Thursday, January 14, 2016

I challenge YOU to the #chimmie500



I am still in recovery from our nutty holiday season. 

2016 = Cook from scratch 3-4 days a week + exercise more.

I'm attempting to cook in larger quantities and use leftovers more creatively throughout the week. A little tweak from last years #52tries with my girl Tiffany and the gang... The pictures above show:

Meal 1: A big pot of Chocolate chili Mole (I added purple + yukon potatoes to cheer on my Big Cats in the Outback Bowl. Didn't have any sweet potatoes in the house.) 
Meal 2: Chili leftovers + cauliflower + kale under an organic rotisserie chicken (Kids made tacos with it all - Boom!)
Meal 3: Pulled Chicken and Chili leftover lasagna 
Meal 4: Homemade stock and leftover chicken in my pea + noodle soup

My favorite family table line right now is: 

"BUT MOooooooom, YOU think EVERYTHING is delicious!"

I vacillate between feeling on top of the world and somewhere else (with a skinned up knee and ice on my brain). Terri Salminen, you are always on my shoulder in the kitchen inspiring me; You are my "soffritto sister.

NOW... how do I possibly fit more exercise IN and make it FUN?



Enter in my best friend Laura who moved away from me four years ago (sob). I call her my "chimmie" from Indy (aka racing land) and I challenge YOU to join our first annual #chimmie500. Three days ago I asked her to join me and sent this video explaining it all:

 

The #Chimmie500 = 10 sets of 10 push ups  + 10 sets of 10 squats every day, 5 days a week (I am NOT doing 100 all at one time mind you). My phone is on a 60 min timer and no matter where I am, when the timer goes off, I do my 10 reps of each for a grand total of 100 each for the day/500 each for the week. 


It was Laura's idea to add the squats. Thanks. I had fun telling everyone at the salon about our new fun game (thanks for taking the picture Mac!)

Today is my third day and my pecs are on fire. I won't be writing everyday here, so feel free to follow the shenanigans on Instagram and Twitter (High fives to my sister-in-law Vicki who launched her 100 push up challenge to her High School Dance team last year. I remember her telling me about it and thinking... that's genius. I can do that! But I never made it past day 1... Thanks for the inspo V!)


There is something else I'm after in 2016.

As a child, "the mullies" was the silly place my sister Katie and I would catapult ourselves during playtime, flying off swings and high places, yelling "to the mullies" at the top of our lungs and transporting ourselves in.an.instant to "infinity and beyond" (before our feet landed quickly on the ground). 

Our little souls were unbounded.

"To the Mullies" is right now and in a little bit. I have been reading more lately (slowing down) and found these two paragraphs quite fitting in articulating what my crazy blog name means to me:

"Every time you feel even a moment of joy and love, freedom and bliss, you have stepped into the land of light. You feel so wonderful that you want to keep the experience going, the way two infatuated lovers never want to be apart. But your ego, your safe house, calls you back. This pattern of coming and going is how letting go works. It takes repeated exposure to the unbounded soul for you to know that it is real. But your old conditioning will keep pulling you back. In time, your trips outside will last longer and feel more comfortable. Your soul is starting to seep into you; with this merging you begin to understand that you can live in the unbounded permanently. It becomes more natural than your safe house because in the unbounded, you are the real you. 

Therefore, expecting the best isn't about wishful thinking or optimism. It's about recognizing in advance that your goal is attainable. The unbounded soul is experienced, however faintly, in every impulse of the soul. This counters the prevailing attitude in psychology that happiness is a temporary state stumbled upon by accident. I find that attitude deplorable. To declare that love and joy, the primal component of happiness, are occasional is a teaching born of desperation. Keep in mind the image of the safe house and the land of light that surrounds it. No one will ever force you to let go of the limited space you occupy, but you always have the choice to seek the infinite, because that is who you really are."    
                                                                  - Deepak Chopra 
                                                                    Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul

Thanks Deepak. You nailed it right on the kisser mister.

To the mullies we go... in our kitchens, at our family tables, on the ground doing push ups + squats... to being goofballs who jump out of little safe houses.

Let's begin again

And make 2016 our best one yet. 

I freaking love cheese fries too Chris... Let's just keep it to the weekends, kay?:)

xoxoL



ps

I'm a goober for the Microbiome | Get more sleep: Unlocking the Sleep-Gut Connection


pps

Loving my new cookbook and all the legos Santa brought us. The force has indeed awakened.