Finally. TGIF!!

Hello all!  It is finally Friday! Jeremy finally got home last night, and I couldn’t even stay awake until he got home! It was only midnight! I just talked to Jeremy and he said it was 2am.  It took him 9 hours to get home from Ohio!  Holy cow!  I did wake up briefly to say “hi”, then rolled over and went back to sleep.  At some point during the night Sophia came down and got in bed too but I have no idea when., it was actually 3:45am.  I was just that exhausted!

Today is a very busy day for me as I have a lot going on.  In the following order:

1. long run at the gym (5 miles or so)
2. figure out dinner
3. clean
4. pack

I am taking a trip to my hometown of Rochester, NY, to help my parents out who aren’t feeling well.  Should be back in a few weeks–we have my husband and in-laws taking the kids.  Please keep us in your thoughts (and if you pray, in your prayers). Thanks!  Rest assured I will be bringing my laptop…so the show must go on! My personal training book is also being lugged with me, so maybe at night I can get some studying done.

What did you all think of the top 10 list?  A lot of the things on the list are inexpensive, or not very expensive.  You don’t have to spend a lot of money to eat clean.  When I get back home, I think it would be a good idea to add up what I spend on the clean eating foods.  All bets are off with anything else.

This morning breakfast was usual and unusual.  It started with oats in a gigantic jar:

The Jar.

This is the big jar of peanut butter, not the little normal one.  It had oats, maple syrup, peanut butter, cinnamon and half of a granny smith apple:

The jar was soon empty:

Yes, I ate the peanut butter.   As we all know, clean eating is pairing a complex carb with a lean protein.  Even though the peanut butter has protein, apparently it wasn’t enough for me, because an hour later I was ravenous. So I ate the last one of these:

Bison burger with 2% cheddar cheese. Pure protein.  I am now full!

Yesterday, as usual, I has some of this, some of that, and some leftovers that I forgot to “pictureize”:

Sushi.  I had half a salmon roll and half a spicy tuna roll for lunch.  Before lunch and after my step workout (350 calories, which is awful for me but I was just so darn tired I took all the lower options and didn’t really work hard) I had a protein shake…Sun Warrior chocolate protein powder, unsweetened cocoa powder, maca, banana. The usual suspects! Oh, and my snack, Emerald Cocoa Roast Almonds with some raisins.

The next meal that I did take a picture of was dinner, and it wasn’t until 9pm:

Chicken breast, broccoli with real Parmesan cheese and a squirt of lemon juice, spring mix salad with yellow bell peppers and Goddess Dressing, and an honest-to-goodness normal sweet potato with cinnamon.  Wonderful!

There was some snacky-snacky in the form of Purely Decadent Ice Cream and peanut butter yet again:

Mmmm. Mocha Almond Fudge.

When you clean eat you’re not supposed to count calories, but I was curious as to where I was at.  So yesterday, I took the time to enter all of my foods into the Livestrong.com web site…called The Daily Plate.  It’s a fantastic web site, designed well, easy to use, and free.  It also has an iphone app that a person could sync to the site if they wanted to.  (That’s me, “Miss Technical”)

At any rate, my total calories = 1946 with everything I ate.  1946-352 (calorie expenditure) = 1594. My fat was awful high though, because of the nut butters and nuts…so I think I need to be watching that.  My protein was on the low side, also..so I need to increase that.  Easy Peasy! Starting today Well, starting now, since breakfast is already over by more than an hour!

Have a GREAT TGIF.  See you when I get to NY!

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

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!