Happy Valentine's Day?

Well hello! For those of you that don’t have any communication with the outside world and/or don’t pay attention to the calendar… it’s Valentine’s Day! Sort of a bittersweet one for me this year, but I’m just treating it as any other Tuesday. J I did leave a big heart-shaped basket of toys/books/stickers for my sweet little Nora this morning and she was SO excited to find everything!

I went to the gym this morning and I must say, it feels so great to be back into a normal gym routine! I know we’ve all heard people say “I’m just not a gym person..” well I most definitely am. I love it! Beyond a 5 minute warmup on the Elliptical today, I didn’t do any cardio. My chest is still really congested and I don’t want to push my lungs right now so I’m just sticking to the strength training. I’m planning to see a gain in weight this week, but I’m okay with it! I know that I’m adding muscle and without cardio, the fat burn is obviously much slower.

Anyway, this is what I did at the gym today:

WARM UP	ELLIPTICAL 5 MIN
EXERCISE	REP	WT	REP	WT	REP	WT	REP	WT
LEG PRESS	12	200	10	220	8	240	8	260
LEG CURL	12	70	10	70	8	80	8	90
LEG EXTENSION	12	90	10	100	8	110	8	120
DEAD LIFT	12	65	10	85	8	105	8	125
SQUAT	12	65	10	85	8	105	8	125
CALF RAISES	12	30	10	50	8	70	8	90

Obviously, it was leg day! I altered the exercises slightly from as they were in the previous circuits that I was doing and I didn’t really pay attention to the weight that I did in the last workout, since I’ve been out of the gym for so long, but I got in a really great workout! I was definitely feeling the noodle legs by the end J

For dinner last night.. I made less than healthy choices L We ended up going to my sister’s work (Beef ‘O’ Brady’s) to visit her and I had ½ of a veggie wrap, a few chips and salsa and like 6 big ol onion rings. They were delicious going down but I immediately felt disgusting… serves me right though! Definitely a mistake I won’t be making again any time soon!

Food Today

Breakfast

Protein Shake following workout

½ c granola w/ ¼ c soy milk and blueberries

Snack

Nothing – early lunch!

Lunch

Going to York St. Café w/ a friend – they have really delicious fresh food and typically some healthier options J

Snack

Protein tofu

Dinner

Spaghetti, maybe?

Overall, I’m feeling much better… almost normal but still some congestion I’d like to bust out of my life! I’m leaving for NYC again on Monday (returning Thurs night) but I am hoping to still workout while I’m there. New York is always good to burn some extra calories since we walk everywhere.. but the food is also so amazing everywhere that it usually balances out lol. I’ll just have to stay focused! J

I hope to get back into some cardio by the end of the week but we’ll just have to see how this cold/whatever it is clears up! Any healing vibes/thoughts/prayers are much appreciated J

Oh snap! I just remembered tomorrow is picture day! Oh man, I’m a little nervous!

Okay, I must run (figuratively, obviously J)… until tomorrow, my sweet Valentines J

Aaand... She's Back! 2/13/12

Wellll… I’m back! I don’t even know where to begin explaining my life over the last month, but it has been a freakin whirlwind, to say the least. Beyond all of the traveling I recapped in my last post, my personal life has flipped upside down and my sweet Nora got really sick and then passed her sickness to me, so I’m still trying to recover from that as well. I’m not going to get into the details of what’s going on with my personal life, not yet at least, but I will say that I was very happy to get back to the gym this morning! I had planned to get back last week but with Nora being sick, I had almost no sleep at all plus every time I tried to get out of bed, she would start crying and yelling for me.. so obviously, I stayed with her. I started getting sick on Wednesday and ended up only coming to work for ½ days on Thursday and Friday, then spent all of Saturday in bed and finally started to turn around yesterday. My dad had bronchitis and Nora caught whatever she had from him, and then I caught it from Nora so it has been one giant respiratory nightmare in my house recently! Either way, I still sound like crap but I am thankful that I am no longer coughing constantly and I’m not as miserable as I was this weekend!

I went to the gym with Emily this morning – it was nice to have her there! We did upper body circuits and I kept my cardio to a minimum as my lung capacity is right around zilch at this point and I’m still having some coughing/congestion issues.

SO – here’s what we did:

WARM UP	5 MIN ON BIKE
	REP	WT	REP	WT	REP	WT	REP	WT
BENCH PRESS	12	65	10	75	8	85	4	95
DB INCLINE PRESS	12	12.5	10	15	8	20	8	25
BICEP TWISTING CURL	12	12.5	10	15	8	20	8	25
PUSHUPS	12	N/A	10	N/A	8	N/A	8	N/A
DB FLYES ON BALL	12	12.5	10	15	8	15	0	0
DB FLYE PULSES ON BALL	12	12.5	10	15	8	15	0	0
CARDIO	5 MIN	BIKE	5 MIN	BIKE	5 MIN	BIKE	5 MIN	BIKE

I started with lower weights on most things because I knew my strength would be down and well, it was worse than I thought. By the time I got to the last round of bench press, it was all I could do to get that 4^th rep up… then with the last DB Flyes and Pulses, I kind of gave up, I’ll admit. We probably talked a bit more than we should BUT I am happy that we got to the gym and that I did SOMETHING! This not working out thing has been making me feel like crap, I just haven’t had the energy to do it… We’re going to go again tomorrow morning and will most likely do a lower body circuit.

Food recently has been here, there and everywhere. I’m still sticking to veganism for the most part (aside from a few cookies and mini cupcakes this weekend – Nora and I baked… and so did my mom). I haven’t had consistent meals or the healthiest of meals, mostly because I haven’t had the energy to cook. However, I’m tossing the fatigue excuse to the side and I’m hoping to get this week going on the right foot! I made granola this morning, still have my protein mousse in the fridge and I went to the store yesterday and stocked up my healthy foods. I’m ready to get some normalcy back in my life!

That being said, I’m going to just start fresh with Today’s food – mostly because I probably won’t remember half of the stuff I’ve eaten recently… a lot of chips and salsa…

Food Today

Breakfast

Protein shake immediately following workout (vegan chocolate protein & soy milk)

½ c granola w/ ¼ c soymilk and blueberries

Snack

Oatmeal w/ cinnamon, raisins and blackberries

Lunch

Leftover WW linguine w/ broccoli (I made for dinner last night – really good! I’ll share the recipe)

Snack

Protein Tofu

Dinner

TBD – I have some options at home, we’ll just see what I’m in the mood for J

Broccoli Linguine

½ box WW Linguine, cooked to box directions

2tsp EVOO

3 lg stalks broccoli (or about 4 cups), cut into small florets and upper stalks sliced thinly

¼ c minced garlic

½ tsp red pepper flake

½ tsp thyme

¼ tsp salt

1 c veggie broth

½ c white wine

-          Bring pasta water to boil; while this is happening, prep broccoli

-          Cook pasta and in the meantime, heat EVOO over medium/high heat

-          Add garlic, red pepper flake and time to oil and cook for 1-2 minutes – careful not to burn

-          Stir-in veg brother and wine, add broccoli and bring to simmer

-          Cover and simmer about 13 minutes, stirring a few times

-          Drain pasta once done and add to broccoli mixture; stir w/ pasta spoon to combine

-          Continue to cook pasta w/ brocc mixture for a few minutes to allow pasta to absorb flavor, then serve!

I served w/ a slice of whole grain bread – it was yummy!

So I got an exciting email yesterday; one of Branden’s cousins that has been following my blog has asked me to write a health/fitness piece for a magazine that she and a few friends are putting together! It will be a 1-2 page story, including my back-story along with a few recipes and some food/fitness tips… so kind of a very small version of my blog! I’m excited J I’ll keep everyone posted on this…

Another friend of mine has reached out for help with his meal-planning and healthy eating so yesterday I put together a 1 week meal plan for him, including recipes and everything… I’m excited to see how he does with it!

I love that people feel confident enough in me to ask for advice, that makes me feel great! I love to help people whenever I can J

Well, I suppose that’s all I have for today…

Until tomorrow! (for sure!!)

Dear January, Where did you go?

Man. I know. It’s been FAR too long. I don’t even know where to begin to explain my life as of late but in a nutshell.. this shit cray. I’ve been traveling all over (Atlanta, then Dallas then NYC) and working in between trips has been insanely busy not to mention having a lot of issues in my personal/family life and it’s gotten to be nearly too much for me to keep sane. Hm.. where to start?

Well, the Atlanta trip went well, but I believe I’ve already re-capped this one. Dallas was amazing – my favorite by far! I got to hang out with my family that I see far too infrequently and met some amazing new people on top of it! As far as working out, that was kind of at a minimum… the hotel was GIANT and I honestly wasn’t even sure how to get to the fitness center, plus it was $16 a day just to use it. BUT I will say that I walked a lot and ate minimally as it’s a little more difficult to find vegan fare in a steak state lol… Overall, I ended up losing about 3 pounds that week!

Last weekend was NYC… which, in any other circumstances would have been my absolute favorite but this trip wasn’t quite as great. A lot of things were mixed/screwed up and it was pretty stressful at times.. I ate more than in Dallas (including my beloved Avocado fries!) BUT we also went to Barry’s Bootcamp so it balanced out. J I’ll talk more about bootcamp in a minute.. Overall, I believe I ended up staying right around the same weight, which at this point is fine with me.

So… BOOTCAMP! Oh man, if you’re not familiar, Barry’s Bootcamp is a pretty serious workout that has recently become more popular due to the Kardashian attendance, along with many other celebrities. It was one of the hardest workouts I’ve had, I can say that for sure. I think I performed pretty well, although I wasn’t able to quite keep up with the workout as directed but I never just completely gave up and I’m so glad that I did it! It was about 60% on a treadmill doing variations of sprints/jogs/side-stepping/jogging BACKWARDS (yeah, I know!) and then we did some weight training as well. It was a little pricey at $32 per class, but I will say that it was worth every penny. Beyond getting an amazing workout that day, I also learned a lot of new exercises that I plan to continue to incorporate in my regular workouts.

So now that I’ve been back home for 5 days, things are finally starting to settle back into some version of normalcy. My personal life is still depressing me pretty hardcore and I feel like I haven’t slept in a month. I have absolutely no energy right now (due in large part to being depressed – on top of lack of sleep) and I haven’t been to the gym all week. I decided that with as tired as I am, it was better to try to recover and get some sleep this week and then go back at it on Monday with a fresh outlook and great motivation. This weekend I’m going to work on my workouts and figure out what I’m going to do. I really liked the workouts that I was doing before I started traveling but honestly I don’t have a solid 4 weeks to dedicate to 5-day per week workouts (I have to go back to NYC in 2 weeks) so I’m thinking I may postpone those workouts until I’m home-based for a longer period of time.



In NYC - my favorite studded tights! :)



Food as of recently has started to get back to normal… I still have my granola in the mornings and I made another batch of protein mousse the other day so I have that and I finally went to the grocery store so I have cooked dinner the last 3 nights (although I didn’t eat last night). On top of everything else, today is a food day at work for the Superbowl but I highly doubt there will be much I can eat, so I will probably just run and get something, maybe sushi?

Food Today

Breakfast:

½ c granola w/ ¼ c soymilk and blueberries

Snack:

Oatmeal w/ raisins and blackberries

Lunch:

Food day/whatever I go get

Snack:

Protein tofu

Dinner:

TBD – I kind of want spaghetti?

Oh! I’ve been making these really delicious sandwiches for lunch this week! I got a Whole Clove Garlic Loaf from Kroger (artisan breads in the deli) and cut it on ‘thick’ then I smear a little toasted pine nut hummus on 1 side of 2 pieces of bread, a slice of roasted red pepper, tomato, avocado and a little hot pepper relish then sandwich it together and bake it in the toaster oven at work on 400degrees for about 10 minutes – amazing!! It’s spicy/garlicy/deliciousness! The bread is relatively small so I’ve been having 2 sandwiches for lunch.

Well, I think that’s about all that I have for today. Sorry again that it’s been so long since my last post… now that things are starting to calm down, I hope to be able to post as normal – along with get back on my normal workout/eating schedule!

Until next time, my friends…