Category Archives: cream of wheat

No sugar day and Slim-Shoppin’ article!

Slim-Shopping has posted an article on my weight loss, sharing the company of bloggers like Lisa, Shelley, Diane, and others, so if you would like to stop by and read Jennifer’s site, please do!

Boy did I sleep well last night!  Guess it was that long bike ride or something.  I got over 8 hours, which is unheard of for me.  My legs felt a little tired, but good.

I decided that today would be a no-sugar day.  Started off with a bowl of cream of wheat cooked with a banana and 2 egg whites, topped with pecans and a little prune puree.

Doesn’t it sound like something a 95-year-old would have for breakfast?  It was good, though.  Except I would have like some fluff on there 😳

Started work on the most frustrating of notes after a 4-day hiatus.  You know those days where there are computer issues and you just cannot be productive at all?  I really need to find a company that has a different platform to work in.  Their in-house programmers really created such a clunky software platform instead of using industry standard ones.  It creates a lot of headaches all around and they are constantly updating it.  I spent a lot of the morning as close to crying from frustration without actually crying.  Great day to decide to go no sugar…..

This is Pixie trying to ignore all my cursing today:

I took a break for lunch and made the chicken curry salad that I have been eating lately.

Yum!  Things settled down a bit and I was able to get work done, but it put me a couple hours behind.  I was hoping to get in an afternoon run, but that wasn’t going to happen.  I was so ready for the latte this afternoon:

My beloved caffeine friend (sprinkled with nutmeg).  I also had a dish of blueberries:

Blueberries are such a fun and interactive food, don’t you think? (or is it just me?).

I was going to make BBQ shrimp for dinner, but BBQ sauce has sugar in it, so I had to think of something else.  When in doubt – go eggs!

Feta/egg/egg white puff (cooked in the microwave for about 1.5 minutes).    I poured the brussel sprouts onto the plate and they landed onto my pear.  Ick! I am one of those people who doesn’t like my food touching too much.  I’ve always been that way.  Gravy was always problematic 😀

I decided to take a run after dinner.  I headed down to the track and started plodding.  It was really hard tonight.  I think it was probably because I biked 40 miles yesterday (duh).  After 2 miles, I started to pull to the right, so I stopped.  I have a race to run on Sunday and I don’t want to mess that up.  I have to say that I have really lost confidence in my running since my injury.  Very curious that I so looked forward to a long bike ride yesterday, and running 3 miles  fills me with a little unease.  I worry that I won’t be able to finish the race (not really likely, but the feeling is still there).  I think I won’t feel right about it until I get back to full speed and strength.

I am off to make a protein snack and company is on the way over, so I am out of here! Have a great night 🙂

Question:  Are you a food separator?

What’s blooming and paper weights

Long weekend ahead! Yes!  Need to tread a  little carefully as there will be some eating out this weekend and celebrating.  (Saturday is actual birthday).

Zee protein hit:

Then biked to the gym:

Exercise Set/rep/weight Muscle worked
Stiff-leg Deadlift 3 sets of 10 with 65# bar Lower body
Chin ups 2 sets of 2, 2 sets of 1 Upper body
Stationary lunges 3 sets of 10 (each leg) BW Lower body
Plank 3 sets of 1-minute holds as superset Abs
Push ups 3 sets of 10 as superset with plank Chest
Cable low row 3 sets of 10 at 50# Back
Face pull 3 sets of 15 at 30# Shoulders
Triceps Pulldown 3 sets of 15 with 30# Triceps

That was enough for the day. My legs were a wee bit tired from yesterday. I realize how my stamina is still down. Good news is that I could do the stationary lunge with no pain! My leg felt tight, but it didn’t hurt. Yay! That means I can do more split leg moves again.  It’s probably going to take me a couple months to build my left leg back up again.

Biked home and made up some cream of wheat custard style and topped with 16 g of cashew butter and 12 g of chocolate fluff.

I made the cooked version of the fluff and it is even more like the jar stuff.  I just added a tblsp of cocoa powder to the liquid ingredients while cooking. Num.

I puttered around in the garden today. I could spend all day doing this stuff and be perfectly happy.  Here’s what’s blooming right now en le jardin de Lori:

Deutschland Astilbe (one that I got a few weeks ago, small but blooming!)

The knockout rosebush with its plethora of blooms.  This bush is amazing.

Flowering tobacco (Nicotiana)

My folks wanted to take me out for lunch today as an early birthday meal since we are going to be out tomorrow.  We went to Samantha’s.  I love this place!

I had a turkey sandwich with cheddar and granny smith apple slices on it.  Hold the mayo.  On burlap wheat bread that they make there.  Not sure why it is called burlap, but it’s tasty.

After lunch, I went back to my parent’s house and helped set up their new little garden.  They had a tree cut down and put in a little garden in its spot.  I brought along some cone flower and black-eyed susans to fill in.  Baby garden in progress:

You can almost see the plants we put in there LOL!  I’ll take a picture later this summer to compare (okay Mom, pressure’s on 😈  )

Came home for a latte and a protein cookie to read with the weekly free paper:

And of course, somebody didn’t want to be left out of the action. As soon as I opened up the paper, I received a paperweight:

I know all of your cats do this, too 😀  Probably dogs as well.

Dinner time was something pretty tasty.  The last piece of sausage with laughing cow and a couple egg whites.  I haven’t had real sausage in forever and it was sooo good!

Rye bread on the side.  I was going to make a sandwich with this, but the bread didn’t rise very well for some reason.

Baking cupcakes tonight to pass around for the birthday tomorrow.  We are using what we call ‘grandpa’s cake’ for my birthday.  It’s kind of a special praline-type frosting that we would have for my grandfather’s birthday (which was on Christmas Day).  I love it, so why not for me?

I can’t believe I have another 3 days off.  I really should use more vacation days this way.  Tomorrow we are biking to birthday breakfast (I am making John get up early, most likely heehee) and then hopefully spending the day at Yaddo Gardens to see what’s blooming there if the weather cooperates.

Have a great night!

Riding and curry chicken salad.

Another hot day on tap today!  Since it was about 90 degrees today, I decided to bike this morning to get in some exercise before it got too hot.  I had a protein drink and hit the trails.  My legs felt somewhat tired.  I think the heat just saps out so much energy.  Not to mention that I felt like puffer fish this morning from it 😀

Some beautiful morning views on the trail.

It was already about 60 degrees at 7am, and just a nice morning to ride.  I did 16 miles today.  On rides this this, I just go out and back with no breaks other than stopping for traffic and a drink.  Came back ready to eat!

I made some pumpkin custard cream of wheat.  Normally I sweeten this with a little brown sugar when cooking, but with the no-sugar rule for the next couple days, I decided to sweeten with some prune puree.

This was just some prunes I soaked in hot water and blended up until smooth.  Kind of tastes like raisins, although prunes always feel kind of elderly to me :mrgreen:   Marisa did this with dates, and I might give that a try as well.

Busy work day today and lunch time came quick.  I made a chicken curry salad.  I am so in love with 4-5 ingredient meals.

This was:

  • 2.5 ounces of cooked chicken, chopped
  • 1 tbsp (15 g) of reduced fat mayo
  • 1/2 of an apple, chopped
  • 1/4 tsp curry powder
  • 1 tbsp of sliced almonds.

Mix all together and top on greens!  It’s delicious.  You know this would be BBQ normally, but no refined sugar again!  Of course, you can all see that I won’t be doing this forever.  Not gonna give up the BBQ sauce 😀

After lunch, it was back to the dentist for me for the filling repair and the new filling.

Me in the chair and kinda nervous.  (Fran – this is for you).

I laughed when I saw how nervous I looked! I am a total wuss with pain.

Again, I love my dentist!  He asked me if it was alright if he gave me some novacaine.  So polite 😀   No pain at all for the drilling.  Sometimes it is the fear of pain that is worse than the pain itself, you know?

After the feeling came back in my mouth, it was latte time! Snack with the latte:

I am pleased that these have lasted since Friday LOL!

I got a chance to do the stuffed pepper for dinner.

It’s basically just ground beef, brown rice, and tomato sauce stuffed into the pepper.  I grated a little cheese on it and baked.

I really liked the filling, but I didn’t care for the pepper that much, so I only ate about 1/3 of it.  I really liked the filling on the brussel sprouts, though!

Still good on the no refined sugar front.  Looking back, I don’t have a lot of sugary stuff regularly other than fluff, honey, chocolate, frozen yogurt, and nut butter.  I had to make some unsweetened peanut butter today, because I miss that!  I don’t know if it is cheating to make something like a fruit puree or not.  But, my challenge and my rules, right? :mrgreen:  I found myself wanting frozen yogurt today because of the heat, but that will have to wait!

I admire those of you giving up the caffeine.  Like Miz – I could never do that!  I did for several days before my mammogram last fall and was not a happy camper.  Guess this shows where my true heart-of-hearts addiction really is.

Speaking of addictions – it’s bagel day tomorrow!  Note I said reduced bread this week, not no bread 😉

Question:  Are you affected by heat or do you love it?

The broken glass theory.

Hello blogland!  I had a nice night’s sleep last night and woke up hungry! Still no running for me, and I wanted to wait to bike later, so I made up some brekkie.  I was still on a Cream of Wheat thing today, so I made them pumpkin custard oat style.  Topped with 5 toasted pecans and some jam.

This bowl was so filling and huge, and only about 275 calories for the whole thing!  Love it when life works out like that 😀

I was thinking about it being 5 weeks ago today when I did my last run.  I will be honest and say that I really don’t miss running all that much.  I more miss the idea of running.  I miss the calorie burn and the good workout feeling when finishing.  Of course, I miss being able to actually run, because not doing it means something is still wrong.  So – that’s all in the open now LOL!

Fast and furious and work today.  Lunch break:

Lots o’ fiber in this bowl!

Miz Fit made a comment on my post yesterday about showing that I broke a glass.  I thought a little bit about why I actually put that on the blog.  It was more of an attempt to show that my life is far from perfect and that a lot of little things go wrong.  I get asked if I am really as happy as I seem, and I would say that I am.  Annoyingly so, from John’s perspective, I’m sure  :mrgreen: .  I read a ton of blogs, or at least they are in my reader.  I know that sometimes when I read blogs, I wonder if that is really how their life is.  Sometimes people come across as so (to me) perfect or incredibly lucky.  Sometimes it looks that way on the surface to me, but I sense there is something lying underneath that isn’t right.  That could always just be me seeing that when it isn’t really there, either, but I am pretty intuitive with people. Other times you can really tell a blogger is very real.

It’s also a reminder that blogs are just a snippet of someone’s life.  Obviously unless there is a webcam, one couldn’t possibly put their whole life on the internet, and who would want to, really?? (Or more importantly, who would want to watch??)  So our opinions of someone’s life are just based on what we are allowed to see.

Anyhoo, I finished up work early.  Clap your hands for productivity!!  It was 56 degrees out, so I decided on a bike ride.  I fueled up with a Kind bar.

These seriously are really good.  I wish I did not know that.  This was also my first real ride with the new bike clips!

I did 19.6 miles today with an average pace of 12 mph.  Feeling good!  I like the clips.  It took some getting used to starting and stopping.  Each time I had to stop I kept saying to myself, “Don’t forget your clips!”  Okay, I actually said it out loud, too….. I was totally paranoid that I was going to forget and just fall over.  The hardest part is reclipping into the pedal after getting going again because it spins around (since I have the dual pedal).  On the longer sections of the path, I just practiced clipping and unclipping while riding to get the hang of it.  I do realize now that I moved my legs around a lot before.  Especially my feet.  Now they stay in place and I am more efficient (I think).  Cool.  I need to adjust them a little, though.

I was hungry when I got back, bottom’s up!

Protein drink and helmet hair – awesome combo 😀

Then some good foam rolling and stretching.  I was also pretty chilled at this point.  56 degrees isn’t really cold, but when you get sweaty in that temp, it’s easy to get chilled.  I decided I needed to incorporate hot sauce into dinner somehow to warm up.  :mrgreen:

I sliced a cooked chicken piece in half and heated it up, then spread it with laughing cow and the hot sauce.  This was very good!  I wish the laughing cow melted a bit better, but still tasty.

New visitor at the feeder:

Such impudence!

We are off for some coffee tonight, since neither of us had a latte today.  The day wouldn’t be complete without it!

Question:  Do you use a blog reader or do you just bookmark sites?

Women’s Health Week and feathered friends.

If you missed John’s maintenance post, here it is! Thanks again, John!

I woke up tres early this morning.  It was darn cold, too!  I did not bike to the gym, so you know it was really cold – as in frost on the car and the scrapers were put away somewhere. Sigh… at least my protein shake had time to digest some.

At the gym, I biked for 20 minutes and the lifting:

Exercise Set/rep/weight Muscle worked
Dumbbell chest press 3 sets of 10 with 25# DB Back
Stiff leg deadlift 3 sets of 10 with 55# bar Lower body
Chin ups 1 set of 2, 3 sets of 1 Upper body
Push ups 3 sets of 10 Chest
Reverse crunches 3 sets of 12 Abs
Dumbbell Pliet squat 1 sets of 8 with 25# DB, 1 set with body weight Legs
Reverse fly 3 sets of 15 with 10# DBs Shoulders
Seated French Press 3 sets of 15 with 10# DBs Triceps
EZ Curls 3 sets of 15 with 25# bar Biceps

Then 10 minutes of walking to cool down. I got the treadmill up to 3 mph today!  The pliet squats hurt, so I dropped the weight on the last set.  Funny how some moves really just don’t feel good yet.  Do you like this table thing?  Janetha and Susan use it and it looks nice and clean, so I thought I would try it.

Breakfast brought back and old favorite – Cream of Wheat!  This is the whole grain kind.

This bowl had a mashed banana, 5 grams of cocoa powder, and 2 egg whites cooked in.  Topped with fluff and toasted almonds.  It was yummy!

Somewhat frustrating day at work to start.  They upgraded our software, so there were lots of issues, and then doctors dictating wrong on top of it.  I worry when doctors cannot select the correct type of report for their patients.  Makes you go, hmmmm….  I can understand doing it once accidentally, but repeatedly??

It’s National Women’s Health Week.

Here are some things to concentrate on – not just this week, but for the rest of your life!

  • Getting at least 2 hours and 30 minutes of moderate physical activity, 1 hour and 15 minutes of vigorous physical activity, or a combination of both each week
  • Eating a nutritious diet
  • Visiting a health care professional to receive regular checkups and preventive screenings
  • Avoiding risky behaviors, such as smoking and not wearing a seatbelt
  • Paying attention to mental health, including getting enough sleep and managing stress

Lunch time!  Except I had an accident while cooking.

This is the counter (I know it looks like a floor). Here’s a tip to help clean up broken glass.  After getting the big pieces, wipe the area down with a damp paper towel to pick up the tiny glass shards.

What is up with me and hot sauce lately?

I moved back to my old rocker seat finally.  I had been working from the couch in order to slouch a bit, per doctor’s orders to keep from pressing on my disk.  Well, after a month, I am tired of that.  Besides, I wanted to sit close to my feeder!  Here are a couple of feathered friends I saw today:

This is the woodpecker!  I don’t know why he doesn’t go to the suet feeder, but whatever.

Then the titmouse was back.  He is so cute!

Note I refilled the feeder, little piggies 😀

Who needs chocolate? I do!

Worked a little past dinner just so I could be finished up for the night since I had a slow start.  John had made some mac and cheese with chicken, and I just added sauteed broccoli to it.  I can’t believe how it bulked up that portion. 😳

With more hot sauce.  I think I have a problem…..

Tonight is coffee roasting (I did make a video, btw, just not sure if it is worthy of posting), cleaning and getting out and covering the plants again.  Hard freeze tonight.  I hope I don’t lose anything.

Plus a snack of some cashews and chocolate.

Question:  What are you doing to highlight your health this week?

Friday fun and guest post request!

Weekend!  Put your hands together everybody!  I so wanted to sleep in the morning and go to the gym a little bit later, but the garbage truck woke me up and I couldn’t get back to sleep.  I got up about 15 minutes later than usual.  The gym was pretty quiet today, as usual on Fridays.

  • 10-minute warmup on the stationary bike
  • Chinups: 1 set of 3, 2 sets of 2
  • Barbell squats:  3 sets of 8 at 85 pounds
  • Seated lat rows:  3 sets of 15 at 45 pounds
  • 1-legged dumbbell deadlifts:  3 sets of 10 with 15# DBs
  • Prone Cuban snatch:  3 sets of 15 with 8# DBs
  • Reverse crunches:  3 sets of 15
  • Pushups:  3 sets of 15

This was extra tiring for some reason.  I don’t know why, but I struggled through the weights today.  Then I hopped on the treadmill for 30 minutes with a walk/run combo.  Listened to the Dirty Dozen Brass Band today.  I love them!  You know they are based in New Orleans?  John and I have a dream to own a 2nd place there.  It will take a lot to make that happen, though. Better start playing the lottery :mrgreen:

Breakfast was custard cream of wheat!  I mashed up 1/2 a banana and added it to the pot with the water, brought to a boil and added the cream of wheat.  Then I whipped in the egg whites.  Thickened up right nicely!

Topped with chocolate sauce 😯  and peanut butter.  Deeelicious.

Headed over to my rental property to check on the status before the open house and broker open coming up.  My tenant is actually very neat clutter-wise (which is great), but things were just dirty.  Splatters on the walls and grime on things.  I did paint touch ups and told him what needed to happen for open houses, showings, and stuff.  It is extremely hard for me to not tell him how to live until the house sells, you know?  I have no control over whether he wipes off the stove or cleans the mirrors in the bathroom.  I hope it sells fast.  It’s actually a very cute house, a little small, but it has a huge yard and we put in granite counter tops.

I was pretty hungry for lunch when I got back, and grabbed something really quick:  shredded wheat topped with strawberries.  I almost never eat just a bowl of cereal, but it was fast!

Back out for more errands, including a new pair of shoes!  I need walking shoes as mine are all worn out.  I had a gift certificate to Dick’s.  I tried on so many shoes, and actually ended up with another pair of Saucony shoes (on sale!!).

They are running shoes, but so comfy that I am just going to walk in them.  I have to go with what make my feet feel happy, and if they want to be in the running shoes, then so be it. When I slipped my feet into these, I just knew they were the right pair.

Jody – just for you.

Pixie chillaxing on the dishwasher because it’s warm (it’s a portable one).  She wants you all to notice her big feet.

Needed to use up the last of the venison for dinner, so I made a BBQ venison quesedilla with laughing cow, chopped venison and BBQ sauce on a smart carb wrap.

Paired with pan sauteed brussels and the last kiwi.  We need to be very judicious with our shopping this week so we don’t have a lot of fresh produce left before our trip.

I am looking for a few guest posts to use if I can’t get online as much during our trip at the end of the month.  Is anyone interested?  Please shoot me an email at javaqueen01 (at) yahoo dot com.  Sorry for the late request!

Question: Are you brand loyal with shoes?

Runnin’ and ramblings

Thanks for the nice comments yesterday about my flashback fat feelings.  It just nice sometimes to admit to these things and know you aren’t alone.  So, I hit the gym for run day today.  I set the treadmill at 5.5 mph and just chugged it out while listening to my player.  I had downloaded Casandra Forsythe‘s podcast as I mentioned yesterday.  You know, I liked listening to people talk while jogging.  I normally listen to music, but this maybe made the time go by faster?  I don’t know why that would be.  It made me think some and nod my head in agreement a lot.  Sometimes I didn’t quite agree with what was said.  I really liked how this interview was 2 real women talking about fitness in a way that isn’t all magazine headline and ‘lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks’ kind of thing.  Also interesting to note is that Cassandra is quite far into a pregnancy, so she also talks a lot about what she does and does not do being pregnant.  They also brought up a great point about how women just always aren’t nice to each other (or themselves).  We cannot appreciate someone for just being, but there has to be a “She’s too skinny/fat/muscular/tall/short/old/wrinkled/etc” thrown in there.  Whatever that blank is.  Why is that??  Quite a long interview, too.  It was about an hour and got me most of the way through my run, which was 6 miles.

I was ready to eat!  I wanted a fast breakfast, so it was Cream of Wheat time!  Made with a mashed banana, cinnamon, and topped with the last of the pecan butter and some chips.  These are regular size chips, and it looks like so few compared to the minis!  They still got nice and melty, though.

There’s some chip dust on there, too, from the end of the bag.  I was sad when the bowl was done.  🙂

Fun note: I received a wonderful email from Brad Schoenfeld and I about fell over!  You know that I recommend a couple of his books 28-Day-Shapeover and Sculpting Her Body Perfect.  Anyway, he apparently stumbled across my blog and he mentioned me on his blog!  I was so flattered! Eeeeeee!!!!!!!!  You all know how I loves my lifting 😀

Still in the ‘use things up’ mode in the house.  We have a lot of food!  Lunch was the rest of the greek yogurt with a little agave, some Special K Protein cereal and strawberries.

I like the Special K, but I noticed it has HFCS in it.  Booo….  Doesn’t stop me from snacking in it though, I noticed. LOL

Snack time involved more of yesterday’s item: 

I am snacky snacky lately.  I’ve been swamped with stuff in the last few days and just tend to eat.  Not to mention the long run.  I tell you, wish I were earning more money for how busy I am!

Dinner was a pizza made from a Josef’s Pita.  These are nice and soft and make a good crust, if not a little thin.

Topped with chicken, feta cheese and a piece of crumbled bacon (couldn’t resist the last piece that John cooked…..mmmmm…. bacon).

I have made so many spelling errors tonight.  I made peanut butter after dinner, and managed to slice my finger cleaning off the blade.  See what happens when you try to do stuff yourself 🙄

Owie.  It always seems like when I cut myself, it is where the digit bends, and that makes it hard to type.  Of course, my job requires typing all day long, so I’ll probably be swearing some tomorrow LOL!  Thank goodness for spell checker.  Going to have some pineapple later for a snack.  Good thing that is already cut up :mrgreen:

Enter here to win some Barney Butter at Healthy Living!

Question:  Do you listen to music or podcasts when working out?  Which do you like better?

Carb loading works!

Thanks for the insomnia suggestions…. hmmmm…. narcotics, booze…. s*x….and kids.   😉

You know that carb loading I did yesterday led to a fabulous run today!  6 miles without even batting an eye.  How about that?  I think I might be becoming a runner…. I got on the hamster wheel and spent 2 miles getting up to 6mph.  Then I put a hand towel over the electronics and just listened to tunes.  I knew that when the album was over it would be about an hour, and when I pulled off the towel, the mileage was 5.9 – so I just finished out 6.  I almost went for more, but I need to be careful about increasing base mileage too fast (since I did 6 on Tuesday).  I had a big endorphin grin on my face when I left the gym, which elicited a nice hello from a man coming in.  Hope he didn’t think I was hitting on him! 😳

I listened to Hot Club of Detroit’s new album, which John got me for Christmas.  I love it!  Good tunes can make all the difference in exercise, don’t you agree??

Came back to a warm and wonderful bowl of Cream of Wheat cooked with a mashed banana and topped with almond butter and raspberry jam.  I burned my tongue!

It’s cold out today, but beautiful and sunny.  I do take vitamin D in tablet form at this time of year since I don’t get out in the sun so much now.  We have some nice icicles hanging from the house now:

This picture was actually taken in sun, but the back light makes it look late.

Clean eating for lunch today!  Tuna salad sprinkled with a bit of lemon pepper and FSTG chips (love these).  And an American Kiwi 🙂

I just wanted to take a minute and give a shout out to Lynn for a Weight Loss Woo Hoo!  Lynn is amazing and such an inspiration to me (as well as many others).  If you haven’t read her blog, you should.  She has a wonderful writing style, which I am envious of, as well as having an admirable control of how she eats, which I am also envious of.

Uh-oh, along with the gluttony yesterday, the envy puts me at 3 of the deadly sins this week 😯

We had forethought this morning to throw some venison into the crockpot with some BBQ sauce and let it cook all day.  I love when dinner is ready to go when I am!  I chopped some up and put over a tiny baked potato.

Having a few more carbs today since it is a longer run day.  It was so good!  Nice and tender.

I am done with work now and off to the cafe for some weekend celebrating!

Question:  Do you get enough vitamin D?

Cold and cruising thoughts.

If you haven’t checked out my post on how I named my blog, click here!  Thank you for your comments!  I have the best readers 😉

Bitter cold this morning.  One of those days where the stairs crack and pop on the porch  😯   I headed out to the gym for my run.  The plan was to do 5 miles, but I was not feeling it today.  I think it was likely the blood donation yesterday.  I slogged through 2 miles and had the speed at 5.5 mph.  Normally I get a first wave of tired after 1.5 miles and then after 2 I’m okay.  Today didn’t feel good.  I normally increase the speed after 2 miles, but my heartrate was 160 at 5.5 mph!  I knew something was up there and decided no speed work and no faster.  I stopped after 4 miles, choosing to listen to my body say it just needed to quit there.  Still 4 miles, though 😀

Came home freezing cold just from going from the gym to home.  Wind chills of below 0 today.  Ugh.  I made a toasty warm bowl of banana cream of wheat topped with almond butter and jam.

One thing about cream of wheat and oat bran is that they hold heat like the dickens!  John said we should insulate our house in cream of wheat, which I am sure the mice would love 🙄

Also some liquid love of cafe au lait to help warm me up:

Pixie has been a complete heat-seeking lap missile today.  She is stuck to me like glue.  I think she really likes the snuggie, too 😀

Lunch was more tuna.  We got a pick 4 pack (12 cans) of tuna at BJs.  I think I am going to be tired of tuna again pretty soon!

Using up more corporate waffles as bread.  Changed it up with strawberries at lunch, though!

Afternoon warmth:

I cut up the best pineapple today for dinner.  They must be in season or something because they were on sale and it was quite good.  I lurve fresh pineapple!  Along with an omelet mess.

I think I need to mince the broccoli if I am going to try to make omelets with it, because the omelet just falls apart.  Still tasted good, though.

I turned down an offer to go out for coffee tonight, can you believe it?  I just can’t bear the thought of going out in wind chill of -11 degrees!  You know it’s cold if I won’t go for coffee….  The weather is making us so excited for our cruise in the beginning of Feb!  Not sure if I wrote about this or not, but we are cruising to Mexico.  The best part is that the cruise leaves from New Orleans (!!!!), so we are there for a couple days before the ship leaves and we can stuff our faces with beignets.

Then the ship goes to the Yucatan and Cozumel.  This is the first vacation for John and I of more than a weekend in 3 years!  We deserve it.  I’ll be blogging on the trip, too – which will be fun.  Can you believe the cruise ship has wi-fi?  This will be our 2nd cruise.  The first was about 10 years ago, which was also to the Caribbean.  How time flies!

Question:  Have you ever cruised before?

Back to normal

I woke up with a little bit of a food hangover today LOL.  Anyone else??  I ate a lot of food yesterday, but you know what?  I enjoyed every single bite.  I ate what I wanted, enjoyed it,and feel absolutely no regret.  And that feels really good!  I like that food is not an enemy anymore.

In an effort to get back to normal, I hit the gym.  Unlike most Saturdays now where it is a run day, I did weights instead.  Reason one being that I did 2 days of running in a row (10 miles total), and I have never run 3 days in a row.  My feet were kind of tired today.  Reason 2 is that I missed a normal Friday lifting session.  Anyway, this is what I did:

  • Chinups:  2 sets of 2
  • Romanian barbell deadlift:  3 sets of 8 at 75 pounds

Alternating sets:

  • Barbell bench press:  3 sets of 8 at 55 pounds
  • Seated lat row:  3 sets of 8 at 55 pounds

Alternating sets:

  • Reverse lunges with 1 dumbell on shoulder: 3 sets of 8 at 20 pounds
  • Arnold press: 3 sets of 10 with 10 pound dumbbells
  • Planks:  2 sets of 90 second holds

Then I walked on the treadmill for 30 minutes.  I was swimming in testosterone today.  This is why I don’t normally lift on Saturdays.  I was the only woman in the whole gym today and I had men standing on each side of me in the free weight section.

Came home to a good,clean, superfood-filled breakfast!

Cream of wheat, pumpkin, pumpkin pie spice (a tsp!), cranberry sauce, and a mix of almonds and pecans.

With cafe au lait in some new very photogenic mugs gifted to me by my MIL.

We had to hit the grocery store to get some of our regular items back in the house.  It felt so good to put bananas,strawberries, laughing cow cheese, and broccoli (!!!) into the cart.  Funny how good it feels to get back to normal foods in normal portions again.

We do still have leftovers, though – so lunch included some:

Chopped up roast beef with laughing cow and a bit of BBQ sauce on a waffle and leftover brussel sprouts.  The cookies have been packed up into the freezer, which is a good thing.

In an effort to get myself to relax today, we packed up the laptops and headed out to Fortunate Cup cafe to linger and surf the net and do some long-needed blog maintenance!

I have made a new page with links to all the races I have done!

Latte:

Plus a couple squares of dark chocolate.

I used my gorillapod hooked to the back of a chair for this shot of my geekdom.

It really gives my camera personality – it looks like a little robot or something.  I wish I could make it take a self-portrait LOL!  This was such a nice relaxing afternoon!  Too bad I have to go back to work on Sunday.  I could get used to this.

Home for dinner.  Check out the old standby!

I do like my routines 😀  They are so easy to slip back into and it feels good.

Speaking of routines:

Nap time and lap time for Pixie.  We are pretty much settled in for the night.  I just took this stealth shot of John playing the PS2 game I got him for Christmas:

I am going to take time tonight and think about my goals for next year.  There are endless possibilities!

Check out my guest post over at Gina’s site on oatmeal!   😀

Question:  Are you back to routine yet?