Fun eats Friday

Hello!  I have new pictures today, but they were taken with my Iphone, so the quality is…questionable.  With that being said, I present to you…Friday’s eats and workout!

Oh, and I went to the gym today to do legs and abs.  I decided against cardio, because I was just completely exhausted.

The following was my workout, and I’m fairly pleased with it.  This would be my normal Friday workout if I was on my Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule for push/pull.  Please keep in mind I’ve used the last couple of days to find my maximum weight…that’s why the weights increased during my sets.

legs:

• hip abduction machine – 130 lbs, 1 set of 10, 140 lbs. 2 sets of 10
• hip adduction machine – 130 lbs, 3 sets of 10
• machine leg curl – 55 lbs. 1 set of 12, 60 lbs. 1 set of 12, 65 lbs. 1 set of 10
• machine leg press – 200 lbs, 3 sets of 12
• calf raise – body weight, 3 sets of 12

abs:

• ab crunch machine – 20 lbs, 3 sets of 8
• inclined reverse crunch – body weight, 40 reps
• kettlebell side bend – (not sure what the weight was, it was a small kettlebell…) 24 reps (12 each side)
• pulse ups – body weight, 40 reps
• v-ups – 12 reps

Overall, a great workout, I think!!!

I came home for lunch and I was staaarving.  I made this:

homemade bread, 1/2 oz. goat cheese, turkey.  (Yes, still eating the 22 lb. turkey! )

I put some natural hickory smoke on it:

Iphone pics. Not so much

I was busy making cupcakes this afternoon, and I was really tired, too.  The cake making was a complete mess, but at least they turned out.  Pictures to come tomorrow!  (I dropped eggs, almost didn’t put in the water, almost over-cooked them…good thing I’ve always said that I’m not a great cook, no matter what the kids think )

Dinner was leftovers for me again, while everyone else had spaghetti and meatballs:

baked chicken on a wrap, with 1 slice of mozzarella cheese, tomatoes and red hot.  All wrapped up:

and with my veggies:

I ate a lot of carrots

So I leave you tonight with pictures of my little Diva:

Diva.

and a Biscuit:

I have to go! Will check back in later   Have a great day!!!

“3 Miler” Sunday and Quinoa pasta review

Good Morning Sunshines! How are y’all today?  Before I even get started, Averie told me that the link didn’t work to her blog for the yummy, clean, (vegan!) treats.  So I re-linked it, but in case ya’ll couldn’t find her, the web site is www.loveveggiesandyoga.com. 

The weather is gloomy out today. I was contemplating running my 3 miles outside, but ick. (Yes, that’s the technical term).  So I’m going to head to the gym, run my miles, work on my legs and try to get those leg muscles built back up.

This morning I didn’t feel like oatmeal, or eggs, and just didn’t know what I wanted. Yesterday I had made the kids pancakes, so I had a few for myself:

Clean, Healthy Pancake Mix!

That turned into these:

Topped with natural peanut butter and some of this:

Love my Honey Bear!

Yum!  So much for not using any natural sweeteners besides Stevia this week, although today is the start of the new week, anyway.

Yesterday I was plain ole’ tuckered out and took a 2.5 hour nap in the middle of the afternoon.  I never do that, because I always feel awful for the rest of the day so it was definitely called for.  I’m explaining all of this because there weren’t as many meals as there should have been.  (Clean eating requires 6/day).

I made myself a mishmash for lunch, because food is so dang expensive and I wanted to eat up all of the leftovers in the fridge:

It doesn’t look like much, but I finally got my veggies in!  Acorn squash, roasted carrots, chicken sausage, Quinoa pasta with homemade arugula pesto.

Let’s talk about the pasta.  I bought it at Publix (the local grocery store), and it was kind of pricey (I think around $5!!!) but wanted to try it.  The box looked like this:

The nutrition is phenomenal, because Quinoa is a complete grain, there was some protein listed (always a plus for clean eaters):

I ate 1 ounce and it was a good amount for a side dish.  I have to mention, it tastes like regular, nutrient deficient semolina pasta!  Fantastic tasting, good texture. gluten free.  I highly recommend it if you are looking for alternatives to whole wheat, whole grain and semolina.  A+

I was feeling kind of icky from being tired and coconut water always gives a good pick-me-up:

But that couldn’t even compete yesterday.  I like to drink it when I’m exercising…it gives lots of natural energy and it’s clean!

Like I mentioned before, I missed some meals so the next meal I ate was dinner.  Dinner consisted of pan fried (a little bit of olive oil) pork chops, green beans, and brown rice with real parmesan cheese:

Completely clean.

Yesterday I attempted to make bread again, and Jeremy helped (probably because he got tired of seeing the bricks loaves of bread that I was baking) actually, it probably had more to do about my complaining about the bricks loaves of bread.  So let’s do a picture comparison!  What I made a couple of days ago:

What Jeremy made yesterday:

Yep. Big difference.  So good, too. I dove right into it and had 2 gigantic slices that looked like this:

Sprinkled with some really awesome Vietnamese cinnamon that I got online.  I’m going to keep making my own bread.  I am totally disgusted with the chemicals that companies put in loaves of bread at the store.  They are awful and you can find them under the unsuspecting chemicals tab.

Have a great Sunday sunshines

Jessica xoxo

Fit Friday :)

Sorry this post is so late in the day!  I was at my gym all morning…I ran 2 miles and then did the Les Mills BodyCombat launch!  Then of course there was a small celebration after   It was fantastic, and between the run and the class I burned 629 calories @ 32% fat.  Burn baby, BURN! LOL!  There will be a picture of us all after the class soon…

This morning I was going to make oats in a jar, but they never made it into the jar! So I had oats in a bowl with chocolate protein powder, peanut butter and raisins:

Not bad.  I chugged lots of coffee because I was heading in before class to run the 2 miles I had on my schedule today:

In case anyone was wondering, Georgia is the Peach State.

In the 101 ways to make the same Mexican shredded chicken, yesterday I made shredded chicken nachos…

Publix blue corn tortilla chips, feta cheese, chicken and diced green chillis.  On the side, was some previously roasted acorn squash.

Also some of this LOVE:

Tabasco is clean.  Nothing bad in it at all. Not even Xanthan Gum, which I am not impressed with.

Yesterday I received some protein powder in the mail.  This protein powder is different because it is whole brown rice protein, instead of your typical whey or casein.  I asked Gena at Choosing Raw about the difference and she explained that the protein isolates in the soy protein are very processed at high temperatures, and the same goes for whey protein also.  As I try to cut processed foods out of my diet, that should also pertain to my protein powder!  I ordered some SunWarrior protein powder from Amazon.com.  It is raw (not heated over 90 degrees, whole grain sprouted vegan protein).  I haven’t tried it yet, but I will let you all know how it is.  The following are the nutrients on the label:

Raw protein powder.

Nutrition.

Yesterday for dinner I made an Ah-maz-ing omelet. Fantastic in every way! And ever since I learned that I needed to eat 65% of my calories in carbs, I’ve added some of my homemade bread to my diet.  I started with an onion:

That's my onion holder. My fridge DOES NOT smell like onion!

Then I added 3 egg whites:

Some Havarti cheese:

and some almost clean chicken sausage.  It had some evaporated cane juice, which was not clean, but sometimes there’s a give and take:

There weren’t any nitrites, nitrates or artificial ingredients. Heaven!

And finally cooked up the ah-maz-ing omelet:

AH-MAZ-ING!!

And the finale picture:

That was the last of the homemade bread   I am attempting more…those slices had the cinnamon vanilla pecan butter granules.

Have a great night! See you all in the AM

Jessica xoxo

The “4 miler” Wednesday

Wish me luck   I haven’t run 4 miles in almost a year!  It’s only one more mile than 3. That makes it sound more achievable, doesn’t it? I’ll let you know how it goes!

This morning I mad my first ever oats in a jar.  It was sooo good!  Oatmeal, cashew butter, golden raisins and raw cacao nibs: (recipe will be under the recipe tab shortly)

Oats. In a jar.

With a side of coffee (notice what my mug says…:D)

Jamaica.

I did workout yesterday and had an awesome workout.  I busted it out!  First I took BodyAttack class, and then I worked my back and biceps:

Back:

• Machine lateral pullup: 60 lbs 3sets of 12
• Row rear deltoid: 40 lbs. 3 sets of 12

Biceps:

• 21′s: Set 1 12lbs, 36 reps, set 2 12 lbs. 30 reps
• Open Ups: 12.5 lbs, 3 sets of 12
• Hammer curl: 12.5 lbs, 3 sets of 8

All of the exercise resulted in a fantastic burn: 651 calories in 1:17:45!

I was famished after my workout, and went with a friend to grab some lunch at the local Mexican restaurant.  I can’t believe I forgot to take pictures, especially since we were discussing the blog (among about a million other things!)  I had the carne asada, with avocado, corn tortillas, and a couple of fork fulls of refried beans.  Accompanied by a very large glass of water . It was a great lunch, we hadn’t seen each other in for-ev-er!

I picked up The Troublemaker, (I mean Sophia) at school and headed home to start the 100 loads of laundry that came out of nowhere.  I worked some this afternoon while the boys and Sophia played, and then dinner totally snuck up on me.  I did have a snack:

Haven't had one of these in a while

Then realized I hadn’t planned dinner! After much to-do and deciding on virtually nothing, I pulled a Ming Tsai frozen fried rice kit out of the freezer that I picked up at Target for emergencies (mostly because it was on sale).

I was tired, so Jeremy cooked it up, and added some Braggs Aminos to it, in an effort to increase the nutritional content (I think). LOL. It was not clean, I think it had MSG in it under one of those other names when they don’t want it to come out and say “MSG”. I seem to remember the words “hydrolyzed” or “autolyzed” in the ingredient list.

The edamame increased its nutritional value (kind of).  Enough of that, I was snacky-snacky again, and didn’t want a real meal, so the accompaniment was:

Homemade bread (the bread that actually turned out and didn’t look like this:)

I'm blaming this on the bread machine...;)

Don’t even ask me what happened.  It tasted good, but it was a huge brick.  Yikes!  On the slice of bread that I did eat (I have no problem increasing my carbs, LOL) was my favorite nut butter:

Almost empty and ready for "oats in a jar".

Oh, and there was also a glass of wine (not pictured).  I’m sure y’all know what a glass of wine looks like

Lately my stomach has been off from stress so I have been enjoying this peach, ginger, green tea that I bought at a little local health food store around the corner from me:

This tea is great.  If you like peach tea, this is the way to go.  The peach smell permeates the room, and it really tastes like a real peach.  Highly recommended. I had 2 cups!

10:00pm is my “witching hour”…that late night hour every night where I get hungry no matter what.  Tonight I just couldn’t find anything that looked appealing to me.  I walked from pantry to fridge, back to the pantry, back to the fridge, (you get the idea).  I finally found what I wanted in the freezer:

My splurge for today

I LOVE these brands of ice cream. So healthy, so good, nothing bad in them.  I HATE that for a little container like the one pictured, it is almost $5.00.  Really? Is it made of gold ?!  Sometimes Publix (the local grocery store) has them buy one get one free.  That’s the time to stock up!

I added some of my homemade cinnamon vanilla pecan nut granules butter because I wanted to:

This hit the spot!

That was the best ice cream ever.  A truly decadent end to my night.

Have a great hump day!

Jessica xoxo

School’s out early Thursday

Ugh. There’s a half day today because we “might” have a storm. Really? That’s craziness!

I was starving this morning. I’m pretty sure eating peanut butter out of the jar late at night does that to me! I’m pretty sure that I need to increase my protein intake, so I decided to have a huge protein breaky.

Salmon is not just for lunch and dinner, folks! It is a great source of protein as well as healthy fats!

That’s 4 oz. of smoked salmon, 2 slices of homemade wheat bread, garlic hummus, and blackberries. It was awesome. It was so great I ended up going back for 2 more slices of bread (they’re small, so don’t think I’m piggin out )

So let’s discuss yesterday. I never got to the gym in the morning like I had planned, because I had so many things to catch up on from the holidays…just stuff that didn’t get done like the banking, and bills, and blogging I headed to the gym at 5:30 with all of my kids in tow to run my 3 miler. By the grace of God, I will finish that 1/2 marathon under 2 hours. Because I haven’t run in a year, my cardio is just not “there”. Yet. Running cardio is so much different than interval cardio. I finished in 1/2 an hour and slid into the end of BodyCombat for a rockin’ ab workout and some chest and tri’s.

416 calories @ 28% fat in 50:43. Fantastic!

Yesterday’s eats were very interesting and yummy. Trust me!

I ate lunch at the local Mexican watering hole:

Fish taco’s, and several sides…I only ate the fish, with corn tortillas and avocados. Darn food sensitivities, no tomatoes

To find the energy to hit the gym at 5:30 for running and workouts I made a new protein shake.  (Recipe in the recipe section…it was that good.)

So instead of the “typical blender picture” I took a picture of what was inside. I am calling it Power Protein Latte Shake. Peanut butter, oatmeal, protein powder, milk, coffee, unsweetened cocoa, stevia. ahhhhh.

After the gym there was some more of the hungries happening:

Smoked muscles, purple sweet potato, broccoli with balsamic vinegar and my homemade bread.  The white “sauce” on the sweet potato is actually plain yogurt and garlic salt mixed together.  It just worked…one of those things

So as I worked all day yesterday morning, this morning I have to head out to get crickets for the lizards, bones for the dog, and beer and wine (in the event that we get snowed in, LOL!) My desk just keeps spreading out over the dining room table:

And I think I forgot to show y’all a picture of the brick bread I baked yesterday:

Have a wonderful, snowy day!