In our apt it is just the two of us and we have a two bedroom but it just fills like we have no free space and we have a lot of STUFF.

Have any interest, check out the webinar and get started today.

http://www.ustream.tv/embed/1023974

I started a 365 pictures project on Jan 1 as well. Check it out here: Clutterfat Challenge by Ambriss Rembulat · 365 Project.

Thanks to Erica Swallow’s Blog I came across the Online Identity Calculator and I was curious to see what my results would be and they are in!

• This Friday my sister will be down for the 4th of July weekend. I know this weekend will be packed with food, fun & sun and we’ll ring in the 4th of July near the bay. Pete, Ash, J, David, Irene & I will be celebrating with fun in the sun…either beach or park or somewhere in between. I just want to see fireworks my sis wants to go to the beach and everyone just wants to chill. Shall be a busy weekend. Following the 4th is my sisters 25th birthday so I’m sure we will be celebrating this weekend. Maybe a club? Unsure.
• At the end of the month we’re celebrating Melissa’s bachelorette in Vegas. My flight is booked and I’m ready to party. I haven’t gone clubbing in Vegas in years.
• Not sure what is in store for August, except I know there is a bridal shower for Mel. Maybe take a trip up north to see my family?
• Sept is Hawaii. =)  & Mel’s wedding in Hawaii is 9/10/11
• Oct is my bff Jaela’s wedding. 10/1/11 which is also the bf’s bday.
• Nov is my cousins wedding on 11/11/11. Then Thanksgiving.
• Dec is Christmas.

We have something every month and I’m excited to live it up in 2011.

Here is my top 5 of the 1st half of the year:

1.  New Years in San Diego with my 2 bff’s Pete & sisterhood.

2.  Visit Julian for the 1st time with the boyfriend for Valentine’s Day. The apple pie & the apple juice were to die for!

3. Birthday weekend with my family. They came down to San Diego and we were able to celebrate mine and my mom’s bday.

4. Los Angeles with the bf. Highlight was the food and Santa Monica. I loved Kalbi Burger…can’t wait to go back.

5. San Diego Fair. I always look forward to the fair every year and we went twice…$3 Tuesday and this past Saturday. Loved the Aussie Potatoes and corn on the cob. Tried the deep fried kool aid and brownies they were good but too sweet.

2011 has had it’s ups and downs but I just want to stay focused and positive. Life is too short to dwell on the bad things.

Tim Ferriss, author of the Four Hour Work Week, developed a plan on “How to Lose 20 lbs. of Fat in 30 Days…Without Any Exercise” and with some research and experimentation he made the Four Hour Body. Check out his blog for the basic plan and pick up the book to see the extensive plan he came up with.

The basic rules of the plan via his blog:

“Rule #1: Avoid “white” carbohydrates
Avoid any carbohydrate that is — or can be — white. The following foods are thus prohibited, except for within 1.5 hours of finishing a resistance-training workout of at least 20 minutes in length: bread, rice, cereal, potatoes, pasta, and fried food with breading. If you avoid eating anything white, you’ll be safe.
Rule #2: Eat the same few meals over and over again
The most successful dieters, regardless of whether their goal is muscle gain or fat loss, eat the same few meals over and over again. Mix and match, constructing each meal with one from each of the three following groups:

Proteins:
Egg whites with one whole egg for flavor
Chicken breast or thigh
Grass-fed organic beef
Pork
Legumes:
Lentils
Black beans
Pinto beans
Vegetables:
Spinach
Asparagus
Peas
Mixed vegetables

Eat as much as you like of the above food items. Just remember: keep it simple. Pick three or four meals and repeat them. Almost all restaurants can give you a salad or vegetables in place of french fries or potatoes. Surprisingly, I have found Mexican food, swapping out rice for vegetables, to be one of the cuisines most conducive to the “slow carb” diet.
Most people who go on “low” carbohydrate diets complain of low energy and quit, not because such diets can’t work, but because they consume insufficient calories. A 1/2 cup of rice is 300 calories, whereas a 1/2 cup of spinach is 15 calories! Vegetables are not calorically dense, so it is critical that you add legumes for caloric load.

Some athletes eat 6-8x per day to break up caloric load and avoid fat gain. I think this is ridiculously inconvenient. I eat 4x per day:
10am – breakfast
1pm – lunch
5pm – smaller second lunch
7:30-9pm – sports training
10pm – dinner
12am – glass of wine and Discovery Channel before bed

Rule #3: Don’t drink calories
Drink massive quantities of water and as much unsweetened iced tea, tea, diet sodas, coffee (without white cream), or other no-calorie/low-calorie beverages as you like. Do not drink milk, normal soft drinks, or fruit juice. I’m a wine fanatic and have at least one glass of wine each evening, which I believe actually aids sports recovery and fat-loss. Recent research into resveratrol supports this.

Rule #4: Take one day off per week
I recommend Saturdays as your “Dieters Gone Wild” day. I am allowed to eat whatever I want on Saturdays, and I go out of my way to eat ice cream, Snickers, Take 5, and all of my other vices in excess. I make myself a little sick and don’t want to look at any of it for the rest of the week. Paradoxically, dramatically spiking caloric intake in this way once per week increases fat loss by ensuring that your metabolic rate (thyroid function, etc.) doesn’t downregulate from extended caloric restriction. That’s right: eating pure crap can help you lose fat. Welcome to Utopia.”

If you could see from the plan it’s a pretty strict diet for people who love carbs & variety so at first I was reluctant to try the program but I had read about it on Zen Habits and my sister who is a personal trainer tried it along with her boyfriend. All 3 lost weight using the program and my sister and her boyfriend did not fully follow the plan but adopted the main principles. It wasn’t until my boyfriend told me he read about it on Gizmodo and he wanted to try it that I thought it was realistic. I’ve found that having an accountability partner is a helpful with both eating better and working out.

We decided to start it at the beginning of May so on Sunday , May 8, we went to the grocery store and brought a list of the items we needed to purchase which helped us to keep on track.

We recently purchased a crock pot so to start off our new diet I found a recipe for a slow carb friendly beef stew. For breakfast I made boiled eggs, lunch was the beef stew I made in the crock pot, and for dinner we made a burrito bowl sans the carbs. While I found myself wanting dairy the cheat day is what makes me somewhat confident in being able to continue this for 6 out 7 days a week. Ferris says a cheat day isn’t an option in order to help your metabolism and so on cheat day I get so excited and my boyfriend and I plan our days around eating. It’s ridiculous but seriously it’s the simple things in life. haha

If you do think about starting the program here are some things I found helpful starting this program -

Meal Planning
Bringing a list of the items you need to the grocery store
Finding someone to keep you accountable. (i.e. my boyfriend)
Finding slow carb friendly recipes to give yourself a little variety while eating the same foods weekly.

Rewind: Yesterday was my 28th Birthday – 4/27/2011. Nothing special about this birthday except it’s closer to 30 my critical age where I have set some goals I would love to accomplish i.e. being fluent in Spanish…I haven’t even started studying…being in an MBA program…I still need to take the GMAT. haha. So it’s official, today I need to get the ball rolling on my 30 before 30 because I have 730 days to get my list accomplished. Here’s to a new year ahead and to being productive!

Today to celebrate Earth Day I bought local organic food from the Green Truck (@GreenTruck_SD).

I went with the Chipotle Wahoo Fish Tacos which were yummy, I loved the pineapple salsa on top. Not only am I behind the idea that the food was local & organic I love the idea behind the truck. Some things of note:

• They run on vegetable oil – the vegetable oil they use to cook their foods.
• Their commissary kitchen is solar powered and if they generate excess energy they give back to the grid.
• All of their packaging & utensils are either recyclable or compostable.
• They compost the used utensils and packaging to use in the farms where their ingredients come from.

In honor of being a better me and contributing to a cleaner environment the boyfriend and I both have reduced meat consumption from our diets. We eat flexitarian, for health and environmental reasons. By reducing meat consumption we can (via Meatless Monday):

• REDUCE OUR CARBON FOOTPRINT. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization estimates the meat industry generates nearly one-fifth of the man-made greenhouse gas emissions that are accelerating climate change worldwide . . . far more than transportation. And annual worldwide demand for meat continues to grow. Reining in meat consumption once a week can help slow this trend.
• MINIMIZE WATER USAGE. The water needs of livestock are tremendous, far above those of vegetables or grains. An estimated 1,800 to 2,500 gallons of water go into a single pound of beef. Soy tofu produced in California requires 220 gallons of water per pound.
• HELP REDUCE FOSSIL FUEL DEPENDENCE. On average, about 40 calories of fossil fuel energy go into every calorie of feed lot beef in the U.S. Compare this to the 2.2 calories of fossil fuel energy needed to produce one calorie of plant-based protein. Moderating meat consumption is a great way to cut fossil fuel demand.

I also bring my own bags to the grocery store & farmers market, don’t purchase bottled water – I bought a BPA free plastic water bottle for work/home, any cans or bottles that we do have we recycle.

We’ve made simple changes and I hope to implement more like composting and only buying local organic and seasonal fruits and vegetables. I’d like to also eventually only buy organic/grass fed meat…working on it but it’s pretty expensive for us right now.

What’s even cooler is I work at a LEED certified building so we implement quite a few “green” practices at work as well.

Hope you can too. Check: http://www.earthday.org/ or http://green.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia_Green for more information on Earth Day and living a more “green” lifestyle.

]]> http://thisisambriss.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/happy-earth-day/feed/ 0 arembulat Share photos on twitter with Twitpic http://thisisambriss.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/one-day-without-shoes/ http://thisisambriss.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/one-day-without-shoes/#comments Wed, 06 Apr 2011 06:39:37 +0000 Ambriss http://thisisambriss.wordpress.com/?p=909 ]]>

Today was Tom’s One Day Without Shoes

The day was about awareness and how something that we take for granted…wearing shoes is such an important part of life and health. We take it for granted because it was even a challenge to not wear shoes today…I had to wear them at work and I actually didn’t see anyone participate at work but it was cool to follow the trending topic on Twitter, #withoutshoes and to see all the cool videos posted on the One Day Without Shoes site.

It was awesome how many companies participated like Nordstrom’s Corporate Office in Seattle, Saatchi & Saatchi in LA, Microsoft in WA, Google in the bay area

If you don’t know why shoes are so important (via the Tom’s website):

•A leading cause of disease in developing countries is soil-transmitted diseases, which can penetrate the skin through bare feet. Wearing shoes can help prevent these diseases, and the long-term physical and cognitive harm they cause.

•Wearing shoes also prevents feet from getting cuts and sores. Not only are these injuries painful, they also are dangerous when wounds become infected.

•Many times children can’t attend school barefoot because shoes are a required part of their uniform. If they don’t have shoes, they don’t go to school. If they don’t receive an education, they don’t have the opportunity to realize their potential.

Support Tom’s One for One shoe movement and other companies who give back.

]]> http://thisisambriss.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/one-day-without-shoes/feed/ 0 arembulat onedaywithout http://thisisambriss.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/having-a-case-of-the-mondays/ http://thisisambriss.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/having-a-case-of-the-mondays/#comments Tue, 05 Apr 2011 06:11:29 +0000 Ambriss http://thisisambriss.wordpress.com/?p=907 ]]> We got some bad news yesterday. My grandmother was suffering from dementia and her health was slowly deteriorating within the last year and yesterday she passed. While I was aware of the situation and it was an expected death it left me in a sad mood. RIP Grandma Ann.

Today was a long day. Work was busy like every Monday is and it went by slow…I guess because I had other things on my mind. It’s hard for me to be away from my family during times like these. Last year around this time we lost my cousin so April has just not been a great month, even though it is my birthday month (we buried my cousin on my bday last year). While I feel down, the point of this entry was to say while I may have been having a ‘Case of the Mondays’, life happens and I got through the day and I’m hoping to make tomorrow better.

Tomorrow is ‘One Day Without Shoes’ and the San Diego Padres home opener and block party. While I won’t be able to participate in either because of work I will be there in spirit. And I am participating in Virtually Without Shoes so cheers, I hope a lot of people participate because I stand behind Tom’s as a company and I wish I could go without shoes at the Padres block party…oh well I can’t wait to see pictures and hear stories about all the cool activities. I have to work and will volunteering at a food bank which both require shoes but I will def be going without shoes afterwards. =)

]]> http://thisisambriss.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/having-a-case-of-the-mondays/feed/ 0 arembulat http://thisisambriss.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/902/ http://thisisambriss.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/902/#comments Tue, 05 Apr 2011 05:56:59 +0000 Ambriss http://thisisambriss.wordpress.com/?p=902 ]]>
(via Kris Atomic) Love this. I get this all the time…people ask me to smile or if I’m tired…unfortunately no, it’s just my face. haha.

]]> http://thisisambriss.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/902/feed/ 0 arembulat krisatomic-cheeruplove