I know that doesn’t really go together, but it sort of does. It was a deja vu kind of work day. Conference calls – Email – Excel files – Word documents – Instant Chats… yada yada yada. It’s probably the same thing that every employee in corporate America does one day or another.
This morning I did not wake up to exercise. Boo on me. I didn’t sleep well and was just plain tired…physically tired. So I decided to do what people always say “listen to your body” and my body said Stay in Bed. So I did….and an hour and 15 minutes after the alarm went off at 5am I got myself out of bed.
Started the work computer – my data transfer was still going…day 3 – but it was saving all my work from my dead work computer so I wasn’t going to bother it at all. First thing I do every day is check my calendar to see how many conference calls I had for the day – only 4 today.. YAY! There are days where I have 6+…Yikes!
My food has been really good this week…I’ve been patting myself on the back as an affirmation of my good choices. Tonight was a slight deviation with our Hillshire Farms chicken sausage sauté – so good! On to the foodie foto’s..Yeeha!
Big ole breakfast pancake…eaten with my hands. MMMmmm
Snack today was 2 Cuties and 2 Apricot Date balls… looks so zen. Ohmm
Homemade chicken salad in a Flat Out wrap on a bed of spinach.
A spoonable smoothie!
Hillshire Farms sausage, leeks, red potatoes and celery. YUM!
I ended dinner with a healthy cocoa – cocoa powder + protein powder with hot water. Sounds weird but tastes really creamy and chocolaty. You don’t even have to add any sweetener at all. Oh, one picture I didn’t take was the piece of Black Bean Brownie I ate after lunch – decadent and healthy!
All this healthy eating is making me feel really great about my recent personal choices. I’ve got a biggee I’m making at work – but I’m not stressing on that at all. Must be all these positive endorphins from exercise and healthy eats. 🙂
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.
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!
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.
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!
Hi! My name is Cathy and I'm working hard to balance health and life. Sometimes it's hard, especially with work, family and my own interests competing to fit into the 24 hours a day we've all been blessed with. This blog is a place where I can share what I'm doing to move - with direction and magnitude...on the vector.
Literature, more than anything inspires me to be the greatest version of myself. Through this blog and my teaching, I hope to share the love of literature that can only come from understanding that great literature is not just read, but demands to be felt.
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