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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What would you do?

Would you rather exercise more or eat less?

So I’ve been doing this Green Smoothie challenge that I found on vedgedout’s blog.  Now I’m only on Day 2 so it’s likely this whole idea is coming from a state of confusion brought about by my lack of salt or sugar or chips or bread or eating whatever I feel like putting in my piehole…anyhoo.

A little eating background.  I don’t eat terribly every day.  I usually eat a protein pancake and fruit for breakfast and get a Starbucks Soy Misto if HunBun’s home.  I’ll have a honeycrisp apple with some nut butter for a morning snack with or without a Starbucks Soy Misto.  (If I don’t go to Starbucks I’ll make a homemade matcha green tea latte or a homemade mocha or hot tea or just some hot water with lemon (like my grandma used to – which as a kid I thought was very weird…oh no, I’m an old lady 🙂  )  Back to my eating habits.

For lunch I’ll do a couple different things like saute a bunch of veggies with Bragg’s Amino’s or make a wrap with roastbeef and stuffed with veggies and goat cheese or a nostalgic PB&J.  Depending on how full I am I’ll add a piece of fruit to round it out.  Afternoon snack (if I remember to fit this in before dinner) usually consists of a protein shake or some veggies and hummus or another piece of fruit.  Dinner is chicken and veggies or sometimes I eat what I cook for the family.  HunBun gets annoyed when I cook their food first then cook mine while they start eating – so I try to make stuff for me that’s super quick so everyone’s not done just when I put my plate down to eat.

So really I eat pretty well – normally.  Now when we go out to eat or go on vacation I do splurge a bit more.  I love mexican food and adore the chips and salsa that our local joint (La Pinata) puts on the table before our food comes.  OM-super slurptastic!  I could eat chips and salsa all day long…if it didn’t kill my healthy living goals.  I also LOVE LOVE LOVE a good dessert.  In fact I tend to look at the dessert menu BEFORE I order my meal just so I know if I should order something smaller so I can save room at the end.

Now that I’m getting older (WAH!) I do feel like I need to do more exercising or eat less calories in order to maintain the fit of my clothes and not have to buy new ones.  I did say fit of my clothes as I don’t really let the number on a scale annoy me as much as it used to (I just let it annoy me a teeny bit).  So long as my pants fit well and I don’t shriek in horror everytime I take my clothes off..I figure I’m doing OK.  Hahahaha!

So my question to HunBun this morning was “would you rather exercise more or eat less?”  His immediate answer?  “Eat Less”.  Wha?!?!

I think I’d prefer to exercise more so I can eat what I want to (in moderation of course) and enjoy being alive and being able to taste some of the wonderous Eats out there.

So I guess I answered my own question – “Exercise More“.  Which means no more hitting the snooze or “forgetting to set the alarm”.  No more weekend chill outs because the work week was “so exhausting”.  No more excusing out the need to drive to yoga.  No more taking the easy route on circuits, speed work and hill repeats.  No more thinking about what my body can do but rather letting my body DO.

So that’s me…2 months early for resolutioning.  I will be Exercising More so I can put a little more in my piehole and not angst about it.  Hahahahaha!

See ya later!

Cathy

 

 

Move it…it’s Monday

**I started writing this whole spiel when I was supposed to be wrapping up my weekend…so instead you’ll read my Monday morning monologue…then get to read the “woah” inducing weekend wrapup after.  You know, just to keep it interesting.  🙂

Honestly I don’t know how daily bloggers do it.  They either lead super exciting jazzy lives or they find more delights in daily living than I give my life credit for.  I mean I guess I could give you a working gal’s play by play of how many conference calls I did…or if I decided to get dressed in something other than sweats and t-shirts and headed into the office…or if I wrote some document or some other super exciting wonky (or work’y) thing like that.

I could write about my Eats…but you’d probably end up saying “didn’t I just read that yesterday?” as I tend to repeat, repeat, repeat what I Eat.  Like the Apple Cider Vinegar drink I start my day with because I read it’s good for your metabolism, followed by a protein pancake (egg whites, protein powder, flax meal, cinnamon, smushed banana) topped with fruit of some sort, a honeycrisp apple (while in season) for snack, followed by sauted veggies (whatever is in the fridge) for lunch, another piece of fruit or a smoothie for the afternoon tide me over (if I remember before it’s time to cook dinner) and finally sauted veggies and a protein for dinner.  Whoo-whee!  I can hardly contain myself with the excitement about all that variety.

ALTHOUGH…I do find the veggie saute quite beautiful in the light of Instagrams Lo-Fi setting.  The colors that nature has blessed food with to not only attract us but to almost define how they will taste in our pieholes is actually one more great mystery to life.  SO TOO…do I find that I have demonstrated some level of creativity as I stare into the open pantry and open refridgerator as I figure out what I’m going to Eat for the requisite feeding time.

AND…I could give updates on my morning Sweats since I’m now including a bunch of body weight circuits into my 5am routines.  PLUS…focusing more on speed workouts to improve my time again for my next half-marathon in January 2013 that could be interesting to some of you out there.

SO…I guess I could write daily if I really put my mind to it.  I guess the questions are: 1. Can I dedicate the time to writing every day?  2.  Can I give myself a break and just write instead of feeling like what I did won’t make the “blog read” cut?  REALLY…it’s all in how I approach this and I meant for this whole blogging adventure to be FUN and a way for me to keep myself honest as I balance healthy living and living healthy with direction and magnitude.

OH.  So I guess that’s why I named my blog that.  🙂

Have a great Monday yourself.

See ya later!

Cathy

 

Wednesday, whaaat???

My favorite scene from one of my favorite movies sums up my bloggedy post…

I can’t believe it’s Wednesday already!  I feel like all I do now is dial in to conference calls, hang up, dial in to another call, hang up, repeat every day while sprinkling in email reading/writing.  No wonder I feel so adrift…my grounding was found by producing documents, materials, visuals…and now I’ve been so turned around with learning my new job, while keeping up with my old stuff, while making sure I spend time on my family and meeting my exercise and healthy eating goals.  No wonder I can’t tell what day of the week it is anymore.

Please don’t let it come to this!

My work space at home has shifted.  (You probably recognize this as the backdrop behind most of my lunch and snack photos – I am usually found dining al-desko quite a bit.  Sad but true)

That looks pretty organized

My filing system on display

See those dumbbells on the floor?  In order to bring some health back into my lifestyle I have taken to doing shoulder raises, standing core work and weighted squats while on conference calls.  I remember to put myself on mute so my heavy breathing doesn’t perv anyone out.  It’s working so far.  Yesterday I logged about 100 of each excercise during the course of my countless conference calls.  Woot woot!

So last week was a complete bomb in the healthy eating department, not to mention the mostly non-active lifestyle I adopted while in Oklahoma.  But this week I’ve been pretty good on the exercising front.  I went to yoga Monday night and Tuesday night, although I thought K’ten was going to kill me with all the “High Intensity” she threw in there.  I gave it my best and only took a child’s pose when the other alternative was to pass out.  🙂  I’ve also been bouncing (it’s all relative I know) out of bed when that alarm starts singing to me at 515am.  Good thing HunBun’s been going to the office early so I don’t feel too badly about waking him up – if he doesn’t have to get up I usually get a knee in the backside to get me out of bed quicker.

Eating’s been much better too.  Here’s a little montage of the last couple days of food…I wish I took a picture of dinner last night, it was super colorful and tasty.  Flick through flip book style…

Chicken Salad veggie pocket #2

Chicken Salad pocket #3 split its backside

Protein pancake with blueberries

Coconut Mango smoothie

Lo-cal version of a Pumpkin Spice Latte

Snack time

Overall doing much better than last week…for which I give myself a pat on the head (my arms are a little sore to reach for my back).

Now that you’re all caught up on my super jazzy life I’m sure you’re motivated to go do stuff too.

Anyway – back to work now that lunch break is over.

See ya later!

Cathy

Pear, Gouda and cracked pepper

Microwave easy treat

Super quick and good for me snack this morning.  Sliced up a pear, it was super juicy and ready to eat. Ripped up a Gouda slice to lay on top.  Bzz’d it in the microwave for 20 seconds and topped with cracked black pepper.

Eats made easy!

Cathy