One of my great passions besides dance is food. I love food. Food is my favorite. I like meats, poultry, veggies, fish, breads, grains, fruits... I'll try anything once, and I'm probably inclined to like it. I love to cook, I love to eat, I love to research recipes, I love nutrition and food science... if I could have a cooking show right now, I would.
Here are some of my favorite tips to keeping your food healthy and delicious at the same time, to make sure you get the right nutrition to keep your dance engine humming along!
1) Creamy recipe? Use Greek Yogurt!
Replace cream, milk, sour cream, half-and-half, or anything similar with Greek Yogurt. It's delicious, nutritious, and probiotic.
2) Ditch the sugar, embrace the honey!
Honey comes in so many delightful varieties... orange honey is a great way to add Vitamin C when using it to replace sugar. Clover honey is like kissing an elf. Sourwood honey is a great replacement for syrup and butter on pancakes. And just plain honey pairs well with anything... try it in your coffee. I'm serious. Honey is also a natural antibiotic, so slather it freely on any of your dance blisters or sword-balancing stab wounds. It also has a better Glycemic Index rating than sugar, preventing the dreaded "sugar rush" and "sugar crash", and you tend to use less honey because it's sweeter than table sugar.
3) Add your own salt!
I buy no- or low-sodium canned vegetables and stocks. This isn't because Salt is Evil... it's necessary to support life! Also, it makes food delicious! What I don't like is sneaky salt. I'd rather salt my own recipes to the appropriate level instead of dumping salt on top of more salt.
3) Put down the frying pan!
Okay, I love fried, crispy, greasy anything. If it's fried, it's awesome. Especially if it's fried in butter... But there are many other ways to get delicious crispy texture while keeping fried food at a minimum. Saute vegetables in cooking spray, or roll meat in breadcrumbs and bake it. Roast your vegetables in the broiler or over an open flame, if you have it.
4) Healthy does NOT mean bland!
Just because something is good for you doesn't mean it has to have a weak flavor. Add spices, herbs, vinegar, even a dash of alcohol (red wine + literally anything = mmmmm...) to create a rich flavor. In my house, we go through garlic and lemon juice the same way some people go through bread and milk.
5) Cook to WIN
Yes, you can win at cooking. Make big batches of whatever you're making, so you have leftovers for another day, or just to bring to work for lunch. Set yourself up for success so you can keep dancing.
6) Weight, what?
Don't worry about the number on the scale! There are dancers of all shapes and sizes at all levels in all styles. Some of these tips might help you lose weight, if that's your goal, but the most important thing is to take care of and honor the body you're in. Dancers need fuel, and they need the best fuel they can get to keep it going during practices, drills, warm ups, and performances. The one and only Grace always tells us to dance in the body we are in, and that's wonderful advice... to work on improving, but not to kill yourself trying to imitate someone else. All of these food tips are merely to make the body you have, own, and move as efficient and well-fueled as it can be.
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Monday, September 22, 2014
Friday, March 7, 2014
My Boogie Shoes!
Barefoot dancing is great. It's all about being connected to the earth, being in full contact with the dance surface, using the natural strength in your feet to manage turns, power shimmies, and create your lines.
Not for me!
The second-most-fucked-up parts of my body are my feet (you don't want to know what the first is). My mother used to have a saying... "Italian shoes do not agree with my German feet!" I inherited her width, but I also got my father's inverted arches, and I have my own problems with callouses. YAY! Couple that with plantar fasciitis and a propensity towards plantar's warts, and there will be no dancing barefoot for me. Bad, bad plan.
I am stupidly jealous of ballerinas in their pointe shoes. I know for a fact that the feet IN those shoes are fucked, but the shoes make their feet look so elegant and delicate. The same cannot be said for me, sadly. I dance in a pair of Leo's jazz sandals. They are... not cute. In fact, they look downright geriatric.
Fortunately, I dance ATS. As our dear Grace says, "You're wearing two skirts and a pair of pantaloons. Nobody's going to be looking at your feet." Thank goodness, because the friggin' sandals make my feet look like duck flippers. Long, wide, and really dorky.
However, as aesthetically challenged as these poor shoes are, GODDAMN do they work great for me! The heel keeps me elevated off of my crappy arches, but not so much that exacerbates the plantar fasc. The elastic gore stretches to accommodate the wideness. Even the little elastic tab connecting sole to heel has a purpose for me... it hits me in the exact spot where the adductor muscle bulges out, so it gets to chill out in open air and not be constricted.
(For those of you who are wondering what the last bit means... basically, where most people have the arch of their foot, my feet are completely flush to the ground. I make bigass footprints. And the part where you all have arches? My muscle bulges outward. I've told them that feet don't go like that. They haven't listened.)
I wish I could reliably wear a pair of shoes that felt great and looked fierce, but I've always had to choose between style and substance. I'm finally at a point in my life that substance is starting to feel a fuckton better than style, and as long as nobody can see them, I'm not embarrassed to wear grandma jazz shoes instead of a pair of bedazzled foot panties. And so long as they make yoga socks, nobody else has to see them either.
Not for me!
The second-most-fucked-up parts of my body are my feet (you don't want to know what the first is). My mother used to have a saying... "Italian shoes do not agree with my German feet!" I inherited her width, but I also got my father's inverted arches, and I have my own problems with callouses. YAY! Couple that with plantar fasciitis and a propensity towards plantar's warts, and there will be no dancing barefoot for me. Bad, bad plan.
I am stupidly jealous of ballerinas in their pointe shoes. I know for a fact that the feet IN those shoes are fucked, but the shoes make their feet look so elegant and delicate. The same cannot be said for me, sadly. I dance in a pair of Leo's jazz sandals. They are... not cute. In fact, they look downright geriatric.
Fortunately, I dance ATS. As our dear Grace says, "You're wearing two skirts and a pair of pantaloons. Nobody's going to be looking at your feet." Thank goodness, because the friggin' sandals make my feet look like duck flippers. Long, wide, and really dorky.
However, as aesthetically challenged as these poor shoes are, GODDAMN do they work great for me! The heel keeps me elevated off of my crappy arches, but not so much that exacerbates the plantar fasc. The elastic gore stretches to accommodate the wideness. Even the little elastic tab connecting sole to heel has a purpose for me... it hits me in the exact spot where the adductor muscle bulges out, so it gets to chill out in open air and not be constricted.
(For those of you who are wondering what the last bit means... basically, where most people have the arch of their foot, my feet are completely flush to the ground. I make bigass footprints. And the part where you all have arches? My muscle bulges outward. I've told them that feet don't go like that. They haven't listened.)
I wish I could reliably wear a pair of shoes that felt great and looked fierce, but I've always had to choose between style and substance. I'm finally at a point in my life that substance is starting to feel a fuckton better than style, and as long as nobody can see them, I'm not embarrassed to wear grandma jazz shoes instead of a pair of bedazzled foot panties. And so long as they make yoga socks, nobody else has to see them either.
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