Looks like my rose bushes survived the freeze.  A [...]]]> My gosh you are all the best internet people!  I am done whining, but maybe the whining actually fixed the comment issue!  Hooray (pleasedon’tjinx).  I am back to my usual self today – actually as of last night.  Grumpiness and I don’t mesh for very long.

Looks like my rose bushes survived the freeze.  A couple bits got crisped, but the rest of the plants look good.  Can we please get back to spring?

We headed out for bagel day! One of my 10% meals!  Nom, nom.  I was hungry this morning.

My Wednesday schedule shifted a bit.  I am now going to meet with my literacy learner in the evenings on Wednesday after work, which meant pushing mother/daughter night to another day.  That actually makes Wednesdays feel a little less hectic for me.

I also was very remiss yesterday not to mention the shoutout I got from Carla at MizFit yesterday.  I was so surprised and pleased to see me as her surprise commenter!  I like how she described me in a nutshell poem, too.  If you don’t read her blog, you should.  It’s very inspirational and very much a ‘thinking about things’ place to go.  The other nice thing was reading the wonderful comments people left as well. That surely makes up for any poopy emails or comments I may ever get   I do like our tribe very much.

Ready for another new food?  I bought some of these at the store.

And it is perky to boot.  How nice! I can have a lot of problems with cereal in the house, but this is not sweetened, so it shouldn’t be bad.  I just wanted some crunch in my yogurt.

2% Fage with the cereal and a drizzle of honey.

They look like BBs!  Or possibly rabbit pellet food. They remind me a lot of Grape Nuts, only not sweet at all.  I guess they are the gluten-free Grape Nuts.

Afternoon latte today.

On days that we go out for breakfast, I have an almond milk latte in the afternoon.  I have found that my skin doesn’t break out when I limit the dairy and since I stopped eating most vegetable oils.  Or maybe I just got old enough LOL!

Another typical Lori plate for dinner.

Some people hate leftovers, but I like them because it makes meals easy.

I am off to do my tutoring.  I will say that the tutoring has been different than I was expecting.  It’s actually kind of tiring!  Also, the training can’t really prepare you for the things that pop up and you just kind of wing it.

And half of the week is over – everybody raise your hands in the air!!

How about a circle for breakfast?

Bagel – showcasing pi with the diameter and circumference references!  Learning – it’s what’s for breakfast.

Wednesday bagels are one of my 10% meals of the week.  It was a gorgeous and sunny morning [...]]]> Happy Pi Day!  3/14. A celebration of the circle and its irrational number.

How about a circle for breakfast?

Bagel – showcasing pi with the diameter and circumference references!  Learning – it’s what’s for breakfast.

Wednesday bagels are one of my 10% meals of the week.  It was a gorgeous and sunny morning as well.  So hard to sit my butt down and work.  It’s also my really busy day, too.  I did make a point to get some lunch before leaving for my literacy tutoring appointment.  More circles!

This is 2% Fage topped with 1/2 cup of pumpkin, 1 teaspoon of honey and cinnamon.  I thought it would be nice to photo it before mushing it all together.  Good, but needed something crunchy on top like pecans. Too bad I had to eat this fast and not savor it.

After tutoring, back to work until latte time!  More pi =

Fran had asked me about learning to do pushups.  I now do straight military style pushups.  (I hate calling them man pushups because women can do them, too).  I used to do pushups on my knees, like girls were taught to do.  The problem with this is that you can never learn to do them on your toes this way. What I did was to do incline pushups.  I started leaning against a wall, then progressively dropped down the angle until I was straight on the floor.  This gives your body time to build the upper body strength it needs to support the ‘real’ pushup stance.  It’s too hard to just start in the pushup position and work from there because pushups on your toes are really an advanced exercise.  They aren’t easy!  Give yourself time to work down.

(source)

You can use anything for the support.  A weight bench, a chair, a step stool.  As the pushups get easier, lower the height of the object.

* My one piece of advice is to anchor the object that you will be pushing against so that it doesn’t slide away from you causing you to fall to the floor.  Not that I have ever done that or anything.  I just want to make sure it doesn’t happen to you, because it hurts – or I imagine it would hurt. Not that I know anything about that…

I ate dinner later because work was running out and I wanted to make sure I got as much as I could.  Ah, the lovely part of working on production.  I did a quick dinner of shrimp stir fry.  This is 4 oz of shrimp with some sauteed broccoli, 1/2 cup of leftover rice and 1 tablespoon of Kikkoman ginger teriyaki sauce.

This was really yummy!

More working after dinner until files run out.  Taking 2 hours out of my day for tutoring means adding them in at night. I am actually ahead for the week, so no big deal.

My mother is coming over tonight for a visit.  Too bad I didn’t make any pi(e).  We like to have pie on pi day, but just didn’t make any this year and too tired to go out tonight!  Guess I will have to settle for nuts and dried pineapple.

Tomorrow is workout B of the Fit Female!

The snow didn’t start until the afternoon, so we were free and clear for Bagel Day this morning!  I love bagel day.

In truth, [...]]]> Snow is here!  Our first real major storm – can you believe it?  And on Leap Day, too.  Does Hallmark make a card for Leap Day?  I wouldn’t be surprised.

The snow didn’t start until the afternoon, so we were free and clear for Bagel Day this morning!  I love bagel day.

In truth, Wednesday we actually call Bagel Day junior because official Bagel Day is Sunday.  We tried to keep it to 1 day a week, but it’s hard.  Back in our fat days, John and I often would go 5 or 6 days a week for breakfast out, either bagels, coffeecake or muffins.  Always with sweet coffee.  How times have changed.  You know that thing called moderation?  We found our level of moderation with the bagels now.

I had literacy tutoring today and I stopped work in time enough to have a quick lunch today before I left.

1-minute muffin done 1-minute style!  This was the applesauce version, which is the version I almost always make anymore.

After the tutoring, I walked home in the snow.  It started to get serious around 1 p.m.

Will have to shovel soon. My arms are not too sore today from yesterday’s workout.  They actually only are  sore when I lift my arms up over my head.  Last night, I went to carry a laundry basket upstairs that was full and had some wet stuff in it for hanging.  I couldn’t pick it up enough to get it up the stairs and had to have John take it up for me!  How embarrassing!  I can’t imagine what my legs will feel like after tomorrow’s drop sets, although I don’t know if I can get to the gym with the snow.

Lattes were welcome today.

I thawed out shrimp for  a  protein dinner today.  These are the large shrimp. I am now spoiled enough to only buy the more expensive uncooked shrimp.  Guess I had better ask for another raise.

I just sauteed them in a little coconut oil with salt and pepper, with shredded brussel sprouts on the side. 4 ounces of shrimp looks pretty puny, doesn’t it?

It’s funny, I can eat more veggies if they are shredded or cut into little pieces.  Not sure why that is, but whatever it takes to get me to eat more!

I had to catch up some work tonight since it was a tutoring day.  Finally finished and am ready for a snack, which will be some fruit or nuts (haven’t quite decided yet).  I have been doing great with my no nibbling.  It gets a little easier each day breaking that bad habit.

I didn’t really set any goals for February, but now I have to plan out some for March!

Question: How was your February?

I was quite productive on Sunday, though.  We did manage to bike 12 miles round trip to breakfast today to [...]]]> We had a nice relaxing weekend. No real long rides (somewhat weather dependent).  We have just been doing so much on weekends that it was nice to kick back at home and get stuff done!

I was quite productive on Sunday, though.  We did manage to bike 12 miles round trip to breakfast today to Orange Cat.

I had a gluten-free cinnamon raisin bagel.

We did some grocery shopping today and the store had carving pumpkins on sale for $3.99 each!  That is an awesome bargain as normally you pay by the pound and we got 2 giant pumpkins to carve.  Look how big:

It dwarfs the gallon of milk!  These would have been $12 pumpkins easily.  I may have to get another one this week as I love carving.

I settled in for some batch cooking after lunch, which included a feta cheese omelet and grapes!

Things that were made this weekend:

Gluten-free pumpkin scones  (recipe coming)

Pumpkin Granola

Alton Brown’s Easy Brown Rice:

Coffee roasting:

Dang!  When we don’t pack our weekends with other stuff, it is amazing what can actually get done at home.  I even vacuumed!

I also did some work.  John made up lattes, which I had with one of my scones.

The fall colors are  here.  I thought you might enjoy some of the views on my walk this afternoon.

Burning bushes have one of my favorite fall colors – the bright pink.

I love this bright orange of the maples as well:

So beautiful and only lasts for such a short time!

Dinner time was Mexican.  We cooked up some ground beef with somespices, salsa, and a little chilis in adobo sauce (hot!).  Served on corn tortillas with some cheddar cheese, more salsa and a bit of sour cream.  Yum!  Salsa counts as a veggie, right? 

Note to self: Get light box out for pictures.

Football tonight and currently looking like I will be losing the picks for the week.  Oh well, it was a good run while it lasted!

Pink item of the day. My cold weather jammies!

This was the flax muffle topped with apple/cranberry topping.  Yum!

John went to play a poker tournament Saturday and he placed 6 out of 23. Not in the money, but I think he did [...]]]> What a gorgeous fall weekend! Saturday started rainy and cloudy, but it did stop.  I made a fall inspired breakfast:

This was the flax muffle topped with apple/cranberry topping.  Yum!

John went to play a poker tournament Saturday and he placed 6 out of 23. Not in the money, but I think he did pretty well.  He doesn’t like tournaments and just prefers the cash games.

I did a lot of errands and checked out a craft show.

I bought a bowl from a woman who totally underpriced her handmade ceramics.

New bowl? $5!  Like I really need another bowl…

Sunday turned out the best weather wise and we did a double dip ride.  First was to Panera Bread and bagels! We have a My Panera card, which is the PB rewards card, and had a free bagel on it. Score!

It was humid this morning and I was pretty sweaty.

Over breakfast, we talked about where we wanted to bike to.  We thought cupcakes, but that would have been a 42+ mile ride on top of a 16 mile breakfast ride – and we weren’t sure about 60 miles on the day.  Instead, we decided to keep it more local and hit one of the ice cream shops.

After lunch, it was time to ride again.

We headed out the long way on the roads and then hit the path.

I love this part of the path. This is the beginning of the hill stretch for a couple of miles.

With all this rain and warm weather, the mosquitoes were swarming. I started getting bitten as soon as I stopped. Ick.

We actually did not go on the hill today. This was the turn around spot on our way to Martha’s!

In the background is Great Escape. It’s right across the street from Martha’s. Still open until the end of October.

Martha’s only does soft serve ice cream, but they do it well.

I decided on a sundae. It is called the Scholarship sundae for some weird reason.  It is your flavor of ice cream topped with raspberry sauce, hot fudge and cookie crumbs.  I had raspberry creme twist as my flavor.

This is the small  It looks smaller in this picture, too.  Oh – and I *never* eat cherries.  The one fruit I really don’t ever eat.

We enjoyed listening to the screams as we ate our ice cream 

I didn’t think I was going to be able to finish this sundae, but then I forget how much I actually can eat without getting full  LOL.  Not to mention it was really, really good. I am not afraid of food!  I was totally carbed up for the ride home.

Daily total:

Total miles: 40.5

Ride time: 3 hours 30 seconds

Average speed: 13.5 mph

Top speed: 23.2 mph

Calories burned: 1264

I could have done 60 miles today, but I think I would have been a bit tired. Plus, there was football to watch!

I picked against the Broncos (which breaks my heart), but I still supported them by wearing my jersey.  Guess it paid off because I won the football picks for the week.  Go Team Lori!!  Woo Hoo!

John asked me to get him up when I got up so we could get an early start on the day because we both have a lot to do today.  I requested no whining when I [...]]]> Where the h-e-double-hockeysticks did summer go??   I can’t believe I am doing the monthly wrap up post already.

John asked me to get him up when I got up so we could get an early start on the day because we both have a lot to do today.  I requested no whining when I did so.   It was a gorgeous morning, nice and cool.  We headed out on the path, which was so quiet in the early morning.  We actually saw 3 deer on the path! They bolted before I could get a picture, though.  I said to John, “See how nice it is to get up this early?”.  His answer, “No.” 

After 6 miles, we arrived at our destination.

Check out the temperature before 8 am:

I had a wheat bagel with cream cheese and a cuppa joe!

The weird thing? Chewing the bagel.  I have not had any bread product in 3 weeks and there is no other food that has the chew of crusty bread or bagels.

I’m happy now.

So let’s review goals, shall we?  I had 2 goals for this month.

1. Begin C25K.  In progress.  This is a 9 week program, so obviously I am not finished.  I am uncertain as to whether I will finish the program.  The run intervals have been short and I notice little niggling things with my leg, but I have completed the first 4 weeks without incident.

2. Go grain-free for 21 days. I did it!  I might have ingested some accidental grain products, like when I had a few marshmallows (corn syrup), but other than that I did stellar.  And you know what?  It was not that hard.  The hardest thing was eating out.  And let me tell you – going grain free is a lot harder than going gluten free!  Corn is in everything.  Everything!

I did find out some interesting things about me going grain free.  It eliminated pretty much all my cravings for bread products and for sweets.  Not that I didn’t eat sweets, but it really curbed my penchant for over snacking.  Which is a good thing. When I did snack, it tended to be on nuts pretty much.  I ate a *lot* of nuts.  Sometimes fruit as well (especially dried pineapple ).

I also found I didn’t need grains to get in my fiber.  I averaged 25 to 30 grams of fiber a day. Coconut flour, flax,nuts, and fruits and veggies gave me what I needed.

Was the food I ate boring for 3 weeks? You tell me.

And now, the part I know you all reaaalllly wanted to know.  Did I lose any weight? Yes.  I did.  In those 3 weeks I lost 6.5 pounds.    Now, I do  take 2 pounds of that with a grain of salt because I weighed myself after a long bike ride, which always results in a couple of pounds of water retention.  So even if it was 4.5 pounds, that is an enormous amount of weight for me to lose in 3 weeks!

I have decided I am going to keep grains lower in my diet for the time being because to not have the cravings for food is really so, so nice. It pretty much took care of PMS cravings as well. They were minimal at best.  I am definitely using this strategy for the holidays and letting the grains I eat during that time be the treats and such.

I am so pleased that the no-grain challenge did exactly what it was supposed to do, which was to get me on a better choice path because I was veering off it a little bit. Weight loss was a bonus.

Now I have to come up with some new challenges for September!

John is feeling better, but still has an icky cough.  He was up for riding to breakfast to [...]]]> Happy Bagel Day!  I ended up not posting yesterday because it would have just been boring food. I have decided if I don’t have anything to say other than what I eat, I don’t have to post.

John is feeling better, but still has an icky cough.  He was up for riding to breakfast to North Country Cafe.  Here he is milking up his coffee.

I had a wheat bagel as per usual, seeing as it is Bagel Wednesday.

John had some sort of raspberry lemon coffee cake and said it was picture worthy, so there you go.

Normally he doesn’t like to wait for me to take pictures

On the way home, we passed through a construction area that was not there on our way to breakfast.

Shortly after that…. hisssssss… thump, thump, thump.  Yep -

That was a 1-inch screw completely embedded in my tire.  I think that is 12 flats now between the 2 of us since April.  Is that a record?  Hello Guinness, where is my prize?

At least we are pretty quick with tube changing now.

After a morning where I had trouble focusing on work (is it not Friday yet??), I made up lunch to eat on the porch.

1-minute muffin with peanut flour on top.  I also have not had a pear in about a week, what is up with that?

Another couple of busy days.  Seems like it always comes in clumps, doesn’t it?  I made myself really try to be productive in the afternoon.  But I did take a break for an almond milk latte and a date with PB.

I made up a quick early dinner:

And then commenced to making John’s birthday cake for Thursday.

His request? Boston cream pie.   I have never done this before, but we shall see how it goes. Baking with a box? Yes please!

Cakes are just coming out of the oven and I am off to meet my mom for ladies night! Gotta run