Back on Track

It’s been almost a month since my last post! I can’t believe it!

I’ve been a little busy with my friend’s wedding

and planning my high school reunion,

which are both now over and were successes – hooray! In the time period of November 10 – December 2 there was also a race run by yours truly. It was a 5 mile turkey trot on Thanksgiving day.

Now it’s on to Christmas hustle and bustle. Before that, though, it’s time to get back on track. Last night I finally felt better after battling a disgusting cold and cough. I decided to lace up the sneaks and get moving. I did the ab exercises from Angela’s Whittle My Middle challenge. I did not get on board with this challenge right away, but I’m LOVING these moves. My abs are nice and sore this morning. Just how I like it.

I also hopped on the treadmill and did 5 minute alternating intervals of walking at 4.0 at a 12% incline (my treadmill’s max) and jogging at 6.0 at 2%. I did about 30 minutes…not wanting to over-do it since there’s still a trace of icky cough down in my lungs. It did feel GREAT to break a sweat and get moving though!

Here is how I am getting back on track with food:

Dinner: Meet Hugh (middle name Jass, last name salad). I mixed up some organic herb greens, baby spinach, a chopped carrot, baby heirloom tomatoes, crumbled goat cheese, sliced almonds, a sesame flatbread and some Annie’s balsamic. YUM!

I reunited with an old friend for breakfast:

There’s nothing like it…

• tons of organic baby spinach
• 1 cup almond milk
• 1 frozen banana
• 1 T Amazing Meal
• 1 T almond butter
• 1 T ground flax

My body is saying thank you. Then I packed my lunch for today:

Homemade lentil soup (organic pink lentils, carrot, onion, celery, garlic, diced tomatoes, organic chicken broth and water) – I made a Hugh Jass pot of this on Monday night when I felt like death. I also packed a stoneground whole wheat dinner roll and an apple. I also plan on snacking on some baby carrots and hummus in my fridge at work.

I shall throw in a CLIF Zbar for good measure as a morning snack as well.

Well that is it, ladies and gentlemen! I’m on my way back to my healthy self!

Hiatus Complete

 

Last week I was feeling sleepy, grumpy and quite frankly, a little dopey.  Hence the appearance of those midgets.

I don’t know if it was the time change, the late night stop at White Castle (first time in my 28 years) on Halloween, or disgusting germs circulating my school…perhaps a combo platter of all three.  I was toast.  But now I’m back and ready to go!

I won’t bore you by catching you up to last week.  It involved lots of food, one run, three yoga sessions and lots of early nights to bed.

Monday:

Breakfast:

AB+J Oats – In the mix:

• 1/2 cup oats
• 1/2 cup each water and almond milk
• 1/2 mashed banana
• pumpkin pie spice
• topped with raspberry fruit spread and almond butter

Snack:  Mini CLIF bar- PB crunch

Lunch:

Morningstar Farms vegan griller burger on a Pepperidge Farm whole wheat Deli Thin (I like these better than Arnold’s Sandwich Thins) with some TJ’s organic ketchup, carrot sticks and hummus and an orange.  Why did I never think to bring a veggie burger to work?  It was awesome!

Snack:

Cinnamon Puffins with almond milk

Dinner:

Oven baked chicken parm and salad.

Last night (I say night because it' was 5 pm, but dark as midnight) was a brisk run. 

Distance:  3.3 miles
Time:  30:27
Avg. Pace:  9:17/mile

I was quite pleased, especially since I walked a few times.  And hooray for a new route.

Speaking of new…

Have you used Gmap Pedometer?  It is fab!  I am usually a big fan of mapmyrun.com, but this is even better!  Check it out!

Have a great Tuesday.  Hooray for Veteran’s Day tomorrow!

On the Edge

Good morning!  I have to say that I think I’ve been on the edge of a really nasty cold for a few days, but have been successfully fighting it off with this little cocktail:

A multi-vitamin and Emergen-C.  Is 1200 mg in supplemental vitamin C too much?  I think I’m od-ing a little bit.  The other pill is grapeseed extract, which has nothing to do with colds, but does have to do with a beautiful complexion ;)

I just googled too much vitamin C and read an article from the Mayo clinic.  I am definitely od-ing.  Especially since I get a good amount of vitamin C from my diet.  Oh well…a few more days won’t hurt I guess.  I’ll just have Emergen-pee (no?)

Monday was hot yoga day.  I think it was hotter than usual though.  I definitely felt like I might puke once or twice.  A few others in the class said the same.  I took Tuesday off due to aforementioned “almost-cold.”

Here’s a peek at some eaties:

Sunday Dinner:

At Momma’s house… roasted chicken (no skin), green beans, mashed taters, butternut squash, stuffing and cranberry sauce.  It was a veritable feast and I was STUFFED!

Monday:

Breakfast:

Oats in a jar…a jar that really had a little too much left to be used for this purpose!  My oats contained: 

• 1/2 cup oats
• 1/2 cup almond milk/water
• cinnamon
• mashed naner

Snack:  CLIF ZBar

Lunch:

Lentil vegetable soup, whole wheat pita and an apple.

Snack:

Peach-flavored Chobani

Dinner:

We ordered takeout since my yoga class started and ended a little later than usual and I didn’t get home until 7.  I picked up this beauty on the way:

tomato, mozzarella, basil and balsamic panini.  Heaven.

Tuesday:

Breakfast:

Cranberry apple oats – In the mix;

• 1/2 cup oats
• 1/2 cup almond milk/water
• mashed nana
• cranberry apple butter
• craisins
• topped with Mighty Maple PB

Snack:  CLIF ZBar

Lunch:

Black bean soup, a grapefruit and…

 

oh former students and your birthdays…you will be the end of me!  I couldn’t resist this donut.  I was hangry.  It was tasty.  I was good and didn’t eat my whole wheat pita with my soup.  That’s a good substitution, right?

Snack:

     Honeycrisp with PB

Dinner:    Penne with turkey meat sauce and roasted Brussels sprouts

 

Well it’s class trip day to the news studio.  It’s rainy and gross.  Lucky us…

So Much to Say

???I guess??? We went to see Paranormal Activity last night. For most of the movie I felt ok about the insanity I was watching. For the rest I was completely horrified.

This chick popped into my head several times during the night. I was not happy about it. She is a freak.

There was a group of teenage girls (probably more like tweenage honestly) who belonged in the Hannah Montana movie (if she has one out right now) rather than this movie. Their screaming and giggling kind of ruined it for me. We definitely told them to shut it a few times during the movie. If you can’t take the scary, go see a G movie homegirls.

In other news, I got a little hair upgrade today:

Don’t mine my unmade bed and clothes strewn over my dressing table bench. Also don’t mind that blurrified pic. It was the best I could do with my ‘berry.

And the best news yet… I’m going here today:

Jack Rabbit

Jack Rabbit is a running/yoga/swimming/biking store in NYC where they custom fit shoes for you after running on a treadmill and analyzing your “biomechanics.” Sweet. Maybe this will ease my groin pain? I’ll be back later with an update. I have a sick feeling in my stomach that I’m going to wind up with shoes sized in the double digits. Gross.

Glorious eats from the past few days:

Friday:

Breakfast:

Brekkie a la Mama Pea. A honeycrisp apple cut into chunks and microwaved with cinnamon for a minute topped with plain Chobani and TJ’s pumpkin spice granola. Delightful, delicious, delovely.

Honestly, I don’t know where the rest of Friday’s eats have gone…or quite frankly what they were. I know I stopped at TJ’s after work and got these:

It just so happened I needed an afternoon snack, so I dug in right in the car! Delish!

I also know my morning snack was this:

New flavor for me. Deliciously exciting. Did not disappoint. You can get an exciting peek at school events via my desk calendar. Yep, we’re visiting a news studio next week on Wednesday. Get excited fourth grade! We will be standing in front of a fake weather map.

Saturday:

Breakfast:

Pumpkin pie oats:

• 1/2 cup oats
• 1/2 cup water and almond milk
• 1 mashed nana
• pumpkin pie spice
• pumpkin butter
• topped with cinnamon raisin swirl PB

AM Snack:

Vanilla Chobani with Raspberries

Lunch:

When a Long Islander is near All American Drive In, a Long Islander must eat All American Drive In. It’s an icon. It’s delicious. I had a burger, a few fries and a big ole seltzer.

Needless to say, I skipped the pm snack.

Dinner:

My FAVORITE restaurant. We started with the baby arugula salad with shaved parmesan, tomatoes and lemon dressing and the baby beet salad with goat cheese and pistachio and split them up between three of us.

I went with the cilantro marinated grilled shrimp with vegetable cous cous and English pea puree. This picture doesn’t do it justice. The puree is 1,000 times greener and 1,000 times less Exorcist throw up color.

Oh Reagan, you will always scare the pants off me…

and apparently give me inspiration for hair cuts…

Sunday:

Breakfast:

Remember this?

I whipped it up for breakfast this morning:

Served it with some maple syrup and strawberries and bananas. These little babycakes were phenom. Light, fluffy, pumpkiny. What more could a girl ask for?

Random gross eat:

I ordered a chicken stir fry…Thursday I think? It came like this:

Would you like some stir-fry with your sauce? Why do people think this is a good idea? Who eats this? Apparently I do. I remove veggies and chicken strips from the saucy madness onto another plate and begrudgingly eat it. My fingers swell from sodium intake and I must drink mass amounts of water with lemon and then get up to pee all night. Never again. Next time it goes straight back.

We’re leaving for Jack Rabbit in about 45 minutes. Time to get out of my jammies and get this party started!!

Going for Speed

I was going for speed….not distance.  I can’t tell you how many times during a run this song pops into my head.  I should probably stick it on my iPod.

 Distance:  2.0 miles
Time:  17:58
Avg. Pace:  8:59/mile

I was going for a liiiittle faster, but at about 1.25 miles, my iPod lost its charge.  Running without music is hard!  I know I did mile 1 just about or even under 8:00, so mile 2 was definitely slower. 

My groin is absolutely KILLING me today.  And there’s no hot yoga class today and I can’t make tomorrow’s.  What’s a girl to do?  Methinks yoga download hip opening flow this evening.

AM Snack:

  My first Vita-Top!  I bought these this weekend.  I got the banana nut flavor.  It was delicious!  I absolutely loved it and cannot wait to try other flavors!

Lunch:

Randomness:  I had a bowl of leftover roasted broccoli and cauliflower from the previous night’s dinner and a grapefruit (which I ate orange style…never did this before).  I was going to have the Chobani and granola, but I was too full.  I wound up digging into the granola only and having just a bite or two of the yogurt. 

That’s my green tea hiding in the background.  My school only has styrofoam cups.  BUMM-ER.  It kills me a little inside every time I use one.

PM Snack:

I finished up the yogurt before I left school and then munched on these strawberries on the way home.  They don’t look too appetizing in this picture, but they were tasty.

Dinner:

I made my three bean turkey chili.  It was awesome as per usual.  A little spicy this time – but that’s the way (uh huh uh huh) I like it.

Dessert: 

I had a TJ’s soy creamy mini ice cream sandwich.  See those ice crystals in the upper right hand corner?  Yeah, I’ve had these since summer.  It still tasted good!

Thursday:

Breakfast: 

I had a bowl of oat bran.  In the mix:

• 1/3 cup oat bran
• 1/3 cup each of water and almond milk
• pinch of sea salt
• splash of vanilla
• cinnamon
• mashed banana
• spoonful of chocolate soynut butter (liked it much better as a mix-in than as a topping)
• topped with plain Chobani

This was a tasty little bowl.  Not my favorite, but how could one compete with pumpkin and apple pie oats?  I mean, that’s just not fair.

It’s almost Friday!  Hooray!