Yoga Dinosaur

1. Eat whole foods. Particularly lots of antioxidant rich fruits and green leafy/coniferous vegetables and clean protein like tempeh, tofu, organic greek yogurt, legumes, cage-free egg whites, omega 3 eggs, wild caught fish and organic poultry. Make this the bulk of your diet.
2. Other good things to eat are whole grains like oatmeal, brown rice, quinoa, millet, barley, and sprouted wheat. Healthy fats from avocados, nuts, seeds, coconut and olives are good too.
3. Drink a lot of water. Aim for a minimum of 2 liters a day, you can drink up to a gallon though especially if you live in a hot environment or are sweating a lot.
4. Take a multivitamin. It will help reduce cravings and fill any nutritional holes in your diet.
5. Sleep. Anything less than 6 hours will increase cravings making it harder for you to control your diet and lose weight. To help with this dim the lights in your house a couple of hours before bedtime, drink sleep enhancing tea (like kava, valerian, chamomile, peppermint, etc.), and engage in relaxing activities.
6. Exercise daily in your favorite way.  This could be yoga, walking, hiking, jogging, swimming, hula hooping, dancing, running, playing tennis, walking your dog, etc. It doesn’t matter just do something.
7. Include some type of strength training a few times a week. It could be body weight exercises like strengthening yoga or Pilates or weight lifting. Either way it increases your metabolic resting rate, is great for your bones, and just makes you feel awesome.
8. Relax daily. Do something were you feel at ease. It could be yoga, reading a good book, taking a bubble bath, painting your nails, chatting with good friends, etc.
9. Go outside. Fresh air and sunshine can do wonders.
10. Unplug. Whenever I watch television it makes me hungry. There are always a million advertisements for food, plus it is easy to sit and mindlessly munch. When you unplug form technology for a bit it helps you answer the vital weightless question: ” Am I even hungry?”
11. Eat when you are hungry. Don’t when you are not.
12. Go slow. The longer it takes you to lose weight the more likely you are to keep it off, and the healthier it is for your body.
13. Love yourself now. The only thing weight loss does is make you smaller. You will still be you. You will still have the same thoughts and feelings and ideas. Love them. Love the fact that you can doodle. Love that you have extra loopy handwriting. Love the fact that you make wonderful pancakes. Love that you got an A in your history class this year. Love that you are shy. Love that you are bold. Love your toes. Love your hair. Love your belly button. Appreciate what makes you you and completely unique from everyone else on the planet.  

This is going to take a while to explain…

My sophomore year of high school I became very obsessed with weight loss. I lost 25 pounds in less than 6 weeks. It took over my whole world and was the only thing I thought about. I lived to create food that maximized portion sizes while minimizing calories. I was a pro at eating a decent volume of food without eating a large amount of calories. I exercised and exercised and exercised.

After my weight loss I wanted an easy way to maintain without counting calories so I went on a whole-food vegan diet with an emphasis in macrobiotics. It worked. I maintained without having to count every morsel of food that went into my mouth. 

The summer before my junior year of high school I had to have surgery to remove a large ovarian cyst and the ovary it was attached to. I was not allowed to exercise in the recovery period from this surgery and that freaked me out. I was terrified of gaining weight more than ever before in my life. I severely reduced the amount of food I ate and dropped down to 108 pounds at a height of 5’11”

When school started I had gained a little back and was in the 110’s. It didn’t matter though, the damage had been done. I was depressed, my hair fell out like leaves, I hadn’t had a period in 8 months, I had a lot of dance injuries that were not healing, I wanted to die.

I needed a way to heal on my own. I went on a 100% raw vegan diet. I sometimes juice fasted. I was on a sugarless raw vegan diet for about 4 months of this time not eating any fruit, sweeteners or even sweet raw vegetables like carrots. It was a really crazy time. My weight stabilized at about 125. I was still a complete mess this whole time. I developed a huge fear of food not being pure. It terrified me more than I could explain. Eating something not on my perfect organic raw vegan diet would kill me. It caused me huge anxiety. I didn’t care about weight even at this point. It was an after thought. I wanted to be clean. This is why I juice fasted so much. I wanted to unzip my skin and give my internal organs a good scrub.

Eventually this started taking a toll on me as well. I was b-vitamin, amino acid, and glucose deficient. I still had all of the problems I did before. I knew I needed to change. After one year of raw I ate cooked food.

I had so many fears of food when I first started going away from my crazy diet. My senior year (this year) is when I finally started eating more like a normal person.

I had lots of ups and downs and relapses. I have had bingeing and purging phases over the past year and a half and times when I hated everything and reduced my calorie consumption to 800 or less while crying over thinspo blogs.

But now everything is better.

I eat intuitively which for me tends to be a whole food mostly vegetarian diet. I have not binged, purged, or restricted in almost two months. I have conquered my fear foods. I am in the process of getting ripped. I have never been happier or felt healthier. I am finally living.

What you do is you click customize in the top right corner whenever you are on your blog.

scroll down to pages and click add new page

at the top of the page change the layout from standard to redirect.

next add what you want the page url to be something such as:

yogadinosaur.tumblr.com/food

then had the redirect url with whatever the tag is like:

yogadinosaur.tumblr.com/tagged/food

name the page something like:

foods I eat

click save

Now whenever you tag a post as “food” it will be redirected to the page you just made and linked to your blog.

Sometimes certain themes can be very particular with what pages they show and it is super annoying. All of the featured free themes show pages and most of the popular theme designers’ themes do too. If you have a theme that has links available but does not show pages you can always copy and page the page url you just created in the link space provided and name it what you want to show as on your blog. 

I hope this made sense!

Nope, not at all.

I do eats loads of vegan food and a nearly vegetarian diet. I don’t like sticking labels on myself though, and I like having the freedom to eat absolutely anything I want without guilt. 

You totally can. I feel like weight loss shouldn’t be such a complicated thing. Honestly, the biggest factors that effect weight gain are stress and emotions. I know that whenever I am getting enough sleep, having the most fun, spending the most time outside, and breathing the most my body is it’s fittest and happiest.

The best advice I can give you is to make fruits and veggies the bulk of every meal. They are excellent for weightless because they are packed with water, fiber, vitamins and mineral. What more could you ask for? At every meal try to have a protein source to accompany your produce as well.

Example meals could be:

b: giant fruit salad and plain greek yogurt with silvered almonds, stevia and cinnamon.

l: Giant salad with mixed greens, lemon juice, avocado, cucumbers, bell pepper, chickpeas, and maybe even a hard boiled egg.

d: giant veggie-tofu stir fry.

Simply making whole foods, in their natural state, the bulk of your diet is a good place to start. The less processed the better.

As far as exercise goes. Try to do some yoga everyday, even if all you can squeeze in is 10 minutes. Use it has a chance to connect with your body and mind. See if you can use muscles you never have before, see how long you can hold a single pose and just breathe, see if you can experience something new. Use your practice as a way to check into your emotions and spirt. Maybe you will find out your are worried about something, maybe you are stressed, maybe you are tired. Take this moment to release everything. Workout your tension; remove your woes.

Start living your live to the fullest. Do things that are fulfilling. Do things that invigorate you. Eating whole foods and doing yoga as a way of making you whole.  It won’t be perfect, there will be ups and downs, but eventually your body will find a way to balance out and find its happy weight.

Just breathe deeply and breathe a lot.

Yes! My name is also yogadinosaur on it. Everyone should check it out:)

Wooohoo! Juicing is fun and gives you loads of energy:) I like to keep my juice pretty simple, but here are my most favorite combos:

1. cucumber, celery, pear, kale or spinach, a little ginger, lemon. So good it’s like a gingery green lemonade. The pear+ginger combo really makes it.
2. carrot juice. Straight up.
3. celery+grapefruit .Soooo good and perfectly tart.
4. watermelon, cucumber, mint .In the summer this is heaven especially with a little crushed ice, oh my jesus.
5. cucumber, mango, cilantro. Kind of spicy. Kind of sweet. Kind of awesome.

I hope this gives you some ideas! The ones with citrus tend to be more sour and the ones without are just refreshingly sweet but not overly so.

Rule of thumb is the more fruit you add the sweeter it will be, the more watery veg like celery and cucumber the more volumeous and hydrating it will be, and the more greens you add the more bitter it will be.

I have SO MANY. I can just tell this post will be obnoxiously long… 

Sweet:

1. Fruit salad with greek yogurt and shredded coconut, slivered almonds and/or granola 

2. Nut butter and jam sandwich on whole meal bread with fruit. My fav combos are:

• Seed multigrain bread with peanut butter, banana and honey.
• Cinnamon rasion Ezekiel bread with cashew butter, thinly sliced apple and even more cinnamon.
• Whole grain sour dough with almond butter, a little raspberry jam, and sliced strawberries.
• The combinations are endless…

3. Luna/Clif/Lara bars with a pieces of fruit, some carrot sicks,and a hand full of nuts.

4. Green Smoothie. Fav combos are:

• avocado, mango, protein powder, a little raw honey, almond milk, swiss chard
• banana, mixed berries, plain greek yogurt, a spoonful cacao powder, vanilla soy milk, spinach 
• Pineapple, shredded coconut, orange, almond butter, a little orange juice, collards.
• Again endless possibilities. If you want to bring one to work/school wide mouth Nalgene bottles work wonders. Using frozen fruit makes them thicker and even more decadent.

Savory:

1. Giant salads. Such as:

• Mixed baby greens, chickpeas, shredded carrot, bell pepper, pumpkin seeds, quinoa, balsamic dressing
• kale massaged with sea salt, olive oil, and lemon juice then topped with avocado, hard boiled eggs, purple onion and brown rice.
• Baby spinach with tofu or chicken, wild rice, cucumber, sliced almonds, tomato, yellow bell pepper, parley and italian dressing or olive oil with a little raw apple cider vinegar.

3. Hummus with stuff to dip in it like sliced veggies and whole grain crackers.

4. Sandwiches/wraps with things like whole bread or tortillas, avocado, sprouts, veggies, greens, tofu, tempeh, organic turkey, stone ground mustard. etc. 

5. Pita pizza! Take a whole grain pita circle top it with tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, loads of veggies and fresh herbs like basil and thyme. Bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 8-10 minutes or until melty and edges are golden.

6. Leftovers from dinner! I do this all the time. Things like:

• veggie- tofu stir frys with brown rice
• whole grain pasta with tomato sauce steamed broccoli and chickpeas.
• black beans with cilantro, chopped tomato, avocado and corn tortillas
• homemade sushi with toast nori, sticky brown rice, avocado, carrots, and scallions
• veggie chili. Just throw several cans of tomatoes, a variety of beans, some frozen cauliflower and broccoli, shredded carrot and lots of spices like cumin and chill powder in a crook pot. Cook on low over night and in the morning you have yourself a hardy meal.
• soup and toast

That’s all I can think of right now, but I’m sure there’s more. Hopefully this helps!

My favorite cheaper brand, about $20-30, is Gaiam. They have a really nice grip so you do not slide around while you practice. For more expensive mats, about $60-80, I think hugger mugger, jade, and manduka are all awesome and will last you a long time. This is nice if you plan to practice daily. 

It really just depends on what size, color and style you prefer. Shop around and read reviews to see what suits your needs:) Have a great day!

You definitely need to rev up your core strength! Try things like plank, forearm plank, leg drops while lying on your back, boat pose, and bicycle crunches. It will happen it just takes lots of practice and lots of breathing:)

A zillion. 

Honestly though, I do not count calories because it is super annoying and makes me feel really disconnected from my body. I used to be really obsessive about it and document what I ate and how many calories were in everything. Things got ugly. If I really had to guess I would say it is close to 3000. Not. Even. Kidding. 

I deleted my blog old blog about a week ago (also called yogadinosaur) because I was a very overwhelmed with school and life, sick, and drugged out on Nyquil. Not a good combo for making rational decisions. Technically I didn’t go anywhere, I just left tumblr.