Blogilates 30-Day Ab Challenge

I’m doing it, you guys…I’m taking the first step toward regaining some semblance of my old life where I cared so, so much about health and fitness.

Starting today, I’ll be doing the 30-Day Flat Abs Challenge from Blogilates. I’m choosing this because it seriously will take like 10 minutes max on any given day for me to do these exercises so really, it’s something I should be able to fit in despite all the baby craziness–no excuses!

I’m reasonably certain that I’m not going to have a six-pack by the end of the 30 days. After all, I’ve got plenty of extra cushioning left over from when I looked like this just a few months ago:
I do kinda miss being able to balance things on my belly, though.

However, I feel confident that I will feel better about myself, and I’m hopeful that this will clear a path for me to really commit to my own health and wellness over the summer.

In the interest of full disclosure, I do kind of have to laugh at the extra water part of the challenge. In general, I drink an outrageous amount of water each day, and even moreso now that I am breastfeeding. So I am respectfully declining that part of Blogilates’ challenge 🙂

Wish me luck!

Change Is In the Air

Well hello there!

I can’t believe it’s been almost a month since my last post. I know that I personally don’t enjoy reading blog posts where the author starts out with drawn out explanations and apologies for being away, but I do have some reasons for my long silence and I’d like to at least address them briefly.

My life has changed dramatically in the past few months since Baby H was born. I still love blogging and I definitely still love food, but both of those things have shifted way down on my list of daily priorities.

I’ve been back at work for a little over a month now and am only just starting to get settled into some sort of a rhythm, albeit a hectic one. Each day, I get up, pack Baby H’s daycare bag, drop him off at daycare, sit in traffic on the way to work, work all day (as well as fitting in 3 pumping sessions), then leave work, sit in traffic on my way to pick up Baby H from daycare, and then go home and spend the rest of the evening trying to entertain him until bedtime, while simultaneously attempting to clean bottles and breast pump parts and get everything ready for the next day when I get to do it all over again.

It’s not just that I don’t have the time and energy to blog, but also that the subject matter I used to write about has become kind of inapplicable. I basically never cook anymore. If I have time to eat in the evening, I do, but it’s not like I’m whipping up any culinary marvels.

Case in point: last Tuesday, for Cinco de Mayo, I really wanted tacos. So, I made some. I made the easiest, most bare bones black bean tacos imaginable, using several premade ingredients (shells, seasoning, etc.).

All I did was saute some chopped onions and garlic, add a 15 oz. can of rinsed black beans, an 8 oz. can of tomato sauce, and half a packet of taco seasoning, and then I stirred in some chopped kale at the end.

I did manage to pick out an amazing avocado for a topper!

The tacos came out really tasty but, like, is that really something to blog about? I’m not sure anymore.

It was the first time I had cooked anything since Baby H was 9 weeks old (he’s 17 weeks now). I couldn’t even get it together to bake a cake for his christening this past weekend. We ended up serving a storebought (non-vegan) cake instead.

So, this is the biggest thing that’s been keeping me away from blogging–this feeling that I no longer have anything worthwhile to share about vegan cooking and eating.

The point of this post is not to have a pity party however, but to give myself a chance to get back on track with blogging by allowing myself a bit more flexibility with the theme. It’s my blog after all! Going forward I will be focusing more on mindful eating and an overall healthy lifestyle, especially with an infant in tow, and my posts will reflect this.

I hope the content will still be interesting enough that those who have read this blog for a long time will want to stick around, but of course I’ll understand if some decide to move on.

Finally, I do intend to keep posting photos of delicious vegan food on social media, so if this is of interest to you, definitely follow me on Instagram! I’ll be posting lots of good stuff with the hastag #whatveganseat.

xoxo
A.Cook, still in the making