Deja Vu Thursday

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.  🙂

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

 

Healthy Starts

commitments

Remember my big question the other day?  You know the one about exercising more or eating less?  Well last night I committed to the exercising more.  No, it wasn’t some big committment ceremony between myself and my treadmill and free weights.

Who doesn’t want to be a unicorn?!?

It was more like I ate a bunch of crap that necessitated my commitment when the alarm went off at 5am this morning.  Burn on myelf!  🙂

So I bounced…or rolled out of bed at 5am and was in the garage by 5:07am to do a sprint workout on the treadmill.  I actually love running on the treadmill although I do think it seems a little more daunting to go faster on the treadmill than to run fast out on the streets.  I’ll see how my theory plays out on my Sunday long run.  This is what I sweated to this morning:

Modified from an Active.com article

That was my first attempt at a picmonkey graphic’y deal.  Not sure if I’m digging the background shoe picture – I may need to find something with more lights than darks to use as the backdrop.  Anyhoo.  I survived.  My legs felt really good on the sprints and I liked the fact that I could test my ability in short bursts.  Since this was my first day of speedwork I did start at a reasonable speed.  My goal is to get to a 2:00 or a wee bit below a 2:00 PR for my next Half Marathon (January 2013’s Tinkerbell in Disneyland).  I’ve improved times in every race and I really believe I can hit a sub-2:00 if I work on my speed drills, some hills for endurance and then increase the long runs, distance and speed.

I’m committed baby!

Oh yeah!

To support this increased exercise (hey I know it was just one workout – but I committed remember), I started the day off with a healthy breakfast – which is my favorite meal of the day.

I got a whole bunch of veggies & fruit servings in these beauties.

Protein pancake

• 2 egg whites (used real egg whites since I didn’t have that carton stuff)
• 1/2 a banana
• 1 Tbsp protein powder (I use vanilla rice protein powder)
• 1 Tbsp ground flax meal (Bob’s Red Mill)
• 1 Tbsp chia seeds
• Cinnamon

Mix it all up and pour into a heated non-stick pan sprayed with cooking spray.  Let it sit for 6-7 minutes until the edges pull up and you can shake the cake around when you wiggle the pan.  Flip over and cook for another 3-4 minutes.  Slide onto a plate and toss on whatever fruit you want.

Green Smoothie

• 2 cups organic raw spinach
• 2 cups water
• 1 cup frozen fruit (the lighter the fruit the greener the drink)
• 1/2 – 1 banana
• 1 Tbsp chia seeds

Blend it all up and drink it up!  Will make a lot so be prepared to sip for a while.

So now it’s worky work time.  I think I’ve got 5 conference calls today – so far…I never know if another one will get scheduled in between.

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

Morning Eats

STUFT Mama Mocha Smoothie and Ozery morning bun

This morning was a repeat of yesterday’s STUFT Mama Mocha Smoothie.  If you are looking for a tasty way to get your morning spinach in…this is the way to go.  I think tomorrow, if I repeat, I will throw some frozen cherries in there in place of the banana.  YUM!

Added an Ozery morning bun with Peanut Butter & Co chocolate dreams PB with a side of kiwi.  Super quick and tasty eats for a Friday morning.

See ya later…

Cathy

**No Sweats this morning.  I think I’ll try to get HunBun to do a walk this afternoon around the lake…if not it’ll be Burpee Circuits for me.  😀

***Yep, that’s Mike Wazowski eye-balling my brekkie…and no, I didn’t share 🙂