I guess I run now

Every day I figure, “this will be the day I can’t come up with a title.” Okay, so this IS the day I can’t come up with a title.

Hubby’s finishing up chapter 5 of his diss today (at least, that’s the plan). YAY! And I need to either write/revise or read…a friend of mine has just finished her third lesbian romance novel & I’m one of her “beta readers,” so I really need to get her some comments back on this draft. Eh gads! This will be only the second work I’ve read for fun this year & romance isn’t exactly my genre (I prefer non-fiction or mystery). But she writes really fun plots & her characters are amazing, so I enjoy responding to her work.

I also need to take my walk early just in case our friends call to ask if we want to go out on the boat this evening. It’s shaping up into a beautiful day, sunny with a high of 72 F. At last, the warm weather has arrived!

Breakfast: smoothie (OJ, strawberries, 1/2 banana, 1/3 container yogurt, coconut oil)
Lunch: salad with egg
Dinner: leftover curry noodles
Exercise: 1 hour walk with the dog.

Have a great Sunday!

Good title for today as I try to do all those things I need to do & keep putting off, like getting the tomato plants & herbs into planters…I’m almost certain the frost danger has passed (& I wish that was a joke).

So I figured I’d use this post to talk about the clicker there on the right. Hasn’t moved, has it? But then, I didn’t bring a scale with me because there isn’t a single level floor in this house, so when I’ve tried to weigh in the past, I get radically different numbers due to very slight changes in where the scale sits. But I’ll be back downstate around the 22nd, so I hope to see movement then. & I have a doctor’s appointment on July 13th, so I better see some progress by then (good motivator for being good while I’m back in MA helping my mom move).

For now…my watch band is loser & my “fat pants” that were snugish two weeks ago are now lose & I’m getting closer to being able to wear the next size down. That’s the real first goal, getting into those size 16s again. Argh.

Today:

Breakfast: smoothie amounting to about 350 calories (CRAZY! & it’s mostly the cocount oil)
Lunch: salad with a hb egg
Dinner: tofu curry over rice noodles…(only had a small bowl, not hungry for some reason)

Exercise: 1.5 mile run/walk. Did the two 1/4 mile runs in the first mile, finished off the final quarter of that mile with short runs, then did the C25K week one (still) and one of the runs for week 2. Moving on to week 2 on Monday. Just as I was updating, hubby walked in to ask if I was ready for a walk…so, another 1/2 hour walk in the evening. Yay! That’s two exercise stars for today, although my knee is feeling pretty lousy.

Got the tomatoes & herbs planted, finally. Not feeling much like doing any work tonight for some reason. & yeah, that’s not good.

Happy Saturday Chicks!

I wasn’t happy with the way the fish was described at the restaurant last night: whitefish coated in potatoes (wha?) & grilled shrimp, which I’m really finicky about…if the shrimp is even one day off, I’m out.

So I went with a steak salad…in one of those tortilla bowls, which, thankfully couldn’t tempt me away from the lettuce, etc. & a beer since I didn’t want friend drinking alone & hubby had agreed to be DD. Then we walked to a nearby bar & walked some more when it turned out hubby & friend’s favorite nearby bar in this town was no longer in business…GD recession.

Then to the small brew pub…I think they have maybe one kettle to produce one beer a month or so. Usually I’d order the house brew cause fresh is best, but they had a Scottish ale on the menu that was brewed with pine rather than hops. Yup, pine. It was yummy! I had two. Yes, I’d planned ahead to avoid the really fattening stuff at the restaurant, but failed to account for friend wanting another drink after dinner & me falling in love with a beer.

Oh well, today is another day & here’s the plan:
Breakfast: 1/2 apple
Lunch: small piece of quiche & salad
Dinner: tonight we’ll do the tofu curry I’d planned to do on Wednesday Hubby really wanted frozen pizza for dinner, so I had quiche & four amazing strawberries for an early dinner. Curry tomorrow night…no doubt!

Exercise: 1.5 hour walk with hubby & dog by the portage…lovely day for it.

Update: going to try to make more of breakfast from now on & I’ve been reading up on coconut oil for metabolism & endurance (and apparently incredible skin & hair), so tomorrow I will attempt a smoothie of banana, strawberry, OJ, yogurt & coconut oil…pretty much blowing my carbs for the day, so I’m shooting for something that’s no more than 8oz big here. The trick will be to measure out the ingredients & know exactly what the calories will be BEFORE I make the smoothie. So, we’ll see how this goes. Hey, anyone read/heard anything about the health benefits (and apparently weight loss is one of them) of coconut oil?

Oh & Mango’s back after a brief time away…killed on her exams & has a new plan to follow. Stop by & say “hi” if you have a chance.

& look at all the positive responses to that post!

Thanks everyone for the support these last couple of weeks! I’m so glad to be back in this community again, I can’t even tell you what it means to me to have this group of amazing women to turn to for support & encouragement and challenges and kicks in the pants!

I can’t tell you what it’s meant to me, but I can tell you about breakfast & lunch & (eh gads) dinner:

Breakfast: 1/2 apple
Lunch: quiche (with onion, asparagus, & cheddar) & salad (out of lettuce, so this is on hold & will be a mid-afternoon snack instead).
Snack: salad w/egg

trying to fill up for…

Dinner: we’re taking a friend whose hubby is out of town & who rarely gets to go out (5 kids all under the age of 7…two youngest are 1-yr-old twins) out for dinner. The next town over has a Mexican restuarant & this friend really wants a good marghereta (sp?)…the next Mexican restaurant is about 2 hours away, btw…welcome to the Keweenaw! Anyway…I’m worried about the Mexican food temptations, chips on the table, tons of cheese, fried stuff all over the place. I’m going to see what they have for fish selections & use this as one of my rare chances for a nice piece of fish (since hubby hates the stuff, so we never cook it at home)…unless the fish selections sound disgusting & then I’m hoping for a grilled chicken with a nice salsa or something along those lines. WISH ME & MY WILLPOWER LUCK for this, one of our biggest challenges in weeks!

Exercise: beautiful day for a 1 1/2 hour walk along the portage. Maybe I can convince my friend to take a walk after dinner…hmmm.

was pretty easy to survive as it turns out. I went downstairs yesterday morning to be greeted by a giant bowl of donuts (he decided to just cook the rest of the dough). UGH! “That’s not good for us,” I said. He’d been thinking the same thing. So out came the gallon zip-lock bags. He froze them ALL to use in his Paula Dean donut & fruit cocktail & sugar glaze bread pudding that his best friend loves & that I think we once calculated at about 2400 calories a serving. That’s a hell of a lot easier to say “no!” to than a bowl full of smallish donuts spread out over a whole day.

So…temptation averted.

Damp & cold is getting old, chicks! Yesterday’s sun was nice, but only fleeting. Woke this morning to another cold/damp morning & an aching hip, but knew the hip would be better during my run (even if it feels like crap afterwards).

So I did my two 1/4 mile runs & mini-runs for the first mile. That’s about when I started regretting wearing the sweatshirt, but I didn’t want to stop to tie it around my waist cause I knew that’d be an annoyance the whole run. That was a good move as the minute I turned around for the run back to the car, the storm clouds rolled in & it got cold & breezy. Where the hell is summer? No wait, lilacs just bloomed up here, maybe all I need is spring. Just a little sun!

Anywho, at one mile I turned on the C25K podcast, figuring I’d give the hip a break & turn around at my old 5K turnaround spot rather than going out 2 miles & back. But I was feeling good at that point, so I kept going, & kept going past the 2-mile point to about another 1/2 mile.

I ended up starting the podcast over after the first round (and before the cooldown) & doing another 4 runs before I slowed down to a walk for the last mile or so. Then I was in a pickle cause I arrived at the car still needing 15 minutes to get me to an even 90-minute workout. So I walked around the park & then headed to the car for 5 minutes of stretching (which was remarkably painful & difficult to do).

I need to work some stretches into my day, I think.

Food:

Breakfast: hb egg (I just don’t like a heavy stomac before a run)
Lunch: PB & J on whole wheat. An indulgence, but also a lunch I started fantasizing about on the run. :0
Dinner: will probably be a curry tofu & veggies over rice or noodles. Like Eryn, I couldn’t bring myself to cook, so dinner was Perkins grilled chicken over salad. Yum!

Exercise: 90-minute walk/run & a second 30-min walk in the evening.

Okay, not a lot of sun, but at least it stopped raining. The dog & I have plans for a long walk later today, so this works.

Hubby made donuts last night…OMG! I hope donuts don’t become the replacement for his fudge-making obsession. We haven’t had a single batch of fudge since I got here & I’d like to keep things just this side of healthy for as long as possible.

My fault, really. I wanted to mix things up a bit, so I got us fixins for falafel, which you fry. Right, not good, but we NEVER fry anything beyond a light sautee in olive oil. So there was all this oil. And it gave him ideas. We “accidentally” left his fanny farmers cookbook at home, but the internet provided a recipe &, yes, there’s me eating yeast donuts (3 small ones) coated in sugar at 10 last night. ARGH!

He just offered me some for breakfast & I said “no way!” Lucky for me he wanted them more than he wanted me to have them.

So…what this tells me is that I need an accounting of my eating. If I’d been tracking my food here, I never would’ve had a donut, much less 3 last night.

So let’s begin the begin…food tracking every day for at least the next week.

Breakfast: 1/2 pumpernickle bagel with 1/2 tbs butter
Lunch: salad and 1 cup leftover pasta
Dinner: BLTs (thus the salad for lunch) & potato salad
Snack: Ugh! 1/2 cup lite ice cream

Exercise: 1/2 hour walk around down town (hubby wanted new shoes, a challenge since the whole of the downtown is dug up (they’re putting in a cobblestone street), which means a lot of hills to get to what would normally be a direct route.

Happy Day Chicks!

I’m just sayin’!

Okay, I’m out of my funk now & making some progress on the day too! If I put in a solid night of work tonight, I’ll feel better about where I am in that damn todo list.

Not looking promising for a walk today…it’s been windy, rainy, and freezing since morning. I keep thinking it has to clear up, but the rain pelting the window makes a different prediction. After my run yesterday, I’m happy to take it easy today & I’m on schedule for at least a food star, so it’s not all bad.

argh! work! argh!

The trivial stuff is making me nuts, a chapter to copyedit & a letter of rec to send (should be “to send” only, but I have this creeping feeling that since I wrote the original letter on the office computer some 550 miles away, I probably don’t have a copy of it with me, so I’ll be re-writing it shortly…damn it!). Okay, these are small things, but I’m annoyed that they’re distracting me from writing and from reading this book I stupidly promised to review.

I’m in a mood. On top of which, breakfast messed me up. Got up, ate breakfast, figured I’d wait an hour & take my pill. Got distracted by trying to clean other annoying tasks off my todo list. Three hours pass. How? Good question…see when I focus, I focus hard & barely move from my spot. Now I’m starved for lunch. Fine. Have lunch, wait an hour & THEN take pill becomes the new plan. Lunch is heated, phone rings, friend wants info on a neighborhood hubby used to live in, I can’t munch and swallow lunch in her ear & I don’t want to force an end to the conversation. So, lunch cold & an hour later. Now it’ll be 2:15 before I have the pill I should’ve taken no later than 9 this morning. I’m possibly not cut out for taking medication is my interpretation of this little scenario. Also, no more eating breakfast first!

Yes, I’m in a bitter foul mood today. Maybe if I can find a copy of the letter things will be better, but I have a feeling I’m writing the blasted thing all over again!

A very cold run this morning. My muscles are still pretty tight from Friday, so it took some time to warm up. The first two 1/4 mile runs were tough & I stopped to walk in the middle of both of them (20 steps both times). Continued with my mini-runs throughout the next mile & then realized at the turn-around point that if I walked out another 15 minutes, I could tack an additional 1/2 hour onto my time. That’s another 1/2 gold star & that’s what it’s all about.

The extra walk also meant that I wasn’t doing the C25K program throughout the whole of down town, which was nice. Also nice: while the first two quarter miles almost killed me, all I had to do was start the first 60-second run of the podcast to know that I could do it & do it pretty easily today. & those 60-seconds felt pretty short, so I think I’ll be ready to move on to week two after Wednesday’s run.

Going to keep with this plan of 2 1/4 mile runs & then mini-runs for 2 miles followed by the C25K program, but that might change when the weeks get tougher.

Okay, I’ve been slacking off all weekend, so it’s beyond time to start getting my todo list done.

Happy day chicks! I hope it’s warm where you are & the perfect weather where tiny2b is running!

Update: got some actual stuff accomplished today! & added in an after-dinner walk with hubby…only 30 mins, though. I’m beat!

but tomorrow, I run!

Same plan as Friday, 2 1/4 mile runs, small runs mixed in for the remaining time, and letting Robert from the C25K take me the last 2 miles back. I’m sore as hell today, but not in my knees or hips! Now, maybe the muscle pain is drowning out the joint pain, or maybe (and I like this “maybe” much better) the joint pain is going the hell away now!

Food today was not good:

Breakfast: 2 eggs over easy with nisu toast (a finnish sweet bread) lightly buttered (note that I usually get an order of potato pancakes at this restaurant, so this was progress for me).
Lunch: handfull of nuts
Dinner (at a friend’s house): 1 bbq chicken leg, 1/2 cup mashed potatoes, green beans, small slice of white bread with margarin, 1 beer
Snack: DAMN IT! 1 cup lite ice cream with 3 tbs hot fudge (this was unnecessary)

Exercise: DAMN IT (again)! 30-minute walk.

Got almost no work done today beyond a quick edit on an essay I hope to send to a friend to review tomorrow (been working on this one for going on 3 years now…argh!)

& I bought 2 tomato plants, 2 more basil, one oregano, a packet of raddish seeds & a packet of nosturums. This year instead of planting geraniums in our planters, I’m doing veggies. May even add some to the garden out front. If I get my todo list cut down significantly tomorrow, I’m going to spend the early evening playing around in the dirt.

Night chicks!