Hi everyone,

Just thought I’d share an expe­ri­ence with you from this morning’s spin class. I guess you could say it really threw me for a loop. I’d love to get your feed­back so please if you have an opin­ion, one way or another, I’d love to hear it.

So, the class got off to its nor­mal start, with a nice, easy warmup, as per usual. I scanned the room to do my daily head count and I noticed a woman who I’d never seen before, tex­ting, while rid­ing the bike. I could see the other mem­bers look­ing at her and kind of shak­ing their heads but she remained obliv­i­ous. I decided to tell her in a very light hearted man­ner that it was time to put the phone away. Expect­ing a gig­gle from her, she instead mut­tered some­thing under her breath (I’m sure it wasn’t very kind), picked her­self off the bike and pro­ceeded to march out of the class. Not exactly the reac­tion I was hop­ing for. I felt ter­ri­ble because I didn’t in any way want to insult or offend her.

After think­ing about it and play­ing it over in my mind a few times (jus a few), I’ve real­ized that I actu­ally did noth­ing wrong. The real prob­lem is we’ve all become a bit crazy when it comes to our freak­ing phones!

Now I totally under­stand that alot of us need to be acces­si­ble and so we keep our phones nearby, just in case. But really, while spin­ning?? Is that nec­es­sary? I’m also of the opin­ion that phones do not have a place at the din­ner table either. What could pos­si­bly be that impor­tant that it pre­vents you from shar­ing a meal with oth­ers or in this morning’s case, work­ing hard in a spin class?

For me, my work­outs are some­thing that I truly rel­ish. It’s time for me and me alone, with­out the dis­trac­tions of kids, hus­band, work, texts, emails and phone calls. It’s a time to recon­nect with my body and clear the mind of all the clutter.

I urge you all to put the phone away, or at least on vibrate, and give your work­outs your undi­vided atten­tion. Make your­self THE pri­or­ity at least for one hour in your busy day.

On another com­pletely unre­lated topic, my daugh­ter and I were in the mood for a crunchy snack last night and made a batch of deli­cious spiced chick­peas last night. We sea­soned ours with garam masala (a blend of Indian spices) but I’ve also made them with Chi­nese Five Spice and they were yummy too.

They’re tasty on their own, tossed in a salad, or as a savoury gar­nish to a soup.

Spiced Chick­peas

Ingredients:

1 can chick­peas, drained well

2 tsp olive oil

1−1÷2 tsp garam masala

¹⁄₂ tsp sea salt

Pre­heat oven to 425 degrees.

On a foil-​lined bak­ing sheet, toss chick­peas with remain­ing ingredients.

Bake in oven for approx­i­mately 45 – 50 min­utes or until golden brown and crunchy.

I also wanted to show you these new wraps that I found, believe it or not, at Wal­mart. I don’t typ­i­cally eat bread, wraps or pita too often but some­times I enjoy a lit­tle carby sub­stance with my egg white omelet. These wraps are higher in fibre than the usual whole wheat ver­sions and are only 140 calo­ries for a LARGE wrap. The nutri­tion­als are pretty good too.