I’m back…. I hope

For real….

It’s been a while hasn’t it?  I could give you a whole bunch of blah blah blah about why I haven’t posted anything and it may be interesting to some – but would require me to actually stop & think about why I haven’t been posting.  To sum it up – I had a lot going on at work…We were getting ready for a family vacation to Florida so I could run at the Disney World Princess Half Marathon… Life was busy.

I have a whole bunch of photos I am going to post up from the trip we took.  It was a great time spent with the kids in Disney World.  Their first trip, my 3rd, HunBun’s 2nd.  The weather held out for us until the last day we were in the park – when it started raining in the afternoon while we were in the Magic Kingdom.  The rain didn’t last long nor was it very heavy but people sure whipped out their ponchos like they were going to melt.  Of course everyone in the family had hats on their heads except for me…so I just trudged through the drizzle.  Good think I wasn’t wearing a white shirt that day – HA!

Although I didn’t get my PR at this race I didn’t do too badly – and I still had fun.  It was nice to run in a different place this time and I will say I did have to adjust a bit to the heat & humidity.  The one thing nice about running in Florida was that I was not cold during the long wait for the start.  I did decide that I am going to get more serious about my training plans for these runs.  I have renewed my commitment to speed drills, tempo drills, fartleks and what ever else I read up on in the running magazines and blogs.  I’m also doing more about my approach to eating.  Although it is relatively healthy, I am going to expend more control over my snacking.  I love me some salty chips….so am going to explore the variety of flavors of homemade Kale chips and store bought crunchy nori sheets.

Anyhoo.  Got a lot of work emails to get through – only did about 1/2 yesterday and I got a lot of planning to get through for some organizational changes I’m instituting in my team (doesn’t that sound exciting? 🙂  )

One nice by product of our family trip to Florida?  12yo has been getting up at 6am – instead of his normal 640am…so he’s been on time to leave for school and I’ve not had to pester him to get a move on.  Sweet!

I’ll post those pictures up as a wordless montage…

See ya later

Cathy

 

What up Wednesday!

I don’t really have a whole lot to say.  It’s been a lot of the same thing every day this week.  Waking up early to bust out an early sweat session…eating healthy meals to stay on the TIU plan…powering through a work day…zooming off to yoga…cooking dinner…trying to chill out…falling asleep.  B-O-R-I-N-G.  😦  Routine is usually what I fall into – be it eating or slogging through the day.  There are so many demands on our every waking minute that you become immune to enjoying life.

I mean who can believe that it’s already February?  I certainly can’t.  I’ve got too much to do at work, for my family, for myself that sometimes I just turn inward.  I retreat into myself – disengaging from everything on the inside while maintaining the outward appearance of full participation.  Is that a protection mechanism?  So I don’t completely drain myself?  Maybe…who knows.  Blah.  That’s usually my statement whenever I don’t want to talk or can’t talk.  🙂

Anyhoo…who signed up to read a decompression session?  Not me – so let’s move on to my favorite topic – EATING!  For all those who think eating healthy is boring and hard – you’re right.  HA!  It can be both of those things if you don’t inject a level of creativity and planning into it.  I do think that healthy eating requires a lot more prep work than not so healthy eating.  That means figuring out what you are going to eat during the week because all that healthy food tends to go bad – certainly doesn’t have the shelf life of say Hamburger Helper.  😀  You also need to cut, pack and organize your healthy eats in an easy to see and grab way.  The easier to grab – the more likely you will eat it.  I’ve learned that the hard way (hard way being throwing out hundreds of dollars of veggies that went bad because I didn’t eat it fast enough – Boot!)

Enough blah blah blahing….  on to the pictorial – Wheee!

Tuesday breakfast. Oh yeah, I eat my pancake with my hands!

Tuesday snack was a juicy pear

Tuesday Lunch – Double wrapping it!

I forgot to take a photo of my super tasty smoothie I had before yoga.  I followed a TIU recipe – Mango, Banana, Almond Milk, Coconut…whir it up and drink. 🙂

After yoga I whipped up a Mexican shrimp sauté and served it along with some lime cilantro rice.  Of course I forgot to take a picture.  More because for some reason we didn’t eat until 730pm…we’re usually done eating and kitchen cleaned by 7pm.  Not sure what happened.  So I was rushing all around and then rushed that food right down my piehole.

Wednesday’s eats were almost an exact duplicate…I think I’m falling into my rut.  Ick.  😦  But it was still tasty – so whatever, right.  🙂

Wednesday Breakfast. What else but a giant ole pancake.

Wednesday Snack: Balls!

For snack I had another pear and 2 of these awesome Apricot-Date balls.  Easy to make, although they are a little sticky to roll into balls.  YUM YUM.

Wednesday Smoothie. Kiwi, berries and spinach.

No photo of lunch…that’s because I was running late to a conference call and had to shove my wrap into my mouth as quickly as I could.  Not the best thing to do.  Also had 2 Cuties along with my lunch.  Sweet treat!

I was smart today and put some ribs in the crockpot for HunBun and the 12yo so that cooked all day and made the house smell SO GOOD!  I put some rice in the rice pot so it’d be ready for them to eat before I got home from yoga since I had to run to CVS to pick up a prescription.

Wednesday Dinner. Chicken and Kale wrap

I may eat a couple Apricot-Date balls as a treat…or have a piece of the Black Bean Brownies I just made.  Hmmmm.  Which would you pick?  😀

See ya later

Cathy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday already?

This week so far has been unsuccessful in the balancing of healthy living and living healthy.  I have eaten all kinds of random things for breakfast, snacks, lunch and dinner.  Call it laziness or lack of motivation or whatever – I am just not feeling up to it lately.

The thing that sucks about eating crappily?  Is that you feel crappy right after that bite is on its way down after you swallow.  It’s already gone past the point of return and now it’s just on its way to sit heavily in my tummy while I wonder why I am choosing to eat these dumb things.  Good thing there isn’t any Halloween candy in the house anymore (except smarties and tootsie pop lollipops – bleah) otherwise you would only see empty chocolate candy wrappers in the garbage.

I did wake up and exercise Monday and Tuesday morning but last night I was so tired that I fell asleep at 730.  You want to know how I know I fell asleep at 730?  Because my iPad wacked me in the chin at 730!  HAHAHAHAHAHA!  I had fallen asleep scrolling around on Pinterest and that iPad just fell forward and bopped me a good one.

So I put the iPad away and settled in to watch The Voice, falling asleep somewhere in the middle of Christina & Ceelo’s performance…but catching the end…then waking up while Carson took 5 minutes to announce one name of who was still in.  Then finally falling asleep asleep because next thing I knew the alarm went off at 5am today.

I promptly pushed the snooze 3 times…until HunBun comes walking over and asks if I’m getting up.  I said “I don’t know why I’m so tired”.  He said “I know, you were freaking me out, talking in your sleep all night long and snoring”.  Hahahahahahaha!

So I don’t know what’s the deal.  But I do know that I didn’t work out this morning and set an intention to take a quick run at lunch time – so we’ll see if that happens.  I started the day with 4 pieces of cranberry holiday toast with PB on it and 1 giant holiday grape.

The best thing to do with the Holiday Grapes, besides just eating them right off the clump, is to make Holiday Grape Salad.  HGS is a concoction of cream cheese, sour cream, white sugar, vanilla extract, Holiday Grapes all swirled together then topped with a brown sugar & chopped pecan sprinkle.  Oh so good!

photo by run for your life

I usually make a big bowl of this for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  We put some aside before everyone starts eating otherwise there is never any leftovers.

How’d I get on this tangent?  So anyhoo… Beats me why I’m off my normal routine.  Might be the holiday slump…where you know the year is ending but can’t believe the year is ending and didn’t do everything you had hoped to do.  Or it might be that I’ve been go-go-go with work, family, exercise and my body is telling me “hold up girl”.  Who knows, I’m no nutritionist, dietician, health expert or Dr.

I guess the only thing to do is look forward and do what I do…bounce back.   I’m sure it’ll get better after this release.  🙂  Thanks Bloggy readers…

See ya later

Cathy

 

 

I must be healthy…I’m craving veggies!

Am I healthy now?

So I’ve been making a huge personal push to clean up my food intake – not just volume but quality and type.  I am normally a pretty clean eater.  I don’t eat a lot of red meat, although every now again HunBun and I will do the 2 for $20 deal at Applebees and get the 7oz. steak with veggies and baked potato  YU-UUM.  Add in the queso and chips?  Super YUM!

Oh, and if you have a Texas Roadhouse near you they have pretty good steaks there AND you can get loaded sweet potatos – it’s like Thanksgiving all year round!

We have a lot of chicken dishes, not too much fish (unless you count “packet” tuna/salmon) and the other seafood is shrimp that I usually cook up with basil pesto and pour over some gluten free pasta.

I used to eat a lot of salad, but then my taste buds turned on me and I couldn’t stand to eat raw spinach or raw kale.  I have to saute the greens or at the very least warm up the toppings so the greens are a bit wilted when I put them in my piehole.  I love veggies and try to add a new veggie every now and again…which is how I found my new fave brussel sprouts – but that’s a digression.

Back to my “I’m healthy now” proclamation.  So I guess I’m healthy…or healthier, right?  So as a testament to my healthiness here are some photos of the latest eats I’ve partaken of.  Just wipe the drool up before it hits your keyboard.  🙂

 

Snack

Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia Drink!

Avocado. Pure & Simple

That’s been my eating pattern for the last week or so.  I’ve been eating protein pancakes every morning – they fill me up until snack time rolls around (or if I’m caught up in marathon conference calls, then when lunch rolls around – BOOT!).  For lunch it’s been microwaved sweet potato and random veggies or egg white scrambles.  Snacks are usually honey crisp apples (SO GOOD) or cucumber slices and hummus.  I do love me some salty chips – so I toss a serving of Target’s Organic Corn Tortilla Chips on my plate too (15 chips for 150 calories – not too bad if I plan ahead).

In addition to the increase in veggies I’ve also upped my water intake to at least 80 oz a day (my handy pink water bottle has a little tracker for every time I fill it up I move it so I can see how much water I’m drinking – so smart, why didn’t I think of that?)  I’ve also grown to love coconut water – especially the chocolate flavored one.  As you can see from the photo above I did try Mamma Chia’s Cranberry Lemonade drink.  It’s like you’re drinking liquidy jello – once you get over that texture the drink itself is really tasty.

So I think I can label myself as “healthy”…I’m not an uber fanatic on my food intake.  I focus on good clean food for most of my meals but do enjoy sugary & salty delights whenever I want….just not everyday.

What’s your healthy eating approach? 

See ya later!

Cathy

 

 

 

 

 

Move it…it’s Monday

This post is really for me…telling myself to move it.  I’ve been MIA on the bloggedy front and really it’s because I’ve changed jobs and that turned my whole schedule completely on its head which meant I lost my head.

In addition to getting a whole new squad in a whole new area of the business that I do not know; I still have all of my previous work.  So needless to say I am running a little bit looney.

With the switch I am having to load balance prior work with new work so, like always, the easiest person to ask to “give a little” is yourself.  Which means I haven’t been to yoga in 3 weeks…failed on the last 2 weeks of my training plan…ate sorta OK and worked way too haphazardly.

I had to travel to Oklahoma, Monday through Thursday of last week to support a previously scheduled meeting.  Oklahoma was fine…that trip always requires a plane switch so I did the Denver route there and back.  Eating while in OKC was completely not healthy.  I had big old portions, not as many fruits and veggies as I should have, full size candy bars during the meeting and totally did not use MyFitnessPal to track my food/exercise.  BLEAH!  I did drink a TON of water…but we only had those mini bottles in the cooler so I felt like a hog grabbing one every 30 minutes.  Good thing everyone else supplemented their water intake with Dr. Pepper‘s, Cokes, Sprites, and all other bubbly drinks.

One of my dinners in OKC

 

Exercise went the way of my food choices – completely unmindful.  I had the best intentions because I’ve been doing a good job about waking up early and then hitting my body weight circuits.  I packed 3 exercise outfits for each of the days and figured out what I’d do if the hotel gym didn’t have enough treadmills for users.  How much exercise did I do while in OKC – ABSOLUTELY ZERO!  You could have found me sitting in my bed eating pilfered full size candy bars from the meeting or eating dried fruit (while somewhat healthy, not in the volume I was consuming) or eating the chocolate chip cookies provided in the hotel lobby.  SUPER BLEAH!!!

The weirdest part was I didn’t even have any emotions to this super fail and I think it’s because I’m the only one who is impacted by the fail.  No one else sees or feels the impact of my poor eating and exercising choices except me.  When I came home I just told HunBun this week sucked and I was getting back on my plan (which I did).  I didn’t even realize the “non-event” last week was until I wrote this down.  I guess in the past I have over emphasized things to the point where I have a ridiculous response to something like this.  I mean I am disappointed that I didn’t stick to my plan like I normally do when on work trips…but its almost like I realized that even with a 1 week fail I hadn’t ruined anything.  It can be fixed.  I can get back on my plan.  I can start by waking up early and getting my booty moving and feeding my body what I should be.

So that’s what I did.  After getting home at 845pm Thursday night I got myself out of bed at 5am Friday morning and hopped on the treadmill.  Then I focused on eating whole foods – no processed foods – with a focus on tons of veggies and protein.

Breakfast: Egg White Veggie Scramble

Big ol’ salad with smoked salmon

Veggie pocket with Chicken Salad

So not to say “problem solved”…more like “problem mitigated”.  I did really well Friday and Saturday…then ate some veggie chips on Sunday from Sunflower/Sprouts….followed by a small handful of chocolate covered almonds/cranberries with 2 slices of Supreme pizza from Safeway (what are you gonna do when you can get a family size pizza for $7.99!).  Hahahaha!

Sorry so wordy…with very little pictures.  But I just wanted you to know where I was….how I’ve been…and how I will be.  🙂

So if you ever feel like you failed, look at it without any filters and move on.  Life’s too short to waste on woulda-coulda-shoulda‘s.

See ya later

Cathy

**By the way, I should be back on track for posting on this bloggedy blog although I am making some changes.  Getting a little more focus going on..learning as I go Peeps, learning as I go.    🙂