on a mission…

I have decided that I am on a personal mission to get as fit as I can and clean up my diet as much as I can between now and June (when we go to the beach, haha!) and then carry on, of course, during and after my vacation. I am sooo looking forward to my vacation!

With that being said, I had a rockin’ workout today! I went to my BodyAttack class, which cheered me up considerably, then worked out on the floor with weights for another 45 minutes…today I did chest, shoulders and abs.  I was supposed to do triceps too, but I just didn’t have anything left.

• Machine chest press, 60 lbs. 3 sets of 8
• Machine chest fly, 60 lbs. 3 sets of 8
• Dumbbelll incline bench press 20 lbs. 3 sets of 10
• Bar military press 40 lbs. 3 sets of 8
• bar upright row 30 lbs. 3 sets of 10
• dumbbell lateral raise 8 lbs. 2 sets of 8 (uhhh, these are hard! Something to work on!)
• bench leg raise 40 reps
• incline reverse crunch 40 reps
• kettlebell side bend (15 pounds) 24 reps (12 each side)
• pulse ups 36 reps
• v-up 12 reps

I guess I did a lot today, I didn’t realize until I wrote it all out!

I have an instructor/national trainer at my gym who is eating clean and she’s been giving me a lot of food for thought lately.  It’s nice to know someone that you can bounce things off of and get ideas from in “real life”. Plus, it’s great for support!  I know a lot of people who don’t have that kind of support, either in real life or online…I ran into that myself when I first started eating clean from my “friends”.  They thought I was obsessive/compulsive and my eating habits were strange. Eventually, they came to accept it; but it was kind of a long road.  I persevered, though, and believe that I came out stronger because of it!  Strong-willed…that’s me!   Food for thought here….if it were easy, everyone would be doing it. Nothing is free.  You have to work at this like everything else.  The payoff is your health.  So eat clean, be healthy!!!

Enough talk today, I guess maybe you want to see what I ate? It wasn’t very exciting…but it was yummy…and I did manage to cut out sugars today, and felt a ton better and not so weighed down.

I got home from the gym and decided I was going to make cut up sweet potatoes, but I burned them.   Have you ever tried a burned sweet potato? YUCK. I really wanted to eat them, too.  In place of the burned potato, I had some foods that you’ve seen before but all together in one place for my lunch today:

Luuunch!

Leftover tuna fish from yesterday with the Santa Fe Marinade, cottage cheese (low sodium), raw peppers and Mary’s Gone Crackers.  Perfection in a bowl.

I must admit that I just didn’t know what else to eat today so I didn’t do the snacky-snacky thing.  Dinner was yummy and very filling:

Grilled pork chop, large sweet potato, and squash with craisins and fresh oregano.  Was fantastic!!!

I love the squash.  I think I like it better with basil instead of oregano.  It was still good, though!

MASSIVE sweet potato. With cinnamon.

I plan on having a banana boat for dessert….it might look something like this:

Banana, coconut, natural peanut butter, golden raisins, honey.

Or it might look something like this:

Banana, raisins, raw cashes, cacao nibs, nut butter.

Who knows? We shall see!

Have a wonderful and healthy hump day!

Jessica xoxo

Let’s Try This Again…

Good Morning my bloggie friends! It has finally stopped snowing but it is C.O.L.D. Holy cow! It was one degree when I woke up. Now it’s 6 degrees!   I am so not used to the cold weather.  I plan on running today, but I need to pick up some trail shoes..my sneakers slide all over the place on the ice and snow and sometimes I have two left feet anyway. So not a good thing!  Here’s a picture of the snow, mostly for my friends in the ATL:

That’s a picture of my parents backyard.

Let’s start with yesterday’s breaky.  Mine was yummy!  I’ve gotten away from eating so many carbs in the morning and kind of limiting if I don’t work out that day.  Yesterday I had a fantastic bowl of oatmeal:

Plain old oatmeal, pineapple, blueberries, granola, and oikos yogurt.  Creamy, yummy, and warm.  I ate the rest of the yogurt in the container to get some protein in (actually, a perfect amount…15 grams).

Fact: The body can only absorb between 15 and 20 grams of protein per meal.  Anything above and beyond gets stored by the body ( like fat does) and needs to be burned off.  Some web sites will put that a little higher (around 30 grams) but personally I like to keep it around 20.

The yogurt:

I have a confession, I had to put some Stevia in it to eat it plain.

Lunch was later in the day.  I really wanted a salad like the kind I make at home. So be it:

Lettuce, baby bella mushrooms, orange peppers, Mary’s Gone Crackers, chicken breast seasoned with Montreal Steak Seasoning.  All covered with Annie’s Goddess Dressing.  It was so good!

I ate before I started my errands, I had a lot of running around to do…the mall, BJ’s, Tops grocery store, etc., etc.  I brought a new bar with me in case I needed a boost.  A friend of mine on a different board that I belong to told me about these Think Thin bars.  Lots of protein, no sugar, low in fat.

Are you tired of seeing pictures of granola bars on my leg yet? At least my jeans were clean   It was ok.  It seemed to be missing something, not sure what…sugar? LOL!  My faves so far are the Cliff Nectar Bars, but I don’t remember without revisiting previous posts how much protein is in them.  And apparently the company is getting rid of Cliff Nectar, and replaced them with Cliff C Bars.  They actually look really good, they have a nut crust bottom, topped with fruit and almonds.  Sounds really good to me!

I had made dinner ahead of time and had it simmering on the stove.  I made homemade adobo pork, because it’s easy and my parents like it.  It doesn’t have a lot of ingredients, but there is sugar in it, so not completely clean.  It turned out fairly well:

I only had a little bit of the pork and ate a ton of veggies with it.  My parents ate their with the traditional yellow rice.  Loved the veggies, they had good flavor. Carrots, broccoli, lima beans, peppers, zucchini.

Again, I was hungry again a bit later and still giving that SunButter a chance.  It’s not that it’s inedible, I guess I’ve been spoiled with my favorite cashew butter I made a banana boat.  See how easy it is? You can make one 1300 miles away from your home!

This one is a banana, golden raisins, raw cashews, raw cacao nibs, and SunButter.  It was really good.  Even with the SunButter, but I hid the taste a bit with the toppings

I am heading outside (I think it’s 9 degrees now?) to run in the snow.  I got me some cheapy trail shoes in the Men’s part of the shoe department in Target…I think they were $39.99.  Then I bought some athletic insoles to put in them, because they didn’t have any sort of cushion. New trail shoes total = $49.99.  Not falling on my bottom in the snow = priceless! LOL.

I intend on bringing my camera and taking snow covered pictures for my family in the ATL.  I miss everyone! So here are some family pictures I want to share:

June 26, 2009 Family vacay in Pensacola!

My Seany and Bisquit

Aidan and Sophia

Have a Blessed Day!

Jessica xoxo

Happy Sunny Day Saturday

Hello all! I woke up to 13 degrees today. Ack! I can’t believe this cold weather. It just makes me want to sit around and snacky all day And snacky all day would not be a good thing. I have no idea what I am going to do with myself today. I’ve decided that Saturday’s will be my day off from the gym, because I have a tendency to over-train. Tomorrow will be another 2 mile run and then I plan on working my legs. I need to really strength train my legs, and I get lots of it using body weight in my classes (think lunges, squats, plyometrics) but I need to get with a leg machine or 2 (can’t forget the hamstrings!) at my gym and make it my friend

On a side note, every single morning there is this one guy that walks by my house. I don’t have any idea where he comes from, but he’s older and always walking no matter what the weather is doing. I doubt he reads the bloggy, but kudos to him for getting out and moving! I think it’s fantastic. And on a whole, that is what we all need to do. If you are just starting out with exercise, a simple 1/2 hour walk would be great 3 times a week! You can build on that, and it will give you a wonderful place to start. And there he goes, LOL!

If you don’t have one of these monstrosities, head outside! Your body will thank you!

This morning I ate some things that were on my sensitivity lists. It is just so hard to avoid certain foods all of the time. Eggs and millet (of all things) are both on my mild sensitivity list, so I can have them once every 4 days if I choose. Since it had been a while, I decided to make something I’m going to call Jessica’s CE Breaky Sandwhich:

The above picture is 1 egg white, 1 egg, roasted red peppers, and reduced fat feta. I am still trying to get through a huge jar of these peppers:

Preservative-less Peppers

Yum. Did you see the running peach on my coffee cup? LOL!

I had to bribe Sophia to go to the gym with me, (she wanted to stay home and play in the snow) so I offered a trip to “The Coffee Store” aka Starbucks after. So we headed over to Target, where I picked up some more reduced fat feta (on sale this week!) Pork Butt (I’m making Adobo Pork for dinner tonight) and some other odds and ends that I’m sure we didn’t need needed.

I chatted up the Starbucks Barista about eating clean and had a very good conversation! She’s totally on board. So here’s a shout out to Jennifer @ the Starbucks in Target on rt. 92. Good for you!! And as I walked around the store I snacked on my homemade trail mix, because I was starving after my run.

Talking about working out, I did my run, finished my shoulders, did 2 tracks of BodyCombat (where my instructor Melissa gave me a fit and clean shout-out but I was concentrating on beating imaginary people up and didn’t even hear her!) YAY!

Yesterday, I ate another wrap, but unfortunately technology had issues with me and I don’t have a picture. So look at this picture:

Replace it with the pork loin I had 2 days ago, and add feta, with a side of carrots and broccoli. It was yummy! I ate late in the afternoon, so there wasn’t another snack before dinner.

One picture I wanted to show you was I had gotten these wraps, and they are completely clean. And they taste wonderful!

I got them at Whole Foods, and I think they were around $3.

We ventured out into the freezing cold to the local watering hole for dinner:

So this is bar food, where they have an extensive beer list. Did I mention mediocre bar food that is not clean in the least? Well, I did the best I could:

That is a $8.99 Chopped Cobb Salad.  The description according to the Taco Mac web site included the following:

Chopped romaine tossed with grilled
chicken, eggs, bacon, tomatoes, black
olives, Blue Cheese crumbles, avocado,
and olive oil vinaigrette.

Review of Taco Mac’s Chopped Cobb Salad

Awful! It was like having a huge plate of romaine with sliced olives and some avocado.  Which I am not opposed to. However, it was waaaay less then an ounce of bacon (not a problem since it’s not clean, but I have to admit, everything tastes better with bacon), a very little bit of blue cheese, a very little bit of egg, and some grape tomatoes that I can’t eat.  I also neglected to mention, I had to send the salad back, because I ordered it with the dressing on the side (olive oil vinaigrette), and it came with the dressing on it as well as on the side.  And it took forever.

The dressing tasted like a cup of sugar with spices in it. UGH!

SO, I’ve determined that eating out is over rated.  I can’t see what they’re putting in my food, so I just didn’t want to eat it

So in waiting for my dinner I ate a few of these off of Aidan’s plate (and by a few I mean 4 or 5):

Because everyone loves a french fry. 

That whole dinner left me ravenous at 10:00 at night, which is my “witching hour” for eating anyway, so I made a clean dessert and made up for the calories:

The "loaded" banana boat

Banana, big scoop of natural peanut butter, golden raisins, and a ton of coconut.  All with a drizzle of honey.  I’m in LOVE!!!

If anyone is interested, my total caloric burn for my workout week was 2329 in 6:48:40.  Yesterdays burn with 2 combat tracks, 2 miles, and shoulders was 391 calories @ 45% fat.

Have a fantastic Saturday and get out there and exercise

Jessica xoxo

Still thinking about paradise…

Bob Marley always get’s me thinking about Jamaica   So, in an ode to Bob Marley this morning, I made some Jamaican Oatmeal:

A closer look:

Plain ole’ oatmeal, pineapple, raw cashews, shredded coconut, and maple syrup flakes.  Brought me back to the tropics

So, yes, my husband reads my blog. So that’s a big hint.

I had exhausted kids yesterday, and really, my days actually start when they get home from school at 2:45.  So I tried my best to eat good meals to keep my energy levels high throughout the day.  I didn’t need my 3:00 cup of coffee, so I must have succeeded.

When you energize through food, you won’t need a surge from sugar or caffeine mid-afternoon. Most days, if I drink coffee in the afternoon, it’s because I want to (I LOVE coffee) not because I need to.

I went and hung out at the gym all morning.  Why, how unusual! I was starving after my workout, so I brought my portable smoothie machine (kind of like a generic bullet thingy everyone has), packed a frozen banana, then threw  maca, unsweetened cocoa powder, chocolate protein powder and water all together and had a homemade smoothie right from the gym.  It looked like this:

Sorry about the old pic, but people probably already think I’m strange for smoothie-ing at the gym…can you imagine if I took a picture of it too? LOL! I don’t care, if I go to the smoothie bar, I can’t count on the quality of what they’re putting in my drink, or if there’s sugar.  There wasn’t any sugar in mine, except for some fructose in the protein powder! And it tasted ah-maz-ing.

Lunch was also ah-maz-ing.  I actually made something that tasted like it was from a restaurant:

YUUUUUMMMM!

There it is, baking in my new convection oven. That I love. Took 10 minutes, 15 total…

That’s not a great picture, but here is what was on my extra fiber tortilla (not clean, but I don’t think I would be able to make my own, and ezekial is out for the time being)…FETA, rotisserie chicken, purple onion, butter lettuce.  If you don’t fold it over first, and then put it in the oven…it will fall apart, and you will need a fork and knife.  FYI. Didn’t matter to me, it was awesome!

To accompany that (not sure what I should name it?)  I steamed some broccoli in my huge chinese style steamer that came from San Francisco:

And had a great big plate full with splashes of my current fave seasoning, balsamic vinegar:

Snacky time right after the kids got home to re-energize:

My new FAVE snack

I know, I need to switch things up! But I am loving my new FAVORITE snack:  raw cashews, raisins, and raw cacao nibs.

Then there was dinner, and I was once again stymied…I worry about the kids and what they’re eating, and then cook myself something entirely different (it’s not normally like this, but I can’t eat everything they are eating).

Does anyone remember peas and carrots jewelery? I used to have earrings that were peas and carrots.  That’s really strange, but they were my favorite when I was around 4 years old.  I think they came with a necklace too: and looked exactly like what I ate last night for a side:

So what this is:  obviously a sweet potato (I put a bit of earth balance spread on it), peas and carrots, and under all of that mess of pineapple is a very dried out bison burger that I bought frozen and pre-made at Whole Foods.

embarrassing.

So, I was still dealing with my kids dinners and getting them eating, and totally dried the cr*p out of the burger.  It tasted fine with that small exception. I had sprinkled garlic salt on it, and with the pineapple…it was fantastic tasting. Not so much to look at.  Maybe I will try again tonight, if I get stuck for ideas for my dinner.

Even with all of that food at dinner (yes, I cleaned the plate, as usual)…I was hungry around 10pm.  I plan on switching what I eat late at night around, as it is my witching hour, but last night I treated myself as I had such an incredibly hard day with the munchkins:

In keeping with the tropical theme, that is my “banana boat”. HINT! With a side of chocolate Purely Decadent coconut milk , everything in it I can eat ice cream!

Cashew butter, coconut, banana. That’s all you need.

Have a fantastic day everyone! I have to get to the gym for my first 3 miler in over a year!  Just as a reminder, the ALCAT page is updated, as is a new page with my personal food sensitivities…and the FIT workout is almost complete (except for legs and abs). Let me know what you think!!!

Stay warm!

Jessica xoxo

Yesterday’s Workout (Cardio and Weights):

Chest:

Machine Chest Press, 50 lbs. 3 sets, 12 reps

Pushups (body weight) 3 set of 12

Triceps:

Bench dip (body weight) 3 sets of 8

Machine triceps extension 80lbs. 3 sets, 8 reps

Seated tricep extension 15 lbs. 3 sets, 12 reps

Cardio:

BodyAttack Class

calorie expenditure: For the cardio – 462 calories at 35% fat; for the weights: 77 calories @ 52% fat.

I didn’t get to my shoulders I plan on doing them today after my run, along with some abs.  Please keep in mind that my cardio classes also incorporate body weight strength training, so I probably did 100 push ups before I even hit the floor for weights, as well as a ton of body weight strength training on my legs and an ab track   Overall, a good workout!