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Healthy Living – Day 18

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Last night I woke up out of a sound sleep at 2am with my heart POUNDING.  It wasn’t like the pounding of anxiety or even being frightened.  It felt like my heart was trying to fly out of my chest — on the right side.  I had to wake up a little bit before I realized that my heart isn’t even on that side of my body, but nonetheless it scared me. 

I haven’t been following my healthy living plan very well this week.  I accidentally bought peach tea on Monday instead of unsweetened and didn’t realize until I had a sip.  After that, it just went downhill.  Sometimes it was little things like eating rigatoni whose sauce was sure to have added sugar in it.  Other times, I just visited my coworkers that give out candy and grabbed some.  I have been working out less this week too.  I had to stay late for a meeting at work on Tuesday and by the time I got home, it was too dark to walk.  On Thursday, the snow was falling so heavily, I figured it would be dangerous to walk on the road.  On Friday morning, I never got my e-mail with my strength training video on it.  To be honest, I have been pretty self-loathing about my inability to follow my diet and exercise plan this week.  I don’t know what’s wrong with me!  All of the pain caused by my weight, needing to lose weight so I can have another baby, and needing to lower my cholesterol should be enough to motivate me to lose weight, exercise, and eat healthy!

When I awoke in the middle of the night with my heart pounding, I immediately felt like I wasn’t doing enough to fix my cholesterol levels.  My sister did some research on diets to reduce cholesterol and it seems that the only one that actually shows anything definitive was the Mediterranean diet, of which I knew very little.  A few internet searches showed me that I wasn’t going to like it much.  One of them had a sample diet.  There was a salad for dinner almost every night.  I’m not a big fan of salads for a multitude of reasons.

I went online and found a few books on the Mediterranean diet.  I looked at the one that was the best seller.  It was even rated for 4.5 stars.  I read the one-star reviews.  They complained that all of the food took a really long time to cook and required ingredients that were not readily available in most grocery stores.  I live in a rural area, so the odds were, the same thing would happen to me.  I found another book instead that has recipes that can be made in 30 minutes. 

I bought and read the book today.  It also had a brief explanation of the diet at the beginning.  It’s pretty simple.  Half of the plate should be vegetables of some sort, a quarter should be protein, a quarter should be whole grains.  Fruit can be for dessert.  They also said fish and seafood should be consumed at least twice per week, beans/legumes should be consumed daily, poultry is fine, and that red meat should be only once a week.  Most of the dairy allowed are eggs, greek yogurt, and goat cheese. Sugars are kept to a minimum and occur only in fruit and honey.  The only bread seems to be pita bread and “crusty whole wheat” bread.  I’m not sure where to find it, but I suppose I could figure out how to bake it if I have the time.  I also put out a Facebook post, announcing to my family that I would be following this diet and to do what they can to help me stick with it. Right now, we’re working with the food we have until I get paid again.  Nonetheless, I did okay for dinner tonight: parmesan encrusted pork chops, balsamic broccoli and mushrooms, and white rice (we don’t have brown). A new week is starting, so I just need to pick myself back up again and keep on going.

Starting weight: 239.0 lbs
Current weight: 237.6 lbs


Book Review: Empowering Your Life with Wicca

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Title: Empowering Your Life with Wicca

Author: Sirona Knight

Pages: 293

Genre: Self-help, religious (Wicca)

After a brief introduction on some unnumbered pages, the book starts off with the first chapter: “The First Empowering Step: Setting Your Empowerment Goals”.  It has a number of stories of people who improved their situations, a guide on creating sacred space, magic tools and focals, empowering your magical tools, the magic circle, empowering your circle, and closing the magic circle. Then it goes into goals and patters, how to set your empowerment goals, with a number of examples using stories and anecdotes. In this chapter, there is “The First Empowering Step: Love Meditation”, which is kind of confusing, since the chapter is supposed to be the first empowering step which is setting your goals.  Then I read on and realized it’s broken into different types of goals: love, health, and prosperity.  Each of these has a meditation, affirmation and prayer, how to create a sacred space for your goal, a ritual, and an oracle.

Chapter 2 is on creating your empowerment plan. This and every following chapter has another step to reaching your goals. Each chapter has a small amount of instruction, a few anecdotes or stories, and the following for each goal: love, health, and prosperity.  Each step also has a meditation, affirmation and prayer, how to create a sacred space for your goal, a ritual, and an oracle for each type of goal.

Page 265 starts the appendices with appendix 1 on empowering Gods and Goddesses. Appendix B has a list of empowering crystals and gemstones. Appendix C has empowering magical tools. Appendix D lists empowering herbs, plants, trees, and flowers. Appendix E shows some magical symbols and is followed by the bibliography and index.

Verdict: 4/10

This is a great book for someone who has a lot of time to do rituals, guided meditations, and updating their altar and keeping sacred space.  It is also a great book for someone who wants to spend a significant amount of time doing meditations and rituals.  It was well-researched with some great guided meditations and rituals. The anecdotes made it a fun read and helped illustrate some points, but some readers might see it as “fluff” to lengthen each chapter.

However, it is my opinion that if you want to improve love, health, or money in your life, you can cast a spell or two, but a better use of your time would be actually following a plan to improve those aspects of your life.  For example, if I wanted to not be fat (which I do), I could follow the guided meditations and rituals of all 12 steps of this book.  Or I could spend that time cooking healthy meals and exercising.  That’s why this book got a low rating.  It’s not that the book was bad.  It does what it says it will do.  I just saw the methods offered as being too lengthy for the desired end result.  And if I had a dollar for every time the author used the word “empowering”, I’d be rich.

Book Review: Sabbats

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Title: Sabbats

Author: Edain McCoy

Pages: 355

Genre: Non-fiction, informational, religious (Wiccan)

After the table of contents, this book starts off with its first chapter “The Pageantry and Meaning of the sabbats”.  It is sort of an introduction and sort of a catch-all for various things the author wanted to include that may or may not relate to the subject area. It goes through the Wheel of the Year and explains which holidays are practiced in which Pagan cultures around the world. It takes a brief detour from sabbats to go into ritual tools, the elements, how to make a robe, the role of ritual and about this book.

After the introductory chapter, there is one for each sabbat, which is about 20-30 pages long each.  Each chapter contains 4-8 pages on the historical context of each sabbat, a few recipes, a few crafts with complete how-to guides, an idea for a ritual, and ideas for activities.  Sometimes there is one or two music suggestions for each sabbat as well.

On page 201, part 2 of the book begins.  It is entitled “Rituals”. It contains 60 pages of sabbat rituals for groups and solitaries.  Finally, we have the appendices. Appendix 1 has an outline for ritual construction.  Appendix 2 has the elements of spell construction.  Appendix 3 has a glossary.  Appendix 4 is a resources and merchants guide.  Appendix 5 contains the instructions for making felt sabbat calendars. Appendix 6 has various correspondences such as other names, symbols, colors, animals, deities, activities, stones, foods, taboos, plants, meaning, attunement teas, ritual oils, and mythical creatures associated with each sabbat.  Appendix 7 has Pagan symbols with their meanings.  Appendix 8 has cross stitch patterns.

At the end is the bibliography and selected readings followed by the index.

Verdict: 10/10

This book actually contains more than you really need in a book about the sabbats, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  It gave a ton of information about each of the sabbats, a bunch of recipes, ways to celebrate culturally, crafts to make, sample rituals for both solitaries or groups.  I was annoyed initially at not getting a generic list of activities and or Gods/Goddesses associated with each sabbat, but the appendices had these in them too!

I actually found this book early on in my spiritual journey.  I was really excited because it contained pronunciations of the different sabbats.  I wanted to talk to my family about the holidays I was practicing, but didn’t know how to say them!

Book Review: The Crystal Bible

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Title: The Crystal Bible – A definitive guide to crystals

Author: Judy Hall

Pages: 400

Genre: Non-fiction, informational

The first 38 pages include the table of contents and some background information. It touches on how they’re formed and how to select your own crystals.

Starting on page 38 in alphabetical order, they dedicate 2-6 pages per type of rock starting with Agate and ending with Zoisite on page 322. Each entry has a color photo of each stone. The entry also includes a list of colors, a description of the appearance, the rarity, and source. Then it goes into the energetic attributes, healing, and position for each stone.

The final pages include several pages on the different shapes of crystals, a quick reference guide about other associations with the stones such as chakras and the zodiac, and an index.

Verdict: 10/10 – This book does exactly what it says. I would recommend this to anyone looking to know more about gemstones, looking to do energy-work with gemstones, or looking to identify gemstones.

Book Review: The Simple Sabbat

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Title: The Simple Sabbat – A Family Friendly Approach to the Eight Pagan Holidays

Author: M. Flora Peterson

Pages: 154

The first 22 pages were filled with information about the author, table of contents, dedication, prologue, and introduction.

The first chapter of 2 pages explains the wheel of the year. Chapter 2 delves into ritual circle formats. It offers a family-friendly version of rituals.

The remaining chapters are on the Sabbats. Each Sabbat offers the following sections: time, meaning of the season, God, Goddess, colors, altar, activities, an incense recipe, an oil recipe, a food recipe, a ritual, and sometimes a craft. There are also a few pages for notes at the end of each chapter.

The book really ends on page 138, but there are several pages about the author’s other books.

Verdict: 7/10 – I liked a lot of the activity ideas. There were a lot of references to her YouTube channel (probably too many references) for craft ideas and more recipes. Many of the rituals weren’t terribly family friendly. I guess it depends how old your kids are. I would have liked to see more ways to involve your family in ritual. There was also just one to two sentences describing the purpose of each holiday. If I were a beginner, I would have liked more information.

I also tried the recipe for skull bread. They tried to make it accessible for vegans or those with allergies, but mine didn’t taste or look very good, despite my baking experience.

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