When Do You Work Out?

by Emily

I liked yesterday’s early workout so much that I had Adam drop me off at the gym again this morning.

I did a treadmill workout – warm up + 1 mile run (9:17) + incline walking – 2.25miles and 30minutes, followed by a quick stretch and some abs moves.

I haven’t 100% come to a decision yet, but I think I’m going to move towards morning workouts from now on (vs. going at the end of the day after classes) –

cons of morning workouts

it adds a 3rd walking trip to my day (Adam drops me at the gym, I walk home to shower, I walk back for class, I walk home again)
I won’t have time to eat breakfast before my workout
it’s hard for me to wake up before 8

pros of morning workouts

my workout is out of the way for the day
not having to work out after class makes me much more likely to study before dinner
I can wear one thing from class through the end of the evening; I hate feeling like I “wasted” a cute outfit because I have to change into gym clothes at the end of class
I won’t have to stuff the aforementioned change of outfit into my purse to get it home from the gym

After a quick shower, I made myself a nice little breakfast.

A mug of cocoa,

half a Sandwich Thin with chunky peanut butter and honey,

and a juicy clementine.

The mix of flavors here was so satisfying. I am super psyched that clementines are back in season, we’ve got a crate in our fridge!

I have one class on Fridays (biochem) and then my plan is to hole up in a coffee shop somewhere and power through some homework.

When do you prefer to work out?

27Jan2011

Gourmet for a Thursday

by Emily

Dinner tonight was pretty gourmet for a Thursday. Actually, it was pretty darn gourmet in general!

We started with a salad course.

I had a romaine base with chopped pear, soy nuts, and low-fat poppy-seed dressing.

Super yummy. This has been my favorite salad dressing for years, but I think this is the first time I’ve bought it since we moved from Miami in 2003.

For the main course I made Cheesy Meat Loaf Minis from Cooking Light.

Actually, I put all the ingredients in a bowl; Adam technically made it since he’s the one who had his hands all up in the raw meat.

We thought the recipe was pretty good (7/10), here are the changes we made –

98% lean turkey subbed for sirloin, with an extra 1/4 pound of meat
no onions and no oregano (just because we were out, they would have improved the dish)
panko bread crumbs
an extra ounce of white cheddar subbed for parmesan
and horseradish mustard subbed in for horseradish and dijon

On the side we made a batch of Waffle Fries from Alexia.

I got this product for free using a coupon from the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have bought this with my own money, but I’m so glad I got the change to try it because I would totally spring for it again! The fries were perfectly crispy and seasoned but not soggy at all.

All in all it was a very satisfying dinner.

We’ve been watching The X-Files (via Netflix instant watch) and I can’t get over how cheesy the first season was! Did you watch the X-Files?

27Jan2011

I Got Curried Away

by Emily

My friends over at Tandoor Chef asked me to let you guys know about their Get Curried Away with Tandoor Chef campaign. Their products are all ridiculous good, so why wouldn’t I? All you have to do is enter the contest before January 31st and you can be entered to win a years worth of products! I entered, and so should you.

Even if I don’t win, I should be thanking them, because the contest title inspired this tasty lunch.

Actually first it inspired a Marco Polo-esque trek for the necessary provisions,

then came lunch.

Curried tuna salad!

I mixed up half a can of tuna, some Miracle Whip, 3 Tbsp of raisins, and a healthy shake of sweet curry powder.

With half a Sandwich Thin (toasted with Smart Balance Light),

and carrots roasted with honey and balsamic vinegar.

For dessert I ate this candy bar I picked up along the spice route.

Mr. Big was actually deceptively not that big (it wasn’t small, but it wasn’t as large as it look is my point), it was filled with this great airy wafer candy.

I’ve got a class at 4 and then the only plan for the evening is dinner. See ya!

27Jan2011

Late Morning Wake-Up Call

by Emily

Labs don’t start until next week, which means that my morning class was canceled today, yippee! I took advantage of the found time and tried to make up a little sleep so I wouldn’t repeat yesterday’s walking zombie theme.

Once I got up, I took further advantage of the free morning and had the husband drop me off at the gym on his way out. My extra long classes are really tiring, so I’m thinking I might need to move my gym time to morning time.

Today I did 30minutes on the elliptical, level 6. Guys, I’m not gonna lie, this was hard! Like legs burning, oh my god make it end hard. Apparently no matter how much you run on vacation, you can’t take a month off of exercise without losing fitness. Good to know. Also good to know while I still have time to get back into shape before my March venture.

Even though I walked home through the snow, I couldn’t get my head around a hot breakfast this morning. Instead I had the last of the tropical fruit mix, topped with pulverized coconut,

and a big bowl of Special K Red Berries with skim milk.

Do you tend towards hot breakfasts in the cold months, or solider on with cereal and smoothies?

26Jan2011

My First Long Day

by Emily

So Wednesdays are a bit insane; I get to campus at 11am and I don’t finish classes until 8:40pm! By the time my final class was done I was feeling very, very tired. Sidenote – that tiredness was not helped by the fact that our music teacher does not allow food or drinks in the classroom…..in a 3hour long class……at dinner time. [end rant]

This morning I made sure to eat an extra filling breakfast to make up for yesterday’s missing dinner.

That’s a serving of plain Siggi’s topped with 2 tsp maple jam, 3 Tbsp chunky peanut butter, and a serving of Special K Red Berries.

Delicious, and the (tons of) peanut butter packed a protein punch that kept me full all morning.

Lunch was less exciting. I packed a minneloa from home,

and bought a southwest chicken flat bread from the book store cafe.

My sandwich was tasty, but my teeth have started hurting and I could only eat half of it. Boo!

I have lots of break time on Wednesdays – 1 hour + 45 minutes + 2 hours – but unfortunately I didn’t make good use of it at all today. I’ll have to chalk up the wasted time to first long day tiredness. Probably from now on I’ll go to the gym in my 2 hour break, but I didn’t want to go all sweaty to my first class session.

When I got home at 9 tonight I was beat. All I could manage for dinner was a hot chocolate and a frozen meal.

Caramel Praline Hot Cocoa,

and a Pumpkin Squash Ravioli Healthy Choice.

P.S. This is disgusting. I ate it because I was exhausted and starving, but they were steamed apples in with the squash chunks and the ravioli were sweet and disgusting.

I’m finishing an episode of The X-Files with Adam, and then bedtime can’t come quickly enough!

When was the latest class you took in college?

25Jan2011

Chew On This

by Emily

So this is going to be my smile for approximately the next year –

That’s actually more of a grimace, but you get the point.

If you are thinking “this is a food blog, I don’t care about your embarrassing mouthware!” then chew on this ~~fun~~ fact- most of the nutritional problems in the elderly are directly related to issues with their teeth. Dietetics definitely recognizes the link between the health of your teeth and your overall health; we had several lectures last semester devoted to dental carries alone. As much as I wish they wouldn’t, my trips to the orthodontist are definitely going to have an impact on the way I eat in the coming months.

I can take the retainers out to eat and brush my teeth, but ideally they need to be in my mouth as many hours a day as possible. This has a couple of scary effects on my diet –

I can no longer be a grazer. In order to maximize my retainers-in-mouth time I need to generally stick to three meals and day and they need to be as short as is realistically possible.
I cannot really eat during my classes. I suppose I technically could, but I don’t plan on taking out my retainers in the middle of a lesson. I’m not really sure how this is going to work, especially with my 6-8:40pm class.

After I was done reliving my teens I spent the morning running random errands. We’ve got quarters for laundry, a new stock of stamps, and my mouth looks like it belongs on someone who gets felt up in the hallway; done and done.

My mouth doesn’t really hurt yet (it will), but the crunchy salad I had planned for lunch was not happening. I ended up walking down the street for a slice of buffalo chicken pizza.

Followed by some nice cold ice-cream.

And I’m glad that lunch was calorically heavy because it ended up also being dinner. I’m not sure whether it’s the after-effects of yesterday’s migraine, all the extra spit I have going, or a combination of both, but the thought of eating dinner was just sickening. I’ll have an extra big breakfast tomorrow!

Suggestions needed! What the heck should I do about eating on campus?

25Jan2011

Two by Two, Hands of Blue

by Emily

If you can tell me what tv show my title quote comes from you will earn my love and respect forever!

On a less nerdy note, this morning my breakfast was served two by two, in bowls of blue.

~~Bowl~~ cup numero uno was a serving of (canned) tropical fruit salad.

Dos was some plain 0% Oikos with maple jam stirred in.

My mother put this maple jam in my stocking for Christmas because she’s a genius.

It’s Greek yogurt’s soul mate. Instead of flavoring the yogurt but thinning it out, this gives you fully creamy yogurt with heavenly pockets of maple.

I had to get up for an earlyish breakfast this morning because I’ve got a orthodontist appointment at 8:45. Oh yes, you read that right! I’ll tell my braces story at a later date (remind me if it’s not up by next week), but for now suffice to say that this is not my first go-round with orthodontia. I’m not getting actual braces, but the next time you see me I’ll be in retainers!

24Jan2011

Minimums and Maximums

by Emily

Minus the fact that I lengthened it by forgetting my lunch until I was a block away, my walk to school actually wasn’t so bad! I was cold, but not oh-my-gosh-I-think-I’d-rather-just-curl-up-in-the-snow-and-die-cold.

My first day of classes went well (this semester is going to be hard!) and p.s. my packed lunch ended up being delicious and satisfying. To top off my good day, I even headed to the gym after class.

1mile in 9minutes 10seconds, followed by a quick .25mile walk cool down.

(This next bit is mostly on here for my records, feel free to skip ahead.) I’m excited to get back to the gym, and I’m even more excited about a fun fitness thing that might be happening the second week of March. I want to make sure that I am (1) ready, as in, in shape and (2) ready, as in, not injured so I made a loose workout plan for the next month. In addition to strength training, the following are my minimum and maximum workout goals for each week.

1/24 – 1/30: run 1 mile; x-train 20-30minutes
1/31 -2/6: run 1.5 miles; x-train 25-35minutes
2/7 – 2/13: run 1.5 miles; x-train 30-40minutes
2/14 – 2/20: run 2 miles; x-train 30-45minutes
2/21 – 2/27: run 2 miles; x-train 30-50minutes
2/28 -3/6: run 2-3 miles; x-train 30-60minutes

With between 4-6 cardio sessions each week, all done on the treadmill and elliptical. Basically I want to get back into shape, but to force myself to move slowly so I don’t mess up my legs again. I can walk as much as I want, but I want to stick to the maximum miles running on any given day.

Anyways. When I got home this evening I was treated to a killer migraine, but I managed to push through and ended up with a banging dinner.