Virtual Breakfast Date

Posted on August 8, 2016 by Alison @ Daily Moves and Grooves

virtual breakfast date

…I would usually hug you before we sit down, but I’ve been sick these past few days, so we’ll nix that for now.

…I would be eating leftover green banana pancakes via The Healthy Maven that I made yesterday.

topped with plain Greek yogurt, “My Maine Squeeze” almond butter, and peanut butter + glass o’ almond milk on the side

…I would ask you if you’ve been watching the Olympics. It’s funny; I feel like I become more sedentary as I watch ALL the sports all the time on TV. I’ve been enjoying the gymnastics, tennis, beach volleyball, diving, and swimming the most so far!

…I would take a second to fan over Simone Biles and Oksana Chusovitina, that 41-year-old gymnast from Uzbekistan who is STILL KILLING IT at the Olympics. Literally almost three times older than some of the gymnasts competing.

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I just want to finish everything I do in life with gymnastics arms from now on

…I would tell you that I leave for Ireland to study abroad in less than a month, and I have very few (if any) emotions about it. I tell people that I’m excited, which is half true, because I’m looking forward to the adventures and travel. But I’m also NOT excited, because I know how much I’m going to miss my family at home and friends back in Boston. I’m just gonna go and see what happens, honestly!

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I just need to start thinking about what to pack…and stuff like that.

…I would recommend that you read Kylie’s post about why she hasn’t weighed herself in 2.5 years. Whether you have a history of an eating disorder or not, this is a great read for anyone with body image issues (which is most of us living in an affluent society). Kylie rocks.

…I would tell you that my new veggie obsession is Thai “pun” (wraps, not funny puns). Lettuce + some kind of protein + cucumber + cherry tomatoes + Thai basil + cilantro + mint + spicy peanut sauce. The fresh herbs are ESSENTIAL.

For this week’s version, Madre grilled up some lemongrass-scallion-black pepper pork patties. For her peanut sauce, she mixes her classic spring roll dipping sauce (similar to this recipe) with peanut butter to taste.

I’ve also had the combo on a big bed of salad greens.

JUST DO IT.

…I would tell you that I think baking skills are a prerequisite for becoming a physical therapist. All the the treats that the PTs bring in to work are phenomenal. Like these cookies and cream cupcakes for someone’s birthday:

oreo on the bottom, chocolate cupcake, homemade cookies and cream frosting, mini oreo on top

Other treats this summer have included cake pops, homemade chocolate chip cookies, the moistest (sorry) banana bread ever, and pound cake. #help

…I would perpetuate Asian stereotypes for giggles.

Italian pasta originated from Asian noodles anyway

…I would tell you that I got to hang out with Daliza twice this weekend! She took me to the movie Cafe Society on Thursday night, which I really enjoyed (check it out in smaller, indie movie theaters!). It stars Steve Carrell, Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, and Blake Lively.

Then on Saturday I met up with her and our other high school friend Apaula to see our high school chorus teacher at one of his gigs. Fun to catch up with all of them!

…I would gush over the weather we had last week and hope that it continues into this week.

…I would tell you that eats at home recently have been on point. It’s been fun eating out these past ~~few~~ several weekends, but I loooooove eating home cooked meals.

classic overnight oats

Mom’s comforting meal on Friday night after a long, sick day at work: whole wheat spaghetti with tomato sauce, grilled spicy chicken, and fresh basil

banana nectarine hot oatmeal with “My Maine Squeeze” almond butter

classic avocado egg toast with sriracha

delicious panini a la Madre: whole wheat roll with turkey, swiss, greens, homemade carrot and radish pickles, spicy hummus, and sriracha *drool*

artichoke hummus that I finally popped open from Stowe, VT with baby carrots

…I would tell you that moves and grooves were low-key this weekend since I was sick. Thursday was yoga, Friday was rest, Saturday was Pilates + one day of the 100s challenge (sort of…I didn’t do all the sit-ups), and Sunday was some walking and random playtime on a playground.

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A post shared by Alison Yeung, PT, DPT (@alison_grooves)

…I would tell you that it’s already been a year since I went to the local Indian festival with Rachel! I went with Ben and Pop yesterday, where we shared some Indian grub and walked around the park.

…I would ask you:

Which Olympics sports are you following?

If you studied abroad, how did you feel before going?

What is your favorite way to eat vegetables lately?

Have you seen any good movies recently?

Sandwiches Taste Better Outdoors + Weekly Moves and Grooves

Posted on June 26, 2015 by Alison @ Daily Moves and Grooves

It’s TRUE.

When Jen from Peanut Butter Runner said, “sandwiches taste better on the beach,” I started hoping that I could experience a better-tasting sandwich based on the location at which I ate it.

Even though I didn’t go to the beach yesterday, I did eat lunch outside under the hot sun. The cars passing by sounded like waves washing ashore (Boston University Beach reference!), so it was close enough.

whole wheat pita with avocado, hummus, pork souvlaki, mint, and sriracha

Lo and behold, my sandwich tasted ten times better than any sandwich I’ve eaten indoors this summer. Any psychologists out there wanna get a PhD in this matter? I can be one of your experimental subjects.

Another reason it could have tasted that much better is the fact that I had an unexpected day off my internship. I was only there for an hour before the PTs sent me home, since they forgot to tell me that they had a 2 hour meeting in the middle of the day.

Since it was such a nice day, I decided to walk around and explore the town. My internship is in a cute, quaint town half an hour away from my house, so I was excited to have a spontaneous date with myself. 😀

I felt like the Barefoot Contessa walking into a boutique cookware shop and an organic, local market. I also wish I was a better food photographer so I could have an excuse to get ALL THE PRETTY THINGS.

I went home and napped for almost two hours. Excuse me?

I mean, I’ve usually been getting fewer than 8 hours of sleep per night, so maybe my body just wanted to catch up. But I was knocked out during this nap. I know because I don’t remember turning off my alarm after the first 45 minutes. I always feel slightly guilty when I indulge in such a long nap, but I know I need to honor my body and focus on rest this summer!

On that note, let’s move on to another edition of…

Saturday: 30 minutes pilates

Sunday: gymnastics warmup + 1 mile walk

Monday: 2 mile walk

Tuesday: 8 minute abs + messing around with dance choreography (missing dance like CRAZY this summer)

Wednesday: 20 min lower body barre + 2 mile walk

Thursday: donkey kicks and bridges + handstands

Friday: maybe a complete rest day, maybe some yoga, whatever feels right!

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Happy Friday, folks!!! Take a nap if you need it 🙂

So tell me:

Do you think food tastes better in a certain location/situation? Besides food tasting better when you’re hungry 😉

Do you like napping when possible?

How did you move this week?

10 Out of 10

Posted on July 21, 2014 by Alison @ Daily Moves and Grooves

…I’m not talking about Paul Walker (RIP).

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Even though it IS #mancrushmonday.

I’m giving a 10/10 to these past three days! My uncle has been asking us how we rate every day on this vacation on a scale from 1-10 (10 being the best), and I’ve given everything 7 or higher. Mall day was an 8 and Disney World was a 7.5, but this weekend has shown even higher ratings on my radar!

Joining the marvelous Monday party on Katie‘s blog!

Friday: Madeira Beach and Bubba Gump

Ranking: 8

This was my first time going to Madeira beach, which is on the Gulf of Mexico side of Florida. The waters are considerably warmer (like, almost HOT) than the Atlantic waters, and the waves are pretty calm. It’s two hours away, so we stopped at a Vietnamese restaurant called Ben Thanh for lunch.

Grilled pork vermicelli bowl

Power napping!

It was a perfect day to be at the beach! We swam a bit, collected shells, kicked around a soccer ball, and built a sand castle that someone ended up stealing. Hmph. We didn’t even get to take a picture of it, but it was a fabulous castle. I also attempted handstands. I flipped over three times.

Once we worked up an appetite at the beach, we cleaned up and walked over to Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. for dinner. “Run Forrest, Run!”

There are little notches under the cups so that they can hook onto each other. Magic = ruined.

I ordered the gumbo and house salad, and they were very meh. I had about three bites of the gumbo because it was WAY too salty, and the house salad was average. I ended up sharing my aunt’s seafood pasta and Daliza’s mac and cheese (so good!).

Even though we were stuffed, as we were driving home, my aunt spotted a shake shop with a really long line, so she exclaimed: “That’s gotta be a GOOD shake shop!” Sooooooo we went and got shakes there.

Mint shake for me!

I drank as much as I could, but this thing was huge, so I finished about ¾ of it. Sugar coma.

Saturday: “Staycation” with Daliza

Ranking: 8.5

While my mom took my aunt, uncle, and cousins to St. Augustine, Daliza and I slept in and stayed home for the day. We started with a leisurely breakfast and a flashback movie— Mulan (aka my hero).

After spending way to much time trying to pump up the bike wheels, we finally got to biking around my neighborhood in the hot sun.

Daliza said it felt like we were out there for 10 minutes, but we biked for about an hour before coming into the air-conditioned house for a refreshing lunch at 4 PM…Ha. Then we tried to hunt down alligators (by hunt down, I mean take a good picture of them) in the lake behind my house. We found one peeking out of the water!

Yep, that little thing in the water would be it.

I couldn’t zoom in quite far enough to get the details, but Daliza’s video camera showed that it was an alligator for sure. After a few hours of doing that plus a whole bunch of nothing, we did an hour of Pilates before hunkering down for dinner and more Disney movies. We mini-marathoned it with Hercules and Mulan II.

Sometimes it’s nice to take a vacation from hard core vacationing…if that makes sense.

Sunday: Orlando Farmers’ Market and Cocoa Beach

Ranking: 10

I finally found my 10/10 day! Yesterday started with an early morning wake-up call (read: I overslept and my mom had to barge into my room) for 8 AM Mass and a little grocery shopping. After breakfast, we all headed downtown to the Orlando Farmers’ Market!

I was overwhelmed by all the amazing food and merchandise stands there. They even had outdoor yoga classes for $5! Daliza and I might try that next Sunday. Yesterday we were just sampling all the food. ALL THE FOOD.

We also encountered some fun/ferocious/freaky animals. The swans were trying to eat my little cousin. We even saw black swans!

After eating, sweating, and repeating, we drove to Cocoa Beach. It was sunny and gorgeous when we got there, and the waves looked a whole lot more exciting than the ones at Madeira Beach. Daliza and I weren’t planning on swimming, so we didn’t bring our bathing suits. However, the water looked too enticing to pass up, so we bit the bullet and just bought new bathing suits there. Worth it! Even though the clouds started coming in and looking nasty. They just made the waves bigger for us!

Apparently there was a riptide, so we all had to be careful and not go out too far. Daliza and I just sang this song as we jumped over the waves.

All the beach fun wore us out and made us READY for dinner. It was a quick drive to “Thai Thai” restaurant for some Thai and Japanese cuisine. Sushi for me, kids meal katsu chicken for Daliza. She loved it.

Then it was time to head home, finally. But first, we made a pit stop to Abracadabra Ice Cream Factory for some liquid nitrogen ice cream!

They start with the cream/sugar base, you choose three toss-ins, and then they add the liquid nitrogen

I chose mint, oreo, and graham crackers for my ice cream concoction. We all thought the ice cream itself was just sickeningly sweet, so most of us didn’t finish. A travesty, I know. That’s enough sugar for the rest of the week.

I’m done. Peace out.

Have a wonderful day, friends!

So tell me:

About your weekend!

Do you like the beach? Waves or no waves?

What do you love the most about farmers’ markets?

Have you ever tried liquid nitrogen ice cream?

A Different Kind of Discipline

Posted on July 8, 2014 by Alison @ Daily Moves and Grooves

My moves yesterday: 45 minutes of yoga, attempting headstands (are they supposed to be harder than handstands?!), 8 minutes of abs, walking.

So basically, yoga and walking. That sounds like a nice active rest day doesn’t it? A few months— or even weeks— ago, I would say so. Now though, that’s a lot for me.

I mentioned yesterday that slower workouts need to happen right now…but didn’t I say that a couple times on the blog already? Yeah, I did. I said I wanted to slow down my workouts to help me increase body fat so that I can get my woman processes all sorted out. Then I said I wasn’t doing a good job of actually giving my body rest, so I put even more restrictions on my exercise. But I still exercised a good amount because I still had a gym membership, dance, and opportunities to work out with my friends.

To be honest, when I wrote that second post about how I wasn’t really resting correctly, I sort of gave up on the rest thing until the end of the school year. I was involved in so many activities that working out became…automatic? (For lack of a better term.)

Well now that it’s summertime, I ended my gym membership, and I’m done with dance, I’m buckling down and really (REALLY REALLY REALLY) trying to rest more. Just more, not totally. I know what you’re thinking— sure you are, girl who cried wolf.

As someone who had an eating disorder in the past, increasing the amount of food I consume has actually been the easier part of recovery. Decreasing exercise, on the other hand, has proven to be so difficult, and I honestly think that has been preventing my body from doing what it needs to do (ladies…ya know).

Why is it so difficult to not work out? For one, I simply love to move (hence the blog name). But there is also a huge culture of “discipline” in the fitness world, which can help motivate people to exercise…

…However, I feel like these kinds of messages are also guilt-trips. If I intentionally don’t work out for a couple days in a row, and I see a photo of a sweaty, flexing person on Instagram with the caption, “get it done” (or something similar), I can’t help but feel like I should get up and do burpees right then and there.

This kind of advocacy for workout discipline is great, don’t get me wrong. These “fitspiration” messages help prevent me from being a veg on the couch watching Giada and Ina on Food Network all day.

But right now, I need a sort of opposite discipline. I need the discipline to say:

No to burpees.

No to pistol squats.

No to tons of push ups.

No to running (yeah, RUNNING— the thing I don’t even like that much).

No to being out of breath.

No to pushing myself.

And I have been doing this for the past week or so. I’m not saying I’m completely resting, because I’m obviously not. I never did. It has just come to the right time for me to finally take this more seriously. Again, no doctor ever told me to stop exercising, and my doctor just told me last week that I should still be doing some sort of exercise, and I am. {I even said a few days ago that I could do a single dead hang pull-up now, but I’m pretty sure that’s mostly because of muscle memory. I use the door frame pull-up bar every time I walk by it.} Any movement right now is for my sanity— my mental health. I’m being mindful and careful all the while though.

Am I sure a decrease in working out will help out my situation? Nope. But I think my body needs the rest either way. I’ve also been eating even more.

Foooooooood.

So maybe this is just going through one ear and out the other for some of you at this point, but I’m still figuring out what the heck is happening too. Whatever it may be, for now, I’m practicing a different kind of discipline in telling myself to NOT go hard. Hold me accountable.

Weekend Confessions III

Posted on July 7, 2014 by Alison @ Daily Moves and Grooves

Hey there!

I hope you all enjoyed your weekends, whether you were celebrating the red, white, and blue or catching up on rest and relaxation! My weekend was very relaxing, but I also had a blast with my friends and family. So blessed!

Joining Katie‘s marvelous Monday!

I have so much to say about my weekend, so I’m gonna do it confession style {third edition}:

Confession #1:

On the night when we were supposed to have fireworks(the night before 4th of July), Daliza and I wanted soft serve ice cream so badly, but the nasty thunderstorm was preventing us from going to get some. So we pouted and nearly cried like 4-year-olds…

…until it stopped raining.

Score.

We’re adults, I promise.

Confession #2:

I spend a good 20+ minutes each day working on my handstand. I shall stick the dang thing. Right, Amanda?

Confession #3:

My moves have been walking, Pilates, and yoga recently. Because slower workouts just need to happen right now.

Confession #4:

I left Ben at home on 4th of July to go to a graduation party. He had just arrived from Boston for the holiday weekend, so I picked him up, brought him home, and left him there. I made him pasta salad and he napped, so he was alright. He also went over to his friend’s house, so it’s not like I completely abandoned him. 😉

Confession #5:

Italian families are so FUN. Michael had his graduation/his mom’s birthday party on the 4th, and it was a blast. Not only was the food amazing (*ahem* an Oreo+Reese’s ice cream cake— holla), but the company was even better. We played Loaded Questions of course (thanks for lending it to us, Veronica!).

Also, watching the World Cup with his family was craaaaazy. In a good way!

Confession #6:

I was so hyper on sugar when I got home from the graduation party (ice cream + cookies=Alison is off the walls). It was too dark to walk outside and I wasn’t really feeling yoga, so I literally walked up and down my stairs for a good 20 minutes. I prayed while I was at it, because…~~I’m insane for walking up and down my stairs at 11 PM~~ why not?

Confession #7:

This weekend was the first time I went to the pool this summer. I went because the kids I babysit wanted me to join them and their parents. My skin doesn’t like chlorine, so I didn’t want to go at first, but I caved (their little faces!!!) and went. It was fun! And COLD. Next time, I won’t go when the sun is setting.

I just didn’t put my head underwater because a) I would have been extra cold; b) I still had makeup on— don’t wanna scare people looking like a raccoon.

Confession #8:

My parents are like teenagers updating their social media pages.

It’s okay, they needed to post real time updates for their anniversary celebration!

Confession #9:

The food at the restaurant we went to for their anniversary was pretty terrible. My gargantuan crab cake had lots of fillers and no flavor. Dad’s “blood orange mascarpone cheesecake” was rubbery. Mom’s “panna cotta” was curdled. The food was clearly not fresh, which was a bummer.

Blood orange mascarpone cheesecake was actually just a funky rainbow sherbet sponge

#firstworldproblems

Oh well. Ya win some, ya lose some.

Confession #10:

I turned into a huge sports fan this weekend. All the World Cup and Wimbledon excitement has me yelling at the television like my dad. I do usually like watching tennis, but this is a once-every-four-years occurrence when it comes to soccer.

I know, I’m a fake fan.

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I definitely have so many more confessions, but I think ten is quite enough, huh? So despite the gnarly food at that restaurant, this weekend was absolutely splendid!

Hope you all have a marvelous day!

So tell me:

How did you celebrate 4th of July?

Have you gone swimming this summer?

Have you ever eaten food at a restaurant that was just nasty?

Daily Moves and Grooves

pray. eat. move. groove.

Tag Archives: Pilates

Virtual Breakfast Date

Sandwiches Taste Better Outdoors + Weekly Moves and Grooves

10 Out of 10