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. 🙂
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? 😀
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!
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. 🙂
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…
I will say that when that alarm went off at 5am and it was hecka cold outside of the blanket I needed to take 4 or 5 deep breaths before I stepped out of bed. But I got into the garage/gym at 5:09am and jumped right on the stationary bike for a quick 5 min warm up.
Why is that riding the stationary bike for 5 min seems like so much less effort and excitement than warming up for that same amount of time on the treadmill? Could it be that in the 5 min I rode 2.15 miles but only burned 23 calories?!? Probably.
After the 5 min warm up I did a circuit work out made up of a bunch of different circuits that I’ve been doing…with a few random things thrown in to mix it up.
Use that 1 minute breather to get your dumbells in easy grabbing position.
I try to focus on form and balance first. Once it starts feeling too easy I’ll add more reps or change the weight of the dumbell or kettlebell I am using.
After that sweat-fest, I came in to whip up some breakfast. While my green smoothie (see recipe in yesterday’s post) was whirring away in the blender I made an egg-less protein pancake. Or attempted to make it into a pancake may be a better way to say it. It was delicious, but in no way would you call it a pancake. It was more like warmed banana flavored stuff you hoped didn’t fall off your fork. 🙂 I should have used coconut flour or GF flour instead of the ground flax – to offer some binding opportunity. Oh well. That’s the nice thing about food experimenting, most of the fails you can still eat.
To make the pancake I replaced my egg whites with 1/2 a cup of unsweetened applesauce, kept in the 1/2 a banana, protein powder, ground flax meal, chia seeds and cinnamon.
The pictures still make it worthwhile. Drool away…
That’s 2 cups of spinach!
Warmed banana “stuff”
It is so chilly today but the sky is blue and clear. So here’s to hoping for a warm up in a bit. Come on Sun! You can do it. 🙂
To all of you who have kiddos, pass out candy or are still kids at heart – have a safe and happy halloween celebration. I know San Francisco is going super crazy with the black and orange since the SF Giants won the World Series.
SB Nation. Justin Sullivan
How lucky the celebration parade is happening on Halloween. I mean even if you aren’t a fan you’d still be part of the crowd if you were celebrating Halloween by wearing your favorite black and orange outfit. Like these beauties…
Skate on Jive Turkeys
Enjoy your festivities…have a piece of candy and simply offset by throwing in some squats, leg raises and our favorite PLANKS. Those’ll help you stay fit and healthy as you start the holiday season.
**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.
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!
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.
This morning I upped my reps for my Superset workout that I did last week. The superset is from my virtual training plan from Tina Reale with Best Body Fitness. I started with a 5 min stationary cycle then hit the supersets. I had sweat dripping all over the place!
I can’t believe how incredibly weak my upper body is. To do the 25 pushups I had to do an incline pushup instead of regular style. So I did it using my stationary cycle seat “diamond” push up style.
Hey I guess the best thing about having weak arms is I’ll be able to tell when I gained some muscle strength…cause I’ll actually be able to do the darn pushups! Bwahahahaha. 🙂
Morning Eats
I had cinnamon spice instant oatmeal with blueberries & sunbutter again.
Instant Oats..less the papaya today
No papaya this morning though. I was full until 1130am when I stopped and had a tiny gala apple and a “melted dole whip” smoothie. I added vanilla protein powder for a “creamy” taste…I’ll have to add only 1/2 Tbsp instead of a full one – too much vanilla flavor for a Dole Whip.
Melted Dole Whip, take 2
That kept me going until after my 2nd conference call of the day. They were spaced oddly today – cutting through my normal eating hours (snack & lunch) but I did pretty well.
Lunch al-desko
For lunch I made a roast beef pita pocket with hummus, spinach and goat cheese. Tasty! Also ate some blue corn chips I picked up from Trader Joe’s. Blue corn chips are more substantial than the regular Tostitos chips we usually buy. I think with the blue chips you could actually stick to the posted serving size (of 11 chips) because they are thicker and require more chewing action.
All you need for a RB pocket
I’m gonna eat you!
No pictures of the blue chips…I ate them too quickly and threw the bag away. Didn’t want to dumpster dive like I usually do when I remember to take photos after the fact. I have another bag of spicy blue corn chips – I’ll photo those, Deal? 🙂
I’ve gotta pack for a quick work trip to Kansas City…aren’t I lucky?!? Although we get to wear jeans, wahoo, so I don’t have to worry so much about which pair of black dress pants I’m bringing – HA! I think I will make a fashion statement by wearing those printed jeans I bought on my birthday buy-obration.
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.
onthevector 