Eat Dance Live

One month, I'll eat collard wraps for dinner every single night. Another, I'll just eat banana soft serves all day long. This week it's cinnamon sprinkled bananas, apples, dates, and granola crunchies every night. Even though I probably have bananas in some form in most of my meals, sometimes the slightest change can make the biggest difference. It's like eating starchy carbs as bread vs. pasta, same thing but big difference. The secret to this recipe? Cutting your bananas laterally instead of in slices... ooOoOOoo, wild and crazy, I know. In my continuous pursuit to remain as LFRV  as possible, this dinner combination definitely fits the mold. The granola crunchies are probably LFRV sub-par, but I need crunchy texture in my food, especially when I mostly eat blended fruits and greens... So yep, this has been my dinner for about a week now. I tend not to question what my body feels it wants to eat at this point, so I just go with it. Banana Apple Date Bowl Y...

This is a post for skeptics, because I was once one of them as well. I'm also going to go all scientifical on you, which doesn't happen very often, haha. As much I believe in the power of the raw diet, its capacity to provide me with everything I need to achieve and maintain optimal health, it still sometimes seems unlikely to me that I can get my daily dose of ALL my vitamins and minerals by just eating fruits and veggies. I was feeling this particularly strongly when I was on my banana island , pretty much just eating bananas and greens. Call me the Saint Thomas of the raw food diet but I need to be "shown" that this works... I finally took the suggestion of lots of seasoned LFRVers and downloaded Cron-o-meter . Cron-o-meter is the best nutrition tracker I have used to date. More so than just giving you the usual boring caloric breakdown, you can program it to your own specific dietary needs. In short, you can set how many calories you want to eat, how much o...

Things that were awesome about today: 1. Seeing this on my way home from the post office 2. Receiving goodies from Nativas Naturals for having won this contest 3. Really getting off on buying organic bananas by the case 4. Choosing to take a deep breath, and not stress out too much about this (T-7!!!!) 5. Discovering, Courtney's awesomely crazy sweaty beast incline workout (don't let the "walking" fool you) 6. And of course, the cuteness that is my kitten Have a great weekend!

Dear Stress-coping Mechanisms, Where have you been over the past year or so? I miss spending time with you. We used to get along so well, people always used to comment how good we were together. I think we both had to contribute a lot to each other. Please come back. I miss you. Love, Chantal I've returned to being the "once a week" blogger and I'm not super pleased with that. However, I've also started to seriously somewhat start freaking out about my PhD comprehensive exams that are now both happening in less than a month. My day has pretty much been looking like the following: -wake up -study -gym -study -enforced time to actually do non-brain things (like read blogs, or play mindless Nintendo DS games...) -sleep (usually not enough) -start over Also, because I'm psychotic and strangely operate better under stress (or used to anyway), I've also taken up a part-time job over the weekend over the past month...

Mid-week rant #1 : To all those who post twitter feeds, facebook updates, etc. blaming/complaining to Mother Nature for the "weird weather" we've been getting over the past couple seasons, please stop. It's not her fault that we are thinning out the ozone, polluting, and causing her to go through an early menopause. Let's start taking a little bit of grown-up personal responsibility, 'mkay? Actually, that's my only rant, but it's certainly been building up for some time... Like I mentioned last time, the weather hasn't been getting any cooler in these parts and my LFRV-ism (now called HCRV, for High Carb Raw Vegan, because apparently the movement is trying to reclaim the bad rep given to the "carb") has certainly been helping. Here are a few breakfast ideas when the weather gets hot and you just need to cool down that internal body temp. I promise it'll work really fast! (Cow cup is not required, but a definite bonus.) Creamy Orange ...

Happy Summer Solstice! Yes, we are indeed at the height of summer! Today is the longest day of the year, and it has many names Midsummer, Summer Solstice, Litha, to name a few. From now on, we enter into the waning of the year, when the days will grow shorter and shorter so get out there and bask in the sun while you can! In Pagan lore, the Holly King, who represents the waxing year, triumphs over the Oak King, who represents the waning year. For all those of you who have read   A   Midsummer Night's Dream, it's a time when elves, sprites, and fairies are out in great numbers, so magic is bound to happen tonight! Being the day when the light is strongest, Midsummer symbols are yellows and gold, fire, the sun, oak trees, fruits and sunflowers. We unfortunately never got to planting our sunflowers this year, but if you have some around, make a bouquet and celebrate! I met up with Andrew for lunch today for a high noon Solstice meal. I tried to aim to make e...

I know, the last thing this world needs is another acronym, but I'll throw one out at you anyway... LFRV stands for Low-Fat Raw Vegan, which is kind of a handful to write down every time. LFRV is known under a few other names, namely "811" (based off of Dr. Doug Grahams ' 80/10/10 ) . The gist of the being 811 is that you get 80% of your calories from carbs (fruits and veggies), 10% from protein, and 10% from healthy fats (avocados, nuts, and seeds). Because you're primarily eating healthy alkalinizing foods, you have to eat A LOT more of them than you would on a standard diet (think how quickly it would take to digest 1lb. of bananas vs. a 1lb. steak). As an active person, it is suggested you eat your weight x 200 in calories (so for me that would be 2400ish+). That usually means 2 ginormo fruit meals during the day (we're speaking pounds of fruit here) and a big salad for dinner. Who says you have to go hungry this way? The thing is, when I decided to go raw...

Oh the successes, I have known this week! There's nothing like a 6 day camping festival surrounded by friends old and new, fire-lit drum circles, pine woods and cool rivers to completely rejuvenate you and make you feel alive. These past few days have been extremely curative for me both physically and mentally, and I feel so grateful for the life I have. But on to my successes: Success #1: Mosquito Prevention As I mentioned in my last post , one of the most successful ways to avoid getting bitten by mosquitos is to avoid potassium foods a few days prior to and during your camping trip. So it's been no bananas, pumpkin seeds, strawberries, whole grains, and brazil nuts for us for almost 10 days now and the mosquito bite tally: 5 over 6 days, while everybody else was massively attacked. I don't know if it's the raw diet or potassium or both but it worked so well that at one point, we were talking to a friend and all the mosquitos were swarming around him while we just sa...