Holiday Monday

Frustrated again with wordpress.

Please see post here

Sunny Long Weekend

Wow! What a great opener to the seasons long weekends.  I don’t know about where you live, but the Easter long weekend was nothing but 20 + degree celsius weather and sunshine here in Southern Ontario.  Quiet unusual for us, but you sure didn’t see anyone complaining about it.

Though it was a long weekend, I did have to work for 6 hours on Saturday, but the rest of the weekend (including Easter Monday) was all mine.   

Started the day Sunday off with some Pancakes for pancake Sunday of course!   

Blueberry Pom Buckwheat pancakes

  

  

SO delish, and filling.  The Husband has 2. I was pleasantly surprised that he said he liked them so eagerly.  The Husband likes his traditional looking foods (‘normal’ white looking pancakes, meat and potatoes).  I also made a failed attempted at a vanilla (almond milk) chi tea latte.   

After lunch I went for a run.  This run was an exciting one for me.  This was the first run that I was to do with the new route (an extra 1km) added to my pre-existing course (5.3k in total).  It was great!  I hardly had to break for small walks at all, no side stitches, no cramping, no excessive loss of breath.  I was so extremely happy with myself. I can’t wait to get out and do it again.  Sadly however my toes were so sore after my run. Completely a result of my sh*tty shoes.  They are first off not real running shoes, they are just sneakers, plus they are super old.  They used to be my aerobics shoes then got demoted to outdoor runners.   

After running I walked up and down my block 3 times to cool down, and then grabbed my yoga mat and headed into my back yard.  Some outdoor yoga.  I have never done yoga on my own, rather always in a class with an instructor, so this was new to me.  Nice.  Did about 30 mins of stretching and relaxing through yoga.   

I then thought that my parents were picking me up to take me to a BBQ birthday/going away party at 12:30, and I only had one hour to shower, do my hair make up get dressed and eat lunch.  I hate rushing, especially on weekends, as I rush all week-long.   

Sadly I did not need to rush they were not coming to pick me up until 1:30. So I had lots of time to eat my lunch.   

Left over tomato veggie pizza

  

& a yogurt

  

 After lunch, I grabbed my lawn chair and went and sat in the sun in my drive way waiting for my parents to arrive (carpooling).   

Sandal season baby!

  

 To the BBQ I brought a fruit tray.  I knew that there would not be a lot of options that I would eat (burgers) and options that I would eat that aren’t healthy (chips), so a big fruit tray was where my attention was going to be focused.   

Plate #1

  

Plate #2

  

Plate #3

  

Enjoying the beautiful weather in the backyard.   

Me & Mom

  

Dad, Matthew (brother) & Me

  

Rachel, guest of honour

  

The Husband got off work and made it to the party!

 

Dinner time came. Funny story about this is that I haven’t eaten beef or pork since I was 16 years old (started eating chicken and fish again 4 years ago, but no beef or pork for 12 years – a noticable amount of time).  So when Tom, Rachel’s dad was asking who wanted cheese on their burgers, my mom asked if I wanted cheese on mine.  I sarcastically answered her, no I don’t want cheese on my burger.  She then said that I should go and tell this to Tom.  I looked at her trying to figure out if she was joking or not.  She was not. I told her “mom I don’t eat beef!” lol.  She was like Oh yeah right.  LOL 

The husbands Plate #1The Husbands plate #2

 

The Husbands plate #2

My dinner plate 1 and only

 Was a great party.  Great company, great food, great weather, great times!  

Back at home, I ended up snacking.  The bain of my healthy eating habits, after dinner snacking.  I really am working hard to eradicate this bad habit. Sadly it is just taking longer than I would like.   

yogurt, granola, goji berries, pumpkin & chia seeds

Honey Dates

 I drank 10, 8oz glasses of water. 

 I burned 800 calories.

 

I ate a guestimated 2,053 calories (the salads from dinner).

 

Where’s Miranda?

I apologize that I have been M.I.A this weekend.  I promise you entries tomorrow before lunch. I hope everyone had an enjoyable long weekend.

Ciao

Making the most of every moment

I have been trying to make the effort to set daily goals for myself.  For Saturday my goals were

1) Be present and enjoy all the moments big and small.   – Check

2) Stay below or at calorie count.  – No

 3) Stretch – no planned exercise today, it’s my day or rest.  – Check

Though I didn’t reach all my goals for the day, I was happy to have done 1 & 3.  I had to work Saturday, so I wanted to make sure that the rest of the day I was able to be relaxed and enjoy the afternoon and evening that The Husband and I got to share together.

I started my day off with some new combinations of an old favourite.

Brown Rice Syrup

Oatmeal with banana, cinnamon, nutmeg and mango.

Off to work I went.  And I think for those of you who read yesterdays post and those of you who didn’t (click here), well we know how that turned out. *sigh*

Mid morning snack sadly had no flavour, just tasted like water.

Lunch I was looking forward to, as my day was pretty busy with meetings from 10:30-12 and then 12:30-3pm. So my 30 minute lunch break was a little retreat away from everyone else.

Tuna wrap with sprouts and red pepperBaby carrots and garlic hummus

My afternoon snack that I had at work was an impulsive one.  Though I try to make an effort to eat natural foods today just wasn’t meant to be one of those days.

After work I was meeting The Husband at a local patio.  The Courtyard

So nice that I had a drink already ordered and waiting for me.  Thanks babe!

I had my packed afternoon snack here (an apple), while The Husband ordered some pickles.

My drink was great and I was super happy to have had one of my favourites waiting for me, but I thought I would try a Long Island Iced Tea.  Wrong!  Tasted only like club soda.

Because it was only 4pm, we decided to grab our bill, and we headed to the Bulk Barn and No Frills.  Everything being closed tomorrow for Easter, I had groceries I needed to stock up on.  Plus we had nothing planned for dinner.  So while we were shopping we grabbed some dinner ingredients.

The Husbands dinner

Bacon & Onion pizza

My pizza was not from the frozen dept, rather I assembled mine myself. Starting with some pizza dough and some tomatoes.

That’s right no sauce. Use your tomatoes fresh as a base.  Next some spinach, Portobello mushrooms and red onion.

Next some sun-dried tomatoes, asparagus and feta cheese.

Bake and serve.

The Husband and I decided that we were going to keep our Saturday evening a low-key one.  We used our hot tub (which sadly did not work out my kinks), watched some T.V and then watched the movie The Informant (funny movie). Spending out evening like this, I had some snacks.  It was hard to not snack just sitting around.  It’s my ultimate bad habit and I am working on breaking it.

Beer nuts, chocolate eggs, some water and a Bud Light Lime.

I commited squirrelslaugher

OMG! ! ! !

 I feel so terrible! 

While I was driving to work this morning, there was a car behind me, and cars beside me driving in the opposite direction. 

A squirrel runs out into the middle of my lane. . . .

I don’t swerve (because I can’t). . . . .

I don’t slow down because you aren’t supposed to (safety reasons). . . . .

The squirrel stops . . . . .

I adjust slightly so I make sure the squirrel is in the middle of my car, so I don’t run him over. . . . .

First set of wheels, cleared . . . . .

. . . . .the squirrel makes a run for it . . . . .

Kerthunk, pop and crunch . . . . . . .

*chin quiver*

I ran over Mr. Squirrel . . . .

Squirrelslaughter!

I had to call The Husband.  I was fighting back tears.

To give you a better understanding as to how I hate road kill.

I don’t even like it when I see road kill on the road, I gag.

I don’t like it when my car or The Husbands car tires run over road kill, I gag.

This happened just over an hour ago.  I am still traumatized, at knowing I possibly killed a little squirrel dad/husband who was probably out gathering food for his family, or out scouting a new housing location.

*Sigh*

I hope you have a better morning than I have.

A lot to catch up on

Greetings.  So I have finally gotten the time to sit down and write.  I am sorry if you have missed me, I have missed you.

So my plan to catch up from where I left off Wednesday morning is to work backwards.  So when you read this you are reading the most recent activities and foods all the way down to the least recent ending with Wednesday.  

So, Happy Good Friday everyone!  Seriously the best day weather wise that we have had.  

here in Southern Ontario this year.  I do believe we were ‘shattering’ the record high that was set something back in the 1970′s I think the news told me, was 20.3 degrees.  Today we were estimating a high of 25 degrees. It truly was fantastic.  

For dinner, well I thought that Kevin was going to be home from work for dinner, however he got called into overtime and isn’t expecting to be home until after 9pm. *hrrmp*.  So I threw together a few ingredients I thought would work well and were low on the mess and effort scale.  

Pumpkin yogurt oats1/3cup oatmeal, 1/8cup pumpkin&sunflower seeds, 1tbsp chia seeds (love those suckers), 1/8cup of pumpkin and 1/4cup plain yogurt1 Whole Wheat double chocolate chip muffin

 

 I had booked myself in for a Hot Yoga session for 3pm today.  I gotta say I was very excited.  I am not sure if it has been only 2 or if it has been 3 weeks since I have been able to make it to hot yoga. It’s both saddening and painful.  Painful because I have not been allowing my body to rest because I have been going at 200% for what seems like forever.   

Because it was such a beautiful day out, I decided to walk to yoga.  Only too me 20 minutes to walk there and another 20 back.  Some good exercise to log. I also saw several things that I was able to stop and take a picture of that normally I would have zoomed by in my car.  

Some flowers

 

and one up close and personal.

 

 

 

   

 

   

   

   

Awesome retro 70′s furniture for 350$

 

A mother and her daughter stopped on the side of the road for some painting and sketching.

 

   

   

   

   

   

  What did you do outside today in this beautiful weather?  

After yoga I hadn’t eaten since breakfast/snack, as I had eaten A LOT! So I grabbed something smallish.   

Walnut halvs and almond slivers

 

one tough a$& banana

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like I said, I had a lot to eat for breakfast/snack that made me completely full and didn’t eat any lunch.  This is all that I had for breakfast,

 

Eggwhites, spinach, tomato and feta with cinnamon raisin bread and a coffee

Peach yogurt with chia and pumpkin seeds – told you I love them

   

   

   

   

  For snack I had 

 

Half the chocolate chip (R) and a whole cherry almond cliff bar. So filling

To this point I have had 7, 8oz glasses of water.

 

I have burned 700+ calories.

 

I am taking a break from counting calories today.

 Thursday night was a long one.  I was absolutely exhausted when Kevin got home from work at 10pm (after going for beers with the guys from work), that I don’t even remember him taking me up to bed.  

 

Dinner was decent though.  I had originally packed a dinner (as I too worked late but of the office), however it didn’t keep well and tasted horrible.  So because I was already at the mall, and had done some shopping after work, I thought something light for dinner was in order (plus it was already 8pm).  

Mac Sushi (minus the two rolls I ate in the car on the drive home)

 While walking around the mall I grabbed a quick snack,  

Oganic Liberte strawberry yogurt and a tall nonfat vanilla chi latte

 

 The snacks I had packed I grazed on all throughout the day, and really didn’t touch the banana and nuts (from Friday’s afternoon snack). 

14 baby carrots and 1/2 a red bell pepper

 So for work Thursday, I was at the local shopping centre.  Tough I know.  I work for a not for profit agency, Big Brothers and Big Sisters.  We are always looking for children and adults to sign  up to get matched. It is always a good time to contact your local branch to apply. Anyway, we want to make ourselves more accessable for people to apply.  So from 10am-6:30pm, I sat behind a table with brochures, inquiry forms (then we mail you the application), and these! ! ! !  

These are not your run of the mill Dollarstore chocolate eggs these are rich and creemy. And some worthers.

Can you tell what I snacked on a few times?

  I loved loved loved my lunch and mid morning snack I packed. 

 

Spinach, alfalfa sprouts, cherry tomato, cucumber, strawberries, blueberries and goats cheese

My mini breakfast cookie

At the gym Thursday morning I had spin class with Joe.  Sadly Joe will forever be my morning spin instructor.  As you will remember I had told you of Allison’s new classes (fitness and kickboxing bootcamps), so she will not be teaching Tuesday am spin.  After spin class I stayed in the aerobics room and got, the balance ball, bosu, stepper, 3lbweight a 4lb weight ball, and a 9lb body bar. I worked out doing various exercises with these for 30 minutes (I can still feel the burn today – Friday evening).  

For breakfast, I have decided this will be my standard for mornings I have spin class  

Green Monster

 

 Thursday I,

 

Burned 560 calories.

 

Ate 1,524 calories.

 

Drank 5, 8oz glasses of water.

 

Wednesday for dinner, I was at work, so this was a Tupperware dinner for 1!

Couscous, edamame, tomoato and chickpea. Only 1 serving left now.

 

My afternoon snack was

Fruit salad (strawberry, pineapple, blueberry, grapes and gooseberry)Nuts!

 

Well, I did it.  I kept it at short as I possibly could, but I got all caught up on my blogging.  Have you ever fallen behind in blogging? What is the longest you fell behind?  

Busy busy busy

*Phew* I am just like a little tornado whirling around everywhere I go.  I just wanted to stop in quickly and apologize that I won’t be able to blog until sometime after dinner tonight.

Last night was a complete write off. I was supposed to go on my new running route with the husband 5.3k instead  of 4.3, however driving home from work #2 for the day, I felt dizzy and nauseous I was so tired.  Plus I still had to make my am snack, lunch, pm snack and dinner to pack with me for Today (Thursday).  So no run. 

After prepping and packing away my food I was ready to hit the hay.  Kevin and I though both exhausted sat and watched Modern Family for 20 some odd mins (thank you pvr).

I got to the bedroom unpacked my gym bag from yesterday morning and repacked it for th is morning.  After that my head hit the pillow and I was out for the night.  Well no that is not true, I woke up to an email coming through my crackberry at 1:30 and then woke up again with a cramp in my right calf at 3:30.

So needless to say that though I am working (aiming to work until) 6:30, I can’t wait for this long weekend to start. 

I will blog upon settling in at home tonight.

Enjoy the fabulous day we are about to have!

Yesterday’s embarassments become today’s achievments

I want to start todays entry with something a little positive before I talk about some not so nice things.

What a beautiful morning!

Yes! It is in fact morning.  That is in fact the moon over the gym. It was such a nice picture to drive up to as I pulled into the parking lot at 6am.

Yesterday I finished off my planned meals with,

a melange of fruit, strawberries blueberries and grapes.

For dinner I was excited for.  I was trying out my own version of spice blend to make,

Chili! Topped with some greek yogurt, so good!

Sadly however between snack and dinner my eating and planned meals only turn a turn, and it was a turn for the worst. Some one had made these,

Multi grain rice krispies, honey and PB.

I had also chowed on some cookies.  You know the kind that come in a square tin and are given out as gifts.  No pictures of those.  Also there are no pictures of the messy binge I went on while putting together my snack, lunch, snack and dinner for Wednesday.  I had 2 small bowls (ice cream ‘bowl’) of granola with coconut, pumpkin seed, chia seeds agave nectar and almond butter.  After that my craving, because that is what it was a craving not hunger, I then had a bowl of corn flakes with 1/2 banana and honey, then, I had a bowl of kashi cereal with pumpkin seeds, chia seeds and sunflower seeds.  Ugh, Carb-Overload!  I paid for it too.  I felt so bloated and disgusting from having eaten so much and in such a small amount of time.

Total calories eaten – too many to count.

Total calories burned – 525.

Total water drank - 7, 8oz classes of water.

From all that however, comes today.  Today I have set 4 goals for myself.  Here they are,

Goals

1) No late night snacking

2) Go for 5.3k run after getting home from work tonight (8:30pm)

3) Stay positive re: work & my progress

4) Stay below calorie count

I feel all of these goals are very attainable.  Number 1 will be especially easy to attain as long as I follow through with goal 2. 

I am however quite excited to go for a run tonight, as I have added 1 whole KM to my run route.  So this should be an easy goal achieving day.

For breakfast before heading to the gym for the scheduled muscle moves class at 6:10am I had,

Rasin, pumpkin seed breakfast cookie with greek yogurt

Sadly muscle moves was cancelled as Allison wasn’t feeling well this morning and called in sick.  Really when the class is at 6:10 and the gym doesn’t open until 6am, I understand why no-one else was called in to sub for Allison. 

This worked out well anyway, because, I am a creature of habit.  I just assumed my gym shoes were on the top of my gym bag as they always as every morning. Well last night I put my gym shoes beside the bag, not on the top of the bag.  I showed up to the gym with no gym shoes, just my black flats that I was wearing lol.  A blessing in disguise. However, this meant I couldn’t do any kind of work out on the floor either in lue of muscle moves.

I had brought my swimsuit because I was planning on going for a swim after muscle moves anyways.  Swimming doesn’t start until 6:30am, so I killed some time by sitting in the sauna until the pool opened.

In the pool I worked on many of the techniques that Heather had taught me last Thursday.  I ended up spending 53 minutes in the pool.  Not too shabby.

At work today I have several meetings out of the office which worried me for staying on track with my eating (eating at regular times and intervals).  So far my morning meeting went well and I was back at the office by 10:15am to have my morning snack (wow it had been 5 hours already since I’d eaten last).

1cup Astro no fat Yogurt 1/3cup All Bran Buds and 1tbsp Crasins

All mixed together and left sitting for 5 minutes before eaten.

So far at the gym I have,

Burned 558 calories.

Drank 4, 8oz glasses of water.

~ M ~

trapped behind my desk away from all sunlight

It’s so sad to be in my office.  I try to spruce it up with my vanilla scented air freshner, my own tunes playing, and even opened the blinds to the window (don’t get excited) between my office and my bosses, so that I could get some natural light coming in from his office.

See my daylight shining through the boss' office over to mine

   

   Sadly none of these work.  My office is dark and gloomy   What are ya gonna do?!?! Though I would have rather stayed in bed this morning, and I almost did, I got up for 5am to head to the gym.  Breakfast 

Green Monster - 2cups Kale, 1cup almond milk, 6 strawberries, 1/2cup pineapple 1/2cup mango and 1 tsp ground flax

 I headed off to spin class.  It was a bittersweet class. Allison the instructor won’t be doing our spin class or muscle moves class in the mornings anymore.  This is because Mon&Wed at 5:30 she is doing a fitness boot camp and Tues&Thurs she is teaching a kickboxing boot camp.  So instead of doing a normal spin class, we did some 1 – 2 minute drills.  Lots of strength training this way.

 Mid-morning snack 

mini raisin pumpkin seed breakfast cookie

I just made a regular breakfast cookie and split the final product into 2 small Tupperware containers and threw them in the freezer.  This way I have 2 snacks ready to go.  This was delish! Just missed the yogurt topping. Lunch, with my food diary, I realized that I had not packed enough food to sustain me through the day, so I would need to hit up the grocery store. 

That's right I bought a .22cent banana with a 20-dollar bill lol

   I also had this salad packed. 

2cups romaine lettuce, 1cup sprouts, 10 cherry tomatoes, 1/4 avocado, 1 celery stalk 2 oz chicken breast and homemade balsamic

  Well only a little bit of time left here at the full-time job, until its off to the races and off to the part-time evening job.  Enjoy the great weather we are having in Southern Ontario today!

Giving it another go!

Well I am back again today starting my blog off with my WordPress blog.  After the mess of pictures that was yesterdays failed attempt, I was left feeling frustrated and irritated.  However last night when I was blogging with my original blog, I ran into formatting problems.  I realized that had that been my 4th or 5th blog entry, I would not have known how to fix it, and would have had to keep on giving it the ‘ol college try and figure it out myself.  So this gave me the kick in the pants I needed to not completely give up on this blog site, and to keep trying to navigate around.  p.s. I hope to get some mega help tonight at work after 7 from one of my coworkers.

Last night was a busy one and I will rewind a little further back.  While taking a 10 min break from my desk yesterday afternoon, I realized I needed to make a weekly meal plan.  This way I could make sure I was getting enough variety as well as all my food groups within the week.  I also thought too that this would help me to see if I was eating enough or not before hand and be able to plan better (when you work 2 jobs through the week planning in paramount).   

So I started in on a weekly menu.  This was pretty easy as I have lots of meal ideas, however I then realized that I had a lot of holes when it came to ingredients for these meals.  Gotta go get more groceries. Sometimes it sucks having to go to the grocery store 3-4 times a week because you area always buying fresh items that get used up so quickly. But my body thanks me for it.   

So after work with my grocery list in hand, with the grocery list sitting on my desk forgotten, I met Kevin at the grocery store (he came because the reusable eco-friendly grocery bags were at home, it just saved me a trip).   

   

Back at home I set out to make dinner.  Sadly I had a meeting back at the day job office for 7pm, but needed to be there to see people in by 6:30.  Despite not going to the gym this evening (because of the meeting), I thought I wouldn’t be rushed, I was wrong.   

Tofu cooking in Soy Ginger Dressingbell peppers, mushrooms, bok choi, carrots and onion

 

bell peppers, mushrooms, bok choi, carrots and onion

 

lots of veggies (a little too much actually) topped with Tofu

 

 So after dinner I was off running again.  Thankfully, (though erksom that I drove 20mins to work and another back) the meeting was 15 minutes.  I was back home with plenty of time to make some meals for the coming workbonanza that lay ahead.  I made a big pot of chili for Kevin and I to eat, I packed up the last serving of my couscous dish, cooked some chicken breast for my chicken salad, and then threw together a breakfast cookie (split into 2 servings instead of 1 to act as a snack). Whoah! :S so much work in so little time.   

Kevin and I vegged out on the couch watching The Big Bang Theory, and I caught up on some of the blogs I follow.   

By 10pm I was a zombie.  I went upstairs and packed my gym back and set my alarm for 4:50am.   

Total water drank Monday (not enough) 6, 8oz glasses of water.   

Total calories burned (with my run), 525.   

Total calories eaten (not counting tasting for quality assurance while cooking), 1,441.