Thursday, August 2, 2012

Exercise check. Eating meh.


This was my motto today. I went to bed a doubter and woke up this morning a believer. Why you might ask? Because I got my ass out of bed this morning and ran 3.5km before work! And that was just the beginning.

Now before I get too far ahead of myself, I want to make it clear that today was not perfect. My eating wasn't fantastic. The things I ate were okay, but I really don't think I ate enough today. And my breakfast choices continue to be less than ideal. However where I was weak in one area, I kicked ass in another. EXERCISE!

Why the success with the exercise? Because I've changed my approach. I'm exercising to be strong and fit. Skinny is just the added bonus...not the end goal. I really think that makes the difference.

But back to my eating choices since that's the starting point of the blog. One reason I'm not a great morning exerciser...I'm not a great morning eater. Yes, I did get up and run 3.5km this morning (did I say that again? Yes I said it again. I'm proud of myself dammit!). But because I woke up later than planned, and was determined to get a run in, I rolled out of bed, got dressed and ran out the door....on an empty stomach. Not a great beginning. When I got through my run, I went home and immediately decided I needed to put something in my stomach, mostly because I felt like I was going to throw up if I didn't. So I ate the quickest and easiest thing I could find. Not toast. I ran out of multigrain bread. I had a banana muffin instead. With lots of water.


After I ate this, my daughter was raving about how fantastic her new cereal (that I let her buy in a moment of weakness) tasted. Of course, she wanted me to taste it. So I did. But first, she kindly pointed out that I needed to take a picture of what I eat. So I did. One piece of Krave cereal!


After my sad excuse for a breakfast, I showered, madly rushed to throw a decent lunch together (no way was I making the same mistake as yesterday and not packing enough food to get me through the day), and managed to get myself and my daughter to where we needed to be on time. Sort of. Well, she was on time. Me on the other hand - I ran a bit late. But it wasn't completely my fault.

At my work I don't have my own parking spot, but a coworker who does have a spot he doesn't often use, lets me use his on Mondays and Wednesdays which are my driving to work days. Unfortunately, he went on holidays, so someone else not aware of our arrangement took it upon themselves to use his spot while he's away...and whoever it was got to work before me! This meant I had to pay for parking, but unfortunately I had no cash on me and the machine needed coins. So, I parked my car, kept my fingers crossed for no ticket and ran across the street to a 7-11 to take money out of an ATM to then get change to park. And of course the ATM was down. Great. I went back to my car (no ticket, whew) and proceeded to take a scenic tour of Yaletown looking for a bank machine. I found a bank, parked and ran again (no money for the meter...sigh) and managed to get money from the machine, but only half the task was accomplished because I still needed change and there was a line up of about 15 people for the teller. Crap. I drove back to the parkade, parked and ran inside the building to Starbucks (yay!) where I ordered my soy chai latte for the sole purpose of obtaining change (yeah right).


After my getting-to-work adventure, I went to my office, started to work and eventually realized I was starving. Shocker. At this point it was basically lunch time, so I heated up leftover chickpea curry. It more or less tasted the same as it did yesterday which is good, but not great.


What you may or may not notice about my lunch is that my portion amount was way off. I loaded the curry and jasmine rice into my container in my mad rush out the door. The good news is a new skill of mine is eating reasonable amounts of food, not everything on my plate just because it's there. So my after looked like this:



Not too bad right?








Fast forward to later in the afternoon and my body told me it was time to eat something again. One thing that I got right this morning was packing watermelon for a snack. Yummy!!


One other thing I got right this morning was that I threw my gym clothes, shoes and boxing gloves into my bag and put them in the car this morning JUST IN CASE I decided to be brave and try to do a 30 minute hit circuit as well as my morning run. I mulled this over in my mind and envisioned how I would probably keel over and die in the middle of the floor after trying to do both in one day.Then I told myself to stop being a drama queen and to give it a try. So I did.

Today I met Lisa at Burnaby Hit. And it became obvious why she does the bootcamps there. The girl doesn't let up on you! Which is AWESOME!! Elbows higher! Kick harder! More power! Throw your hips into it! Somehow, I managed to make it through the circuit, despite thinking that I was probably going to die after each station. I think that part of me pushed even harder to do it, just because I thought I couldn't. Bob got the beating of his life after that workout. And I felt amazing!

Have I mentioned how much I love the trainers at Burnaby Hit? Every one of them is fantastic and let me tell you I never leave there feeling like I didn't give it my all or that I only got a half-assed work out in. Trust me. In fact today, I was so red and sweaty, that Lisa took a picture of me. Why the hell would anyone want a picture of me in that state you might ask? Or for that matter why the hell would I LET someone take a picture of me in that state? Well for the Sweaty Betty contest of course! Sounds gross hey? Well, the winner gets a trip for two to somewhere hot, so I'll tell you if the gross was worth it if I win it ;-)

Anyway, after the killer workout, I drove to my chicklet's summer camp to pick her up and we went home where I ate a protein bar.


And then, because rushing around is the story of my life, we drove to Richmond to pick up my husband from work. From there we went to the mall for what was supposed to be a quick stop, but wasn't. I really should have expected this. Have you ever shopped with a tween girl? I have, and it's never quick. By the time we were done, everyone was hungry and my husband and daughter got the great idea that a McDonald's stop along the way home would be the perfect option for dinner. Me not having to come up with dinner ideas was the convincing point for me, though I wasn't pleased that my family was eating garbage for dinner. I really need to work on their eating habits next! Anyway, they grabbed their meals and I got nothing. At this point my husband pointed out that he realizes I'm definitely committed to my fitness goals because normally, I would've said "screw it" and had McD's french fries for dinner. And of course he then asked me, "you just don't want to take and post a picture of them right?" Jerk. He was right though.

Of course I couldn't eat NOTHING for dinner, so I needed to come up with SOMETHING for myself. So I settled on a salad in a pita. When I have it for lunch, I usually just have half, but since it was dinner, I had a whole one.


And that was it for my eating today. I feel like I probably needed to eat more, but I don't feel like I'm starving as I write this, so probably my eating choices passed some bare minimum requirement.  But the GOOD news is I drank tons of water today and the GREAT news is I got TWO workouts in!! What this boils down to is that I took last night's challenge to myself  seriously and decided to "wake up and be awesome"! I'm going to be even more awesome tomorrow and challenge myself to focus on my eating choices. Stay tuned to see how it goes!

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