Tag Archives: bagels

Lifting Move of the Week and John’s Birthday!

It’s John’s birthday today! Welcome to year 42 sweetie 😀

He slept in while I biked to the gym for a strength workout.

Exercise Set/rep/weight Muscle worked
Straight-leg deadlifts 3 sets of 10 at 75# Lower body
Close grip lat pulldown 3 sets of 10 at 50# Back
Cable Squat to Row 3 sets of 10 at 60# Full body
Planks 3 sets of 90 second holds (dying on the last one) Abs
Barbell Chest Press 3 sets of 8 at 55# Chest
Standing Single leg Calf Raise 3 sets with 10 with 45# bar Calves and balance
Prone Cuban Snatch 3 sets of 10 with 10# DBs (20# total) Shoulders
Triceps kickback 3 sets of 10 with 15# DBs (30# total) Triceps

Then I walked for about 10 minutes on the treadmill waiting for the birthday boy to get to the gym. We then biked to Panera Bread per his request for breakfast! I have not done a bike ride after lifting in a few weeks and had forgotten how tiring that was….

I was so ready for my bagel!

Asiago cheese. Yum. I started to wolf it down and actually had to tell myself to slow down out loud.  I was wearing Triscuit (my trisuit) today because of the heat and humidity. I felt funny walking into Panera wearing it, and I swear I saw 2 women looking at me and talking to each other. Kind of felt exposed and uncomfortable. I thought maybe I was imagining it, but when we went up for coffee later, they asked where were were riding from. Not sure what they were saying to each other, but I guess it doesn’t really matter.

Lifting Move of the Week:  The Close Grip Lat Pulldown! This exercise works the back and actually gives a nice stretch feel, which I really like.  Most of the time, you will see the wide grip bar used on this machine.  Swap out the wide bar for the V-bar (the little v-shaped handle) for variation.  Make sure your legs are snug under the lap bar.

While this mostly does the back, your rear deltoids (back of shoulders) and a bit of chest muscle is used as well.  When pulling down, think of pulling with your back muscles.  If you hook your hands  on the grip without your thumbs, you will use less arm muscles. These are good practice to graduate to chin ups!

Slow work day today on both job fronts, but I had a lot of other things to do.  Lunchtime was a quick egg sandwich on the yummy bread!

Then I picked up John’s requested birthday cake from Baker’s Dream:

It is a vanilla cake with coconut cream topped with chocolate buttercream.  Total decadence!  We got a small cake so there wouldn’t be a lot of leftovers.

We had cake in the afternoon with my folks, since with dinner and a movie tonight, it would be too late for cake (is it ever too late for cake??)

My slice with some caramel swirl ice cream.

I had my dad’s extra frosting.  He said it was too much frosting.  I disagree :mrgreen:

I got John his own cycling jersey.  It has a poker hand on it, so we both can be cool riding now.  I need to get a photo of both of us all tricked out.

Posting early today as we are going out for dinner (Pizzeria Uno) and a movie – Inception.

Happy Birthday to the best husband in the world!!

July/August goals and playing hooky!

This post is going to be filled with stuff, so be forewarned!

We woke up and decided to bike to Panera this morning.  Doesn’t it seem like my butt is planted on the bike permanently?

Blueberry bagel.  Yum!

John wanted to get a shot of me noshing, so here it is.

Nomf!!

We took it easy on the ride today as our legs were a bit tired from yesterday.  It was quite a hilly ride.

Started with work when I got home and after 200 lines this popped up.

Don’t like seeing that, because no files means I don’t get paid.  (Job #2 only has files Mon through Friday).  So, I did chores while waiting. After steam cleaning the carpets and eating lunch:

I checked work and still no files available.  You never know if they are going to come in or not.  I decided to write about July’s goals:

So, July goals were :

  • Continue with at least 1 no-added sugar day a week.  This actually isn’t that hard, I have to say.  FAIL!  I actually kinda forgot about doing this. Oops.
  • An 80-mile bike ride.  Gonna do at least that one, and likely finish out the 100 as well.  Kind of need to get that done so we can get back to normal biking :D Eeeep!! Well – we skipped right on over the  80 miles and did the 100!  I feel so awesome about that.
  • Big challenge – I am not going to step on the scale for 30 days.  I weighed myself this morning and that is it for the month.   I did not weigh myself for 30 days and it was not that hard. I actually lost several pounds this month, too.
  • Really practice mindful eating and mindful being.  Did this.  I really worked on mindless snacking, which is really what I attribute losing some weight to.

Not too bad.  The goals I have planned for August are:

  • Compile my recipes into a cookbook, which I am going to give to anyone who sponsors my Team Challenge ride. (Will talk about this tomorrow)
  • Continue working on the no snacking while preparing meals.
  • Again, no weight goal this month, just being mindful of what I am eating.  I am going to weigh myself when I want to, though.
  • I’ll probably add something else after I think for a bit.

After figuring out my goals and *still* no work,  I talked with my sister –  and since her husband and kids were visiting her in-laws, I popped down for a sister day!

The puppies were happy to see me.

We did some visiting and she made me a snack of some cheese toast with farmers market bread and cheese!

Her husband is the manager for a state tree nursery, and they are taking part in a study for using bio means for invasive plant control.  This test is for Phragmites, which chokes out cattails.  There is a stand of phrag (that tall stuff in the photo) on the property, so they are housing sheep for a month.  The idea is to see if the sheep will eat the weed if it is available.  This is the pen which these sheep are led into to see if they will eat the weed.

All that bare patch is from them eating the phrag.  They seem to like it.

Baaaaahhhhh!  So cute.  I wanted to hug them all.

We also saw a momma deer and her fawn on the way.

After this, it was shopping time!  I scored 2 new bowls, which will appear on the blog this week.  2 bowls for $7!!  I loves me a bargain.  My sister got a new Droid phone.  Lucky her!  After shopping, we were kind of hungry for dinner, so we stopped at Esperanto in Saratoga.

My sis:

I had the falafel pita with hummus.

It was delicious!  I forgot to get a picture of the cookie we each got to take home.  It was a cranberry oat cookie.

We made a pot of coffee and chatted and ate cookies.  It was certainly a nice way to play hooky!

I am home now, and there are only a couple of files to do.  Guess I am going to have to use some PTO for the day.

On a side note, if you want to help out a fellow blogger, John from Time to Challenge Myself has an entered a stridea to do 40 races by the time he reaches 40.  You can vote for his idea here.

Whew – I think that is enough for today! 😀

Habit energy

Thursday, also known as the new bagel day!  We woke up way too early (or TFE, as John likes to say…).  Downed some protein drink and biked away.  I was maybe a squidge tired from the monster workout yesterday, but not too bad.  The heat broke and it was a beautiful, nonhumid morning!  Yay!  I also got to have breakfast with my favorite person…

Sunflower seed bagel and cream cheese.

Somebody please stop me from thinking about opening a bagel/cupcake/muffin/coffee shop… please…

It was nice to sit and relax since we were up early.  Funny, but now our 2 bagel days coincide with the start and end of my workweek.  We go Sunday, which is the start of the week for me, and then Thursday, which is my Friday (and my mind gets all sorts of mixed up when I start thinking like that).

Good ride home.  13 miles round trip at exactly 13 miles per hour.  Convenient!

Steady work right away with good dictators.  That made for a nice end to the week at job #1.

Lunch time!

Finally opened a bag of Food Should Taste Good Lime chips to have with tuna salad.  This bag has been unopened for 2 weeks! It’s funny how long things last when I don’t snack on them…  Whodda thunk that?? 🙄

One of the terms that I really liked in the Savor book was “habit energy.”  There is also a sanskrit work for it – Vasana.  Habit energy can be good or bad.  What happens is that when there is a little seed of something and it gets watered, it grows in strength.  You can see how this is good or bad.  The thing about habit energy is that it can be (and usually is) totally unconscious.  I had a lot of habit energy towards snacking while preparing meals.  First it was a little nibble of what I was making, then it was snacking on cereal or crackers while cooking.  It became really easy to add an extra 150 calories before I even sat down to eat.  I noticed that this habit energy was very powerful and occurred at all 3 meals!  I would get back from the gym and have some nuts while my oats were cooking, or if I was putting chocolate chips on my oats, then I would have a few. (Easy to eat 70 calories of those without noticing – 1 tbsp).

When I decided to nip this in the bud, I didn’t realize how hard it was going to be.  I had fed that habit energy so much that it was unconscious and like a snowball.  Do you ever have an epiphany like that where realize you did something, but now *how much*?  Breakfast was easier than the other meals, because I just would make my coffee earlier and start drinking it while cooking.  The other 2 meals were more of a challenge.  I started popping the Altoid ginger mints to prevent my nibbling.  There were some times where I would have 2 or 3 mints just to get through the cooking without nibbling and I still found myself going to the pantry out of habit, but didn’t eat anything.  The first week was really rough.  I chose to not even let myself nibble on something like carrots or part of the fruit for my dinner because it was the habit I wanted to break, not the food.  If I were to allow myself only something I deemed ‘healthier’ would put food into good and bad categories, which I don’t like to do.  It was hard because I am hungry when I am cooking (to which the intuitive would say eat, right?).  Of course, there really isn’t anything wrong with being hungry and waiting a little bit for your meal to cook before eating.

I have to say that it is much easier now.  The habit energy is there still, but dwindling.  I need fewer mints and don’t unconsciously start to grab for things as much.  I started this habit breaking on the 11th, so that is what, about 2-1/2 weeks?  Not saying I am going to never nibble again, but I do feel like I am getting this habit under control.  Wonder where that energy went?

The interesting thing about habit energy is that it really affects so many aspects of our lives, including how we react to other people or situations.  Being mindful can really make you stop for a second and notice that habit energy.  Once you acknowledge it, the power starts to go away.

Snack time included a latte and another couple squares of Lake Champlain chocolates:

I do much better with chocolate when it is in bar form rather than chip form.  Again, I have some strange food things going on.

Finished up job #1 for the week.  Yippee!  Tomorrow will just be some of job #2.  And blueberry picking 😀

I had an omelet hankering for dinner.  This has some sauteed broccoli, caramelized onions, and a laughing cow wedge inside.  With a plum on the side.

The drink on the side is a POM cocktail (of sorts).  I mixed some POM juice into lime seltzer water.  Very good.  POM Wonderful sent me a case of juice!  Gotta celebrate Friday Thursday.

And in even more celebration, John and I hit the mall just for fun.  Kind of like high school where you go to the mall on weekends, right?  I found some wrinkle cream at TJMaxx.

Score!  Hopefully it isn’t expired or something and burns my face off….

Then it was Starbies for some real vitamin C:



That’s the stuff…. It’s decaf, though.  Can’t live it up too much, now.

That’s where I am blogging this post from!  Starbies now has free WiFi to everyone, not just card owners.  ’bout time!

Question:  Can you think of habit energy you have that you would like to change?

Bagels and biking x2

You know it’s Sunday when you see bagels and biking in the title!  Here is  a picture of my trusty bike:

Nothing special.  Just an old Schwinn hybrid type that I got used about 5 years ago for $140.   You don’t need anything special to ride 100 miles 😉 , although it would be easier with a road bike.  I made myself a little protein drink and we headed to Panera.  We went a circuitous route today to add a few miles.  Met my mom joined us for bagels today!

Yum.  This was after 11 miles and I was quite ready to eat.

Then we headed home.  Total round trip was 19.5 miles, and average speed of 13.3.  Not too shabby for a breakfast ride 😀

Hit the ground running typing at work today.  I think a lot of MTs have just left job #1 company (or got fired) as there has been a backlog of work and they are hiring now.  That’s what happens when morale is down.  Maybe I will be one of those people soon (the leaving, not the fired, hopefully).

Lunch break!  Pumpkin and vanilla greek yogurt with Uncle Sam’s cereal in it.

Plus one of the last pears I have.  No more in stores, so I will have to put aside that favorite for a bit.

Do you want to see something really crazy?  In the comments from yesterday’s race is someone who did the same race as I did (AJH).  Read her recap post and check out the picture of her at the finish.  The man in the green shirt right next to her is John!  How about that for a coincidence??  Kinda spooky….

Latte in the afternoon.

I am drinking this sitting in front of the fan LOL!

Pixie just doesn’t know how to do her job.  She is supposed to scare the squirrels off of this bird feeder, and all she does is watch them.  That squirrel could care less!

Now that the Starlings seem to have moved on, the woodpecker is back, too!

I was pretty hungry for dinner.  Luckily John had cooked up some chicken earlier, so you know what I had to have!

Plus some strawberries on the side:

Lucky for you, I used up the last of the BBQ sauce and the salad mix, so I will have to come up with some different dinners this week :mrgreen:

I decided on a double dip ride again today.  Wanted to bike for a bit more tonight, so that meant yogurt!  I asked John how his yogurt was:

I guess his goal is to ham it up in every picture now,even though he knows they are going to end up on the internets.

I had pistachio yogurt, one of my very favorites!

Anyone have any good suggestions for an anti-wrinkle cream?  Seriously.

Total bike mileage today was 32 miles.  I so love my bike….  Just in case you are curious, today’s calories tallied up to 1710 (give or take a few).  I was surprised that it was that low, actually.  Big reason is because I didn’t nibble.  Funny how that works, isn’t it??

Off to foam roll and stretch!

Bagels and brussels.

It’s the new bagel day! Slept in until about 7, which was really nice. Fueled up with a bubbly protein drink and biked to Cool Beans.

It was a very nice morning for a ride. I do have to say that my legs were actually sore after my workout yesterday.  I hardly ever get sore anymore. Must be the deadlifts.

Debby brought up a point about wondering the difference between a squat and a deadlift. If you use dumbbells, there really is no difference. When you move to the bar, you have the barbell on your shoulder shelf behind your back for a squat versus in front of you with the deadlift. When you use a barbell, those 2 moves feel very, very different from each other.

Ze bagel!

I totally refined it today with a sesame seed bagel.  It was really good.  I haven’t had one of those in years!  I got it because the other bagels looked really dinky.

Nice tailwind for the ride home afterwards.  I didn’t push or anything because of the sore legs.  I have a race on Saturday, so I am completely resting tomorrow.

Last day of the work week for job #1.  Yay!  The day went slow on that front though.  Plodded through files today.

Lunch break included something sent to me by Attune Foods!

I guess Uncle Sam is a brand by US Mills, which also has the Attune brand.  Didn’t know that!

This cereal is good.  It is not sweet at all (1 g of sugar per serving), so I think it would be good used as a breading for chicken or other savory dishes.  Might have to try that.  It’s got 10 grams of fiber per serving, too 😯

I also had the last of the blueberry muffins I made the other day.  This meal kind of looked like a breakfast LOL.

Watched more of the Tour in and out while working.  I wish Andy had been able to shake Contador, but no dice.  They both worked so hard.  It’s actually good to see no hard feelings between them. Think Contador has it pretty much wrapped up unless something drastic happens.  Now it’s back to watching Cavendish and Petaki (sp??).

Afternoon break of a latte and a Luna bar.

I was really hungry.  I must have jinxed myself saying I wasn’t feeling snacky lately.

I spent the next couple hours trying not to snack.  I was not hungry, but I think I was just wanting to avoid work.  I kept saying to myself to go ahead and eat, but then I somehow got a handle on it and waited until dinner.  (Who is this lady?)

Dinner was something different.  I wanted a BBQ chicken wrap, but decided to put it in the waffle iron to heat it up.  Sort of panini style.

Very tasty.  This pile of brussel sprouts was only 4 sprouts (is that what a single one is called??).  They were ginormous! Sliced thin and sauteed in coconut oil, salt, and pepper.  My favorite way to eat them.

I just finished up work for job #1 for the whole week, so I only have job #2 tomorrow.  Yay!  I will work some on Friday, but Saturday is my no work day ever.  The one day I have to spend with John, so nobody gets to interrupt it unless I say so.

Evening snack will be some bread with nut butter.  I just made up a loaf of maple oatmeal bread.  Yummers.

Be back tomorrow with some more garden blooms.  Couple new things popped open this week!

Question:  Have you ever tried Uncle Sam’s?

Bagels and mastering long-term weight loss

Full 8 hours of sleep last night!  Guess I need to bike 40 miles in order for that to happen.  Legs felt decent, so we went ahead and bike to Panera Bread.  I forgot my jacket, and it was indeed very cold in there.  Oh well, that meant hot coffee with my french toast bagel.

Paper reading and chatting commenced.  Do you ever feel like your brain is all over the place sometimes?  Mine is.

Biked home and settled in for a day’s work.  Busy right from the start, too.

Lunch break and I wanted protein!  Chicken curry salad.

This is a tasty salad.  We went grocery shopping last night and are overrun with produce.  Not a bad thing.

Not sure if it is a hold over from yesterday’s ride, but I have been kind of hungry today.  I broke a little earlier than normal for a snack of iced coffee and some Lindt chocolate (touch of sea salt).

Good!  I was hoping to make it to dinnertime, but my tummy was growling a couple hours later, so I had some blueberries.

Frustrating work afternoon.  I was doing a 15 minute report (which takes about 3x as long to actually transcribe).  It was an admit for a newborn and the doctor began switching back and forth between he/she for the baby during the report.  There is no way to tell which sex a newborn is, as there is no name given (and that doesn’t always help).  So, I had to send it through with a bunch of discrepancy marks.  Funny how the doctors get irritated at the transcriptionsists like we are supposed to be mind readers. 🙄

I read an interesting article today on Tips for Mastering Long-term Weight loss. Evaluating how many of these I do:

  1. Learn to love exercise – done.
  2. Count calories the right way (quality, not quantity) – Mostly do.
  3. Fill up with fiber (whole grains, fruits, and veggies) – Done
  4. Control carbs – I do fairly well with this.
  5. Downsize your portions – Done
  6. Eat protein and take a multivitamin – Done and done.
  7. Eat dairy – Oh yes, do that for sure.
  8. Weigh yourself carefully.  This actually was confusing, because it said to weigh carefully, but then to use the clothing test.  – I am not weighing myself this month, although I would like to right now.
  9. Use a food diary – I use daily plate.
  10. Have a healthy attitude – I do fairly well at this, but could always improve.

Am I the only one that has trouble with using clothing as a weight barometer?  I find I can wear the same pair of pants with a wide weight range.

I was so hungry for dinner, so I needed something stat.  I had a ginger Altoid to keep from nibbling (this is working really well, btw).

Cheese omelet anyone?  Yum!  With some elderly brussels.

I need to work some more tonight.  This is starting to get hard, I have to say.  Why can’t I get paid (enough) to just blog my little heart out?  😉

Snack of some granola later, I believe, once I finish work.

Double dip ride and super foods!

Thursday is the new bagel day!  John plays poker on Tuesday nights and can’t get his butt out of bed, so we moved bagel day from Wed to Thurs.  It actually works a little better for me because I am not biking after a strength workout.  I had a protein drink and then we headed out at a nice clip today.  Breakfast outside, even though it was a little muggy!

I just could never give up my bagels.

Good ride home and I pushed it for the last mile going 20-21 mph.  We average 13.7 mph on the way home, which is pretty good.  When you don’t have road bikes, you can’t get huge amounts of speed.  John threw the gauntlet down when we got home that he was never going to wait for me again since I obviously have my speed back.  Guess I can’t nurse an injury excuse anymore. :mrgreen:

Just an FYI on that, I feel pretty good, and my left thigh is getting bigger again.  Now  it is only 1/2 an inch smaller than the right thigh.  I still have skin numbness over my knee, which I am beginning to think is permanent, but the knee itself is fine.  The only thing that bothers me anymore is running.

Worked job #1 for a while.  This job really sucks the life out of me.  The atmosphere is just not good.  If someone makes a mistake, they send out a blanket email to everyone to stop doing it, so we get multiple messages a day on what we are doing wrong, so you just doubt everything that you do.  I keep wondering if I am making these mistakes and it got my confidence down a little.  So when I got taken off QA after a week at job #2, that really justified that I am competent, thank you very much.

Lunch time!  Nothing too exciting, Just tuna salad and Wheat Thins Fiber Select (veggie flavor)

After lunch, I moved up to the bedroom and worked in there with the AC on rather than trying to cool the whole downstairs.  John made me a latte after a while.  I was thinking how decadent it was to work propped up in bed with a latte!  There are some benefits to working at home :mrgreen:

I had an email asking about the superfoods term that I use a lot, so I will do a refresher on those.  You see that term bandied about a lot, but I am referring to the book SuperFoods Rx by Dr. Steve Pratt.  These foods are nutritional powerhouses.  You can click on each on below to see more about each one’s benefits.  Each of these foods also have ‘sidekicks’ which are related, but not quite as good as the original.  Bolded ones are in my diet a *lot*.

Apples (pears)
Avocado
Beans
Blueberries (strawberries, cranberries, cherries)
Broccoli (brussels, cauliflower, kale)
Cinnamon
Dark Chocolate
Dried SuperFruits
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Garlic
Honey
Kiwi (pineapple)
Low Fat Yogurt
Oats (brown rice, quinoa)
Onions
Oranges
Pomegranates
Pumpkin (carrots, sweet potatoes)
Soy
Spinach
Tea
Tomatoes
Turkey (chicken)
Walnuts (almonds, cashews, peanuts)
Wild Salmon (tuna, clams)
I think I might try to address each of these foods with a recipe – that would be kind of fun.  Or at least the ones I eat.  Avocados will not enter my house!
Speaking of super foods – I filled my dinner with them!
Quick stir fry in coconut oil of chicken with broccoli, brown rice and ginger sauce.  With a side of blues!
I was really hangry for dinner.  Another successful no snacking pre dinner, either.  That made me pretty cranky, actually, as I was really hungry.  I hope it gets easier.
Done with job #1 for the week.  Yippee!  I wanted to do something, so what better than to hop on the bike for yogurt.  Double ride today.  At least I burn off some of the calories of the things I am going out to eat 😀
Rice pudding flavor yogurt topped with raspberry sauce.  Tell me you don’t want to lick the screen?
Ended up biking 25 miles today.  Good stuff.

Question:  What is your favorite superfood (or sidekick)?

Tour de bagel and 7 steps of mindful eating.

Off to the Tour de Bagel this morning!  I had a protein drink and we biked it out on the roads to Panera instead of the path.  Really set a nice pace today, too.

I was ready for that bagel today!  Asiago cheese.  Num.

We chatted for quite a long time.  It was nice not having to grocery shop  afterwards like we normally do on Sunday.  Then we pushed it again on the way home.

Ride distance: 16 miles

Avg speed:  13.5 mph.  Nice pace.  On the rough path, we are usually about 1 mph slower.

Had the Tour on while I got settled in to work today (job #1 very busy today).  Poor Lance.  Not the way to end his comeback for the Tour.  My thighs were burning in sympathy for those guys at the end on the climbs.  I don’t know how they do it.

Guess the heat relief was short lived.  Hot again today, but maybe not as humid.

Lunch break!

Made some egg salad on a Tomaxico wheat wrap.  These are good and have a better texture than the Smart Carb wraps.

I haven’t weighed myself since July 1.  I go through periods where I weighed every day and then periods where I would weigh once a week.  I did it to note the number, but the fluctuations stopped bothering me a while ago.  It has now been 10 days since I stepped on the scale.  I actually don’t really think about it that much as of yet, although I was a little curious after the 100-mile ride as to what the scale said.  It’s funny how yesterday morning I was feeling thin and fit and I thought that maybe because I was only relying on my eye and not a scale number?  Then last night I was feeling chubby, so maybe not LOL!  My brain is so weird.

My barista is back, so he made me a latte today and I had some blues with it.

I just love the color of these berries.  I am smitten.  They are almost gone now.  Might have to pick again on Friday 😀

More review of Savor includes the 7 practices of a mindful eater:

  1. Honor the food. Meaning to think about where it came from. I am taking time to think about this before each meal
  2. Engage all senses.  Notice the visual appeal, the textures, the smell, etc., not just taste.
  3. Serve in modest portions.  You can always go back for more.
  4. Savor small bites and chew thoroughly.  I could do better with smaller bites.
  5. Eat slowly.  Really need to work on this one.
  6. Don’t skip meals.  Never, ever a problem here.
  7. Eat a plant-based diet.  Vegetarianism is not for me.  I do have days where I don’t eat meat, but not going to happen all together.  Eating locally produced meat is important to me.  I want to be an ethical eater.

That is one thing that is bugging me about this book.  The pushing of vegetarian and vegan way of life.  There seems to be no distinction of purchasing local farm meat products and factory farming.  Otherwise, I am learning some good things from this book.

In keeping with being mindful, remember how I mentioned my habit of snacking while preparing meals?  I decided to really try to not do that today.  Lunch is always easier than dinner, and I had no problem there.  With dinner, I had Altoids come to my rescue:

I put one of these in my mouth while I was in the kitchen to keep from nibbling.  I don’t even want to nibble on what will be on my plate because I want to get rid of that habit all together.  The ginger mint (I really love these, btw) really helped me with that.  Then it was gone and I almost reached for something on John’s plate and had to catch myself.  A lot of habit energy to divert, that is for sure.

What I did eat:

BBQ shrimp!  3 oz of shrimp looks a little dinky on the plate.  My eyes don’t like that portion size.  Really tasty, though!

I am done with job #1 today – yay!  Going to relax and enjoy a couple mindful pieces of this:

Question:  Are you a fast or slow eater?

Lifting Move of the Week and June recap.

Happy mid week! It was fro yo last night, btw  🙂 It was nice and cool this morning, to the tune of 58 degrees when I biked to the gym! Awesome! I decided to have a few more carbs with today’s preworkout snack instead of more protein, so I had a Balance bar (210 calories).

Tasty.

I got to the gym and had a fantastic workout.

Exercise Set/rep/weight Muscle worked
Barbell deadlifts 3 sets of 8 with 80# bar Lower body
Chin ups 2 sets of 2, 3 sets of 1 Upper body
Dumbbell fly (flat) 3 sets of 10 with 20# DBs (40# total) Chest
Planks 3 sets of 75 second holds! Abs
Pliet squat with dumbbell 3 sets of 8 with 40# DB Legs
Dumbbell Shoulder Press 3 sets of 10 with 15# DBs (30# total) Shoulders
Nose breakers 3 sets of 10 with 25# bar Triceps
Seated calf raise 3 sets of 10 at 110# Calves
Seated lat row 3 sets of 10 at 40# Back

Whew! I am almost up to pre-injury deadlift weight. I was at 95# before, so getting closer!
Today’s Lifting Move of the Week: Nose breaker! Also called the skull crusher, both of which are cool names and make you sound hard core :mrgreen:  The key to this exercise is to move your arm from the elbow only, because you want to isolate the triceps muscle.  It takes a lot of concentration to do that, and to not drop the bar onto your face (hence the name).  My arm does move a little, which is what I try to work on for this exercise.

Sorry for the video quality here.  My tripod is on the fritz and I this was the best set up I could do.  You don’t need to see the top of the bar anyway.  I don’t really think you should be seeing any light at the small of my back.  The funny thing is, I keep my abs pulled in to keep my lower back from arching, but I actually have a somewhat indented lower back, so maybe that is normal.  You can even see it when I stand.

I was nicely tired after that workout, finishing just in time for John to pull up to the gym for our bike to breakfast!  The path was nice and quiet this morning.  I was happy to see this sign:

Oh yes.  I had a sunflower seed bagel with cream cheese and a giant coffee!

We sat indoors today because of how chilly it was outside.  Then we biked home.  The ride home felt so good because I had eaten breakfast.  Funny how that food and fuel thing works, isn’t it?

Must be vacation time for doctors.  Work has been spotty at best today, which I am not fond of.  We have 12 hours to finish our line requirement, but I like to work straight through most days (you know, kind of like a normal job).  I don’t always appreciate having to go back and work after dinner because there was no work available during the day.  Maybe it really is a good thing I am taking on this 2nd job.

Lunch break included an egg/egg white scramble with laughing cow and lots of hot sauce!  I would have cut into it to show you, but it would have gotten to messy.

I am going to go blueberry picking this Friday! Yay!

So my goals for June were as follows:

  • Enjoy my birthday (the 5th).   Done and done!!
  • 70 mile bike ride.   Done! It was hard, but we did it.
  • Read more books.   I got out several books from the library, but didn’t finish 2 of them because I didn’t like them.
  • Run a race.  Done!
  • Go sugar free for a few days during the month.   Done. I did 4 or 5 days.  It is a good practice to do, I think.
  • Note I am not making a weight loss goal this month.  Scale stayed put.

I have been doing some reading on intuitive/mindful eating recently – and does it not seem to be in the forefront of the blogosphere right now?  Sometimes I think the internet is like the collective a la Star Trek.  Resistance is futile.  Anyway, this is going to figure into my July goals that I will outline tomorrow.

Random afternoon snackage:

Dinner time was the classic Lori salad!

I have to say that I eat a lot of chicken.  I am always surprised at how much chicken we go through.

After some more work after dinner, John and I headed out to Starbucks to relax.  That is where I am posting this from, too!

That’s a decaf coffee, just so you know!  John is reading Agathie Christie while I type.  Funny how I was quite the party girl in college, and now I like to sit in cafes and drink coffee and surf the web.

Question:  Did you have any goals for June, and if so, how did you do?

Quiet day and a much better ride.

Sunday and back to work again.  The weather has quieted down.  Since my chain was not working well and we had to go grocery shopping, we just drove to breakfast.  Back to Panera Bread for bagels!  We need more than 2 bagel places around here within an 8-mile radius.

Blueberry with reduced fat cream cheese

and 3 cups of coffee 😀

We then got all nicely stocked up on groceries.  Lots of fruit.  Strawberries, kiwis, bananas, dates, blueberries, apples, pears.  I we eat a lot of fruit during the week.

Work was slow today, so I ended getting more things done than anticipated.  I scrubbed my bike off and degreased and regreased the chain, and did general cleaning around the house.

Lunch break was chicken with laughing cow and some pan sauteed sweet potato slices.  Good that way.

Plus yummy blueberries!  I need to call the local farm and see if it is picking time yet….

With still no work available, I went out for a leisurely bike ride for 1.5 hours.

Much, much better ride than the craptacularness that was yesterday.  See how happy I am after arriving at the yogurt place?

I had some lemon yogurt with raspberry topping.

This combo was good, but I was expecting a more tart lemon, like sorbet.

See all the choices of flavors to choose from?  It’s almost too much.

Nice ride today.  14 miles round trip.  Active recovery day for me!

Still no work in the late afternoon.  We have to keep checking in every couple of hours when there are no files, just to make sure any stat reports get finished.  So, that is annoying because I don’t earn any money….

I decided to take that time and make an Indian dish for dinner called Palak Chole.  It is a spinach, tomato, and chick pea dish that was really easy to make, healthy and turns out to be vegan as well.  I will put a recipe page up with that hopefully tomorrow.

Yum!  I had mine with 1/2 of a Lavash bread.  Nothing like combining cuisines, right?  If someone had said to me 4 years ago that  I would be eating a dish that combined chick peas, spinach, and tomatoes and liking it, I would have said “Ick, no way!!”.  Oh what I have missed.

Got more weeding done tonight.  Doing good on controlling them this year so far.  Tonight’s snack:

Kashi!

And:

Summertime = berry time!  Yay!