Course Correction

Yesterday I opened at work, which means getting up at 4 am. I don't really mind that shift too much, but for some reason I was really tired and out of it all yesterday after work, so I never got around to posting.

This morning I finally got around to doing this BodyRock workout. I had honestly been avoiding it for like a week. It just seemed so scary! I ended up cutting it in half, like Katie, and it wasn't so bad.

The high today is in the 40s, so I'm planning on going for a 3 mile run after work.

I want to talk about a course correction I'm going to be doing. I think that to be successful in any plan (weight loss, fitness, whatever else), you have to be flexible and willing to make changes as necessary. What works for a time may not work later on for any number of reasons.

When I started this blog, I decided I was going to take a break from weighing myself. Well, I broke down yesterday and did it. I just felt like I wasn't making progress anymore...and...I was right. I didn't gain, but I was maintaining.

Overall, I think that the break from weighing was good. It showed me that when I am ready to maintain my weight, I can do it without counting calories and weighing myself on a daily basis.

However, I also think that if I want to keep losing weight, I'm going to need to keep tracking. I am ok with this. There are 10 weeks left until May 14! I know I can make some great progress between now and then!

With that said, I'm going to be counting calories again as well. Of all of the weight-loss strategies that I have ever tried (a lot), counting calories seems to work best for me. Counting calories means weighing my food, so I busted out the digital scale when I made my breakfast this morning. I really don't mind weighing and measuring my food. Ok sure, sometimes it can become pretty tedious, but I am a numbers person, so I think it's kind of fun :)


Included in my bowl was 1/3 c. oats, 2 T. soy protein, 4.5 oz banana, 1 tsp. maple, 10g pecans.

I haven't had maple syrup in so long, and I didn't realize how much I missed it! Just a tiny bit adds such a great flavor! I'm glad to have you back in my life, maple.

Off to work now!

Important question:

Do you count calories (or have you before?)

Friday Push-Up Challenge: Week 1

Last night my brother stopped by unexpectedly with red velvet cupcakes from Starbucks (he works there) and corn fritters from a restaurant in our neighborhood. In case you aren't familiar, corn fritters are fried balls of doughy deliciousness covered in powdered sugar. I'm telling you, they are amazing.

They look like this (source)

Seeing as I had already spent an hour last night looking up cake recipes and pictures of cake online (fighting a major craving), I was pretty much powerless against them.

However, I'm not going to feel bad about it. They were delicious, and obviously exactly what I was looking for - cake craving is gone! I also scraped the frosting off the cupcake I ate because it wasn't that good. I will put that one in the 'win' column for me.

I often feel bad when I think I have eaten too much, but I am really working on trying not to feel guilty, because it usually just leads to a cycle of binging. If you ever feel this way too, you should read this article. So, today is a new day, and I am moving on!

Plus, I think that the carb-loading was beneficial because I had an awesome workout today! Here's the lowdown:

First up: The Friday Push-Up Challenge Week 1

I announced yesterday that I am challenging myself to to as many consecutive full push-ups as I can each Friday in March. I am working on using alternative metrics, other than the weight on the scale, to track my weight loss and fitness progress. I'm excited to see how my strength will progress over the course of this month!

I will post my scores each Friday for you to follow along. You should join me! Post your scores in the comments. If you can't do full push-ups right now, do them modified! It's all about pushing your own limits and seeing what you can accomplish!

This morning I got up, had a quick breakfast of brown rice microwaved with a splash of almond milk, a chopped apple, and a spoonful of peanut butter. I was a little nervous to do my push-ups, so I played 'Eye of the Tiger' on YouTube to get me motivated. Ok, this was a little pointless, because I only got through about 30 second of the song before my arms gave out....but here is my score:

Week 1 score is: 16

This is really exciting for me, because 6 months ago I don't think I could do a single full push-up. Pretty cool! My goal for the end of the month will be 20 consecutive push-ups. I think this will be a challenge, but still do-able.

What is your goal going to be?

After push-ups I set out on my long run for the week. I did 7.5 miles in 80 minutes. Not too bad! It was a really great run; not too hard, no music, nice temperature. Perfect start to a Friday. Also, this run puts my weekly mileage at 22 mi. Next week I am going to try for 25 miles.

I got paid today, so we finally did another big grocery shopping trip. I love having a kitchen stocked full of healthy food! I have some fun ideas for recipes this week!

How to make healthy fried rice

Since we skipped our big grocery shopping trip last week, our pantry is getting a little low right now. I actually kind of like times like this, because I feel like times when I have limited ingredients at my disposal are when I come up with some of my best recipes!

Today I had the idea of making a healthy fried rice. I actually don't think I've had "real" fried rice in years. It usually doesn't taste that good and is so greasy that it leaves a film in your mouth. So here's how you make healthy and tasty fried rice at home.

The basic principles:

1. Brown rice, not white
2. More veggies, less rice
3. Lean protein, rather than greasy mystery meat
4. A light touch with the added fat

You will need:
- 2 cups cooked brown rice

- 3 cups chopped veggies - I used carrot, celery, broccoli, orange bell pepper, and peas. You can use whatever you have on hand.

- 8 oz (about) protein - I used frozen uncooked shrimp, but any kind of lean meat or meat substitute would work.

- 2 eggs, beaten - Sub tofu or leave these out if you are vegan.

- Flavoring - I used soy sauce, hoisin, and Chinese 5-Spice. Fresh ginger, sesame oil, fish sauce or oyster sauce would make good additions as well.

- Garnish - I used chopped avocado and Sriracha hot sauce. Other ideas include chopped peanuts, cilantro, scallions, etc.


How to do it it:

Step 1. Cook the rice.

This afternoon I made brown rice in the oven. This is my favorite way to make brown rice. Because it takes a lot longer to cook than white rice, it's really a pain to have to babysit it on the stovetop for 45+ minutes. All you have to do for oven rice is combine 1 part rice to 2 parts water in a dutch oven (I used 2 cups rice and 4 cups water), and cook for about an hour at 400 degrees. Easy!

Step 2. Saute veggies.

I sprayed a pre-heated pan with olive oil and sauteed my broccoli, pepper, carrot and celery. I left out the peas because they are more delicate and I didn't want them to overcook.


Step 3. Add in your protein.

Cook for a few more minutes.


Step 4. Add in eggs, delicate veggies, and flavoring ingredients.

I used 1 T. soy sauce, 2 T. hoisin, and 1 T. 5-Spice. Stir until the eggs are cooked through and all of the ingredients are combined.


Step 5. Add garnishes. Eat!

My recipe made about 3 -4 servings. Leftovers, yay!


Overall the flavor of this dish was great! Not greasy, and no gross heavy feeling when you are done eating. The avocado was an amazing addition; I really recommend it!

Friday Push-Up Challenge

I've been doing a good job of keeping up with my workouts lately, but I feel like I need a fun new challenge to give me motivation.

I was talking with a coworker the other day, and he told me that he runs the same 3 mile loop every day for his workout and he hates every minute of it. How does he do it?!

I am currently training for my first half marathon, so I won't really be switching things up with cardio too much, and I've also been enjoying doing the bodyrock workouts as a nice change from the weightlifting that I have been doing for the past 6 months or so. But...I feel like I need a new goal to work toward!

Enter: the Friday Push-up Challenge!

When I first started lifting weights last summer, I don't think that I could do one full push-up. On Sunday after my run at the gym, on a whim I managed 15 full push-ups in a row.

Like I've said before, I feel like I was driving myself crazy weighing myself on a daily basis, so I've been looking for some alternative metrics that I can use to track my progress. It's pretty neat to think that in the span of a few months I have increased my strength so much.

So how is this going to work?

I'm going to work on incorporating push-ups into my regular workouts a few times a week. Every Friday in March, I'm going to do push-ups first thing in the morning (before I do any other working out) to find out the max that I can do in a row. This will be my score for the week and I will post it on the blog.

The Fridays this month are:

3/4
3/11
3/18
3/25

Feel free to play along!

____________________________________________________________________

Moving on to breakfast! Last night when I made my dessert oatmeal, I made an extra serving of oats nmmand left it in the fridge. This morning I added a chopped apple and cinnamon and then microwaved it for 90 sec. I added a spoonful of sunflower butter, a few chia seeds, and a few chopped pecans on top. I loved the bits of soft/crunchy warm apple throughout. Yum!


I slept in again this morning, so no workout before work. Although, it may have been a blessing in disguise because the high today is 48. Maybe there is a bike ride in my future?

Cat Post

I can't believe that I haven't posted any pictures of my cats yet! Here they are:

Burt

Ellie

I didn't have to work today, so I have lots of pictures. I woke up at 7, and made some oatmeal with a banana, and some peanut butter. I planned on waiting about an hour and then going for a run, but in true day-off fashion, I managed to put it off a few hours.

A while later I made an egg with spinach and buffalo sauce. Normally, I would have had two eggs, but we are running low so I decided to take one for the team and just have one.


I finally got my butt in gear and left the house at 11:30. Yesterday I left my water bottle at work, so my plan was to run over to the gym, lift weights for a little bit, and run home. It seemed like a pretty good idea ahead of time. Map My Run told me that the gym is 2.5 miles from my house, so a 5 mile run + a little bit of weight lifting seemed pretty reasonable.

I never run with a water bottle, and I totally underestimated what I difference it would make. I never thought about it being heavy before, but after running with it for 2.5 miles it suddenly seemed to weigh a lot more. The wind was also out of control today! But, I made it home in one piece, and sometimes having a workout that really wears you out is pretty fun!

Lunch was super easy thanks to leftovers from last night. I also had an apple with cinnamon.


A little while after lunch I started feeling crazy tired. I made myself a green smoothie with almond milk, soy protein, spinach, and banana because I thought maybe I needed more nutrients, but it kind of made me feel worse. I thought I might have to throw up...definitely the mark of a good workout! Ok - I'm not saying that I want to work out so hard that I throw up on a regular basis, but every once in a while I like feeling that I really pushed my body. I just slept it off today though, no barfing.


When I woke up I snacked on a carrot, and made some yummy spicy tuna croquettes. They turned out really well, but I'm going to tweak the recipe a bit before I post it. I had one with spinach and broccoli.

My brother came over for dinner, and he and Andrew had pizza. I managed to hold out, but I did scavenge the crust from my brother's pieces. He doesn't eat the crust, can you believe that? I had some spaghetti squash with avocado and hummus, a roasted sweet potato, and an apple.



For dessert a little while later I made a small bowl of oatmeal and mixed in a few spoonfuls of pumpkin, unsweetened cocoa powder, and a packet of stevia. No picture because it wasn't pretty.

Lessons

Like I predicted, my motivation was pretty low for working out last night after work. But, after some blog-stalking and eating a snack of an apple and some peanuts I was out the door! The weather was so nice yesterday I knew I couldn't let the day go to waste!

I did sprints yesterday - after warming up I alternated a few minutes of running at a near sprint with a recovery period of a few minutes. I don't have a sport watch, so I just eyeballed it (i.e. ran until I thought I was going to spew, then I slowed down). I did 2.5 in about 25 min (including about a .5 mile warm up and .5 mile cool down). Apparently my recovery times were sloooooow. There was definitely a little walking included here and there. But, it was starting to get dark so I just gave myself a pat on the back for getting it done and went home to make dinner.

Two things I learned from this workout:

1. Do not eat peanuts right before you run. My head knows that this is probably not a good idea, but my heart says yes, eat the peanuts.

2. I never thought I would say this, but I actually kind of like running on the treadmill. Ok, so let me qualify that statement....I definitely still prefer doing longer slow runs outside. It is so so so boring to do these on the treadmill for me. I just love being able to be outside and look around and enjoy the scenery. However, when I am trying to run for speed (sprint intervals or tempo runs), I think I like it better on the treadmill because I am able to monitor how fast I am going.

When I am outside, I tend to just poke along thinking about life and how great it is to be out there. Maybe someday I will have a Garmin and that will motivate me to go faster outside, but until then I think I'll keep mixing it up with the treadmill.

We skipped our big grocery shopping trip this week to try to save some money. We picked up a few essentials on Monday like fresh fruits and veggies, and buffalo sauce (very necessary), but we have been trying to eat down our pantry and freezer stock this week.

I love when dinner is a mish-mash of ingredients that are thrown together without a whole lot of forethought, and it ends up being amazing! Last night was one of those nights!

I chopped up the bag of carrots and peppers that I brought to work for a snack (I didn't eat them at work), and also chopped up a few stalks of celery. I let these sweat for about 10 min and then added in some blackening seasoning that I've had for ever but don't think I have ever used. I deglazed the pan with a little red wine vinegar.


Then I added in about half a bag of frozen okra, half a bag of frozen black-eyed peas, a couple big handfuls of spinach, about 1/3 c. BBQ sauce, and about 2 T. yellow mustard and let this cook for about 5 minutes.


In the meantime I toasted some almonds and chopped them up, then added them in to the mixture when it was heated through and the spinach was wilted.


Served with quinoa = super easy and delicious dinner + leftovers!


This reminded me a lot of Almond Chicken that you would get from a Chinese Restaurant. Not the flavor, but the texture of the carrot, celery, and almonds. Now I have almond chicken on the brain so that might be making an appearance soon.

A little while I made some fruit salad with apple, banana, and frozen blueberries. A few hours after that I had a grapefruit.



Important question: Do you like leftovers?

I love leftovers. I typically make more dinner than Andrew and I will be able to eat just so I will have leftovers for lunch or dinner the next day. It saves me from having to cook something new for every meal, and a lot of foods taste better the next day. I actually find it sort of crazy that some people don't like/don't eat leftovers. Are any of you out there?

Cravings

This morning I slept in a little bit and enjoyed taking a shower and eating breakfast at home before work. Typically, I work out before work and then just take a bird bath (as my mom would say), where I dry myself off and wipe myself down with baby wipes that I keep in my gym bag. I don't think it's really a big deal, because I work at a gym so it's not like I really need to look that nice. As long as I don't stink, I think I'm good.

Last night I got tired so early. I never got around to taking a shower in the evening, and I figured that if I went another day of workout + no shower that would be pretty gross. Plus I still needed to blog!

So I'm postponing my workout until this evening. Usually I have trouble with motivation if I try to wait until after work, but I'm hoping the nicer weather today will help me out a bit.

Yesterday's workout was a 4 mi treadmill run. It was a little rough. I kept thinking about stopping the whole time. I was actually bargaining with myself, but I stuck it out. We were running a little low on fruits and veggies, so as a pre-workout snack I grabbed a small handful of peanuts. This was not a good choice. I just felt sluggish the whole time. For breakfast as work I had a bowl with some leftover chicken, eggs, spinach, buffalo sauce, and a ripped up mini bagel. The mini-bagel was Andrew's idea and it was excellent!

Also at work I snacked on almonds. When I got home for lunch I was ravenous! I needed quick food fast! I made up a quick plate of eggs with spinach, carrots, and an apple with PB. Afternoon snacks included another apple, a banana, a grapefruit, and some more peanuts.


For dinner I made split pea soup! We found some bread in the freezer, so I had a piece with hummus. Dinner was the early bird special (i.e. 5pm), so I went back for two more small bowls of soup throughout the evening.


Since Tuesdays are my long work day, I got meals and snacks packed and ready to go. A smoothie for breakfast, soup and salad with hummus for lunch, and carrots and peppers for snack. I also stashed an apple in my purse.


Since I didn't workout this morning, I had my smoothie at home (almond milk, spinach, banana, blueberries, soy protein, and almond butter) and added a mini bagel. After I took the picture I added a tiny bit of cherry preserves. These mini bagels are the perfect size. Small enough that you don't get a carb coma, but you still get to enjoy some chewy bagel-y goodness.


All day yesterday I felt really out of whack. I was craving junk food so bad!! We ran a few errands in the afternoon - (meijer, sams, the office store), and at each place I insisted that we walk through the candy aisle to look at everything. I knew I wasn't going to buy anything...I just wanted to look. All day I kept listing the foods that I wanted to eat...thai food, pizza, taco bell, candy, milkshake from Steak and Shake.... I managed to hold out, and I'm hoping today will be a little better.