Health Weekend!

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In my time here in Thailand I have gone through a few changes.<span><span> Starting my journey here 22 months ago I began with opening my eyes to food.<span> I had stopped being a vegetarian in a way to integrate into my community even more.<span> I had accepted greng jai as something I could never go against and thus ate anything and everything that was placed in front of me whether I wanted to or not.<span> In my village I had stopped exercising because people feared that I shouldn’t go out on my own.<span> Because of all of these factors I gained a lot of weight.<span> It didn’t help that when my American friends and I got together we weren’t out searching for the tastiest salad but instead for pizza, fries, and any other unhealthy cheesy option we could find and then top it off with some alcohol.<span>In my first year here in Thailand I gained a lot of weight.

In my second year in Thailand I decided to make a change.<span> After constantly hearing how fat I was as I biked by I knew I had no choice but to make a change for both my mental and physical health.<span> So I began doing everything I could think of starting with cutting out rice.<span> Do you know what it is like to cut out rice in a community were everything revolves around rice?<span> Every meal, a lot of desserts, EVERYTHING goes with rice so when I said no thank you I confused a lot of people.<span> When I also started saying no thank you to ALL the canomes (desserts) I also threw a bunch of people for a loop.<span> Greng Jai I kicked out the window and explained to all my friends that I was on a mission to get fit.

Dieting wasn’t the only thing I did, I began exercising like a fiend.<span> I started with some P90X, the most amazing work out video EVER, as well as training on the village elliptical that would become my best friend.<span> When my foot was healed and Boot and I parted ways, I picked up running and began training for a 10k.

In less than a year I had dropped 50lbs.<span> I had gone from my highest weight in my life (175lbs) to a weight I hadn’t seen since high school (125lbs.)<span> Of course now I was being told that I was too skinny or that I could stop exercising, or my personal favorite you can eat rice and canomes again, but I was feeling the best I had ever felt in my life.

And I like to think that I was an inspiration.<span> Within my village more people were joining me on my evening runs and at the village gym.<span> Everyone was asking me what exactly I had done to go from fat to skinny.<span> And never have I been so ok with sharing my weight.<span> If I have done nothing else, I have empowered a lot of people to go the healthy route to loose weight.<span> There were rumors I had taken pills so I dispelled all rumors and handed out recipes, free of rice, and training tips.

My villagers weren’t the only ones inspired by my new body.<span> Other volunteers were shocked to see a new me.<span> With all the research I had done, recipes I had concocted and a work out plan that was flawless because I was clocking so many hours, a friend suggested a health weekend.

I wasn’t the only one who had gotten on the healthy kick, some of these girls started out on them long before coming to Thailand.<span> So five of us decided to get together and dispense our secrets.<span> Better yet we were going to swap recipes and try a few of them out.<span> Thus Health Weekend was born.

We all came to a friend’s village on Friday with plans of eating healthy and working out and that is exactly what we did.<span> One friend mentioned that under normal circumstances we would all be getting bombed at some bar but this time around we were making kale shakes and healthy chili.

When we weren’t cooking up a storm we were working our fannies out.<span> P90X Yoga, the best yoga video ever, made us all sweat while running in the am was helping us train for a 10k we were all planning to run in the near future.

This weekend was one of the best weekend of my life.<span> I had so much fun sharing my recipes, my work outs and my research not to mention the compliments my fit new body was getting.<span> Here are some of the recipes we shared, each of them we tried and each of them delicious.<span> My all time favorite, the chickpea cookie dough.<span> Yes I know it sounds weird but this is the most amazing dessert you will ever try!

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