Friday, March 25, 2011

Bison is SO the new Beef!

A couple weekends ago I attended the Natural Foods Expo West at the Anaheim Convention Center.  I slapped on my Nike Free's and did the grueling 3 hour walk through all the booths.  In true Rosie fasion I was able to sneak in using a co-workers badge for free! 

As I walked through the different booths varying from coconut waters to hemp socks I found one handling out samples for bison jerky.  It was a native american family that passed down the recipe for generations.  They had a graph that showed how bison measures up to beef and other meats.  First off, the jerky was sooo good but it was the facts of it that got me intrigued.


I decided to get some from Ralphs, but boy is it pricey.  Makes sense, though, it was free-range no antibiotics and natural.  It fits perfect in the Paleo diet!

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Let's Talk About Stress, Baby! Let's Talk Aboout You And Me!

We all experience it.  STRESS.  We experience it through work, financial situations, family issues and sometimes we are stressed all day.  This is different compared to what "stress" meant to us while we were cavemen. 

Regardless, stress creates such an impact on my physical body that when I get home after a stressful day, my energy levels are extremely low and all I want to do is sleep.  In very simple fundamental terms, stress creates a fight or flight response in our bodies.  This is mostly remnats of when we were running from predators and trying to survive.  Having this reaction all day can certainly wear you out.  When we don't have the option to fight OR run this adrenaline gets built up with no where to go.  Sometimes people supress this, and it comes out in other ways.  Personally when I get stressed I hold it in until I get home then am in a bad mood to everyone around me.  Not good.  This is hard to control.  Even when I tell myself that it is just due to stress, the toxicity keeps overriding my mental state. 

It is hard to wrap your head around, but by getting stressed and upset, you can only blame yourself.  If someone is yelling at you for all the mistakes that are happening you are bound to get a little emotional and riled up.  This is only your fault.  You create your own mental perception.  You are the only one that can control your mental state.  It is gift that some people have mastered.  Going through stressful situations has only taught me that life is short, I'm still alive and there are far worse things going on in the world.  Why would I allow anyone or anything to get in the way of a peaceful mind.  From now on, I'm not allowing it. 

We can not live our lives allowing stress to seep in and take control.  We are wired to take on so much that stress is bound to pop in and out, but through handling it correctly we can go through life clear-headed no matter what situation.  Sometimes you have to realize there are things that cannot be changed, we have to accept it.  Even the worst thing that has or will happen in your life, you must accept.  That is the start to a peaceful way of living. 

If it is too overwhelming, take a day off work.  It is better to come back refreshed and rested than to keep dragging with you every negative moment in the past.  Don't be brainwashed to think you have to follow every rule.  "Exercise rebellion" sometimes, take charge of your life.  When you are old and gray you WILL regret not spending more time having fun, being with family because I'm sure you already do. 

Just a subtle reminder to myself and others that LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO BE STRESSED. :)

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

My Take On 2012....

Ok, before the movie, before the hype and before all these back to back crazy natural disasters, I was always fascinated by the end of the world or a global extinction.  To me, it makes sense for the earth to cleanse itself.  Will it happen in my lifetime? Who knows.  I don't know if "fun" is the word to describe studying this topic, but it is definitely thrilling.

The mayan prophecy supposedly states that the world will end December 21st, 2012, and Nostradamus mentioned somewhere close to that date as well.  In any case, the earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and other natural disasters are enough to get me at least prepared for something traumatic.  Isn't it interesting how a major earthquake in another country gets us worried, yet we still go to work and carry on? We will still do the daily grind until it directly affects us.  We are such good citizens. We can have a major one in a neighboring state and we will still make sure we are at work on time the next day.

So, whether the end of the world is coming soon or not, it is good to be prepared.  With this, I have come up a few ideas.  I don't mean to scare anyone, but if our surroundings are rubble and our cell phones don't work how will we locate our loved ones? You come up with a meeting spot.  Make sure the ones you love know where to meet, I was thinking maybe a park or figure out the coordinates of a specific area and memorize it and pass it along.  Have a survival kit handy, with a compass, flashlight, knife, etc.  Also, dehydrate your own foods, make them compact along with plenty of water.  Put it all in a backpack and make sure you know exactly where it is. 

I keep thinking about the Japan earthquake, what if that happened to us? Would you have any regrets? All material objects will be gone, money too (luckily I don't have much).  If you knew this would happen how would you live? In A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle describes loss as stripping away your ego.  You are literally left with nothing but everything at the same time.  Your aliveness is what keeps you going and there is almost a peace in knowing you no longer have anything to cling to, no matieral objects (the bright side?). 

"Live each day as if it were your last" has a new meaning when natural disasters are all around you and the threat of another extinction is looking at you in the face.  Life is short whether we live until we are 100 or the world ends in 2012. 


Friday, March 11, 2011

Are We Animals or Are We Robots?

I think we are in the in-between stage. Our animal roots are mostly shunned, and masked by our societal rules and structure. In nature we are supposed to hunt and gather our own food, spend all hours outside, be constantly moving.  We should live the way nature had intended, with our own body types, our own faces, the natural way.

Through nature we can know our purpose.  Animals only live in the NOW, they aren't concerned with the past or future more so than what is happening right now.  They don't carry with them any burden of whether they will be successful, or anything that happened negatively in the past. We can learn from this.



                                                                           -INSTEAD-


We are no longer attached to nature.  We eat processed food, we stay indoors, and we have laws and rules to dictate our lives.  We also arise to an alarm, we drive machines, and exercise on machines.  We are timed, measured, governed.

However, we have made so many aspiring advances in philosophy, mathematics, medicine.  We can save lives, though beautiful, not natural.  It is a toss up to give up all of our modern technologies for the way we were truly born into this earth.



So what are we most like, ANIMAL OR MACHINE?

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Things I'm Excited About - Volume 3

1. Sunny Weather
I got a glimpse of it today, puts a smile on my face. :)
Give me some more of that sweet sweet Vitamin D.

2. Wine Wednesdays at
 Roman Cucina in Fullerton
Bring your own wine and they cork it for free or their bottles are 1/2 off!


3. Romantic Leaps of Faith
<3 Need I say more?


4. Snapea Crisps
Healthy Alternative to Chips!


5. The Secret
Ok, I know I'm a little late on the bandwagon and its some
 what condradictory to A New Earth, but I'm really feeling this book!
Based on the law of attraction, what your mind thinks about, you can achieve.





Wednesday, March 9, 2011

I'm a Ramblin' Woman..

Deer Valley/Park City
...I aint never gonna change.  Got a gypsy soul to blame and I was born for leavin'.

As human beings we have a thirst for exploration and a curiosity for traveling.  This is something I have never been able to shake.  Everyday I want to go somewhere new. Dallas today, New Delhi tomorrow. It doesn't really matter where I go I just want to go.

I know I am not alone.  Rambling goes back millions of years, back when we rambled to survive.  But now, from Led Zeppelin to John Fogerty, songs are everywhere about a man rambling town to town the open road as a guide.  In the book, A New Earth it gives the reader the opportunity to open the mind and find their purpose.  I could easily say traveling is my purpose but its not my inner purpose.  Traveling is my outer purpose and it will be the key to my inner. Confusing I know.  Through traveling I can honestly say I have grown the most as a person.  You get to see the world in a new light, through new eyes.

Whistler


Some trips have been hard, as I have traveled alone a lot and I haven't even traveled that much compared to a lot of fortunate souls.  Even a new town, however, can spark insight to a new depth of my purpose.  Being fortunate to drive 25 minutes to the edge of the continent and see the ocean is even a worthy trip.  Regardless of where you go, every step in a new direction brings on a new opportunity in life.  It's a beautiful thing.


Chicago


Most of my positive memories were not sitting at home watching TV, they are seeing Frida Kahlo's house in Mexico City, skiing in Canada, seeing wild kangaroos in Australia and partying with my girls Sex & The City style in NYC!  These are the memories I will look back at when I'm old and gray, life is so short and any opportunity I have to ramble I'm going for it!


To all those who are traveling I say ramble on....  :)

 Salt Creek

______________________________________________________________

ram·ble  (rmbl)
intr.v. ram·bledram·blingram·bles
1. To move about aimlessly. See Synonyms at wander.
2. To walk about casually or for pleasure.
3. To follow an irregularly winding course of motion or growth.
4. To speak or write at length and with many digressions.
n.
A leisurely, sometimes lengthy walk.
to stroll about freely, as for relaxation, with no particular direction


Tuesday, March 1, 2011

People LOVE to be sick!

Ok let me preface this by saying, there are a lot of people out there who truly are ill and have no control over it.  Interestingly enough, they are usually the ones who remain strong and empowered by the illness.  I am talking about people that are constantly sick with the flu or a cold and who love going to the hospital.  Yea, there are a lot of people like this.

Haven't you noticed all the hospitals popping up everywhere, it is a huge booming industry.  I went to the ER a week ago for a friend who had some crazy memory loss (another story) and what I found out was the ER took just as long as the regular hospital!! I thought I would see broken legs, blood, people fainting and hurled over.  None of that.  It was crowded with people that seemed to have either a cold or hypochonriasis.  This baffled me.  We shouldn't take advantage of emergency health care.  A real emergency is likely to have to wait longer due to people that get a thrill from going to the ER for something not so serious.

The healthcare industry is thriving on people that are sick all the time, and they encourage it! Instead of actually getting rid of the problem both physically and mentally they give people "feel good" pills and encourage them to come back for more.  When people are always sick I try to stay away from them, not because I think they are contagious but because they now define themselves through their illness and to me that is weak.  "How are you" takes on a whole new meaning when talk to them, it gives them an excuse to really indulge in their sicknes and every aspect of it.  We shouldn't be this sick all the time.  Like I said, sometimes there is nothing we can do and unfortuante cases people are sick and have a serious condition.  But for others who relish in it, I say go get healthy! Stop eating crap and run a little bit. If it kills you to get out of your chair and you feel the need to tell everyone about it, maybe you need to relieve your body of some excess weight and be strong again.  

When we lived in tribes we didn't have the ER, heck even people living out in the outskirts can't get to an ER for real emergencies.  With this said, we shouldn't take the ER for granted and only go for true emergencies so we don't clog it up for others.  I had to vent :) Happy Tuesday!

It's The Journey Not The Destination..

So it has been almost two months since I started CrossFit at Canyon CrossFit in Anaheim Hills and I have been loving it! My goal was to attend 3x a week to start which has turned into only 2x a week in reality.  Even with 2x a week I am noticing a difference in my endurance and strength.  This workout will NEVER bore you! You will constantly be sore because you are using different muscles every workout and each one is way different.

The theory behind this way of exercising is to shock the system in short, but intense workouts. This goes hand in hand with my paleo diet.  When we were cavemen we didn't do long distance running, we usually walked long distance (I'm assuming) and when we hunted we did brief intense sprints and pushed the body to the limit.  That is exactly how CrossFit works you out.  This is my kind of workout because long cardio runs are not my thang.

To switch things up on my "off" days I have been going to SkyHigh Sports, hiking, and yoga at home.  I have been cheating on my diet lately so once I synch up the workouts with the diet I'll become Wonder Woman!! For the most part, my quest to balance body, mind and soul has been going well.  The enemy, however is my thirst for alcohol which deters my whole goal.  Just got to tell myself that cavemen didn't have cactus cooler shots. If they did that would be awesome though. ;)

Now that the body is taken care of, I can focus on mind and soul.  To do this, I have been reading, planning trips and finding my true self and purpose.  Everyday I feel one step closer to why I am here on earth.  Pretty deep, right?   I think everyone deserves to be their best self.  My next post will be dedicated to what I've learned to fuel the mind through the book A New Earth.

"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better."
                                                                                                       -Albert Einstein