old picture Friday and TGIF!

Good morning bloggies!  I am so happy that it is Friday.  My 10 year old came down and had to wake me up this morning, and then informed me that I had turned my alarm off in my sleep, lol!

Today is going to be old pictures of the food I ate yesterday, because my camera battery died and that makes it impossible to post pictures.  So let’s get this party started!

Breakfast Friday am:

chocolate covered raisin oatmeal

oats, unsweetened dark chocolate cocoa powder, Sun Warrior Brown Rice Protein Powder, raisins. YUMMY!

Sun Warrior.

I love this protein powder because it is so clean.  Not 1 bad thing in it!  Highly recommended.

Coffee. Lots of coffee.

Did I mention lots of coffee this morning? LOL!

I went out last night for dinner to a local Chinese restaurant and had sushi that looked something like this:

Sushi.

I say it “looked something like this” because my sushi last night was a bit different.   I had a spicy tuna roll, and it didn’t have cream cheese or anything.  It also had white rice, because they don’t make it with brown.  Accompanying my sushi was miso soup and a house salad with the ginger dressing that I love.   There was some water to drink, also…no drinkies for me last night!

So sorry about the old photos!

I snacked on this before dinner, because we didn’t go out until 7pm:

Just 1 whole egg, no pancake.

and a lowfat cheese stick, which I don’t have a picture of. (Lucky you!).

Lunch was a Gardenburger with leftover roasted broccoli and brown rice:

Except the picture shows cottage cheese, not brown rice:

Brown rice.

Of course I had to have some chocolate:

Decadent raw orange chocolate brownie always tastes good!

As do these cookies:

Kashi

Overall, I feel that I did a fairly good job of eating clean yesterday and had a minimal amount of sugar.

I also got a fantastic workout session in.  (FINALLY!) BodyStep for 1 hour, and then weights.  I had to do the majority of my weights in one day, but I’m happy I finally got them in:

• Bar military press 30 lbs. 3 sets of 12
• Bar upright row 30 lbs. 3 sets of 10
• dumbell front raise 10 lb 2 sets of 12, 12 lb 1 set of 12
• barbell bent over row 30 lbs. 3 sets of 12
• cable seated low row 20 lbs. 3 sets of 12
• dumbbell bicep curl 12.5 lbs 1 set of 12, 15 lbs. 2 sets of 12
• 21′s 15 lbs, 3 sets of 12
• machine tricep extension 80 lbs 3 sets of 8
• seated tricep extension 15 lb 1 set of 12, 20 lbs 2 sets of 8

Today’s plan is to do legs, abs and a short 2-3 mile run @ 10 minute miles or under.

So what’s everyone’s plans for the weekend? I have a busy weekend ahead. Soccer, birthday party sleepover, girls movie and dinner night on Saturday….working out…and 20 loads of laundry!

Hope y’all have a great Friday!

Jessica xoxo

Hump Day!

I woke up this morning and it was suddenly Wednesday! Craziness.

I ate some interesting things today! I started the morning with my chocolate covered raisin protein oatmeal:

"Before"

What we have here is chocolate protein powder, unsweetened cocoa powder, stevia, golden raisins.  What the yuminess looked like all mixed up:

"After"

I missed my bloggies yesterday!  Today was another day back to the cancer center, and I wasn’t going to turn down the catered lunch they offer:

Tomato-Basil Soup

Oooh. The soup was really good.  I also had a real roast beef sandwhich:

bad picture. Sandwhich, not so great, either!

Next time, I’ll have the turkey again, which was fantastic.  There was also a salad on the side:

bad picture. Yummy salad!

My picture taking was lacking today.  I think it will get better as we go on, so that’s something to look forward to!

Let’s talk about the salad dressing:

mindboggling.

Why is the dressing so yellow?  I only used maybe a teaspoon.  Oh, that’s Italian dressing, by the way. LOL!

After we got home I did some snow shoveling and then headed to the grocery store (I think I mentioned I’ve been living there?)  Dad wanted to try some sushi, so I got him some with crab meat and avocado:

It was very good, and I think Dad liked it

I got myself another $6 Wegmans Meal for dinner which I thought was fantastic, again!

Garlic parmesan encrusted tilapia, harvest vegetables, butternut squash with spinach and cranberries.  It was so good, I ate the whole thing!

Remember the preservative free cookies I made the other day to take in to the nurses?

They ended up looking like this:

And then I ate one.

Yesterday I ran 3 miles outside and took a snapshot of my Garmin:

Keep in mind I was running in the snow so it was tricky footing.

Have a fantastic rest of the day.  See you tomorrow!

Jessica xoxo

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

…and I ate a whole head of kale!…

I’ll get to that in a bit…

Let’s start our discussion with yesterday’s BodyAttack launch.  I am so psyched. It ROCKED!  Cardio junkies like myself were very happy by the end of this class.  Complete cardio, great leg workout, triceps, chest…and more cardio.  I haven’t been to the last 2 launches because of the previous stress fracture in my hip, but I really liked this mix.  I did get one picture of our fantastic instructors:

I am a walking advertisement for my gym, but my gym is awesome.  If you’re in the Atlanta area, contact me for information and we’ll get you in to work out with me!

This morning there was some more protein powder oatmeal:

Sun Warrior Chocolate Protein Powder, chucky peanut butter, strawberries. YUM!

Yesterday I had a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and a whole LOT of that

After the awesome workout, I had a protein shake (no pic)…Sun Warrior protein, maca, banana, and unsweetened cocoa.  When I returned home, I was starving again, so I had the rest of the sushi that I bought at Whole Foods the day before.  Brown rice, salmon and cream cheese roll:

I sprinkled some Braggs Aminos on it for that necessary added flavor

Then there was some of this:

Some of this...

and…some of that:

Some of that...

(Just the Mary’s Crack).

Then my grab n’ go snack:

Homemade Trail Mix

That brings us to dinner.  I had a plan…another night of 101 ways to cook shredded chicken, purple sweet potato, and steamed Archer Farms mixed veggies in a microwave bag:

That’s cinnamon all over the sweet potato, and it had a drizzle of honey also.  My shredded Mexican chicken sandwich had diced green chili’s, was on an Ezekial english muffin, and was spiced up with this:

Clean hot sauce

Veggies!

Only veggies. Nothing else. Clean!

The purple sweet potato..I gave them a try before, but I couldn’t even eat it.  So unsweet, even with the honey and cinnamon   It looked so pretty, but tasted awful!  In the meantime, I decided to make kale chips.  Using my Misto olive oil sprayer:

Flavor without over doing it!

I tore up a head of kale, sprayed it with olive oil, seasoned with sea salt, and threw it in the oven for 45 minutes.  Fortunately, it was done while I was trying to eat that purple sweet potato.  I hate to throw away food, but I needed a replacement, and the kale chips were it.  The following is a before the oven picture:

Before.

And another:

Good thing the oven is clean

And finally the after picture of kale in a “chip like state”:

Crunch, crunch, crunch….so there was a replacement of the sweet potato of plate number 1:

Then plate number 2:

Then forget the plate, I ate the rest standing over the pan!

I can’t stress enough how good kale is for you.  It has beneficial nutrients and is low in calories.  Even eating the whole head like I did will only put you back around 400 calories (give or take). If you are interested the following web site has some very important information about kale and its important attributes:  http://whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=38.

Today I leave you with a picture of Sean with the puppy.  We had a very tired puppy because I took her for a walk (umm, she kind of walked me, we need to work on that ) and she played with another puppy for a while.  She’s as exhausted as I am!  Have a great hump day!

Jessica xoxo

YaY! It’s Friiiidddaaaaay!

Hello y’all from rainy, gloomy Atlanta, Georgia. Oh well, that’s ok. At least it’s not snow! Yesterday was horribly busy and hectic for me. Something went really wrong with my car, and I wound up having to have it towed and get a rental. It was after the gym, though, which was good (priorities, LOL!) I took BodyStep and had the most fantastic class since I’ve been back on my feet (literally!) I burned 589 calories @ 24% fat in 1:28. That is fantastic. Plus, I was on an endorphine high for the rest of the day so the car incident didn’t really bother me

I promised I would veer away from chicken and steamed veggies and switch things up. I did!

This morning’s breakfast was not very creative (but I have never claimed to be a cook). Wheatena with peaches and coffee. I was super hungry, the Wheatena has carbs and protein, and I just felt like my body needed carbs. So there you have it. At least I was drinking out of my Peanuts mug!

So lunch yesterday (because I had to deal with the car) came from Publix, the local grocery store. I had gone to one that I normally don’t go to, and found they have a little sushi station! (The other stores just make it in the back and package it). SO, I have a moderate sensitivity to cucumbers, which every single roll had, and was able to custom order my rolls and bring them home:

this is smoked salmon, avocado and brown rice. It was sooo good!

Dinner I made a pork butt with garlic powder, thyme and a pinch of sea salt (ummm, not that great, but edible:)

Salad mix with mushrooms, Goddess dressing, and a LOT of broccoli. I also had a Luna bar yesterday (I had a coupon, buy 2 get 1 free so they’re gone now) and another banana hammock (the same as yesterday as well). So if you missed my posts from yesterday, go check them out!

My plan for today:

1. Return rental car (my hubby came home last night, so I can use his car)

2.  Find out what is wrong with my car

3.  Take Biscuit for a bath at PetSmart (didn’t make it yesterday for obvious reasons)

4.  Christmas shopping

Friday Tip of the Day: If you experience pain while doing a particular exercise, don’t continue to do it. Try to modify it if possible or choose a different one. There are lots of exercises out there, you don’t have to do any that cause you pain!