Hola from Madrid!

Hi Happy Life, Healthy Life-ers! If you 'like' me on facebook, you know I've been in Madrid, Spain, for the past week! My best friend Lauren is studying abroad here and I came to visit her. It has been a crazy, amazing experience and I am so sad to leave. Before I left, I naturally had MAD anxiety about the food situation here. One, because I've never been and fear the unknown and two, because Lauren told me it is carb central and there is practically nothing healthy. I had three goals this trip. To have fun and really experience life here in Spain without feeling guilty about food, two--stay on top of my work out schedule, and three, try and dress nicely the majority of days I'm here. Because if you know me, you know how much I would LOVE to go out in my sweats, running shoes, and dirty old headband every day. So, without further ado, here's how it went :)

First off, I had a 13 hour flight. 6 hours from Los Angeles to New York, and 7 from New York to Madrid. I ate a delicious, huge breakfast before my flight (oatmeal with peanut butter, greek yogurt, and an apple), and right before my flight I had a protein bar. Passed out, woke up, and wandered through JFK Airport for some food. And be still my beating heart here's what I found-

Real ingredients...I recognized them all. So happy.

Once I got to Madrid, checked into the hotel, I was starving. I am convinced that room service is God's gift to mankind...I wish I had it everywhere. And by everywhere I mean at my house.

Lobster salad? Yes please. 

Passed out early. Woke up the next morning at 6:30 AM. Horrible. With nothing else to do...I decided to make good on goal number two and go to the gym.

Whole gym to myself...happy camper!

Room service had this amazing breakfast called the "Fitness Breakfast" which was amazing and perfect. It was an egg white omelet, a box of all bran cereal, and half a grapefruit not pictured because I devoured it every morning before I could photograph it.

After breakfast every morning, we got showered, dressed and took the metro to Starbucks (I know, we're so so so American).

Metro!

Skinny Vanilla Latte...mmm

We walked around Madrid everyday and worked up quite an appetite. My absolute favorite lunch place was a place called Maoz Vegetarian. Apparently it's a chain, but I had never been there before, so I have been three times so far. I just can't get enough I mean look at this-

Ugh amazing. Lettuce, carrots, cous cous, garbanzo beans, roasted cauliflower and falafel.

Added some tzatziki sauce and mixed it up :)

The days I couldn't make it to the gym were not lazy days at all. We walked EVERYWHERE. Including Europe's largest flea market, El Rastro :)

At El Rastro is where I finally got my first real Spanish dining experience. And by that I mean we went to a hole in the wall restaurant, where no one spoke english, and I had no idea what I was ordering. I recognized the word "pollo" as chicken (thanks annoying El Pollo Loco commercials), and "ensalada verde" and green salad. I couldn't have gotten luckier. My food was AMAZINGLY delicious and fresh.

Apparently, all green salads come with tuna here. That's what Lauren said. Same with vegetable sandwiches. Tuna isn't considered 'meat' to the Spanish!

Pollo Asado. Clearly I forgot to take a picture before I devoured most of it.

Another amazing form of out of the gym exercise were these stairs in the metro stations. Literally kicked my booty!

There's Lauren on the escalator ;)

Later than night we went to Plaza Mayor...another famous spot!

Pretty walk over 

Plaza Mayor

One of the days we went to this crazy place called Mercado San Miguel.

 Hands down my favorite place here. It will become very clear when you see the pictures. This mercado was just a huge, indoor, market with TONS of stands selling tapas (appetizers), wine, beer, juice, fruit, vegetables, sweets, pastries, just anything you could possibly want. The best part was that it was cheap, and each tapas was about two bites. So I bought one, Lauren bought one, we took a bite, and switched. It was the perfect late lunch. Here was our haul...enjoy the food porn.

French bread with caramelized onions, garlic, and brie cheese. 

Merengue Cupcakes

Raspberry and caramel macaroons

Tomato, mozzarella and pesto kebob, and some sort of chicken tomato onion kebob 

French bread with FRESH mozzarella, arugala, and balsamic vinegar

French bread with fresh mozzarella, olive oil, blueberry jam, and walnuts

And literally the most amazing frozen yogurt I've ever had. Lauren's had apple pie on it, mine had Nutella crunch. MMM

After that we walked down to a bar called "100 Montaditos" and got sangria in a beer mug for 2 Euros! Obviously this was my cheat day :)

Came back to room, siesta timed, and then ordered more room service. I'm legit nervous to see my bill but I just love it.

More wine

Greek salad with grilled chicken

 We also went to Retiro Park, which is apparently famous and I could see why. It was absolutely beautiful and SO much to see we couldn't even walk to entire thing. It was so peaceful and relaxing.

Last night, we went bar hopping and it was CRAZY because Madrid won the world cup! I unfortunately didn't take pictures. But I can tell you there were 1 Euro tequila shots and a 24 hour pizza place...and I can also tell you I woke up at 4 PM and am going to the gym now :)

It has been a very happy, relatively healthy, and very balanced trip. Exactly what I needed. I am proud of myself for not having even ONE food freak out, and striking a good balance with my exercise habits. Hopefully all future trips are as great as this one :) Ciao! x

Deceiving Food Labels

Hi guys! Clearly I took last week off, sorry about it, I was playing hard to get. This week though I'm back with vengeance. This week, I'm going to talk about misleading food packaging and show you some better alternatives. What prompted this you may wonder? Well, I was strolling through my neighborhood Albertsons, literally strolling, I don't go with a grocery list, I just wander up and down every aisle, when I came across a recurring phenomenon. SO many products claimed to be 'all natural' or 'whole grain' and then I read the ingredients, and, well, half of them i couldn't pronounce. So here we go.

Veggie Shreds. A seemingly 'healthier' alternatives to cheese. I mean it has to be healthy, it has the word veggie in it. Here's the weird pard, IT HAS NO VEGETABLES IN IT. NONE. I know those ingredients are hard to read but there are no veggies listed. I read it three times. Unbelievable. Plus look at all those ingredients. I can't pronounce more than half of them. Never a good sign. Alternative?

Good old, regular cheese. If you're feel like cheese, go for the real stuff. Portion it out, they're the same amount of calories. And look at the ingredients on the real cheese. It's a short list, and I know what they are.

Applesauce. A staple since 1842. With 100 calories per cup what could be bad? Mmmmm how about that sugar content? 24 GRAMS. That is pure insanity. Second ingredient? High fructose corn syrup. That sneaky bastard.

Instead, let's go with the No Sugar Added one! Only 50 calories per serving and 11 grams of sugar, none of which is artificial.

Okay, when I was in the firmest grasps of my anorexia, 'Light Canned Soup' was literally all I ate. It tasted great and was low in calories. I ONLY used to look at the calorie content. I didn't care about the ingredients or other nutrition facts...clearly. Because LOOK AT THE SODIUM CONTENT. 690 mg....PER SERVING. There's TWO servings per can. That's almost 1,400 mg in one meal. Oh and if case you were wondering, recommended intake of sodium is around 2,000 mg PER DAY. My insides must have been saltier that cured meat. Yuck.

Instead, look for the 'no salt added' or 'low sodium' options if you have to eat canned soup. This can has 270 mg for the whole thing as opposed to 1,400 mg.

This cracks me up. "MORE WHOLE GRAIN THAN ANY OTHER INGREDIENT!". In case you didn't know, ingredients are listed by weight/amount. So yes, the first ingredient is whole grain oats. But the second AND third AND fifth, are SUGAR. I don't have a healthy alternative to this because, well, they're Lucky Charms. Delicious? Absolutely. Magically? Nah, sugar-ly.

99% fat free will draw us in like a moth to the flame, right? Boom, in the cart. But upon further inspection, 1 container has a crazy 36 grams of carbs and 29 grams of sugar. & only 5 grams of protein. So healthy.

If you read my blog regularly, you know I'm a greek yogurt whore. I can't live without it. And for 130 calories per cup, 9 carbs, 9 grams of sugar, and 23 GRAMS OF PROTEIN, how couldn't I be?

Lol. Lol, lol, lol, lol. Lol-ing so much. Sugar Free Oreos ya'll. Ingredients listed, by amount. Number one? Maltitol. A sugar alcohol. Artificial sweetener. Also on the list we have acesulfame potassium and Sucralose. More artificial sweeteners. So you won't get fat, you'll just get cancer. Next is the Weight Watchers cookies. Just...just look at the laundry list of ingredients.

Instead, go with a cookie with the least amount of ingredients. Preferably, all of which you can pronounce. Sure they're probably more calories, but you also won't want to eat as many because you'll be satisfied. And you're putting REAL food into your body.

Moving on to drinks that claim to be healthy. This one kills me. Green tea with honey. Seems harmless. No perservatives, artificial colors or flavors. But with 17 grams of sugar per serving and 2.5 servings per bottle, That's putting you 42.5 grams of sugar per bottle. Putting that simpler, a can of Coke is 39 grams.

Vitamin Water is one of my FAVORITE misleading labels. Vitamin, Water. Seems so good. So good in fact that why bother reading the nutrition information? Oh because it has 33 grams of carbs and 32 grams of sugar. That's why.

Green Machine. Look at that bottle. It's a health conscious consumers dream. Green, Naked, All Natural, Fruit, No Sugar Added. And then there are 28 grams of sugar. Yes, they are all natural which is why I added the ingredient list. All sugar comes from the fruit. But that doesn't take away from the fact that it's still sugar and it's still 280 calories...for a drink.

And lastly, my personal favorite. "NUTRITIOUS AND DELICIOUS" 1% Chocolate Milk. It contains NO high fructose corn syrup! However, it is two servings per bottle. So, per bottle, 360 calories, 56 carbohydrates, and a WHOPPING 54 GRAMS OF SUGAR. They sell this at schools. Putting those grams of sugar in an even scarier perspective, look at this--

Four, King Sized, Reece's Sticks, 34 grams of sugar. A pack of Twix, 24 grams of sugar. A whole, King Size Hershey's bar, 41 grams of sugar. ALL less than the supposedly 'nutritious' chocolate milk they're selling your kids. You want to get something out of schools? That's the thing.

So pick your poison and pick is wisely, because as Dr. Ann Wigmore said,

"The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison.”

Happy, Healthy, Thursday. x

A Fine Line Between Recovery & Relapse

So the last week I've been on a health kick. Excluding Saturday when I drank an entire bottle of Skinny Girl Margarita but that's neither here nor there. I'm coming to realize a very obvious thing-- When I eat like shit, I feel like shit. This is no huge, ground breaking thing, but it is becoming more and more clear to me. I haven't eaten any processed sugar in two days. Not only do I have a splitting headache, but I have never wanted to dig my spoon into the jar of frosting that's sitting in my pantry more than I do as I type this. This scares me. How can something legal, something that's supposedly not a drug, be THIS addicting?

I have to figure that something that makes me feel that bad, must be bad for my body, right?

I am at a really weird place in recovery right now. I'm realizing the line between 'eating healthy' and 'having an eating disorder' is REALLY thin for me. For example, when I order my salad dressing on the side and no croutons on my salad...is that my 'healthy' side ordering? Or my 'eating disorder' side ordering? I don't know. And in here lies the problem I'm having this week.

I'm realizing also that everyone has a different definition of what "healthy" means and that there is a big difference between eating healthy and having a healthy thought process. Unfortunately for me, these things rarely go hand in hand. If you asked my dietician what it means to be healthy, she would tell you it's freeing yourself to eat whatever you want, whenever you want, and stopping when you're full. Eat intuitively. Feed your body what it wants. Get in touch with your hunger and fullness signals and honor them. I agree one hundred percent and hope to one day be in that place.

If you asked my Mom on the other hand what it means to be healthy, she would tell you it's eating organic. Not eating anything that didn't come from the ground or didn't have a mother. Don't eat any meat that isn't grass fed. Don't eat anything genetically modified. Don't eat anything if  you don't recognize ingredients on the label. Again, I feel myself agreeing with her one hundred percent as well.

So, I feel myself becoming obsessive again, or, maybe a little bit relapse-y. Or maybe just confused and at a weird cross road. But this time it's different. This time, I'm not afraid to eat foods because I'm afraid of the weight gain. This time, I'm afraid to eat foods because of the way that I feel after I eat them. After I eat too much processed sugar, I literally wake up with a sugar induced hangover. When I eat a bag of chips, I am nauseous for at least 2 hours afterwards. And I don't enjoy feeling like that. I've been doing a lot of research and listening to lots of speeches from people who are experts in nutritional sciences. I am learning so much. So many horror stories about genetically modified food, soy, corn, the dairy industry, food allergies, I could just explode. So, if you guys are interested, I'd like to share what I'm learning over the next couple of posts. If not, I will carry on with my regular posts and not bash on anyone, but let me know what you'd like to see from me.

For now, I will try and remember this: A lapse is not a relapse. Life is about balance. And the only way I will appreciate my balance, is to be off-balance for a little bit. x

Ps- Here is an amazing breakfast recipe for all of you who asked for a good one in a hurry! This can be made in a couple minutes the night before, grab it and go! Cant wait to try it!