Recent meals and Week 2 of Bootcamp

Quick update on yesterday's meals and workout:

I had left over paleo pancakes (elana's pantry silver dollar pancakes) for breakfast - these were delicious and quick and easy to make. I highly recommend them if you're looking for a new pancake recipe. Next time I think I'll add coconut flakes or even blueberries to the batter. The honey was sweet enough that I didn't even use maple syrup or anything on them. Delish.

Lunch/dinner was shrimp cocktail - but without the cocktail sauce. I just thawed jumbo shrimp and mixed in some tomatoes, olive oil, and fresh squeezed lemon juice. (I also had a salad on the side). Dinner was more jumbo shrimp, this time on top of (rather than next to) a salad :-) ...I can't help it, I find a food I like (just like with music) and I eat it until I can eat it no more (or listen to it on repeat, as in the case of music).

Yesterday's workout was some absurd set of kettlebell and medicine ball circuits. The goal was to see how long it would take you to do 50/40/30 of 5 different exercises, twice over. Obvs, I chose the 30 rep sets and it took me 31:12. We'll be re-assessed again and hopefully, I'll get through this quicker next time.

Today's food: eggs and turkey bacon for breakfast; grilled chicken salad for lunch; a cup or so of blueberries; and a coconut milk yogurt. I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do for dinner. I'll update this later when I figure that out. Maybe sweet potato hash again? That was SO good - you guys HAVE to try it.

Today's workout: RUNNING. FUCKING RUNNING. I HATE THE FUCKING RUNNING. like, as in 100 yard (or meter? i don't know) sprints. FUCK FUCK FUCK. I was about as slow as the 14 month pregnant chick that was working out with us. We had to run 100 yards (or meters? it was the length of a parking lot) and then power walk back.... as many times as possible for 15 MINUTES. Apparently this is how you get fast. We'll see about that. All I know is that I have never felt so in touch with my fucking hamstrings as I have these past two weeks. OH and my fucking boobs kept flying all over the place. OH, wait, before we did the running, there was JUMPING. FUCKING JUMPING. I don't know what I dislike more. We had to do a broad jump that was measured (best of 3 was taken)..I got 4'5". Yeah, i think that pregnant lady went farter than I did. To end this joyous workout, we did some ridiculous core workout where we had to do an exercise for the length of time it took one person to run a short distance (like a 1/4 of the parking lot). When that person came back, the next person would get up to run that distance while we moved onto a new core exercise. And this went on for about....10 people/10 core exercises. Maybe more, maybe less. I don't know, I was pretty dead by this time. This better get easier...because all I feel right now is how hard it is and how challenging it is for me.

Today my ____ is: (1 is the worst, 10 is the best)
- stress: 4/10 - not too stressed, had a good day at work with my minions/bad day w/ one of my clients and have to do some work tonight, but I'm feeling ok about it.
- anxiety: 5/10 - i don't feel totally relaxed, but i also don't really feel anxious...
- energy: 5/10 - thank goodness, i have some energy back.
- mental focus: 4/10 - not as foggy as last week, but still feel some "residual" fogginess
- fitness: 1/10 - when a 45 month pregnant woman laps you during sprints, you feel pretty out of shape :-(
- quality of sleep: 5/10 - I think i need to go to bed earlier. I only woke up once (at 4am) and then woke up for real at 6:30 - so that was better than usual.
- happiness: 6/10 - i feel ok today, had a relatively good day at work (minus my idiot clients), left in time to come home, watch an episode of HIMYM, went to workout/torture myself, and now am looking forward to dinner.
- financial discipline: New indicators: (1) ahead of schedule/ (2) on track/(3) behind schedule/ (4) holy shit what did I just do. Today, I'll give myself a 2. I spent more than I wanted to this weekend, but less than I expected too, so I think overall I ended up saving $ on what could've been a really expensive weekend (with the 2 day festival).

Oh, and here's a picture of my ugly rainbooties. Thoughts? I went to 3 stores on Sunday and these were the only ones I could find :-(

hullo

hi sisters

last week was pretty busy... and it started (sort of) off with sara bareilles!!!

i bought kira tickets to a sara bareilles concert (last tuesday - 4/30) as an early birthday present, and man oh man was it awesome. it was a solo show - no openers, and just her on stage. she had all these instruments out and would just play one instrument per song... so for one song, she was on piano; another, she played acoustic guitar; another, she played electric guitar; she even played the harmonium!

she has an amazing voice and stage presence and she curses like a sailor and basically i just want to be her friend. have you guys seen her in concert? if not, i highly suggest it...

speaking of concerts, how was the shaky knees festival, maya??? glad you were able to get excited about it on sunday - not much is worse than wet feet, but i think the anticipation of wet feet could possibly be worse. i hope the lumineers were amazing! all i think about now when i hear the song "ho hey" is the girls on nashville...

other stuff happened last week that i can't really remember - game of thrones quizzo, which was interesting but also kind of weird - good to go to, though, because i hadn't seen some of the people in my book club in months (we haven't had a meeting since 2012... yikes). had to work late a couple of nights last week, but thankfully i don't have to do that this week (except for tonight haha). oh, speaking of work, i contacted someone in our writing center at drexel to see if they are looking for more faculty/staff readers to work with students on their writing... i decided to do that because i just started grading reflection papers in my civic engagement class (the class i'm teaching for freshmen which really isn't going all that well, mostly because none of the students want to be there, and i don't know how to combat that) - and realized that a) students don't know how to write and b) i would like to help them with that and c) i used to really love working at the writing center in college, so i might as well get involved with that here, right?

anyway... i feel like i haven't been good about keeping in touch with anybody recently or being responsible for myself in any way, shape, or form, so i'm trying to be better about that. you know, actually picking up the phone and calling people - or responding to people's emails - or writing in the (b)log (even if none of this is about any dinners i've had recently). also, making plans! like... maya, what do you want to do for your birthday? have you thought more about when a trip to CA might happen? i'll be honest, i'm not sure if i can afford it, but i'll try my best. and chaya - what's on tap for the trip out to CA this month?? kevin was telling me about some museum (site??) in LA that has to do with mammoths...??? i just googled it - it's the la brea tar pits and the george c. page museum - think that might be cool to check out?

and here's a picture of boo, looking out the window... (which i didn't close today, and it's supposed to rain for half the day... great.)

sweet potato hash with a fried egg!

super fast, delicious, and paleo!

found the recipe on nomnompaleo: http://nomnompaleo.com/post/19886925277/sweet-potato-hash-with-fried-eggs

I added a bit more spice to it and used coconut oil instead of lard, but otherwise pretty much stuck to the recipe. If you have a food processor, it takes less than 5 min to prep and only 10 or so min to cook the sweet potato + egg. I've been obsessed with eggs lately - especially over easy, so the yolk creates it own "sauce" with whatever i'm eating so this was a fun find. Will definitely add to the rotation.

Though, I *have* been eating a lot of eggs lately... so i'm looking for new/non egg breakfast recipe. Maybe coconut flour pancakes? We'll see...

End of Week 1 Bootcamp

Today was my 4th bootcamp workout! I have survived my first week of bootcamp! Woo!

Today's workout was really fun - we did an AMRAP (As Many Rounds As Possible) of the following:

5 touch run (30 meters)
15 pushups (from the knees, hands free - meaning, at the bottom of the pushup, I have to lift my hands off the ground (when my chest is resting on the ground))
15 sit ups (elbows touch the knees)
20 crate squats (butt must touch the crate between reps)

I forget how much time we had to do this - maybe 25 or so minutes? For every full round (1 set of the 4 exercises), you get 50 points. I got 147 points. I was 3 pushups away from 3 full rounds!

I guess this was also part of some "qualifying" event for the FitWit Summer Games. Apparently, this is a thing - a big thing? - and there will be more qualifying events over the course of the summer.

After the AMRAP, we played a "team" game: we split into two teams and each team had a stack of green, red and blue poker chips. There was a board that listed exercises that would get you green, red, and blue chips... See where I'm going with this? Each chip had a different "dollar" value - green was $10, red was $5, and blue was $20 I think. Each of the exercises in those groups were also of a corresponding, increasing difficulty (red= easy, green = medium, blue = hard). I also don't remember how long we had here, but let's say 25 minutes. Individually, for each set (of each exercise) we did, we could take away one of the corresponding chips from our opponents and put it in our "bank"...We ended up losing spectacularly - something like 500 points (us) to like 1000 points (them...but they did have one more person than our team). So, it was still individual in nature, because you had to do whatever you could, and at your own pace, but the team work comes in because you could help the team collect chips for each exercise you did so you felt extra motivated to keep going. It was fun!

Food-wise, I had turkey taco left overs for lunch AND dinner. They are so dang delicious y'all. I wish you could've tried them.

Weekend-wise, I have tickets to go to a music festival, Shaky Knees, both Saturday and Sunday. Unfortunately for me, it's supposed to monsoon all weekend. The festival is in a bunch of different venues - mostly outdoors - so on a nice/normal Atlanta day, it would be amazing... during a southern rainstorm, it has the potential to be AWFUL. Cross your fingers that it doesn't rain too hard/for too long. Or, it only rains during the bad bands (not that I'd know who they are...I recognized two of the bajillion bands in the line up hahaha)

Today my ____ is:
- stress: 7/10 (i have a lot of work to do...lots coming up in the next few weeks and I feel behind already...)
- anxiety: 6/10 (not feeling too anxious today)
- energy: 3/10 (feeling a little more energy, but still pretty tired/foggy)
- mental focus: 2/10 (same, still having trouble focusing)
- fitness: 4/10 (i feel sore; the sort of sore that reminds you that you had a good workout - i feel my hamstrings today)
- quality of sleep: 6/10 - I had an okay night's sleep - still woke up and slept into 7:30, which I did not want to do, but i am tired! i guess my body needed it.
- happiness: 5/10
- financial discipline: 5/10.... shaky knees is gonna cost me $100! actually, more than that if i count drinks and food. ugh. and with the rain - oh, btw, we're not allowed to bring umbrellas! wtf. - i don't feel like i'm getting the full value of this experience. bah!

My dinner was so delicious

That I had to come back and tell you about it.

I bought organic, vegetarian fed, ground turkey and made turkey taco wraps, using homemade taco seasoning (see previous post for recipe), and garnished with salsa, lime wedges, and avocado slices.

I sautéed a little bit of onion and garlic in 1 tsp of coconut oil. I added the ground turkey (about 1lb), and added 3 Tbsp of my homemade taco seasoning while the meat browned. I let it brown over low-medium heat for maybe 10min? It was nice and crispy brown when I took it off the heat.

I assembled by taco wraps using romaine leaves, added the meat, an avocado slice, salsa, and squeezed a little bit of lime over it. I didn't have cilantro or hot sauce; I bet that would've made it even better.

It's so easy and prob sounds pretty boring but I have to say, this was one of the most flavorful tacos I've ever had! (Well, if I do say so myself). I can only attribute that to really good quality ingredients. Que DELICIOSO!!!

Day 4, FitWit Bootcamp

Today was a pretty rough day - hard to focus on work, SORE, stiff neck/radiating pain in my arm. I had red wine last night (alcohol and sugar), a little cheese (few tablespoons) (dairy), and dark chocolate almonds (sugar)...today, I had some more dark chocolate almonds and cheese (parmesan), but overall I am happy with how I've been able to stay away from gluten and dairy for the most part. I definitely feel tired... I'm hoping that this is my body "detoxing" and I'm hoping even more that I get through this quickly.

I really didn't think I'd be able to work out today b/c of the neck pain, but I actually feel MUCH better now than I have all day. Crazy, huh? The trainer was saying that my neck pain was probably due to a combination of an excess of lactic acid accumulating in my traps and poor form when I did my pushups on Tuesday. I'm pretty sure he's right about that - pushups were the last thing I did on Tuesday and I remember them being really hard to do but I pushed through it (heh heh heh).

Today's workout was learning about kettle bells. Those things are fun! Today was our last newbie-only workout, starting tomorrow, we'll be with the vet for the rest of our workouts (whoa). Those make me nervous because it sounds intense...but maybe it will be like Tuesday's, and it'll be about getting through a # of stations. I like those sorts of workouts.

Food-wise, I don't have pictures yet b/c I haven't made dinner yet, but I will be making turkey taco lettuce wraps, with salsa, avocado and lime. Taco seasoning is not paleo, but I found a recipe for home-made taco seasoning:

TACO SEASONING

ingredients:
2 T chili powder
1-1/2 T cumin
1-1/2 T paprika
1 T onion powder
1 T garlic powder
2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

I'll let you know how it is....

Today my ____ is:
- stress: 5/10
- anxiety: 8/10 (I'm really anxious today..not sure why. I booked my trip to Boston and my flight was a little more than I wanted to pay - but still affordable -but I still don't know why I feel anxious.)
- energy: 1/10 (I feel BONE tired today)
- mental focus: 2/10 (i feel super foggy today and had a trouble focusing on work)
- fitness: 4/10 (i feel sore; the sort of sore that reminds you that you had a good workout)
- quality of sleep: 4/10 - I think i need to go to bed earlier. I woke up a few times during the night and slept in until about 7:45am - not good :-(
- happiness: 5/10
- financial discipline: 6/10... this indicator is hard for me to rate on a day to day basis. I spent $$ on my ticket to Boston today, but I haven't spent $$ on anything else. I also looked into refinancing my mortgage today (long story, probably not going to happen w/ sovereign bank b/c it's not my primary residence - oh,maybe this is why i feel anxious?). what exactly is financial discipline? sticking with my budget? so far, i think i'm doing ok. paid a little more in groceries than i expected to yesterday, but i also haven't spent $$ on anything discretionary this week.

I can't believe this week isn't over yet... I can't wait to sleep in this weekend.

Day 3

No Bootcamp class today. Which is awesome because I feel like a truck hit me. I can't move. I am sore. It hurts to laugh. I feel all my muscles. Everywhere. The only comfortable position right now is standing up.

I also think I'm starting to feel the effects of my recent dietary choices: I am BONE TIRED today. I was also pretty foggy (focus-wise) today.

I don't have dinner pics to share, but here is a picture of my grocery shopping trip tonight. Cats not included. I bought "clean" food - thinking about how the animals were raised, etc. I'm pretty happy with the selection of groceries I have for this week; I think I have decent variety so that I'm not eating grilled chicken salads all the time. It's a pretty easy lunch, but I'd like to explore a little. Two things I'll try are mashed cauliflower and cauliflower "fried rice" this week.

Any guesses on what this grocery trip cost?

Today my ____ is:
- stress: 4/10
- anxiety: 4/10
- energy: 1/10 (I feel BONE tired today)
- mental focus: 2/10 (i feel super foggy today)
- fitness: 3/10 (i feel sore; the sort of sore that reminds you that you had a good workout)
- quality of sleep: 5/10
- happiness: 5/10
- financial discipline: 6/10 (i spent more on groceries than I should've...)