Lagom

Lagom

This little Swedish word says it all.

Not too much nor too little.   Just the right amount.  Perfect balance.

Such is the key to achieving a gracefully fit life.  In the past I have strived to find balance through too much exercise and, correspondingly, a surplus of food.  This approach left me strong and at a healthy weight but constantly concerned about that delicate ratio of calories in to calories out.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE to exercise and I LOVE to exercise a lot.  I DON’T, however, like exercising to seek balance in my calorie needs.  This strategy leads to exercising out of guilt or concern over my last or next meal, an unhealthy relationship with food indeed.

My on-going intention with this blog and with with my personal life is to practice a lifestyle of lagom and gracefulfitness.  For me, this translates into eating wholesome food when my body tells me to fuel it, eating not too much or too little, making exercise goals and more or less sticking to them because I love to move my body and I get great stress release from exercise, and practicing gratitude each and every day for good food and a strong body.

I love this quote from the “10 Thoughts on Whole Living Page” from November’s issue of Whole Living Magazine

“Try seeing exercise as freedom, as opposed to obligation.”

On that note, MISSION: Yoga 5 for 5 is going and flowing 🙂

It’s the 4th day now and I find myself looking forward to my yoga from the moment I wake up.  Today I am going to try a session from exercise tv, probably about 30 minutes long, we’ll see what pops up.

Back in May I developed my own yoga practice that I love and is perfectly suited to morning or night, as a warm-up or cool-down from another activity or on it’s own, and only takes 15-20 minutes to complete.  You can check it out here.  I plan on expanding it to include a few seating and lying postures over this MISSION.

Yesterday I finally got around to making another batch of kimchi.  We ran out a week or so ago and I have been missing it ever since, it is such an easy addition to any meal and a great way to really amp up your intake of probiotics and oh-so-healthy enzymes.

I started out with two giant heads of greens, a bok choy and a napa cabbage.  These green beauties came direct from the farm I grew up care of my dad and stepmom last Friday.

First I chopped up the greens, salted them liberally, covered them with water, and left the bowl in the fridge overnight.

The next day I used the food processor the mince garlic and ginger and to chop carrots and daikon.  The greens were drained and the other veggies, plus some green onions, were added to the bowl.

Last time (and the first time) I made kimchi I added a spoon or two of sugar but this time I blended a gala apple and threw that into the mix for sweetness.  Also into the mix went LOTS of crushed red pepper flakes and a bit more salt (I just tasted the greens and stopped salting when they were really salty but not disgustingly so).  I mixed it all up with my hands, squeezing as I went to help draw out the natural veggie juices, creating a brine.

Note: if your skin is sensitive or peppers exceptionally hot you may want to wear gloves for this part.

I packed the goods into a ceramic crock and set it in the pantry.

The fermentation starts right away and it will be ready to start eating on Saturday in all of it’s spicy, crunchy, sour yum!

Yea, it’s yogatime!

Exercising today is definitely a freedom rather than an obligation.  How about for you?  Do you get caught up in the obligation of exercise?  Forget about a balanced program for a second, if you had to choose one exercise to do for the rest of your life, what would it be?  That’s a really hard decision for me but I would have to say dancing, which is kind of cheating because the possibilities are so wide open with dance ;).