The Healthy Bride

 

by Christi Masi

You have just said “yes” to the man of your dreams and set the date.  You have an entire year to plan the wedding. And of course, you want to look great in your wedding dress.  What better time than now to turn your attention to getting in shape– not just for your wedding day, but for life?

 

12 months before

 Overall Health

Getting engaged is a perfect time to get a full health check-up.  Go get a complete check-up from your physician (have your fiancé get one too) including having your blood work done.  This will give you all the numbers you need to get your health and fitness program off and running.

 

Healthy Eating

Take inventory.  Look at where you are – nutritionally.  Are you getting enough calcium? Vitamin D?  Is your weight in balance with your height? Don’t know? The blood work you had done at your physical will help tell the story. If the numbers are not where you want, schedule an appointment with a nutritionist (many take insurance) and find out where you need to be. If weight loss is your goal, she can help you make choices, set goals and get on a plan for now, and forever.

 

Fitness

This is an area that will require an assessment.  Take an honest look at your workout schedule.  Ultimately, you want to be including cardio (3x per week), weights (2x per week) and flexibility (5x per week).  If you are at zero days per week now, I recommend starting on 2 days per week, 30 minutes per session of any exercise you like.  Stick with it consistently for 2 weeks, and then add a third day.  When you have again been consistent for 2 weeks, add another day. 

9 Months Before

Nutrition

If weight loss is your goal, you want to start thinking in terms of weeks, not months.  9 months = 36 weeks.  If your weight loss goal is 30 pounds, you have just enough time.  Losing 1 pound per week is optimal for keeping the weight off, and for maintaining your health.  Keep working on your weight loss program with your nutritionist or program, and if you are not seeing the results you want, consider keeping a journal to help you uncover your hurdles and road blocks.

Fitness

Your program should be taking shape now.  36 weeks is plenty of time to achieve your ultimate fitness level.  What are your goals (we know the first is looking fabulous on your wedding day!)? Start by writing down what you want from your fitness program.  Set some weekly, and then monthly goals.  WRITE THEM DOWN – this makes a huge difference.  Make them specific (I want to be able to do 25 full body pushups by the end of this month), measureable (I want to lose 1″ off my waist in 8 weeks), attainable, realistic, and timed.  Then set about the work of how you will get there.  In the pushup example:  I will do 15 pushups every morning before I get into the shower or I will do 3 days of cardio exercise at 60-80% of my heart rate for 40 minutes for the next 6 weeks.  Check in with your goals weekly, toss the ones that don’t work, and re-evaluate often. 

Rest

Make sure you are getting enough sleep and enough rest from your workout program.  One day per week of rest from your workouts is adequate.  Getting 7.5 – 8 hours of sleep per night is essential for optimal functioning and it will help you lose weight too.

 

6 Months Before

Focus is the word at the 6 month point.  You have set upon your nutrition program, your fitness program should also be off and running, with you doing at least 3 workouts per week.  If not, here are things to consider:

Join a group

There are workouts for brides in some sections of the country. The Healthy Bride

offers classes in Seattle, WA, Bellevue WA, and Portland, Oregon.  The classes offer a supportive community for brides to get a great workout while sharing weddings stories and advice with the other women in the class.  Best of all, this program helps brides set goals, achieve them, and keep them accountable.  If The Healthy Bride is not in your neighborhood, look for another community class you can join to help you stay on track.

Find a workout/nutrition buddy

Perhaps it’s your maid of honor, your entire bridal party or your mom.  Find a workout buddy who will help you get out there!  It is proven that you will stay more committed and be more successful with a workout partner.  Your workouts should be 2 cardio + 1 weight workout per week at this point.  When you are successful at this for 2 weeks consecutively, add a 2^nd weight training day.

 3 Months Out

 Crunch time. 

You are getting really busy and it’s harder to stay focused on good nutrition and getting in your workouts.  Now is the time to really check in with your goals on a regular basis.  Write them on pretty stationary and hang them on your bathroom mirror so you stay focused. 

Workouts:

Cardio is still at 2x per week for at least 40 minutes and you are now doing 2 days per week of weight training (full body workout).

If you are still having a hard time staying focused, hire a trainer to help you.  Even one time per week will give you the accountability to stay on track.  If you have “trouble spots”, your trainer can help advise you how to tackle them.  If you are just getting started, a more focused program with a trainer will really help you.  Ask at your local gym, or look for someone in your area comfortable providing fitness solutions for brides or go to The Healthy Bride Website to get a downloadable workout.

 1 Month Out

 Stress is the number one factor to keep you feeling your best the month prior to your wedding.  Getting enough sleep will do you wonders at this stage of your wedding planning process.  If you are just starting to think about getting into shape, be realistic, and recognize that change is going to be tough at this point.  Having said that, there are things you can do:

1. Get 7.5 – 8 hours of sleep a night
2. Drink enough water.  All beverages help, and just focusing on it will help you stay tuned to your thirst.  When you feel hungry and don’t think you should be, start with a tall glass of water.
3. Workouts.  Try to get in 2 -3 per week for 30 minutes.  Something is always better than nothing. Keep them simple, and even if you can only grab 10 minutes here or there, do it.  The stress reduction you will get from the workouts will make a huge difference in how you handle the stress of the month leading up to your wedding.
4. Massage.  Take time to take care of yourself.  Getting a weekly massage can help you feel great, relaxed, and pampered.  You want to feel good from the inside out a stressed bride is not a fun bride. 

 

The Big Day

 On your wedding day, allow time for you.  Get enough sleep, schedule in your favorite workout (there are many yogi’s who do day-of yoga workouts) East a healthy, substantial breakfast.  Make time to pamper yourself.  Schedule a massage or scalp treatment prior to having your hair and makeup done. 

Make sure you have delegated someone to take care of the last minute details so that you can focus your energy on feeling happy, healthy and in love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the PCC website:

This is a beautiful presentation for a light lunch or as the first course to a cozy dinner. So pretty, so healthy! Use any of the myriad of beautiful root vegetables you love.

 

3 organic Dungeness (or other) sweet carrots
2 parsnips, peeled
1 turnip, peeled
1 red beet, peeled
1 medium yam, peeled
2 tablespoons extra virgin oil
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup hazelnuts
Salad greens
4 to 6 ounces chèvre or feta cheese

Balsamic vinegar or your favorite vinaigrette

Preheat your oven to 400° F. Coarsely cut all the vegetables into 3/4-inch squares and toss them in the olive oil. Generously season with salt and pepper.

Spread the mixture in a single layer on a sheet pan. Roast the vegetables for 20 minutes. Add the hazelnuts to the vegetable mixture and continue roasting for 5 minutes longer or until the yams are fork tender and the mixture is caramelized around the edges.

Divide the greens up between 4 to 6 salad plates. Place a mound of chèvre or feta in the center of each plate and scatter the vegetables and hazelnuts around. Drizzle with balsamic vinegar or your favorite vinaigrette.

Serve with great crusty bread and olive oil for dipping!
Recipe by PCC Chef Lynne Vea
PCC Fresh, January 2009

This time of year, the newspapers and the general media are all focused on the Year in review.  So, what’s your fitness year in revue? 

What was your fitness goal for 2008?  Did you achieve your goal?  I know The Healthy Bride and The Healthy Goddess saw many of you kick butt on goals you set.  We would love to hear your account of your journey to achieving your fitness goals in 2008.

What is your fitness goal for 2009?  I know a few:  Heather, Laurie, Erin and their larger group are planning a climb up Mt. Rainier.  Tracey is working toward running the Lisbon Half Marathon.  Shanna is doing a Half Iron Triathlon.

Send us your 2009 goals.  We will be delighted to be a part, and to help cheer you on.

This is from Huffington Post.  An article I didn’t think you would want to miss.

By Dr Nicholas Perricone

Thanks to the pleasures of overindulgence, the holidays are often a time of accelerated aging. Even worse, is the fact that the aging is so visible. Gray pallor, bags under the eyes from stress, too much egg nog and lack of sleep; loss of facial contours from binging on sugars and starches. I think you get the picture — and its not pretty.

But the news is not all bad. While I can’t promise you a Benjamin Button experience, I can help you to enjoy the bounty while preventing a mutiny of the body!

The most important fact to take away from this article is this: foods and beverages can be pro-inflammatory or anti-inflammatory. Pro-inflammatory foods accelerate aging and disease in all organ systems, including skin. As a dermatologist, my number one job is to keep your skin healthy, youthful and radiant. This means learning how to control inflammation. I have created a simple, yet highly effective Three-Tiered Program designed to carefully control our blood sugar and insulin levels. To accomplish this we must avoid foods that provoke a “glycemic” response in the body, i.e. cause a rapid rise in blood sugar.

This is the key to health, longevity, mental clarity, well-being and beautiful youthful skin. Foods that are pro-inflammatory, such as all forms of sugar, processed foods, pasta, breads, pastry, baked goods, and snack foods such as rice and corn cakes, chips, pretzels, etc., cause a highly destructive pro-inflammatory response in our bodies.

Follow these simple Tier One Tips to successful navigate the holiday table, avoiding unwanted weight gain while keeping skin radiant and youthful. Future blogs will introduce the other two tiers.

â–ºEat your protein first before diving into the veggies. This will prevent rises in blood sugar and curb your appetite.

â–º Look for free range poultry fed organic vegetarian diets, containing no antibiotics, growth hormones or other additives.

â–º Buy organic vegetables and eat the skins–the greatest concentration of nutrients and fiber are in the skin or right beneath the skin

â–º Substitute baked organic sweet potatoes for regular potatoes. Bake and serve hot with the skin.

â–º Sprinkle cinnamon on winter squash and sweet potatoes to stabilize blood sugar.

â–ºPumpkin and apple pie are great sources of many vitamins and minerals. An added bonus is the liberal use of spices such as ginger and cinnamon which lower blood sugar and provide anti-oxidant protection.

â–º When baking, choose raw, unfiltered dark honey in place of sugar.

â–º Make your pie crust flourless–use ground nuts and real butter–not shortening which contains dangerous trans fats

â–º Add minced garlic to mashed turnips and squash for flavor and anti-oxidants

â–º Theonine in green tea is calming; helping to relieve stress

â–ºExercise. Historically we not only blow our diets during the holidays we also fall out of our exercise routine.

â–ºSleep–not getting enough sleep is linked to the craving of high calorie, high fat foods.

â–ºDon’t buy canned nuts. Enjoy nuts in the shell.

â–ºStay well hydrated with pure spring water

â–º When it comes to alcohol, choose red wine, rich in flavonols, anti-aging antioxidants

â–ºStudies show a daily glass of red wine offers:
• Protection against certain cancers
• Protection against heart disease
• A positive effect on cholesterol levels and blood pressure.

â–ºEven healthy foods can raise blood sugar if too much is eaten at one time.

â–ºThe road to smooth, wrinkle-free skin and healthy weight is keeping blood sugar and insulin levels even.

â–ºGreen foods, such as young barley grass help neutralize the the damaging effects of alcohol on the liver.

►Curcumin, the substance that gives the spice turmeric its distinctive yellow color, stops the changes caused by excessive alcohol consumption that lead to liver damage. I recommend mixing ¼ teaspoon with a little water. This amazing spice will also lower blood sugar and provide superior anti-oxidant protection.

â–ºTo help counter the effects of one day’s overindulgence, eat lightly the next day.

â–ºInclude the omega 3 essential fatty acids to prevent weight gain. Eat wild salmon or sardines and/or take one to three high quality fish oil capsules with each meal.

We have been having a hard time keeping classes going since there is so much snow on the ground and driving is so tricky.  So, indoor workouts become a good option.  Today, the Mt. Baker group was able to get in an hour run (that included lunges and 100 pushups).  I was also able to fit in about an hour of shoveling and had to walk from Capital Hill home, then back up to the studio and back home again.  Another 1.5 hours.  Not too bad for a snowy day.

Tomorrow’s workout will be indoors – I need some cross training. Here is my workout for the day:

1 hour on the exercise bike radom program
2 sets 15 squats to press on the swivel board 10 lbs
30 lunges off the bench each leg with 15 lbs
Leg Curls using a physio ball
Push ups – 2 sets 50 one hand on med ball
Lat Rows 15 lbs
Chest flys on the ball 15 lbs
Bicep curls – 2 sets 15 12 lbs
Triceps Dips 2 sets 15
Front and Lateral Raise 3 lbs
crunches on the ball
obliques on the ball
back extensions over the ball

I need to put up a pull up bar and start adding those in too. 

if you don’t have dumbells, just use bands or even milk jugs work. 

Have a great workout!

Recession? Time to Slash the Flower Budget

 

Tom Bloom

Her fiancé, Ryan Priem, who is 28 and a salesman, saw his income drop, and the couple found themselves spending the $35,000 set aside for their March 2009 wedding on everyday living expenses. They began trimming costs from every aspect of their event.

The big hotel to which they had committed early in the process suddenly seemed unaffordable. So Ms. Huber sold her $3,400 Amsale dress on Craigslist and plans to wear a less costly one. She canceled the morning-after brunch, cut a half-hour off the photographer’s services and halved the size of the bouquets. Finally, she canceled the cake, as dessert is already included in the dinner she ordered.

“We can do without,� she said. “Dessert is tiramisù, so we’ll get pictures of us slicing that instead.�

She’s hardly alone. As the financial condition of the country worsens, the wedding industry, so long considered recession-proof, is seeing fairy-tale weddings stripped of their sprites, their sparkle and everything else that suggests splurge. Read More

My uncle Bob died last week.  He was a hilarious man whom everyone loved.  He was 77 years old when he died.  Not bad for a guy who smoked for 40ish years and never exercised a day in his life.   He just didn’t believe in exercise.  His work was physical, so that certainly helped, and he did a lot of dancing, which probably also helped. 

Mostly, he was funny, fun and a great person.  Everyone who knew him liked him.  He was fun to tease and a great sport.  He had a very gruff facade – that we all saw through.  There has to be something longevity when you are smiling a lot, when you are happy and when you make other people smile with you. Bob did that.

I know his family will miss him most.  All of us who knew him will miss him too.

OBITUARY: Robert C. Simonton
Nov. 24, 1931-Dec. 13, 2008

Mr. Simonton is survived by his wife, Joanne Simonton; children Mark Simonton, Dianne Nowak and Pamela Kralman; brother Benjamin “Ben” Simonton; eight grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

He was preceded in death by his parents, and three brothers.

 

Yesterday, while the snow was dumping down upon us, I sent an email out to my Mt. Baker neighborhood class asking who wanted to go run stairs.  Delightfully, I received 5 responses.  We met on the corner and ran up to the top of the Dose Street Stairs (a favorite of mine). I suggested we do 20 sets (about twice our normal amount for a workout), but after about 10 sets, the stairs started to get pretty iced over, so we altered our plans to go for 15 plus a run along the lake.

While we were on the stairs I (again) heard an eagle chattering.  Sure enough, there she was sitting in a tree off the the north of the stairway.  I had heard an eagle earlier in the morning along the lake.  Probably (maybe?) the same one. 

Once we left the stairs, we stopped for some photos.

We then continued along the lake, then up a fantastic sledding hill and back home.  It was so fun to see everyone in the middle of the day! 

What’s your workout program for the snow?  If you don’t feel like going outside here is the indoor workout we did this morning:

1 min 15 seconds 3 x through:

V-Ups or Bicycles
Pushups
Lunge w/ dumbells off a 8 inch bench
Side Step with bands around your ankles – hold a medicine ball straight out from your chest
Deadlift with barbell
Assisted Pullups
Ab crunch on a ball
Squats with overhead press on bosu
bicep curls with dumbell
triceps extensions

Another way to get in your workouts:  walk or run everywhere you need to go.  Leave your car at home.

Enjoy!

We have been subscribed to Willie Greens CSA for a month now.  I love it!  There is a surprise every week, and I am learning to cook vegetables I would never buy at the grocery store.

We get a medium size box each Friday.  Last week we received radishes, mixed salad greens, arugula, spagetti squash, potatoes, 2 celeraic roots, 1 bunch of leeks, apples, beets and garlic.

Our weekly deliveries has led us to cook several large pots of soup.  When you make soup with fresh veggies, it’s amazing how great it tastes.  Lately, I have not even been following a recipe.  I just saute onions with garlic, then fill the pot up with the veggies that sound good, then throw in barley, beans, pasta or potatoes, and let it simmer for an hour or so.  Last week I was energetic enough to bake a loaf of squash bread to go with our pot of soup.  It was fantastic.  We then eat the soup for dinner for the next several nights. 

The soup is healthy, hearty and filling.  Below is a recipe from Willie Greens.  They are great at providing at least one recipe a week to go with their delivery.

If you have a favorite healthy soup recipe, please share!  I am always looking for new ideas.

Farm-Style Leek Soup

2 lg Leeks (1 lb) with part of green tops, sliced
2 md Onions, sliced
1 lg Clove garlic, minced
1/4 c Butter
4 c Chicken stock
2 c Uncooked noodles (3 oz)
1 Bottle beer
1 1/2 c Shredded semisoft cheese (eg Muenster)
Salt and pepper

Cook leek, onion and garlic in butter for 15 minutes, using low heat and stirring often. Add stock, cover and simmer 30 minutes. Add noodles, cover and simmer 15 minutes, or until noodles are tender. Add beer and heat to simmering. Gradually add cheese, cooking slowly and stirring until melted. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Makes 6 servings.

And the bread recipe:

Butternut Squash Bread’

INGREDIENTS:

2 (.25 ounce) packages active dry yeast                            2 eggs, beaten

1/2 cup warm water (110 degrees to 115)                         1/3 cup butter or margerine melted

1 1/4 cups mashed, cooked butternut squash                  1/3 cup sugar

1 cup warm milk (110 to 115 degrees)                               1 tsp salt

                                                                                           7 cups all-purpose flour

DIRECTIONS:

1)  In a mixing bowl, dissolve yeast in water; let stand for 5 minutes.  Add squash, milk, eggs, butter, sugar and salt; mix well.  Gradually add 3-1/2 cups flour; beat until smooth.  Add enough remaining flour to form a soft dough.  Turn onto a floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic, about 6-8 minutes.  Place in a greased bowl, turning once to grease top.  Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour.  Punch dough down.  Shape into three loaves; place in greased 8 in x 4 in x 2 in loaf pans.  Cover and let rise until doubled, about 30 minutes.  Bake at 375 degrees F for 25-30 minutes or until tops are golden.  Remove from pans to cool on wire racks.