Midweek progress

I posted a couple days ago that I am doing the Tracy Anderson Method right now for my strength workouts. At first glance, a lot of the moves look pretty easy, but do not be fooled, this workout is HARD! I have completed 6 days of the 30-day program so far, and I already am noticing some changes. My stomach is much flatter and my arms and legs feel and look (to me) more toned. Awesome! The downside is that the workout is exactly the same for 10 days, and then is switches to a new sequence. Doing the same workout every day is getting pretty tedious.

The other day I thought I would give her dance cardio a try, and I after flailing around my living room like a crazy person for about 3 minutes, I gave it up. In Tracy's book she claims that repetitive activities like running and biking build muscles and make you bulky and because of that says that you are not allowed to do cardio aside from her dance cardio while on her program... Sorry Tracy, that's just not going to happen.

I've been having some foot pain for the last week when I run, so I haven't been doing much of that lately either. The nice weather over the weekend and early this week meant a couple of bike rides, but now that it's going to be cold again I might be hitting up the elliptical machine. Boo!

For dinner tonight I made a really tasty soup inspired by this recipe. It's really not like the original at all, because I didn't have many of the ingredients on hand, so lets consider this to be a loose interpretation.



Spring Greens Soup
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 3.5 oz white onion, chopped
- 4 oz celery
- 4 oz frozen peas
- 1 package frozen spinach
- 4 oz white beans
- 4 oz chickpeas
- 1 cup whole wheat macaroni
- dried oregano, basil, thyme, dill
- salt and pepper

Sweat the garlic, onion, and celery for a few minutes on med-low. Add peas, spinach (no need to defrost), beans, macaroni, and 6 cups water (or broth or stock if you are so inclined). Add about 1 tsp. of each of the herbs, salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil and cook until the pasta is al dente. Taste for seasonings.

I served it with some tilapia that I seasoned with Blackening Seasoning and pan-fried and an english muffin on the side. The whole meal was delicious and healthy and came together really quick!

Sorry for the lack of precise herb measurements and cook time. I am the queen of winging it in the kitchen. I rarely set a timer when I cook, because I usually have pretty good intuition about when things are done. However, this does not always work out for me. I made cookies last week, and over the weekend I opened up my oven to put something in and found a cookie sheet of week-old burned cookies. Whoops! I may or may not have eaten them anyway :)

Whirlwind weekend

This weekend was such a whirlwind. I can't believe it's already Sunday night!

We got in a lot of quality friend and family time, it was so much fun! Unfortunately, the only camera I have is a big dSLR that is a tiny bit cumbersome to drag around when I am out and about, so I didn't take any pictures. I lost our small camera last summer (with all of our honeymoon pictures on it) and we haven't been able to replace it yet.

On Thursday I picked up a new book at the library: Tracy Anderson's 30-Day Method


The book includes a 30-day workout plan with a strength, cardio, and meal plan component. The meal plan is downright ridiculous. I was a little bit in shock to read how little food she has you eating. A typical day includes about a cup of fruit for breakfast, a cup of soup for lunch, a small afternoon snack, and a piece of fish with veggies for dinner. I'm not sure if anyone could stick to that for 30 days.

The cardio is a little silly too. The book came with a DVD that has two 20 minute dance cardio sequences. They are basically Tracy jumping and flailing around.

Despite the goody cardio and meal plan, I was interested in trying her strengthening method. Rather than lifting weights, she does bodyweight exercises with very high reps (20-60 reps). Her exercises focus on the smaller accessory muscles rather than the bigger muscles (quads, biceps, etc). She says that this can help you "achieve a long, lean physique instead of a bulky look."

Since last summer, I have been doing traditional weight lifting, and while I do like the results I got, once my strength increased to the point where I was able to lift heavier weights, I was worried I was starting to look a little bulky, especially in my arms.

I am always up for mixing up my workouts, so I'm going to give Tracy a try. The 30 plan is broken down into 3 10-day segments. For 10-days, you do a sequence of 16 exercises, working up to 60 reps each, and then switch to a new exercise sequence for the next 10 days and so on.

Tonight I did 30 reps, and it took me about 45 minutes to get through it. This is definitely a time-consuming way of working out. On the plus side, I am feeling pretty sore, especially in my butt. I have been a little lazy about weight lifting the last couple weeks and I really miss the sore feeling.

I will report back on my progress!

Friday Push-Up Challenge: Week 3

18 today!!

I've really got to get it together this week so I can get to 20 by next Friday!

Somehow this day has managed to fly by. We just got home from the grocery store and we have friends coming from out of town who will be here at 6, so that gives me 1.5 hours to clean my house and myself and look presentable. I think I can handle it.

This is going to be a fun weekend...

Friday = out of town friends coming to visit
Saturday = celebrating a friend's birthday
Sunday = parents coming for lunch

Do you have fun weekend plans? This is going to be the most active weekend I've had in months and I am super excited about it.

Ok time to ninja clean!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Hey all! My laptop was out of commission for a few days, but now I am back in business!

Since I last posted, my life has pretty much consisted of work, Battlestart Galactica, running, and practicing my pushups for Friday. Yesterday was my first day off in two weeks, so it was a little sad to go back to work today.

Do you have any fun plans for today/tonight? No partying for us, but we are going for our first bike ride of the year this afternoon!!!!

I think I am way more excited about riding bikes than drinking.

Friday Pushup Challenge: Week 2

Friday push-up challenge!

I was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to up my number this morning, because I really didn't do a whole lot of practice push-ups throughout the last week. Friday kind of snuck up on me this week!

I managed 17 push- ups this morning! 3 more to go before the end of the month!

I am working this evening so we spent the morning and afternoon doing grocery shopping and laundry. I love doing grocery shopping trips at times when no one else is at the store! For lunch I made chicken salads with spinach, apple, broccoli, light honey mustard and some Fritos for croutons. This was awesome! They added a really nice salty crunchyness, and .5 oz (what you see on my plate) is only 80 cals.


I couldn't decide if I wanted salty or sweet for my afternoon snack, so I did an English muffin two ways: one half has an egg and sauteed spinach, the other half has sunflower butter, vanilla chips, and a sliced strawberry.


I've been a bit of a workout punk this week...It's funny, in January I would have been excited about a 35 degree day, but now 35-40 degrees and rainy makes me want to curl up in bed. Tomorrow I'm back on it though!

Andrew is having a friend visit from out of town this weekend, so I'll be mostly on my own because they'll be busy playing video games the whole time. I picked up some extra work shifts, but I've also got some fun solo activities planned...I think I'm going to make bread! I'll report back with my results!

Still figuring it out

When I was 19, I was at my highest weight ever. There have been lots of ups and downs throughout the years, but since then I have lost and kept off about 45 lbs.

Based on my experience, you would think that I would have a thing or two figured out about weight loss. But sometimes, it seems like I know nothing.

I posted a couple days ago that I was going to start counting calories again. I've been back on that train for a few days for a few days now, and like I said before, I really don't mind it. My problem is that I am not sure how many calories I should be eating to lose weight. It seems like when I don't count at all, I just maintain.

I know that there are plenty of calculators online to help you estimate how many calories you should be eating, but the numbers they offer are so disparate that it leaves me back at square 1. Some say eat 1200/day and some say eat 2200/day. Thanks a lot!

Last fall I was able to maintain a weekly average of 1400-1500 cals/week for a few weeks so I thought I would give that a try. I was going for 1300/day + a extra treat budget of about 1000/week. This would give me an average of 1450 or so for the week.

What I didn't take into account was that when I was eating this much in the fall, I wasn't exercising as much as I am now and I really was only able to maintain this for a couple weeks before I fell off the wagon. So, as you might expect, I spent the first couple days of this week absolutely obsessing about food. I spent hours (not exaggerating) looking at food porn and was starting to get really bitchy (sorry Andrew). That let to a total blowout on Tuesday night (frosted animal cookies and froot loops, and they were delicious). I woke up the next day feeling pretty bummed out about it but I know that I was not eating enough. So I got right back on the wagon, but this time I am going for about 1700 cals/ day.

I know I won't lose as fast as if I could force myself into a lower number, but being a crazy miserable mess is just not cool.

Important Question: For those of you who count calories, or even just those who watch what you eat, how do you decide how much to eat?

Our laptop is out of commission, and I can't find my memory card reader to load pictures onto the netbook right now, so I'll leave you with this picture of a dog driving an RV.

Have a good day everyone!

Chocolate Chip Soda Cake

Work was pretty lame today, but I managed to balance it out with two awesome things:

1. Run with Andrew. This afternoon when I got home from work I told Andrew I was going on a run and he asked if he could go with me. Um...Yeah!!! I love exercising with my man! We did about 3 miles. I didn't time us, but it felt like we kept a pretty good pace and even sprinted to the finish. I was so glad to have a workout buddy today, because when I walked in the door after work I was cranky and tired and wanted a beer, pizza, and ice cream to make me feel better. The run was fun, and afterward I felt great. Love when that happens!




2. Cake. I don't remember when I first came across the diet coke cake recipe, but I've been wanting to try it for a while. The basic idea is that you use a boxed cake mix, but you replace the eggs, oil, and water with a can of soda. I was skeptical, but tonight I decided to give it a try.

I used a yellow cake mix and plain soda water. I also threw in some chocolate chips. It was so easy and it turned out really well! Fluffy yellow cake + melty chocolate chips = happy Michelle!

It wasn't quite the same as a homemade cake made with butter and eggs, but it was still pretty darn good. And, as much as I would like to be the type of person who can have a small piece of a super rich dessert and be satisfied, sometimes I just want to eat a giant piece of cake, ok? I know I'm not alone here.

I'm definitely going to be trying this again, maybe next time I will try using a flavored diet soda.

Some possible tasty combinations...

Chocolate cake + Root beer?
Vanilla cake + Cherry 7-up?
Spice cake + Dr. Pepper?
Angel Food Cake + Squirt?
Strawberry Cake + Ginger Ale?

What other combos can you think of?

Check out my cake's plate halo

I am working on trying to eat more sloooooowwwwwly because I have a tendency to go crazy on my food and scarf it really fast. So, when it was cake time made myself a nice little set up with some tea and magazines. I kept the tv off and the laptop on the other side of the table, just out of arm's reach. I am always multitasking so it almost felt luxurious to just sit and eat without 1000 distractions.

Wow it's already late and pretty much my bed time. Tomorrow = interval workout on the treadmill. Yeah!