Self Care | Wholehearty

Image Leave a comment October 17, 2018 Elizabeth McBride

Wait, are those brussels sprouts in that picture?

You read the words “self care” and probably thought I was going to suggest you grab a big bowl of ice cream, right?

I’m certainly no stranger to dishing out a bowl of Bluebell after a hard day, but lately I’m thinking about self care a little differently. I’m looking at how I can put good stuff in my body, so that my body works at its best…which makes me feel happy and want to go around spreading good vibes everywhere I go. I think of it as trickle down self care. I treat myself well so that I have the energy, joy, and stamina to treat others well.

So, how do we get more good stuff into our bodies? By eating more plants, that’s how. Even though we know we are supposed to eat our veggies, chances are you aren’t getting the recommended five servings every day. I know on most days I don’t unless I really try.

I have started tracking the days I eat five servings of fruits and vegetables in my bullet journal. If I eat my veggies I get to color in a little box in my habit tracker. It’s amazing the power that coloring in that box has over me. It totally changes my eating choices. If I’m making scrambled eggs for breakfast, I’ll throw in some leftover roasted broccoli from the night before just to get in a serving of vegetables right off the bat. Add a handful of blueberries as a side and I get to count that as a serving of fruit. Boom! I’ve had two out of five of my servings before I’ve even gotten dressed. #killingit

Left to my own devices, I will mindlessly choose to eat nothing but baked goods and proteins all day long. I mean, yum, right? But now that I’m tracking my fruits and veggies, I’m making sure to squeeze some plants into every meal.

So, here’s how you get massive amounts of plants in your body and have fun doing it.

SELF-CARE VEGGIE BOWL

Crank your oven up to 425 degrees.

You take a sheet pan, preferably it is really beat up and crusty from all the other times you have roasted veggies on it.

Then you chop up:

a shallot or any onion you have on hand
butternut squash (I cheated and bought an already-chopped up butternut squash because hacking my way through a rock-hard gourd and dealing with squash guts at lunchtime is a deal-breaker.)
And brussels sprouts (which do have an “s” on the end of “brussel.” I googled it so that we can all just relax and keep reading.)

Next you grab your olive oil and you drizzle a few good glugs of oil all over the veggies, which at this point are on your cruddy old sheet pan as shown in picture below. Glug, glug, glug goes the olive oil all over the veggies. Add some salt and pepper, give it a little toss with your hands, and you are good to put it in the oven for 30 minutes or so. Every 10 minutes, give the veggies a little stir so that they get evenly caramelized. You can even talk to them while you are in there stirring, and say little encouraging words about how good they are looking. That’s what I like to do.

Meanwhile…on top of the oven…make your balsamic drizzle. Balsamic drizzle sounds super fancy and foodie-like, but it is very simple to make. All you do is take 1/4 of a cup of balsamic vinegar and put it in a small sauce pan, add a tablespoon of honey to the vinegar and bring to a boil. Simmer the mixture for about ten minutes so that it can reduce to a nice syrupy consistency.

If you like watching things boil like I do, check out my video below!

Feel free to share that video on all the social media.

Then, it’s just a hop, skip and a few parmesan shavings to turn your veggies and drizzle into a delicious feast for the senses. I combined my vegetables with Israeli couscous, toasted pumpkin seeds, Craisins, and parmesan shavings and then added a drizzle of the balsamic reduction. Then I ate it in front of my computer, which wasn’t very self-care-y of me, but this stuff doesn’t blog itself.

You could also combine your veggies with quinoa, farro, spelt, nothing, you make the rules here.

The Israeli couscous, craisin, pumpkin seed, parmesan shavings combo was delicious. And I feel super after eating it. Specifically, I feel satisfied, energized, just the right amount of full, and clear-headed. These are the signs that tell me what I’m eating is treating me right and giving my body what it needs to be happy. When I feel better after I eat something, I know it is good food for me. I mean, forget following a special diet that you read about in a book. Just pay attention to how food makes you feel. Eat the things that make you feel good! Easy. Your body knows what it needs.

So much of what I eat (pizza, cookies, hamburgers), is good as I’m tasting it, but then I feel terrible after I eat it. This bowl was delicious and made me feel like a million bucks.

So next time you are having a rough day or a good day, or just a normal day, treat yo’ self to good food. Give yourself a big old plant-based hug and give your body what it needs to thrive. Then let all that those good feelings spill over to the people around you. Because your bowl runneth over.

Love,

3 Comments July 18, 2018 Elizabeth McBride

Lately I have been thinking a lot about the following questions:

What would you do if you didn’t have to do it perfectly?

If you dared to be a beginner, what would you try?

What’s something you would never try but sounds like fun?

I read those questions in A Book That Takes Its Time: An Unhurried Adventure in Creative Mindfulness, (love this book!) but they originally appeared in the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. (haven’t read this book, but have always meant to!)

I especially love the first question because I am a perfectionist, which for me translates into either not finishing or not even attempting a lot of things. If I never finish something, it will never be done incorrectly or fall short of what my vision of it was. If I never attempt it, I can never fail. It’s a foolproof method except it keeps me from doing a lot of the things I really want to do, like host dinner parties, finish my novel, write this blog, landscape my yard, etc.

It’s frustrating because a lot of what’s most important to me, a lot of what’s on my life list, is stuff I’m afraid to fully pursue because I’m afraid If I really go after it, I’ll just mess it up. So it keeps me stuck in this loop of wanting to do something that I ultimately don’t do because I am afraid to fail. Very annoying.

So, how do I get off this self-defeating merry-go-round and actually make some progress towards my goals?

This is going to seem like a weird transition, but stay with me. Have you seen the new Netflix show “Nailed It!”? My kids and I have been cry-laughing over this show. On “Nailed It!” inexperienced but enthusiastic bakers attempt to make impossibly difficult cakes and cookies with hilarious results. Here’s a description of a scene from the show from a recent New Yorker article:

“I don’t mean to laugh, but your princess is terrifying,” Byer says to a contestant named Toni. She’s doubled over in laughter in front of the final reveal: a collapsed phallus of a castle tower made of underbaked vanilla cake coated in liver-beige frosting. The princess is demonic: a disembodied ball of fondant perched on one of the layers, with giant, staring white eyes, two snakelike nostrils poked in with a toothpick, and long blond hair that snakes down the buttercream walls like lumpy, overlong Cheetos.”

Image result for nailed it show images

There is something about the earnestness of the contestants trying to make these incredibly challenging cakes that just cracks us up and brings us pure JOY. It is so refreshing to see other people struggle and NOT accomplish what they set out to do, but have the ability to genuinely laugh about it right along with the audience.

I wish I could bring the Nailed It! attitude to accomplishing my goals. This, I think, would be the antidote to my perfectionism.

After all, the stakes are only as big as they are in my head. I think my perfectionist brain lies to me and tells me the stakes are enormous, that everything depends upon the outcome of whatever it is I attempt to do, whether it be writing a book or having people over for dinner. When really it’s about the process. I like the process of writing. I like the process of cooking and being hospitable. Doing these things makes me happy and helps me feel connected to other people. Why am I denying myself the pleasure of doing something that makes me happy?

I’ll tell you why. Because perfectionism is whispering in my ear, telling me it could be a disaster. It could be humiliating. Some dinner guest might wander into the wrong room and see that we actually live like a pack of animals, and the rest of the house was just cleaned up for the benefit of outsiders. My toilet might overflow and send a river of toilet water down the stairs (this actually happened at an office Christmas party I hosted. Still trying to laugh about it.) The food could be terrible and we’d have to order takeout. The book could get a bad review and it would make me cry. My blog might be trolled by Donald Trump. “There are so many things that could go wrong! Better not to try at all,” perfectionism warns.

And I totally believe all of this. This all sounds very plausible and like solid advice. So I don’t do the things that scare me. And everything stays very safe, and for the most part nothing bad happens because I haven’t risked anything.

But then again nothing happens.

And the thing is I want stuff to happen. I want to accomplish the goals that have been on my New Years Resolution lists for the past decade. I’m forty-something now. One day I will be really mad at myself if I don’t do some of the stuff I always meant to do. And there’s no telling when that one day will be. It could be a long time from now or it could be sooner.

Perfectionism has literally gotten me nowhere. It’s time to listen to a different voice.

It’s all about the story you tell yourself. I have been telling myself a pretty intense story. My current story is like Mission Impossible, where everything depends on me and the stakes are very high and I’d better not mess it up or else the whole world could blow up. The Nailed It! story is way on the other end of the spectrum. Nothing is at stake. Maybe you could win $10,000 if you are the winner, but that’s like a bonus. Nothing bad will happen if you are not the winner. And either way you will have had a blast and probably spent some time doubled over in laughter. So why not give it a shot?

If I could just scooch my story a little further towards the Nailed It! side of the spectrum and away from Mission Impossible, I think I would be much happier and get a lot more accomplished. So that’s my new goal.

Back to the original question I’ve been pondering: What would you do if you didn’t have to do it perfectly?

The answer is anything I want. Everything. Because nothing is ever going to be perfect and that’s ok. It’s not just ok, it’s wonderful! It’s such a relief. It’s the kind of news that makes me want to cry happy tears.

What’s the story you tell yourself? Do you struggle with perfectionism? What would you do if you didn’t have to do it perfectly? I’d love to hear.

Nailed it!

Elizabeth