More Green Stuff and Lunacy

Wow, is it Monday already? I feel like last week went by in a blur and this weekend was absolutely jam packed!!

I had to laugh at myself the other day whilst in the fruit and veggie market because my basket was just overflowing with green stuffCollards, kale, and flowers. I’ve decided to treat myself to fresh flowers each week because I love having them in my room! They perk me up and make they space feel homey and fresh. Collards and kale were turned into a lovely meal of steamed veggies with collard wraps. I filled the collards with sunflower seed pate, avocado, red pepper and sprouts and paired them with some steamed kale, bok choy and beets. Collards are an awesome vehicle for whatever you want and have an incredibly mild, fresh flavour. The wraps are super easy (basically just a collard leaf with the hard stem at the end cut out) I will definitely be making them again! My eyes were bigger than my stomach and I ended up passing off of my wraps to one of the roomies who happily obliged.

Ashley had me over on Friday night for some pre-outing green stuff and goodies. Quinoa with carrot, kale, sprouts, beets and pumpkin seeds with thai spices. So simple and delicious!! I felt like I was having a bowl at Fresh. While the bowl was yummy and nourishing, the highlight had to be her raw vegan brownies. Oh. My. God. Were they ever freaking DELICIOUS! She was worried about the icing because there had been a bit of a disaster with the food processor and an under ripe avocado, so she used banana instead which was delightful!! We enjoyed a fun night out with our friend Lauren from school and Lauren’s roommates & friends. On Saturday I led three energetic meetings and had 3 people reach their 10% target, 4 people reach their goal and 2 other people get to Lifetime!! I was on such a high and found myself leaping and squealing a lot – not that this is abnormal for me at my meetings! I think my members have come to expect it. On Saturday night I had the pleasure of going to the Centre of Gravity for the 50th instalment of Lunacy Cabaret. The theme was “Golddiggers and Millionaires” so my roommates and I took the opportunity to dress up in our finest, but my camera and I were not getting along so I didn’t get a ton of pictures! I managed to snap a few self photos before we left… I love playing dress up and having an opportunity to wear my fishnets and boas and pretty bling! The show was a lot of fun and I will definitely be going back at some point! Lots of funny, talented performers interspersed with amazing circus-inspired acts including aerials, stilts and fire eating! Here’s a taste of the finale:

I would have taken more footage but my camera died! There were hula hoops, stilt walkers and other acrobatics going on, all in white with the black light on. If you’re in Toronto, definitely a cool event to check out and it happens once a month. I love that there’s a circus training facility in the middle of Little India!! I would love to add some circus skills to my repertoire!!

I love green stuff, dressing up and good friends – who can ask for anything more?

How was your weekend? Did you do anything cool for Earth Hour?

My Life as an Actor, Part 1

While ya’ll were celebrating Valentine’s Day and/or Family Day, I was moving into the theatre, running around in a hoop skirt and basking in the glory of stage lights. There I am, yesterday, dressed as Anne Boleyn, enjoying the sight of my name on a poster between songs. REX opens on Thursday and I am thrilled to be on stage once again.

Between rehearsals, school and Weight Watchers, I’ve been catching up with friends and having some much needed Ashley time. This included attending a great WW meeting with Lindsay on Wednesday and hitting the gym for a fabulous Bodyflow class, taking long walks on Thursday and Friday (in the sunshine), seeing the movie Valentine’s Day with a good friend on V-Day and enjoying some tea, good music and school reading on Friday afternoon in the Annex. On Friday night, the lovely Lindsay had me over for supper where she made gluten free pita with baked falafels. The full spreadWhich all came together to form a happy gluten free vegan falafel pizza It was delicious! The pitas were really yummy, and not just because I haven’t eaten a pita in close to a year. They were earthy, chewy and very pita-like. I loved the falafels and the assortment of veggies. I found myself picking at pitas with sauce once my pizza had been devoured. For dessert I headed to LPK’s Culinary Groove, which did not disappoint Ah yes, you are reading that sign correctly: Gluten free, vegan chocolate Boston cream cakes. I would also call them “chocolate perfection in cupcake form”
Moist, chocolaty cake with creamy, rich, decadent chocolate frosting filled with a smooth, silky cream with a hint of citrusOk, so I might have enjoyed the cupcake a little too much… but it was honestly a little piece of chocolate heaven and a perfect way to end off a stellar meal!

The rest of my time has been spent at the theatre. I can’t wait for us to have an audience! Having warm bodies to play to is going to give us the energy we need to take this performance to the next level. Over the next couple of weeks I will be documenting my adventures at the theatre (and otherwise) as I work to give a fantastic performance and maintain my sanity in the process. I’m looking forward to some special visitors to the show, yummy meals and two back to back Friday massages.

Part of the reason I love being an actor is all the fun I get to have playing dress up. For that reason, I leave you with a couple candid backstage photos of some of my beautiful costumes (and super fun wigs). More pictures to come later in the week!

Lose for Good Launch

On Friday I headed down to Nathan Phillips Square for the Canadian launch of the Lose for Good campaign. I was excited to catch up with some of my favourite Weight Watchers co-workers including the amazing Mary, my amazing Weight Watchers leader trainer. as well as Lindsay (who trained with me to become a leader)

Weight Watchers Canada has partnered with Food Banks Canada to raise awareness of 2 significant issues facing Canadians: obesity and hunger. I am really excited that beginning September 27, in meeting rooms across the country, Weight Watchers will hold a series of food drives to benefit Food Banks Canada as well as make a donation of up to $50,000! Because we don’t have a ton of space at Carrot to house food donations, I’m devising a competition between the three meetings to see which group can raise the most money. More details to come!

The launch was attended by local media including Monica Matys from CTV. Five members from meetings in Toronto, representing 450 lbs lost on the program talked about their success on the program and their excitement about Lose for Good.

In honour of the launch, they each donated their weight loss amount in food – 450 lbs total!!

One of these members was Mary, from my 8:15 meeting.

Mary did such a great job in her speech, I was so proud! Mary has lost 40 lbs with Weight Watchers and has been maintaining her weight successfully for a couple of years. Last December, 2008 she was faced with a new challenge: breast cancer. All of the members in the meeting were incredibly supportive of Mary through her treatments and she has been quite an inspiration for everyone. I was so excited that she was able to be part of the Lose for Good kick off and have the opportunity to share her success on the program.

I am thrilled that Weight Watchers Canada will be participating in Lose for Good this year and really believe that the efforts will help to make a difference. I love being a part of an organization that is really make an effort to give back! There are more than 700,000 people in Canada who rely on food banks each month, which is a pretty frightening statistic. The holidays are just around the corner, making it an even more important time to give back. I really believe that these events are going to help raise awareness and provide a lot of assistance to those who need it most.

Lose for Good launches in Canada on September 27. You’ll soon be able to visit www.weightwatchers.ca/loseforgood for more details.

Amazing motivation and raw taco goodness

As I talked a little bit about in my post yesterday, I was feeling a little down and out earlier this week. So like a good WW member I went to two AMAZING meetings tonight. I try to attend meetings at least once a month, but it doesn't always happen that way. I felt that I really needed the extra WW love and motivation right about now and I'm so glad that I did. 

First up was Lindsay's meeting at Trinity Church next to the Eaton Center. I love that group! They are incredibly supportive of one another and the group has grown quite a bit since Lindsay started there. Lindsay is an incredibly leader. We did our leader training together and it was an amazing journey to take with her and I love seeing her in action now. She's very down to earth and her story is pretty incredible. I always feel great walking out of her meetings. 

Next up was Charlie's meeting at the YMCA. Charlie was my leader for my weight loss journey. He was instrumental in helping me get from this point:

to where I am today. He is a great leader with a lot of humor and I truly love his meetings. It was so lovely to catch up with him and I hope to go back a little more frequently in the future. One of my favourite quotes of the night (from another member) was "I love eating broccoli for breakfast. It's like eating an omelet without the eggs". 

This week we're talking about negative thoughts and how they can impact our weight loss journey. Both groups really resonated with the topic - because I think it's something that we all experience (whether or not we're trying to lose weight) Negative thinking has a HUGE impact on us, and we really need to work hard to reverse those negative thoughts and replace them with the positive. I'm looking forward to our discussion of this subject this weekend at the Carrot. 

Now onto dinner!

Inspired by Gena and Jenna's Wednesday raw food challenge, I decided tonight would be the night I make raw tacos! The taco meat was made of walnuts (soaked overnight), spices, sunflower oil, sea salt and some Braggs. I also made some guacamole with an avocado, cilantro, green onion & lime. 

They turned out great!!! 

The nuts do really give them a "meaty" texture and the spices give the flavor of tacos. I put some guac onto a giant organic lettuce leaf and topped it with 2 tbsp of the "meat". I served the tacos alongside a spinach salad with some more guac and 1/2 a cup of brown rice with corn, cilantro and lime (inspired by the WW brown rice salad) The brown rice meant that the meal wasn't totally raw, but making the tacos was a huge step for me and I'm so glad that I did! Even Joey liked them (with some sour cream and salsa) I will definitely be making these again and this experiment has motivated me to try more raw recipes. 

Today was a great day (how's that for positivity??) and I'm really happy that tomorrow is Thursday! Please check out my post from earlier and provide me with some feedback on my blog and don't forget, you've got less than 24 hours to enter my latest giveaway!

I'm always amazed...

when the meeting topic is a perfect reminder of what I need to do that week as a member.

It has happened several times now, and I'm always thankful when it does happen. Even though I am a WW Leader, I will always be a member first. It's easy to forget sometimes, but it's so important to my journey.

Tomorrow we're talking about the 8 Helpful Habits and it couldn't have come at a better time. I'll write more about this later this weekend and I'll share with the meeting room tomorrow exactly what I needed to work on this week and why it was so important.

If you're reading this now (and want to be a keener for tomorrow's meeting), read through your Week 4 book - Habits of Successful Members --or-- peruse the list of habits below:

Ask for Help
Learn from Experience
Manage Your Environment
Manage Your Feelings
Manage Your Thoughts
Monitor Yourself
Prepare Yourself
Take Care of Yourself

and start to think about....

the Habit(s) you're already good at
the Habit(s) you find challenging
the Habit(s) you are focused on getting better at

and I'll see you bright and early tomorrow morning!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

How is everyone adapting to this chilly weather we've been having? I hope everyone is keeping warm. 

It sure is busy this time of year and I hope that my meetings members got some strategies over the last few weeks for dealing with the people, food, social events, activity and time management. I hope that everyone's activity chart is filling up with stickers! I'm happy to say that I've got more than 5 on mine so far and this weekend I hope to add to it with some walking, hot yoga and belly dancing!

Sometime this weekend I'm going to post some ideas for WW-friendly holiday baking. I love preparing baked goods for loved ones around this time of year, and I especially love encorporating WW-friendly recipes into the mix. I've accumulated a good selection of holiday recipes in the last couple years and I've made a list of what I want to make. Hopefully the recipes will give you some ideas if you would like to get baking sometime in the next couple weeks. 

I'm happy to report that I finished my Christmas shopping before December even started and I even have a few gifts wrapped at this point!! I need to do my Christmas cards... I think that might be another project for the weekend. 

Tomorrow night is my work's holiday party and we're going to a Brazillian steakhouse! I've never been but I'm sure that it's going to be an interesting time. The food consists of a buffet with tonnes of cold salads, bread and seafood. Then once seated, your server brings you a selection of more than 10 different types of meats and sides. You have a card at your place setting that has two sides - green when you are still eating and ready for more and red when you're done or want to take a rest from the food. Wish me luck. I have a feeling that my card will be red for much of the evening and I plan to earn some AP's dancing alongside the Carnivale style dancers and drummers!!

I'm really excited for my meetings this weekend to share the 2009 Weight Watchers program with my members. I look forward to seeing all of you there and letting you know about the great changes to the program. 

Have an amazing week!!

PS - I know I haven't updated my soup post. I was nearly finished uploading/editing it one day and then my computer died and I was not happy. I promise I will get to it, but I hope that a lot of the recipes there will keep your soup pot full over the winter season! I made the stuffed green pepper soup two weeks ago and it was a big hit at our house!

Recipes Wanted!

I am so thrilled for Saturday's topic.

SOUP

I love making soup. I love eating soup. I love soup recipes - so I'm going nuts over this topic!! As I mentioned last week, please send me your soup recipes. I will be posting them here (with Points values) and will have a display in the meeting room as well. I will also be doing a spotlight on produce! I think it will be apples & squash - but please let me know if there's another fruit/vegetable you would like to know more about.

Please email your recipes to me at: wwleaderashley@gmail.com

No day but today

While I always think that every week's meeting topic is important, I think last week's topic couldn't have come at a better time for me personally and really resonated with many of my members as well. In my meetings on Saturday we talked about the importance of Taking Care of Yourself.

In our daily lives, it's pretty amazing how we can push ourselves to the backburner while we tend to our various roles in life. By taking care of yourself, you're really making yourself better equipped to take on those roles and be the best that you can be.

Taking care of yourself means saying no to:

1. always letting others' needs take priority
2. allowing have-to's dominate your life
3. losing motivation
4. being a yes (wo)man
5. feeling guilty about making your weight-loss efforts a priority
   

Take a moment and examine your life. Is your schedule filled with things that you are doing for other people constantly? Where's the "me" time? Is your motivation taking a dive? Do you have to schedule 3 months in advance to do something nice for yourself? If you answered yes to any of these, it's time to step back for a moment and find something that you can do for yourself. Can you ask for help? Is there someone in your life who can help relieve you of some of your duties? Or are things going to calm down soon? What can you do to make yourself a priority?

In my meeting this week I ended with the quote "no day, but today" from the musical Rent. I told my members to make today count and really start taking care of themselves. As someone who leads a very busy life, this is something I need to remind myself of constantly and this meeting topic couldn't have come at a better time. This week I encourage you to also Take Care of Yourself by saying yes to:

1. Valuing your own needs (as much as you value the needs of others)
2. Making time to do activities you love
3. Finding the motivation to work towards your goals
4. Learning to say no to requests that will get in the way of commitments you've made for yourself
5. Saying goodbye to guilt

bzzz bzzz

I have been a busy little bee as of late! I'm sorry I've not had the time to write.

It started with my show. I was rehearsing 4 days/week in August and then we opened the show on September third. I'm in the last week of the run and it's been amazing! We've had great houses of people really loving what we are doing. Luisa is a great role for me and I'm really having fun!

I did my monthly weigh in on Saturday and was happy to be at 128 again. I was up a wee bit last month, but still very much under my goal and I feel really good about that. I've been getting comments from my coworkers that I'm looking thinner these days, which I think might have something to do with another activity that has been keeping me busy and that is belly dancing! I started my new class two weeks ago and I absolutely adore it. Abby is an amazing teacher and I'm liking the challenge of the new level. In early October, I'll be taking a workshop with the founder of the studio and I am counting the days! I'm just obsessed with belly dance right now. Reading books, looking at websites and forums, searching for costumes (which I don't need...) It's an amazing hobby and I absolutely adore it.

At some point this week I'm going to post a blog about my topic for the week because I think it's an important one! It's all about getting rid of pesky ANTs! Stay tuned..

Go for the Goal(d)

Obstacles are thost frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal

~Henry Ford

This week I want to talk about the importance of setting goals - both ultimate and interim. One of the first goals that we recommend at WW is your 10% goal. Research has shown that there are incredible benefits to losing 10% of your body weight including:

• A healthier heart
• Lower risk of type 2 diabetes
• More energy

Sometimes the 10% goal isn't best for everyone, so it's great to set goals along the way. In the meeting room we celebrate milestones along the way with 5 and 10 lbs stars, as well as Bravo stickers.

Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another
~John Dewey

Once reaching a goal (10% or other) it's important to set another, whether that be another interim goal or an ultimate weight goal. If your meetings member who has achieved a goal, sit down and chat with your Leader who can help you set another goal.

This week I challenge you to think about what goal you are currently working towards - is it an interim goal like your 10% or your ultimate goal weight? If you're already at your goal weight, what is another goal that you've set for yourself?

Setting goals (both interim and ultimate) are integral to your success. Setting goals along the way can help strengthen your motivation because your next success is never far off!!

It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward
~Old Chinese Proverb

Olympic Challenge - Week One

Friday marks the opening of the 2008 Summer Olympics. I love watching the Olympics and enjoy a variety of sports including swimming, diving, gymnastics, boxing among others.

This week I'm starting a challenge for my members. Each week there will be a new challenge to complete and something to bring into the meeting the following week. At the end I'll do a draw for a fun prize :)

If you're not a member of one of my meetings, please feel free to participate online. I can't promise you a fun prize, but I love hearing what everyone else is doing and I think a challenge is always good to ramp up motivation!!

I'll post some quotes tomorrow (I can't seem to find them online), but Olympic athletes truly love what they do. They enjoy their sports so much and are truly passionate about training. As a non-Olympic athlete I find that I can approach exercise and activity with a sense of dread if I don't enjoy what I'm doing. This is exactly the reason I quit the gym where I was a member. I didn't like the facilities, the people who worked there nor did I particularly enjoy the act of running on a treadmill. I've found that once I found something I really liked doing (bellydancing and softball to be specific!) I really enjoyed my activity and actually looked forward to it!

So this week's challenge is...
Find an activity you love and do it!

Maybe you already know what that activity is or maybe you haven't found it yet. This week I encourage you to either partake in an activity that you already enjoy, or try something new! Maybe you've always wanted to take a pilates class or you've wanted to join in that pick-up softball game at the park. This week is your opportunity!!

Whether you're one of my members, or not, please join in the "Olympic spirit" and post a comment about the activity you did this week and why you love it!!

Actunities

In my meeting two weeks ago, I talked about "actunities". Actunities are opportunities for activity. The Weight Watchers program talks about 'Moving More', but doesn't specify what that actually means. There is no by-law that states moving more means joining a gym or taking a class, it can really just be about finding other ways to incorporate more activity into your life.

As with everything I talk to my class about, I try to practise what I preach! I've been trying to take walks at lunch, even if I don't need to go out and get anything. I've also been taking the stairs (three flights) in the morning at work instead of taking the elevator. I am proud to report I've done it every day for two weeks except for this past Monday, and that was only because I had forgotten my pass card and had no way to get in or out of the stairwell!

I challenge you to find your actunities and ramp up the amount of activity in your life!

10 Steps to Success

I talked about Jack Canfield's 10 Steps to Success a couple months ago at one of my meetings and I think they are great guidelines for one's weight loss journey as well as life in general!

1.Acknowledge & appreciate the positive past
2.Use positive self talk
3.Acknowledge & build on your strengths
4.Clarify your vision and purpose
5.Set measureable goals and objectives
6.Visualize and affirm your goals and objectives
7.Take action
8.Respond to feedback
9.Persevere
10.Celebrate your success