Wii U. A few days later I received an email asking us if we wanted to fly out to Seattle to shoot a commercial for Nintendo. We happily agreed. Our entire family was flown to Seattle and we spent a day filming and getting a red carpet tour of Nintendo of North America's headquarters. To say I was giddy about this experience would be an understatement. I've always been a Nintendo fan girl and it all started when I was 12 years old. If someone told me decades later I would be standing in Nintendo, as a special guest, to film a commercial I probably would have laughed off the notion!

I soaked in the entire experience and realized how incredibly lucky and special it was for us to have this as a part of our family's history. When we walked in the doors, all of our n…