Air Nomad Pumpkin Naan

There certainly are a lot of Paleo "sandwich" recipes out there that call for lettuce wraps. Honestly, I love lettuce, but since it's crunchy and breaks easily, it makes for one messy wrap in my opinion. For that reason, I've been on the hunt for another type of wrap that both fits the Paleo guidelines and does it's job. I feel like that can't be too much to ask. 

These pumpkin wraps have a very neutral taste so they're good for doing any sort of wrap from burgers with a fried egg to dressed sautéed vegetables. I even enjoy them for breakfast wraps or with a light spread of cashew butter. They're light and flexible and frankly they remind me of something an Air Nomad would eat with their vegetarian diet. I could totally imagine Tenzin and his family munching on these between his training sessions with Korra. Now you can munch on them too!

Air Nomad Pumpkin Naan

Serves
4-5

Ingredients

• 2 tbs coconut oil
• 1.5 cups tapioca flour
• 5 large eggs
• 8 oz pumpkin puree
• .5 tsp of sea salt

1. Heat 1/2 tbs of the coconut oil in a pan on medium heat for a few minutes.
2. While the oil is heating, add all the other ingredients to a large bowl and mix thoroughly until smooth.
3. Pour 1/5 of the batter into the pan and spread across the bottom evenly. It should be as thin as the pan will allow.
4. Let it cook until the bottom is slightly browned. When you feel you can safely flip it, then do so. Keep flipping from side to side to keep the bread from burning. It should take about 3-5 minutes on each side.
5. Repeat till you're out of batter.

Tea: Fall In Love with Hot Leaf Juice!

By Ryanneal on Deviant Art

When I started my weight loss journey, one of the first things I did to motivate myself while working out was to re-watch every episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender on the elliptical machine. There are so many wonderful things about the show and I get something new from it every time I watch it. 

When it comes to inspirational quotes, Uncle Iroh has always been a favorite of mine, but one of his most defining qualities (aside from pure badassery) is his adoration of tea! In the past few months, I have learned to fall in love with it too and now it's an absolute staple in my daily diet.

I've always been a huge coffee and soda drinker my whole life but for the first month or so of my diet, I really wanted to cut those things out so that I could detox on the caffeine and all of the sugar and aspartame I was ingesting.

As time went on, however, I found myself really missing my morning hit of caffeine. I did eventually go back to having a small cup of coffee with skim milk and Splenda, but eventually I started looking into tea because I can take it with our without milk depending on what my diet plan looks like for the day so far, whereas with coffee, I hate to drink it black. My main goal was to get caffeine into my system and to obtain a go-to "liquid" snack with minimal negative impact on my diet. 

There are many different types of tea and they all have varying benefits. My focus was on green and black teas- Green because of what I've heard about it encouraging fat burn and preventing diabetes (not to mention it may prevent several forms of cancer), and black because it's a great morning option since it's the highest caffeinated tea. Black tea might not have as much caffeine as coffee or soda, but it has been proven to have a more specific effect on mental focus rather than general frenetic energy. Not only does it boost metabolism, but it also protects your lungs from second hand smoke exposure, contains antioxidants that lower cholesterol and risk of heart disease, and helps prevent ovarian, prostate, lung, stomach, and breast cancer. Did I mention Black tea also strengthens your bones and boosts your immune response to keep you from getting sick?

Obviously, my conclusion, like Uncle Iroh, was to start drinking ALL THE TEA. There's a lot of teas out there, so I've taken some of the guess work out of it by selecting some of my favorite discoveries to share with you! 

• Celestial Seasonings Decaf Green Tea with White Tea
• Decaffeinated green tea, decaffeinated white tea and Vitamin C.
• This was the best simple green tea I found. It's decaf, making it a great option for the evening or for anyone who's avoiding caffeine. It is a little more full bodied then what I typically drink in Japanese restaurants. I found it best pure and unsweetened. Not my favorite overall, but if you're just looking to drink straight green tea, this is a great option.
• Celestial Seasonings Sleeptytime Vanilla
• Chamomile, spearmint, west indian lemongrass, natural french vanilla flavor, tilia flowers, blackberry leaves, orange blossoms, hawthorn and rosebuds.
• I bought this specifically to help me wind down before bed. I find vanilla very soothing and drinking this tea with a little bit of stevia or honey is perfection. I added milk a few times and it sort of destroyed the layers of herbal flavors, so that's an option, but definitely not necessary.
• Trader Joe's Candy Cane Green Tea
• Decaffeinated green tea, spiked with peppermint
• A friend at work turned me onto this. This tea is seasonal and she had some left over and now I'm hoarding the few bags she gave me because it's so delicious. The mint is gentle as is the green tea taste and it's decaffeinated making it a great before bed option. I don't even need sugar. Just some stevia or honey. Is it Christmas yet so I can buy more?
• Twining's Pure Mint
• Black tea, peppermint leaves, spearmint leaves
• This is my favorite black mint tea. Like the name suggests, it's fresh and crisp. I enjoy it with stevia or honey, but if I'm trying feel warm, cozy and comforted, a touch of milk makes all the difference!
• Twinings Ultra Spiced Chai
• Black tea, natural Chai, cinnamon & ginger flavors with other natural flavors, cardamom, clove
• I had never tried Chai before, but after chatting with a barista friend, realizing how much I loved cinnamon and how much I was craving the richness that I used to find in coffee, I bought some of this. It is to DIE FOR! There are so many layers to the taste, especially if you let it steep for over 6 minutes. I drink this with milk and stevia almost every morning.
• Twining's French Vanilla Chai
• Black tea, natural Chai, cinnamon & ginger flavors with other natural flavors, artificial vanilla flavor, cardamom, clove, vanilla pod powder.
• I loved the Ultra Spiced Chai so much that I bought this variety as well for a more desert-like taste. It has all the richness of the previous tea with the gentle aromatic overtone of vanilla. Settling down with a cup of this mixed with milk and stevia whilst watching reruns of Star Trek: TNG has become the perfect way of restoring sanity at the end of stressful day at work. 
• Twining's Spiced Apple Chai
• Black tea, natural apple, Chai, cinammon & ginger flavors with other natural flavors, cardamom, clove
• Wondering if I would enjoy Chai without milk, I bought this variety. I had some apple tea whilst visiting Turkey some time ago and have never found anything that quite lived up to it here in the USA- until NOW! The apple taste is really great and almost caramel-like when you add stevia, though I think honey would probably taste great as well. 

Those are my top picks! I'd love to hear about your favorite teas in the comments.

Buffalo Chicken & Sweet Potato Meatza Recipe

The more I learn about the Paleo diet, the more I feel like Sokka from Avatar: The Last Airbender would be all over it. "Meat and sarcasm." That's pretty much his whole identity according to the water tribesman, himself. Sokka is a man on a mission for meat and Paleo dieters won't shut up about how much meat they put into every dish they can. It's a match made in diet heaven!

People refer to eating Paleo as "eating clean" and I get that, but really guys, just imagine a life where this is your reality! Ground beef in eggs served with bacon, chicken and veggies at lunch, and a giant slow cooker beef tip stew for dinner. If that sounds attractive, then maybe Paleo might be a good fit for you. So I thought, if I'm exploring this diet, why not try out another Paleo recipe in the name of appeasing Sokka- something that really puts meat in the Paleo spotlight.

That's when I discovered PaleOMG and their recipe for Buffalo Chicken and Sweet Potato Meatza. What's a meatza, you ask? I didn't question it, myself. I expected that it would be like pizza until I realized that clearly it would be nothing like that since Paleo doesn't allow for dairy or wheat products (sorry crust and cheese! You're out!). The idea here is that the ground beef serves as a crust and you dress the chicken in a Paleo friendly hot sauce along with a few other spices. And voila... or something! All I knew is that Sokka would approve and therefore, challenge accepted.

As for what a Buffalochicken might look like in the Avatar 'verse, I imagine something like this:

Are you sufficiently horrified yet? Good! Let's make a Meatza! My ingredients/recipe varies just slightly from PaleOMG. I call it:

Sokka's Buffalo Chicken & Sweet Potato Meatza

Serves: 9 (PaleOMG swears it serves 4-6, but given the content and my focus on weight loss, I decided servings should probably be one slice and my meatza cut up nicely into nine slices that measured just over a cup. My boyfriend, on the other hand, had two slices. It depends on personal preference!)

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs Ground Beef (if you can get grass fed, then it's better for Paleo purposes. If not, whatevs!)
• 1 lb ground chicken
• 1 large sweet potato
• 1/4 cup of hot sauce. (Hot sauce isn't techically Paleo, but I chose mine from a list of Paleo friendly sauces and it was a Paleo recipe site so I let it slide. My hot sauce was Frank's Original and it was DELICIOUS)
• 1 tbs dried basil
• 1 tbs dried oregano
• 2 tsp garlic powder
• 2 tsp onion powder
• Sea salt
• Black Pepper
• 1 tbs extra virgin olive oil (PaleOMG suggests 2 tbs Coconut Oil but I couldn't find any near me and I didn't want to pay a bunch of money to buy some online that I wasn't sure I'd use.)

Kitchenware to have handy:

• Casserole dish (glass or metal)
• Frying pan with glass cover
• Mixing bowl
• Wooden spoon
• Knife
• Paper towel
• Spatula
• Oven mits (no seriously)

Instructions:

• Wash your hands. You're about to be touching a lot of meat.
• Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
• While the oven is heating, prep EVERYTHING. Once this recipe starts moving it's important that you give full attention to the actual cooking because things start happening very fast. 
• Peel and chop up your sweet potato into quarter inch cubes.



• Season your ground beef in a big mixing bowl with the basil, oregano, and any salt and pepper you desire. I try to eat low sodium so I just added a little sea salt and a few good shakes of Black pepper. Now get in there and mush it all up together into a giant seasoned meat glob.



• Wash your hands.
• Get your ground chicken open.
• Prepare small plate or bowl containing your garlic and onion powder, along with any salt and pepper you want to use. You could also just dump the seasoning onto the chicken and mush it up like you did with the beef. It's up to you!



• Measure out a 1/4 cup of hot sauce.
• We are go for launch. Take your giant meat glob and use it to line the bottom of the  casserole dish. It should be about a quarter inch thick and even all the way across.
• Stick it in the oven for 12-15 minutes to bake.
• Put your frying pan on medium heat. Add your extra virgin olive oil to the pan and once it heats up and once you've coated the pan, add in your sweet potato cubes. Push them around a bit to make sure they get covered in the oil. 



• Then cover the pan to let them steam and soften for about 5 minutes. Watch them carefully. They can easily burn during this phase if you're not careful.
• When you're happy with the softness of the yams, add in the chicken and then dump the onion & garlic powder/salt & pepper seasoning on top. 
• Use a wooden spoon to break up the chicken and mix it in with the sweet potatoes. Cover it again and allow it to cook completely.



• Now dump in your pre-measured hot sauce and make sure you stir it into the sweat potatoes and chicken thoroughly. 
• When your beef is done cooking, pull it out of the oven. You may notice a lot of grease. Do your best to drain the pain of it and feel free to use paper towel to mop up any extra. No sense in eating more of that than you have to.
• When you're satisfied with your degreasing, dump your chicken and sweet potatoes on top. Make sure it's spread out evenly. You might want to add more hot sauce on top of everything at this point. 



• Put the casserole dish back in the oven and cook for 5 minutes.
• Remove from the oven and serve! The serving size should be about a cup, maybe a little over. The advantage of Paleo is that if you eat from a prescribed list of foods, you don't need "servings" and you just eat till your full. However, I'm doing Nutrisystem and flexing the plan to try this recipe, I was operating off of a sense of proper serving size, which, personally, I think is important to keep in perspective no matter what diet plan you're using. 

All in all, the recipe was very... well, meaty! It might be a little too much meat for me personally, but even the small serving I had was enough to really fill me up which was very satisfying. If I were to do it over again, I wouldn't have been so afraid of the hot sauce and I would probably skip the whole "Meatza" idea and just use the portion of the recipe for the buffalo style sweet potatoes and chicken to serve with a heap of similarly seasoned veggies. So, give it a try and let me know how you like it! Also make sure you check out PaleOMG because that site has a ton of fascinating and delicious recipes for anyone who wants to try Paleo but doesn't want to just have chicken and broccoli every night. 

Jedi Mind Tricks & Fitness

I wish I could say I'm a total health nut who loves the gym and that I think brownies are icky sugar toxins, but I'm not. It still takes willpower to stick to my mission. I'll never stop loving days where I can completely immerse myself in a video game for hours on end or enjoying a Hobbit themed feast with my friends. For my first month, I completely avoided those things so I could create new habits and in a way, detox/wake up my body. Seven months into this lifestyle change, I've definitely indulged in some treats and devoted hours on end to adventuring in Skyrim without derailing my progress one bit. The question became, how do I use delicious treats and non-active geeky indulgences as motivation to put in the effort at the gym and the table a majority of the time? My answer: A reward system. I unlock an achievement, I get a trophy. I bribe myself to do healthy things I'm not crazy about with things I love but should only do in moderation. 

Even though I don't love going to the gym, I like the elliptical machine. After the "shiny newness" of a new health regime wears off, working out on a machine can feel a bit like subjecting yourself to being on a "hamster wheel" 5 times a week. What makes the day in/day out tedium of watching statistics flash across the screen bearable is being able to watch my favorite TV shows. I don't have time to sit down and rewatch all the shows I love, but if I do it at the gym, then it's accomplishing something instead of just marathoning them nonstop while I sit on the couch and surf the web. The bonus to this system is that it provides another fun way to measure my progress. After all, you can't always expect the scale to go down, so why not measure you're level of awesomeness by how many cult TV shows you've watched while at the gym. For the record, I've watched every episode of Firefly, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and 2.5 Seasons of Xena: Warrior Princess whilst busting my ass at the gym. Next in the queue: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There are people who say it's detrimental to watch TV whilst exercising because you'll relax and not push yourself hard enough. To counteract this, I did research to find my optimal heart rate and I make sure that I stay in it while I'm working out. I also choose shows with a lot of kicking ass in them- usually with a female heroine I dig- so whilst Xena is bashing heads or sprinting through the wilds of Ancient Greece, I pick up my intensity. 

There are other smaller "Jedi Mind Tricks" I use to make sure I stay motivated and continue to push myself. For instance, if I try something new and truly despise it, I don't force myself to keep doing it as long as I still go to the gym and do something else. A personal example would be weight training. I tried it out when I started my gym membership, but I never felt engaged by it and I didn't really see any results despite my research and sticking with it for over a month. I just decided there were too many other active things I could be doing/trying with my time. I will note that I initially decided I hated Zumba and now I take two classes a week, so who knows? One day I might totally get back into it. In any case, I still wanted to do some conditioning and eventually I started going to yoga classes two or three times a week. I've built up my strength and balance exponentially. Plus I can measure the progress of my fitness by being able to reach new poses or stay in unmodified plank or chaturanga longer. The other evening I was able to do "upward facing dog" instead of "cobra" AND "unmodified side plank" for the FIRST TIME. I felt awesome afterwards. On days when I'm not feeling particularly "zen," I just tell myself I'm training to be the Avatar. I defy you to do "yoga warrior dance" and NOT imagine you're doing the dance of the dragons with Zuko and Aang. No kidding. That shit works every time. 

My willpower weakens significantly when it comes to video games. If I get sucked into a story or fixated on a goal in game, I will not stop until that best in slot item is mine. Seriously. I have problems.  I used to be like this:

You know, except with lady parts. Not pretty, right? A lot of people think video games are "the enemy" right now, and not just when it comes to fitness. People who know almost nothing about these games are asserting that they cause violent tendencies, rob you of real life experiences, or are senseless garbage that will rot your brain- I could talk about how I don't agree with those accusations all day. I won't because that could be its own post. One thing I can say is that they ARE addictive and that I have personally experienced gaming addiction to the extent that some of my friends had to stop the madness and screw my head on straight again. Did I to stop playing video games altogether? No. I just had to learn to enjoy them in a way that would not prevent me from persistently pursuing a marked improvement in my health. For my first month on Operation: Stop Treating Your Body Like Poop, I didn't play many video games- and certainly no MMOs (my personal crack). Once I had my fitness and nutrition routine under control, I started allowing myself to play games again, but ONLY after I'd been to the gym or done my chores. In my opinion if you're a productive member of society and you're looking after your health, who CARES if you spend 4-6 hours that evening raiding Icecrown Citadel with a bunch of pixelated buddies? I'm sure there are people who still think video games are the devil, but that's my take on the issue in relation to my own health at any rate. 

Are there things you do to bribe yourself into healthy eating and fitness habits? Leave your tips in the comments!

Officially Frustrated

I'm one of those people who weighs every day. I do it to get a sense of how my eating affects my fluctuations and to get myself used to seeing fluctuations rather than being surprised by them. 

That being said, I've eaten and exercised PERFECTLY every day this week except for Thanksgiving day and I only lost .8 lbs. The scale has been STUCK at 192.2 for 3 days and I don't get it. It's not going up or down and I've been really active. I just don't see how I can't have lost any weight at all since Thursday and it's really grinding my gears. Today is weigh-in day and I have almost nothing to show for it even though I ate pretty responsibly at Thanksgiving and stuck 100% to plan on the other days. 

I know I just need to keep working and that plateaus do happen but "MEH" I say. "MEH" indeed. I am most disappointed at this turn of events.

Yip Yip! It's My First Cosplay!

Well I had my weigh-in yesterday and I was pleased to see that I wasn't derailed by my weekend at New York Comic Con with my friends. I really did my best to stay on track. I packed a bunch of meals and looked at the menus for the restaurants we normally go to in order to prepare myself for what I might face. I did end up losing 2.8 lbs this week which is great. I was prepared for the scale not to move at all. Even though I brought Nutrisystem food with me every day for lunch and my afternoon snack, I was in costume, so I had to hunt down my friends in order to retrieve it since I didn't have a bag with me. The only day that went south was Saturday because a friend I was with got really sick and she had to stop walking around. I didn't want to leave her alone so I had to get a hot dog for lunch because that was all there was in the vicinity. It was one of those situations where I did my best to do the least damage possible with just a dollop of ketchup for flavor, but I felt kind of cornered and guilty about it afterwards. I ended up skipping my afternoon snack because of the hot dog and had a salad with grilled chicken, low-fat balsamic vinaigrette, and avocado when we went out for dinner. I guess I was just trying to minimize the damage while trying to enjoy a "special occasion" night out with my friends. 

All in all, it was a successful, healthy week and I still met my goal of at least 2 lbs lost per week WHILE having a ton of fun at the convention. 

I've always been afraid to cosplay because of my weight. I just didn't think I'd be able to become a character that would be recognizable. Most of our heroes and heroines in fandom are quite svelt and the idea of fitting my pudginess into that mold seemed like a lost cause. Plus the internet can be a cruel place where people lampoon photos of "bad cosplayers" or "fat versions" of characters and mock them mercilessly. I was really afraid of becoming a target for that. 

However, when I started this journey, I really wanted to plan a cosplay as a motivation because it's something connects my personality and my geekdom with my health (two things that have been in opposition or just not related at all for most of my life). I chose to create an anthropomorphic version of Appa, a flying bison, and one of my favorite characters from Nickelodeon's animated show Avatar: The Last Airbender. With help, encouragement, and advice from friends (as well as learning how to hand sew on youtube!), I think I was able to pull off a pretty great look. I wanted to share it with you all here! Some of my best friends agreed to reprise their Toph and Man-Toph costumes so that we could all go around as a group and enjoy the convention together. I really appreciated their support and show of solidarity. <3

Yip yip! Appa takes to the skies!

This was the first Aang that I came across at the convention. For those who don't know, Appa is Aang's spirit animal companion and the creature that carries Aang and his friends around the world on the show. I made it my goal to get pictures with every Aang I could find (one of whom was 6 years old and ADORABLE), but this one turned out the best. Although, it sort of looks like "Appa and Aang go to the prom." Ha!

Here's a view of the back of the costume. Appa has a very distinct look and people wouldn't necessarily recognize me from the front immediately, but as soon as I passed by, they would shout "Appa!" It was really funny. 

Moreso than anything else I learned from this experience, I found that cosplay brings people together. We met so many other fans of the show we love, some were even dressed up as other characters. When we all posed for pictures together it stopped traffic. People swarmed us like paparazzi. We all got to talk about why we loved the show and how we made our costumes. Everyday as I passed through the crowd I just heard a continues melodic strain of "Oh my god! It's Appa! Appa, look! Wow! Look at that Appa! Dude! Amazing, it's Appa!" It was just such a rush to feel people's support for all my hard work and of course to get to share our common love of the show in the process. One artist in artist's alley told me a story about how Avatar brought him and his girlfriend together and how Appa was their favorite. He was telling me this like I WAS Appa and I was personally responsible for his joyous relationship- which was hilarious and touching at the same time. The whole time I was nervous that cosplaying with be a degrading experience, but now that the convention is over, I can not only say that we made a great impression (as evidenced by all the pictures I've found of us that are now floating and garnering positive feedback around the internet! Haha), but I can also say that my experience was completely positive and even empowering. After the con was over, my boyfriend and I started planning a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic cosplay for PAX East in March. Now I have another goal to achieve and the best part is that he's going to participate in it with me so we can share our love of the show with other fans. :) 

And for those of you who know what "Gangnam Style" is, here's a "Heeeeey Sexy Appa" pic. You're welcome. This happened because my friend yelled at the other cosplayer, "Hey man! Hey! I need you to come yell at my friend's butt." To which he responded, "Sure!"

Cosplay Progress and Halloween Hullabaloo

My Appa cosplay for New York Comic Con is coming along pretty well and I've also started preparing for Halloween too. Lot's of sewing, which I didn't know how to do before so hooray for learning how to do new things. Just need to attach the false arms to the bracers and run an invisible line between them so they'll move along with my regular arms, remake the horns a lot smaller, and then maybe sew an elbow joint into the arms to make them move more naturally. Lots of work but it will all be worth it! As far as Halloween goes, I'm lucky enough to be relying on the immeasurable skills of my friend Agatha who makes our group of friends themed costumes every year. This year's theme: Mortal Kombat. I wish I could say that I'm super into it. I love video games, but I'm not really a huge fighting game fan. I'm going to be Sindel, the banshee! She wears purple, which is my favorite color, so I was willing to capitulate to the overall desire of the group to do that theme. I know Agatha will alter the more naked aspects of my costume that make me nervous so that I'll be comfortable. It's not that I don't like nakedness. There are just still parts of my body that I'm really uncomfortable with exposing to the world! This is mostly about having fun with everyone and taking awesome pictures and I didn't want to be the thorn in anyone's side just because I was afraid of not looking like the character and not being able to show enough skin to do her justice. When we're all dressed up, I know we're going to look amazing. Agatha always makes sure of that!