Monday Meals…a photo montage

Just cause I got my act together….here’s a photo montage of my first day on the TIU plan.  It’s food…healthy style.  🙂

Breakfast pancake

Blueberry & tea Snack

Lunch wrap

Its juice…but chunky!

Dinner wraps & roasted veggies

And that was Monday….what’ll today bring…hmmmm   🙂

See ya later

Cathy

Monday recap

So I’ve got a few weeks before I’ll be pumping my arms and legs while running over in Disney World….eeeeeee!  I wasn’t that worried, until HunBun says to me while we are brushing our teeth this morning “so, uh, you going to be ready to run in a few weeks?”  Uh, What???  Now I’m thinking- well I haven’t been as consistent with my running since I got this cold and my schedule has been ridiculous; am I ready?   Blah!

Hey what you gonna do right?  Just do the best I can every day – get myself moving every day until we leave then make sure to do some jogs once we get there to get acclimated.  It’s all about having fun on these races so I’m not overly dwelling on it.  Although I will admit I’d love to improve my time from last month’s Tinkerbell.  That was a pooter for me… 😦

A while ago I joined the Tone It Up program…or I should say I bought the program and had not made the full commitment to the program in any type of consistent manner.  So this weekend I made a commitment to myself that I can give the TIU plan 5 days (doing the Beach Body version) to see what it can do for me.  I’m not overweight…I just want to tighten up in some spots and lose that layer of cover over my muscles.  I like my arms and think they’re pretty good – but would love to have Jillian Michaels arms or Linda Hamilton a la Terminator

I mean seriously tight!  I got a little more squish around some of the edges you know.  🙂  I’ve always expended a lot of calories but certainly did not help on the eating side of the matter.  I know, I know…90% of your body is made in the kitchen – or whatever they say.  That’s why I’m doing the TIU plan – to help with my eating approach.

Day 1 on the TIU Beach Babe eating plan

I started my day with a 30 min walk/jog on the treadmill.  Last week sucked – in the way of exercising and with this blasted cold I wanted to ease into my sweat this morning.

TIU touts the wonders of drinking shots of Apple Cider Vinegar.  So the TIU day starts off with some type of drink with an ACV shot.  Today started with a Bombshell spell which is THE BEST way to drink an ACV shot.  Zippy and sweet.  That was followed by a protein pancake – which I always make in a single giant pancake rather than tiny multiples.

I make my protein pancake the way everyone else makes it – but I do change the dry ingredients just a bit.  I do about 3/4 of a scoop of Perfect Fit protein powder, then add 1 Tbsp Decadent Mix Flax & Chia blend and 1 tsp of Maca Powder.  That’s added to a 1/2 a banana and 3 Tbsp egg whites.  Smash or whip as you like (I use the fork I’m going to eat it with – I wash it before eating…  HA!) then pour into a heated sprayed pan.  5-6 minutes later you can eat it.   That was Meal 1…Breakfast.

M2 was 1 cup of blueberries picked at while on a conference call along with 2 cups of hot tea.

M3, Lunch was 3 oz of grilled chicken on 1/4 cup of cooked quinoa and 2 slices of tomato wrapped in a collard green.  I added some fresh cilantro on top – love the freshness of cilantro!

M4, I blended up a “juice” that was more chunky than liquidy.  I haven’t invested in a juicer – and prefer not to until I truly get into the juicing habit.  So I used all the settings I could to get my beet, apples, ginger and lime to a drinkable state.  I had to add some water to get the stuff moving since I could imaging our blender starting to smoke as it tried its darndest to liquefy these things clattering around in that glass jar.  It did get there finally…and I have a photo but apparently didn’t upload it…so that’ll be a bonus photo for tomorrow.  Wheee!  I was kind of worried about the taste but with the addition of the lime (peel and all) it was really fresh and light.  Although the chunk factor makes this one for those with a penchant for healthy eating – and not someone who just came off a milkshake binge.  😀

My afternoon workout was 60 minute Vinyasa Flow at Xplore Yoga.  Love love love this class.  My knees felt really good so I could bend deep into Warrior 1 and side angles.  She worked us on the Chaturanga‘s…but I was able to power through and keep up.  Double Whee!

M5, Dinner was 2 more chicken & quinoa wraps in a collard green leaf along with some roasted brussel sprouts, cauliflower and broccoli.  13yo asked for some roasted veggies too – so I happily spooned some on his plate to eat.  HunBun said “no thanks”.  🙂  That’s not unusual for our table.

I plugged all my food into MyFitnessPal and was told I only ate 1050 calories for the day.  That’s a no-no.  What’s weird is I don’t feel hungry or deprived in any way – it may be because veggies bulk you up more and I also ate about 89 grams of protein – which is 10 more than my daily goal.   Tomorrow I’ll add a smoothie and see what that does for me.

Biggest Loser is almost over…we’ll see if Danny can save Jillian from going off air.

See ya later

Cathy

**Best commercial from Super Bowl Sunday?  Dodge’s “The Farmer” with Paul Harvey.  Awesome!

Manic Monday

So the last few weeks have been ugh-ola.  First my work Blackberry went bananas and it took a good 2 weeks and 3 replacements until I got one that would work.  I don’t even want to make the switch to the iPhone that is being offered because I’ve just reentered all of my contacts BY HAND!  So thanks but no thanks…I’ll wait until this BB dies then switch because it won’t matter anyway.

Then a week and a half ago my home pc went dark.  The darn graphics card went kaput…and the computer was so old that it wasn’t one of those cards you could just take out and replace.  Oh, no…that would have been too easy for me.  When HunBun opened that thing up he found the card to be wired in.  Gah!  Lucky I was headed out for a work trip so I just let it go while he figured out a plan.

While I’m at work my darn work computer decides to blue screen itself…which if you’re familiar – means it has up and died on me.  This is happening at 7:15am Wednesday morning as I was planning to print off a bunch of documents for an all day meeting I was leading with my team.  When I turned on my laptop and saw that blue screen I yelped and hit the power off button…hoping I had caught it before the full memory dump completed.  Well I started-stopped-started-stopped-started-stopped-started-stopped-started….then actually stopped.  Seeing as my on-off plan wasn’t working I decided to sit there with a frowny face.  Lucky I was in the office…one of the IT guys on site came over and took my dead laptop away to see if he could Frankenstein resurrect it for me.

Long story short…the technical way the IT guy said it was “You’re hosed”.  Definitely not something you want to hear from an IT guy who was supposed to save your work life by recovering all of the work you had been doing for the last 2 weeks.  (Thank goodness my work pal admonished me to back up my computer just 3 weeks ago) I’d be fine except for the fact that in the last 2 weeks I had built out an entire tracking workbook for all the things my team is working on…with legends and tabs and all that!   Super BAH!

I got my new work laptop on Friday…then it took all day to get it to a working condition – while I am still waiting on another IT guy to save my email archive.  Please please please be successful!

I got this lovely grapefruit shaded Vaio on Sunday to replace ye olde home pc.

Purchasing this was a pain in the patootie too.  HunBun and I went on Saturday to the fancy Westfield mall since I couldn’t find something I wanted at the local Best Buy.  We went to the Sony store and spent a good 40 minutes in there looking at a total of 4 laptops they had on display.  It came down to the shiny red one or the white one that also came in pink.  Meanwhile HunBun is steaming because the sales gal is blah blah blahing about techy this and that which means nothing to me since I told her exactly what I needed the laptop to do for me – go on the internet, upload photos, play iTunes, type stuff.  Well when she said “when you need more memory you can upgrade this one and it’ll cost you as much as this more expensive laptop that has that memory now”.  As I prepared for a flame out she walked away and I made a silent “whew” as I turned to look at his irritated face.  He was done… and I made my decision.  “I’d like to see the pink one of this Vaio please”, I said to sales person #2.  Off he goes to the back room which must be the most cavernous place ever because it took him a good 10 minutes to come back out.  Then he brings this pink cutie out and I say “I’ll take it”….and he says “oh, I can’t sell this to you today…but I can sell it to you tomorrow”.  What?????  I did not even look at HunBun as I could imagine what that face would have looked like….he was already circling the store so he wouldn’t get annoyed at the tech sell.  We left.  I was irritated.  He was annoyed.

Sunday morning I dragged the 13yo (yes he had a birthday) and 11yo (and he had a birthday too) to the mall.  After we wandered around the Lego store deciding on what new set we just had to have…we marched straight over to the Sony store where I promptly said “I’m here to buy the pink version of that laptop since I couldn’t buy it yesterday”.  Sales person goes into the cavernous storeroom and after we stand there (I annoyed…kids asking why it’s taking so long) he finally comes out.  I say, “is that the pink one?”.  He says “yes, that’s the one you want right?”.  I say, “how much is it?”.  He says “$$$”.  I say “ok, I’ll take it”.  Then he proceeds to try to sell me some $$ protection plan to which I say “My husband says to never buy those, so no thank you”….I felt bad at my snooty self but I was just done with this whole purchasing experience.  Plus he gave me an irritated look when I said no.  Then after he attempted to sell me a different $$ protection plan – to which I not said a polite, but unfriendly, “no thank you”.   He finally rang me up.  I slid my card.  I walked out with this teeny little box with a very spendy thing in it.

HunBun was able to buy some gadget that is able to pull my old data off my old hard drive.  So he did his thing and now I’m back to business.

Whew….long story.  Now it’s too work.  I’ll be back to normal soon….I hope.

See ya later

Cathy

Life makes living hard. .

So the last few weeks at work have been especially tiring… mentally and emotionally draining.  So much that at the end of the day I was grateful if I could get to yoga for a class. 

I was getting more & more anxious about the two Disney races I had coming up.  I hadn’t done the level of training I planned and didn’t eat as well as I normally do. So needless to say I was starting to doubt my ability to run the races.

So HunBun and I drove down to Disney early Friday morning.  The ride was pretty smooth. just a few F bombs from HunBun as fellow drivers weren’t following the rules if the road.  We switch seats at the Grapevine.. so I get to deal with the LA traffic.  🙂

We got to the park at 11and got something to eat.  I love the chicken salad sandwich on brioche that they have there.  They also offer a pretty good gluten free bun option for HunBun and his turkey sandwich.  Saw this….but didn’t eat it.

The 5k was Saturday morning at 545am.  I felt awesome and finished in 28:47!!!  I was super stoked and my legs felt great walking back to the hotel where HunBun was sleeping.  Hahahahaha.  Love the support!

We spent Saturday in California Adventure park and then headed back to Disneyland for the afternoon.  We were tired..from the drive..from the work week.  I grabbed a sandwich for dinner – chicken salad again and (here’s where I make a foolish decision) a seasonal cupcake.  This cupcake had chocolate mousse frosting on a chocolate cake with raspberry cream filling.  So decadent…but absolutely the worst thing for me to eat before a 13.1 mile run.

My Verizon service wasn’t working well so I have no pictures from the morning of the race. 

I started off good…then felt myself getting slower.  So I would speed up, then slow down.  When I heard Kanye singing Power at mile 10 I knew I wasn’t going to hit my goal time since he’s supposed to be singing that to me at mile 11.  Gah!

Well I finished strong.  Didn’t make my goal which was to cut 11 minutes from last September… instead I added 11 minutes.  Doh!

Finish time was 2:22.  But hey I finished right?  I had fun.  My HunBun was there for me at the finish.  What more can a girl ask for?!?

Plus I get one more chance to PR next month at the DisneyWorld Princess half marathon.  So as I stare at my medal I’ll take pride in my accomplishments. 

See ya later

Cathy

Monday, monday. la laa la laa laa laaaa

Not sure if you all know that song but it sure is something you can hum along too…since I don’t know any words but Monday and La.  🙂

Janathon…Janathon…Janathon.  I didn’t get my Saturday post in within 24 hours, but that’s because I didn’t do any “exercise“.  Did a bunch of walking around the house and ran some errands – but nothing you would define as “exercise” for the day.  Bleah.

Sunday, January 13th: Ran 5.5 treadmill miles.

Push up challenge:  10 FU’s and a bunch of planks.

Who out there as an iFit enabled piece of exercise equipment?  Well ever since iFit changed their website my treadmill has not communicated at all with my iFit website.  So annoying when you pay for a service that no longer works.  I sent an email with my issues a bit ago and am waiting for the response.  I have another issue to write in about – “Unable to download workout – Error” that I got on my machine this weekend.  ARGH!

Monday, January 14th: A.M. free weights for the arms.

Push up challenge: 10 FU’s and a few chaturanga’s too.

I’m going to take a run/walk up to the Starbucks at lunch time to get 2 miles in and hitting up Vinyasa Flow this evening.

This weekend HunBun and I are headed to Disneyland so I can run the 5K and Half-Marathon.  We’re hoping the weather stays clear so the Grapevine (I5 route’s through the mountains) is easy to drive.  Last weekend they closed it down for 20 hours…and people were stuck!  No thanks!

Enjoy your Monday!

See ya later.

Cathy

 

Janathon Day 10 update…and Day 11 start

What up Janathoners!  So long as you’re getting active for this first month in 2013…that’s the best thing.  🙂

Thursday, January 10th: 5-6pm Muscle & Flow

Push Up Challenge:  9 FU style!

Friday, January 11th: …nothing yet…

Push Up Challenge: 10 FU style and 20 Knees!

I’m making sure to do a little something every day.  This weekend I’m going to mentally prepare for those 2 little races noted on the right side of this post.  You see those?  Yeah, the NeverLand 5K and Tinkerbell Half are next weekend!  I will freely admit that I have not maintained my training plan.  Did not complete near the number of distance miles that I should have.  I have maintained levels of fitness by yoga’ing and circuit training – so I am hopeful that I will be carried by that and the excitement of running with thousands of others.  I will prepare myself not to be disappointed with my time…but plan on pushing myself to accomplish my goals.  No giving in here!

I enjoyed the green smoothie starter for every meal.  Certainly kept me filled up and hydrated at the same time.  I’ve been using water in the smoothies to keep them light.  Although yesterday I made a batch of date balls…must have had 25 finished balls….this morning I only had 2 balls left.  Whoops!  Guess they are a little too tasty.  🙂

See ya later

Cathy

 

Janathon Day 9…starting off on a new foot for Day 10

Yesterday I was lame on the exercise and eating front.  Boo!  😦

 Wednesday, January 9th: Firm Your Butt workout.

Push up challenge: 8 FU Push ups.  I totally forgot to do the knee ones, since I procrastinated on those and said I was doing them “later”.  Boo, #2!

I went into the office yesterday because I needed to switch out my work Blackberry.  Yes, I am still on a Blackberry for work.  It works for me – in fact works very well – when I don’t have one that sucks battery juice like it’s the sweet sweet nectar of the gods.  Well the first replacement BB could not be registered…the second replacement BB was an extremely old model that sucked battery juice like it was that sort of sweet & sour drink that you want to chug but can’t.  So yesterday’s visit to the office was to work with the super awesome ladies who always get it right.  Now I’m just waiting for the Helpdesk to call me back to set up my corporate email account so I can be productive when I’m away from my desk.

All that busyness went on past the time I wanted to leave – so I missed my Vinyasa Flex class.  Boo, #3!

I need to just face the simple fact that I am a morning exerciser.

Yesterday morning, or Janathon Day 9 – I did this Firm Your Butt workout from Self magazine.  I would love to have this workout give me this butt.  Seriously.

**This is also why I’m starting off the day with a green smoothie – because no matter how much you exercise it is really what you eat that matters.  Anyhoo…

So yesterday morning I grabbed my exercise ball and told my butt to get lost.  Let me tell you something, it is not easy to get your balance on those exercise balls.

The first exercise was not too difficult because you had really 3 touchpoints with the ground, your knee, your foot and the ball you were leaning on.  But the rest all have just 2 touchpoints – which means you have got to go slow and focus.  Your core is essential to maintaining your balance on these balls.  The “easiest” one?  Booty pop for sure.  I can booty pop my brains out – but good gravy the others required much more concentration.

Janathon Day 10 started off with 9 FU push ups.  I’m planning on going to my Muscle & Flow class tonight – then going to do the Tone Your Gut workout from the same Self magazine if you’ve got the physical copy – or just clickety-click on that link up there for free.

Breakfast started with a green smoothie…and a hot cup of cinnamon & honey.

I’ve been reading about the benefits of cinnamon & honey so started to drink a “hot toddy” with those two delights in the morning.  Looks like you’re drinking reddish brown water – but tastes pretty nice.

Now I’m ready to start the day.  Only 3 conference calls on the docket today – but I’ve got a lot of thinking and writing to do so I can finish up my strategy document.  I expect some staring into space will occur.

See ya later

Cathy

So unmotivated…..UGH!

I’m hoping that as I do my Janathon Day 7 update it will motivate me to do my exercise for Janathon Day 8.  Still hoping……

Monday, January 7th: 5-6pm Vinyasa Flow class at XploreYoga

Push Up Challenge:  7 FU’s (full-on style, just so you know I’m not swearing at you acronym style) and 20 Knees.  My yoga instructor may have chaturanga’d my arms to fatigue in class because it took me a while to get my 7 FU’s in and then to maintain my baseline of 20 Knees.  Eeesh.

I watched the Biggest Loser Sunday night and Monday night.  While I love Jillian Michaels…she sure turned on the beast factor this season.  I mean I get the need to motivate people – but it became apparent that these folks were not responding to her “in your face/drill sergeant” style of motivation.  On Monday when they had their little pow-wow and she agreed to modify her approach to better suit the needs of her team I was quite surprised.  Although it didn’t help as she is now down to 2 in just 2 shows.  Super Yikes!

Sooooo… I haven’t gotten motivated yet for more exercise on Janathon Day 8.  The only thing I have done is a ton of squats while on a conference call (otherwise I’d feel like a total slug) and 8 FU pushups at around 430pm.

I really need to NOT hit the snooze bar in the morning and just get my butt into that freezing cold garage and run or circuit my way to a warm sweaty state.  I’m so lame.

Tomorrow…Day 9 I predict will be much more sweaty than Day 8.  Count on it!

See ya later

Cathy

Janathon – Day 6 (quick update)

Supposed to do 8…did 4.  BLEAH!

Sunday, January 6th: Treadmill 4 miles (SSSSLLLLLLOOOOOWWWW) and my PU (push up) challenge.  I did 7 FU (full on) PU’s and 20 knee PU’s!

Whoopie!  I did 2 more FU PU’s  than I completed Saturday so I am super jazzed about that.

I keep my arms close to the side of my body – similar to a yoga chaturanga (I posted a Lululemon link for reference).  I feel more confident in my form when I keep my arms close, it allows me to move slowly through the move and not just collapse down and then wobble my way back up.

How to Chaturanga

I do my FU push ups first because that allows me to go until fatigue – or my form gets all janky.  Plus this is what I want to improve so I’d rather have my full arm strength (what little I have) available to do these.

Once my FU form is lost I transition to my knees to do as many knee style push ups as I can (trying to maintain at least 20 since that was my baseline).

Once I get super strong…maybe I’ll do these…  Heck Yeah!

See ya later…with my Janathon Day 7 update.

Cathy

 

Internet’s back!

We have Internet!!!

You do not realize how many of your gadgets and how many times you use high speed Internet. Well we found out the hard way when our Internet went out late Friday and into Saturday. After I fiddled around with the help offered by the automated voice recording on our service providers 800 number (where they repeatedly told me I could find more troubleshooting detail on their website – duh, that’s why I’m calling – because I have no Internet you donkey) I finally got to a human being. **enter sound of angel choirs singing here**. After she did whatever magic she could over the air space she set up a technician appointment for us 7:30am-8:00am Sunday morning. Eeks…and yahoo!

Right on schedule that techy showed right up…looked at our old modem and figured out that was our problem. For which both he & HunBun were happy since that did not require the techy to crawl around under our house to fix some cable issue. So I am back in the world of technology dependence.

Saturday update. Janathon challenge.

Saturday, January 5th: Treadmill circuit and a bonus Push Up personal challenge!

I have notoriously weak arms. Yes, notorious. I mean I can lift corners of couches and carry 5 bags of groceries on one arm, but ask me to do a push up? Forget that! Yoga has been a good starter course to building up my arm strength, with chaturanga’s and planks…but a full on push up, geez no. So I added a personal, to me, push up challenge to my Janathon. Yesterday (since this update is coming to you Sunday morning) I started my push up’ping.

Push Up challenge: 20 knee PU’s and 5 FU (full on) PU’s!

My goal is to reverse that…where I do way more FU ones than knees. Wish me strength!

Yesterday I pulled off a surprise birthday party for HunBun! I can not tell you how much anxiety I have had over the last few weeks as HunBun detests surprises AND detests gatherings with a lot of people. So his sister and I put this whole shin-dig together and yesterday was the big party! It was a Mexican Fiesta…using a Day of the Dead theme. I’ll do a photo upload in a bit (since i’m using my iPad to do a post for the first time – I’m fancy like that). The facial expressions he moved through after he opened the door and everyone yelled “surprise!” was absolutely priceless!

So today will be a chill day…except for the 8 miler I’ll be fitting in and my PU challenge.

See ya later

Cathy