First Timer

After hearing so much about Jillian Michael’s 30-Day Shred on other blogs I had to check it out. Since I decided a few weeks ago that joining the gym wasn’t an option, I ordered 3 of her DVDs to keep me busy at home. Hoping these workouts will be good on my days off from running I gave one a try.

I started my morning off with Jillian’s 30-Day Shred workout. This is the one I’ve heard the most hype about. As a first timer I started with level 1 as she instructed. The DVD is made up of 3 workouts (level 1,2, and 3) that you progressively work through. Each level is 20 minutes of continuous workouts alternating between strength, cardio, and abs.

I have tried a lot of these quickie 20-minute workouts and never see results or feel very challenged. Jillian held her word and worked my ass hard during those 20 minutes. I have a feeling these workouts are going to be good! Come on, she is referred to as America’s toughest trainer.

Soon I’ll try the other DVDs- No More Trouble Zones and Banish Fat Boost Metabolism.

Once at work I had breakfast- PB oats :)

Amy’s came back into my life today around 1:00. I promise I’ll never cheat on her again! Today I had the low fat Minestrone soup that is by far one of the best. Next time I’ll look for low sodium in this flavor. No wonder I like it so much with all the salt!



After lunch I made some hot tea to fill the rest of my belly :)



Side note: I drink water all day long. I don’t see the need to post it everyday but I keep a 24-ounce bottle at work that I fill up at least 3 times a day. Yesterday I had 3 bottles before even eating lunch. Just to give you an idea. I’m always thirsty and can never get enough ice-cold water. I read once that you should drink half your weight in ounces of water each day. There’s my little fact of the day :)

Not too much going on this evening. Take a peak at my to do list.

Make dinner- grilled vegetables over brown rice

Pack Jeff’s lunch and my oatmeal

Set out work and warm running clothes for tomorrow

Bake M&M cookies with leftover candy (while Jeff’s at basketball)

Relax


There you have it! Stay warm tonight wherever you are.
See ya tomorrow!

My first breakfast cookie!

This morning I woke up early to run my 2 miles from yesterday. Surprisingly I am still sore! What the heck? I feel like an old lady when I get up from bed, out of a chair, even walk.

I snuck out of the bedroom trying not to wake Elli. I planned to run quick then take her out when I got back. It worked since she was sleeping soundly and I even covered her up with a warm blanket as I tiptoed out the room.

I bundled up with lots of layers and ran my two miles. My stomach was growling the whole way. I usually don’t eat breakfast till 9-9:30 so this was strange for 6:00 a.m. I kept thinking about my breakfast cookie waiting in the frig which made me run a little faster.

Once back home I stretched my sore body, took the recycling out, then woke Elli. I couldn't believe she was still sleeping. When we got back in I had to try the breakfast cookie. After the first bite I knew it needed a little sweetener (there wasn’t any included to start with) so I drizzled some agave on top.



I ate half and brought the other half to work. I can’t even describe how delicious this was! And a nice change from my regular oats.



Once I got to work I had some breakfast blend coffee with a little unsweetened soymilk.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot that I baked some vanilla cake last night. I had some Nasoya leftover from the sugar cookies and found this recipe on Tina’s blog. Since I had all the ingredients I thought I’d give it a try. I’ve baked a lot this week but end up freezing most of it. Whenever I get on a baking kick I throw most of it in the freezer that way we can have treats anytime.



Back to today… my bfast cookie held me over till 1:00! I couldn’t believe it.

Lunch was Amy’s Organic Chunky Vegetable soup. This is one of my favorites! I also had, for my first time, Mary’s Gone crackers that were really good.



Look at all the veggies!



Plus I finally remembered to pack a reusable napkin and spoon, see!



There’s something about Mary’s crackers, I kept going back for more. (Wonder if that's where the movie came from..hehe) I think it’s the crunch. It’s a nice texture. After my soup I had a sweet tooth so I had 2 clementines.


Around 3:30 I felt hungry and my blood sugar felt low but I was in a training session. As soon as I finished I felt a binge coming on since my body was so weak. (I’m hypoglycemic). So then at 4:00 I ate a lot! An apple, crackers, and an organic Z Bar. What a terrible feeling it is to have to get your blood sugar up without inhaling too many calories. I thought that I balanced my meals pretty well today so I’m not sure what made me crash like that.

After getting rid of my shakes and feeling normal again, I realized that I didn’t photograph my late day snack. I’m sure you got the idea though.

There are no major dinner plans for tonight. I think I’ll be eating a salad with some Mexican inspired toppings since I still have leftover rice and beans.

I’ve gotta catch up on all my recorded shows from last night. I still can't believe we didn’t stay up for the Top Chef finale!

Shhhh… don’t tell who won :) Night!

Let’s have dessert first

I always liked the saying that you should eat dessert first to make sure you have room for it.

Last night after dinner I made the Nasoya sugar cookies. They were huge and had a nice flavor! Much sweeter than I expected from the ingredients and they had a cake-like texture. Oh yeah, they look more like Easter cookies since we don’t have any green/red sprinkles.



I got a little creative with my dessert.



The end result: sugar cookie soy ice cream sandwich! This vegan treat was sinful and oh so tasty.



Onto this morning’s workout… I tried something new today. Yesterday I discovered the Ace Fitness website and their At-Home workout caught my eye. I have to try new things at home since there will be no gym in my life. This was a good workout to do and I’ll probably do this on my days off from running. It was pretty quick, about 25 minutes, and targeted several different muscle groups. The warm up and cool down include yoga poses and the workout is pretty basic. Take my advice and play some music if you decide to give this a try. It got a little boring and music would have jazzed it up. I was too lazy to turn any on.

I also ordered 3 of Jillian Michaels’ DVDs from Amazon this week. I read from other bloggers that she has some great workouts.



My plan is to make our basement a comfortable place to workout and keep things interesting. Unfortunately I’ll be stuck inside a lot through the winter months. I just hope the weather doesn’t keep me from running outside, safely anyway.


I changed my oatmeal this morning since there was no fruit on hand.

• 1/3 cup oats
• 1/4 cup Bear Naked granola
• Cinnamon
• 1 tsp agave nectar
• 1 spoonful of natural pb



I added too much water to the mix so it wasn’t as good as it would have been. I also finished off a bottle of Trilogy Kombucha that I had at work. This stuff takes some getting used to but I find myself craving it now, weird.

Back to training- I’m jumping around a bit today.
I charted my training schedule today since I like to check off the days as I go along. I used Runner’s World to create my schedule through the Smart Coach application. It’s a moderate schedule with Saturday as my long-run day, a total of 15 weeks ending on race day. I’m not sure how to post the chart so I’ll try my best to explain it. I will run on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday (weather permitting) and cross-train/rest the other days. After running 2 half-marathons I am comfortable tweaking the schedule if needed but this is the plan.

Week 1: M 2 mi, W 2 mi, S 2 mi – 6 miles total
Week 2: M 2 mi, W 2 mi, S 3 mi – 7 miles total
Week 3: M 2 mi, W 3 mi, S 4 mi – 9 miles total
Week 4: M 2 mi, W 3 mi, S 5 mi – 10 miles total
Week 5: M 2 mi, W 5 mi, S 6 mi – 13 miles total
Week 6: M 2 mi, W 5 mi, S 6 mi – 13 miles total
Week 7: M 2 mi, W 5 mi, S 7 mi – 14 miles total
Week 8: M 2 mi, W 6 mi, S 7 mi – 15 miles total
Week 9: M 2 mi, W 7 mi, S 8 mi – 17 miles total
Week 10: M 4 mi, W 4 mi, S 4 mi – 12 miles total
Week 11: M 2 mi, W 6 mi, S 8 mi – 18 miles total
Week 12: M 2 mi, W 7 mi, S 9 mi – 20 miles total
Week 13: M 2 mi, W 8 mi, S 9 mi – 21 miles total
Week 14: M 2 mi, W 7 mi, S 10 mi – 21 miles total
Week 15: T 2 mi, Th 5 mi, Sun Race Day! 13.1 mi

Hopefully that makes sense. I find it difficult to squeeze in long run during the week since I work full time and try to run in the mornings. So I tend to adjust this schedule as needed.


Ok enough about running for today!


What was on the menu for my other meals today…

Lunch- Amy’s Organic Vegetable Barley Soup, carrots sticks, and two clementines. I also had Celestial Seasoning’s gingerbread spice tea since my office was freezing.



I’ve realized from all my lunch pictures lately that I am very wasteful. I consider myself to be fairly ‘green’ so are all these disposable spoons necessary? I have reusable plastic spoons at home and need to start packing them for my lunch. I promise to start working on that.


Dinner- Baked sweet potato with black beans and green beans (me) and baked chicken (Jeff)
I'll post that pic tomorrow.

It's now time to clean up from dinner and watch Fringe (DVRed from last week).

Help me out and cross your fingers that we don’t get the icy mix their calling for tomorrow morning! I’ve gotta run!

Have a great night!

Training and Holiday Cookie

Monday, Monday, Monday….

I officially started training today for the Shamrock Half-Marathon! Waking up bright and early to run in 30-degree weather isn’t what I call fun but it felt great. I have to tough it out through the winter training outside and have a feeling it’s going to be a rough winter. You may have guessed that after some convincing from the hubby, I will not be joining a gym like I’d hoped. So there is no back up plan for running in a warm gym on a treadmill. Instead I’ll bundle up and hit the pavement. Maybe Santa will bring a treadmill :) along with the Garmin Forerunner. (Shhhh… I’m not supposed to know).



I mapped out my run after I stretched this morning and it ended up being 2.13 miles. Just a little over the scheduled 2 miles.

• Ran 2 miles (21:00/9:86)
• Stretched
• Abs (plank-side plank-reverse crunch- twisted leg crunch)

My hip felt a little better today while running. I definitely felt improvement other than my bruised butt that still hurts. Yes, it’s big and bounces while running! The worst pain I felt was during my ab workout. While holding plank, especially side plank, my hip really hurt. I tried not to over do it on my right side hoping not to put too much strain on it.

I also reserved our hotel room for the race today. My bestest girlfriend and running buddy is joining me. We are driving down on Saturday to check-in and p/u our race packets and the race is on Sunday, 3/21. Did I mention it’s on my birthday? Probably! I’m getting super excited!!

On my way into work today I stopped at Giant for dog food. Oh, and I got an awesome deal too! Regularly $14.99/14 lb bag, on sale for $12.99 plus each bag had a $1.50 coupon!! Anyway, what I was going to say is that I also picked up some vanilla Nasoya Silken Style Creations to make sugar cookies tonight. Hopefully this will get us in the holiday mood since we haven’t put up our tree yet. After seeing these cookies on Tina’s blog I have to try them.

For breakfast this morning I had oats, go figure. I decided not to photograph them since that picture is getting rather boring. I did switch it up by adding almond butter rather than pb.

• ½ c oats
• Dash of cinnamon
• ½ tsp agave nectar
• 1 spoon full of almond butter
• ¾ of banana

This was good but I still love my peanut butter. The almond butter doesn’t have the smooth and creamy texture that I like about natural pb.


Packed for lunch today is a variety of Amy’s organic soups (I have four cans in my desk), 2 clementines, and an apple.



I decided to have the alphabet soup since it sounded fun and a bit childish.



It tasted a bit like spaghetti-o’s but that didn’t stop me from cleaning my bowl. I wasn’t completely satisfied so I had a PB&J Larabar (also stashed in my desk) and saved the other goodies for tomorrow.

On the menu for dinner tonight is stir fry- one of my favorites! I marinated chicken for Jeff and tempeh for me in ginger sesame dressing. The vegetables are a mix including asparagus, carrots, mushrooms, squash and zucchini that we’ll have over brown rice.



Turns out the veggie mix had cauliflower which we found kind of strange in a stir fry mix. But it tasted pretty sweet.



Dinner is cleaned up and it's time to bake sugar cookie! Yay! I'll post them tomorrow... good night

Back to the grind today after 5 days off work!

To my surprise the gym was practically empty this morning. Here’s what my workout looked like: 20 minutes of intervals on the elliptical and ran 1 mile on the treadmill. It felt great to start off the week with a sweat. Hopefully I don’t get sick since I came home and took Elli out in shorts- it was 48 degrees outside but I was still hot from the gym.

We didn’t have our official Monday weigh in but I jumped on the scale anyway. I was worried that I gained a few over the holiday but was exactly the same, 130 lbs. I can handle that but plan on working really hard this week to loose some more.

Once I got to work I had my morning coffee, regular with unsweetened soymilk and breakfast. This is totally outside of my normal routine of oatmeal- I had a breakfast burrito. Something different taste good once in awhile. I enjoyed Amy’s breakfast burrito made with black beans, tomatoes, tofu, and some other veggies. Pretty tasty and packed with protein that should hold me over till lunch.





Today for lunch I packed soup and salad. We ordered lunch out yesterday from a local pizzeria; Jeff had pizza and had a garden salad big enough for two. It worked well since I needed something to pair with my TJ’s black bean soup. Who knew that it would be ugly outside and raining all day- perfect soup day!

Black bean soup isn’t the nicest looking soup but it is hardy and filling. I brought new salad dressing today: Cape Cod Sesame Ginger dressing. We found this while bargain shopping Saturday. It has a nice subtle taste and we’re going to use this to flavor our dinner tonight as well.



Since I am posting this before dinner I’ll spare you those pictures and details. We’re planning to throw together an Asian inspired dish with steamed broccoli and brown rice, using the dressing as I mentioned.

I hope that everyone has a wonderful and healthy week! Can you believe tomorrow is December?!

Mexican Night and Week's Plan

Today was catching up day around the house. Didn’t get into too much just laundry, a little touch up cleaning, football, and we both managed to get a nap in. I’m really excited about dinner tonight- it’s my favorite MEXICAN! Since we had lots of leftover veggies in the frig we’re making grilled vegetable fajitas with refried beans and sweet potatoes fries. Strange combo but hubby was hungry for fries and since they’re so good I couldn’t resist.

I usually microwave sliced sweet potatoes in water before baking them. It seems to speed up the baking and allows them to get cruncher. However I’m sure you could omit this step but I microwave two sliced potatoes for 8 minutes. Then placed them on a pan, brushed them with canola oil, sprinkled with paprika and pepper, then into the oven. I just guess on time and temp but went with 425 degrees until brown, flipping after about 20 minutes. These fries are one of our favorite sides to make and we usually have them at least once a week.

Ready for the oven



After baking for about 40 minutes



For the fajitas we grilled sliced red onion, red and green peppers, tossed in olive oil and seasoning. I make my own taco seasoning and found a great recipe here.

Here are the veggies on the grill... love this grill pan!



To finish them off, we topped with Amy’s Kitchen traditional refried beans. Yummy!

Here is my plate, I decided to go without a tortilla.



Earlier today we planned our meals for this week, here’s what will fill our bellies:

Monday: Asian broccoli with brown rice
Tuesday: Whole wheat pasta with marinara sauce and vegetable side
Wednesday: Boca burgers with sweet potato fries
Thursday: Jeff is on his own since I’ll be out of town for work
Friday: Shrimp and vegetable pad Thai

I plan on hitting the gym everyday this week. It’s my last trial week before I make my decision, to join or not to join? Anyway, Wednesday night we’ve planned a quick dinner since Jeff has basketball and I want to take the “Rock Your Skinnies” class at the gym. What a catchy name!

Well that’s all for tonight. I’ve had a sweet tooth since dinner so I think I’ll curl up with some sugar cookie tea. Good Night :)

Gym Trial Day 2 and Monday Weigh In

Today was my second of the fourteen-day trial at the gym. This period is going to give me the opportunity to see how the gym will fit into my schedule. The gym is open 24 hours for members but during the trial period you have to be there when they have an attendant, 6am – 9pm. If it were up to me I’d be there right at 5:30am since that would allow enough time to get ready for work.

This morning my alarm went off at 5:20 and I quickly got up to make it to the gym by 6 am. I was buzzing the door at 6 am on the dot. I got a decent workout in: 2.25 mi on the treadmill, stretched, abs workout. I had to be out of there by 6:40 to get home and take Elli out then get ready for the day. I made it to work on time, which proves to me that if I can start going at 5:30am I’ll have more workout time and will not have to rush.

Monday is “weigh in” day at work. I work with two other ladies and we’ve been tracking our weight over the last two months. When we started I weighed 135lbs and today I came in at 130lbs. Not bad- my goal weight is 120 so I have a ways to go!



Here’s what the rest of the day looked like…

A hearty breakfast of TJ’s steel cut oats, pb, and ½ banana with a cup of Celestial Seasonings cinnamon apple spice tea.



For lunch I packed some veggies, hummus, and Amy’s chunky vegetable soup.



Ended up snacking on this later in the afternoon.






It looks like we’ll be having chili again for dinner tonight. Yesterday during football we threw some chili in the crock pot. Jeff makes the best chili and we love how many meals we get out of it. I threw together some corn beard for the side. We had some for dinner last night and ended up with 3 large containers leftover. Two went in the freezer for future use and I left one out for dinner this week.




We never follow a recipe for chili but here’s the run down of our ingredients:

Morningstar Farm crumbles
Dark and light kidney beans
Black beans
Tomato paste
Diced tomatoes (we found some with chili seasoning added)
Chopped onion
1 bag frozen pepper slices (red, yellow, & green)
Chili powder
H2O
Whatever else Jeff threw in to make it delicious!




My smokin' hot dinner...


We just got finished eating and Jeff ended up having chicken noodle soup and a grilled cheese instead. We are both feeling a bit under the weather and that sounded better to him. I made him a grilled cheese with TJ's american soy cheese and to my surprise he actually liked it! Another keeper :)

Since my computer is being crappy and not letting me upload pictures... and I need to polish our silver for Thanksgiving dinner.... I'm going to jump off here.

Have a great evening!

A Day in The Life

In an effort to stay on track with my attempt to exercise daily and eat a balanced diet, I’ve decided to share a few days with you here-and-there. I don’t plan to bore you with this everyday although it will help hold me accountable. I am not even sure anyone reads this blog but I pretend someone out there gives a damn, which makes me think about my actions. Whatever works!
Today started off well with a peaceful and productive morning, always a plus in my book. Elli, our black lab, woke me at the usual 5:25 this morning to take her out. Here is what the rest of my day usually looks like…

Wednesday (Happy Hump Day!)

5:25 Woke up and took Elli out
5:40 Fed Elli and prepped dinner, cut up sweet potatoes
6:00 Bundled up and hit the pavement for a 2 mile run
6:20 Stretched and checked The Nest fitness board
6:30 Got ready for work, made coffee, sent Jeff out the door
7:20 Left for work
8:00 My workday begins….
4:30 Head home
5:30 Take Elli out and start dinner
6:00 Catch up with Jeff over dinner
7:00 Blogging & Facebook updates
8:00 Watch TV (usually recorded from previous night), read and relax
9:30 *yawn* get ready for bed

I try my best to plan meals for the week and here is what’s in store for today.

B: regular coffee with unsweetened soymilk
vanilla soy yogurt with blueberries & raspberries
S: carrots with roasted red pepper hummus
L: Amy’s organic black bean and vegetable burrito
S: apple with natural peanut butter
D: vegan Boca burgers with sweet potato fries

Usually I stick with the “plan” but depending on my mood I may switch it up a bit.

Turns out that I wasn’t hungry for a morning snack so I skipped the carrots and hummus. This was my first of Amy’s burritos and I brought taco sauce a long just incase it was dry. I didn’t need it because it taste great plain. I kept cutting my bites smaller and smaller to make it last longer. During my lunch break I caught up with my current read: In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. My friend, who is also very much into nutrition, let me borrow it. I’ll let you know how it is once I’m finished. I am juggling two books right now so it may be awhile.

Breakfast


Lunch


Snack


Dinner. I had some salad to use up so I threw that in too.


This post has ended up longer than expected. Hope you have a wonderful evening!