Saturday, January 31, 2009

I Kick Ass

Just finished my "cardio" KB workout for this week and I pushed really hard and feel like puking. Who knew nausea was so exhilirating? Most of the time my mind is the only thing that holds me back. Not anymore. I am doing this. I've said that many times, perhaps I've gone at things with the wrong mindset. Reading some blogs I'm new to has really inspired and pushed me to quit being such a pansy. I'll highlight them later, they deserve attention, heck any blog I follow I think is great but a shout out never hurt anyone.
So I did 2 circuits of the workout followed by the max reps on all the core exercises. Examples of what I did today are:
front squat, 1KB 1 arm press on the swiss ball, 2 KB deadlifts, 1 arm rows, alternating leg lunges, triceps standing press, side lunges and 1 arm 1 KB military presses with sets of 25 two arm swings in between each superset and then windmills, opposite elbow-knee touches, KB russian twist, KB V sits, and then swiss ball plank. I am now drinking chocolate flavored Muscle Milk which I should have waited on-in case anyone cares, I'm having one scoop mixed with water.
I have to get in the shower even though my arms probably are too noodley to wash my hair so we can make a 4 yr old's birthday party. I will be eating something good for me that I like before we leave to avoid the subpar offerings. Should have waited on the protein drink as I am now experiencing a slight dumping syndrome feeling, it will pass. Lesson learned.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Winding Down for the Evening

I'm about to call it a night but wanted to update before I did. I did the first workout of the second week (6 week program) at 9 and got done about 10:30 with the cooldown. Night workouts are a rarity for me because I usually bail if it gets too late and I'm tired and make excuses. We had a "snow day" today and my son was home which makes working out hard plus I took a nap when he did because of feeling crummy. My point that is sort of getting lost in the minutia is I WORKED OUT and I am proud of myself. It has not been easy since school started and especially now that I have started my first clinical rotation of the semester, doing pediatric nutrition at the local children's hospital. I've only done one day but so far so good and I am looking forward to tomorrow.
We have eaten the turkey meatballs marsala and the bbq chicken hash dinners so far. The turkey meatball marsala dish came out tasty but I screwed up the directions practically the whole way through and the sauce was not plentiful enough to cover the noodles, ah well it was delicious. The chicken hash was a time intensive disaster tonight because I didn't read that the chicken needed to be roasted ahead of time so we had to do that and then put everything together and then cook that. If I had the chicken done it would have taken about twenty minutes tops. It was good but not stellar, I give it a B+.
I gotta get my face washed and hit the sack, tomorrow is a new day and a long one.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Bleary and Early Share Many Letters

Wow am I super tired today, hopefully this will pass once I get moving a bit more but right now I am regretting the caffeinated beverage I had late afternoon yesterday. I didn't drop off to sleep until after midnight and with getting up at 5:30, that is just not much sleep. I have a long day of lectures ahead of me, 8:30-4:45 to be exact and when you are sitting and listening all day it really wears you out oddly enough. Add in traffic time and that puts me at 7:15-6ish for the day, ack!
Hmm I'm actually feeling ok now that the fog is lifting off my brain. Feeling the soreness this morning from yesterdays workout, so far mainly lats, triceps and quads have spoken up. I got my menu made up for the week, from what I can remember it includes BBQ chicken hash, curried venison steak, turkey meatballs marsala, and chicken scallopini. We ended up with more leftovers than anticipated this past week so that should cover us until Saturday at least.
We are finally getting our bedroom redecorated and it is looking awesome, when I came to bed last night I kept peeking and smiling once my eyes were adjusted to the dark. I'll take pictures soon. Only thing really missing is painting and finding the right tables for one side of the bed and by the armchair.
Ok now that I've bored the world with talking about my furniture needs, I better get cracking on readying myself for the day.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Week 1 KB Body completed!

So I did the third workout today despite not really having the get up and go. My left buttal region (to borrown a Marn phrase) started hurting almost immediately so that sort of put a dampner on it but I did it anyway. This workout was cardio focused so it was made up of supersets with two armed swings in between each superset, followed by some core exercises (I also did the cool down of course). I only did two circuits because of the buttal injury but I think I could have done 3, so that is already improvement. I found a website with some funky swim caps so I think I'll be trying to add swimming in on my off KB days perhaps, get some use out of the gym membership I signed up for (3 yr contract) and have not been using because they don't have kettlebells, bah.
Cooked pizza from scratch last night and I was so proud of myself I could not stop saying, "I am so proud of myself!" haha. The whole wheat crust was from Cooking Light and it was sort of a disaster but it turned out tasty despite the issues that came up. The dough kept clinging to my hands despite adding a lot more flour to it than the recipe even said and it was really pissing me off. I know if your hands are warm that can be a problem, I kept running them under cold water. I finally got it in a bowl but might not have kneaded it enough since it was making me mad, and it did rise and I punched it back down. It was still really sticky though and trying to roll it out made me scream. The recipe was supposed to make two twelve inch pies but I made one big misshapen one. I topped it with sauce I made of tomatoes, garlic, basil and parsley, and shallots cooked down, a four cheese 2% fat Italian mix and sweet Italian turkey sausage, maybe 1 and a half links total. It turned out delicious but the crust of course grew really big and crazy and I had a hard time cooking it through without burning the top. All in all it was very, very tasty and I added a big romaine/tomato salad to mine and our son's plates.
I just contacted a CSA here and am hoping to get a membership and get really creative with vegetables, locally grown, organic vegetables. Awesome.
My muscles hurt.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Hallooooo!

I'm around but am trying to cut down the amount of time my kiddo spends while I sit on this contraption reading/writing/surfing on a daily basis. Today I'm relaxing that a bit and letting him eat his breakfast on the couch watching Mickey Mouse. These are not daily activities but let's celebrate Saturday, yes?
Planning my meals out for the week worked splendidly as I am sure you could have guessed before I even did it. However, it worked so nicely I am committed to doing it again from here on out. I will plan my menu and snacks, arrange the shopping list by section of the store and then proceed to be pleased as punch. Check and check.
The next meal I made after I last updated was barley with chickpeas and pesto topped with sauteed artichoke hearts in garlic and a sprinkle of shaved parmesan cheese. Lovely, meatless and my guys both liked it quite a bit. It was also very easy which does not hurt.
Workouts? Done two of the scheduled three for the week and will do the third today, I promise. The third one is an all body workout but focused towards cardio so I look forward to it the least but will not skip. I see a lot of two arm swings on the agenda, my palms are already crying-at least I get some cool callouses out of it. I am weird like that. I have to say, I really am loving the workout program and very excited about what I know will happen to my fitness level and physique-it is already happening after one week. Oh! I think I finally have the hang of Turkish get-ups after practicing with no weight added this week-I will attempt to add the ten lb KB next time, I have a serious learning/ability deficit on this one or any other lunge maneuver for that fact. I know what I need to do to make it easy on my knees and effective and I pay close attention to that but sometimes I just get all flustered and disconnected from where exactly my various body parts are supposed to be at what time. No matter, I am getting it, yay!

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Early Bird

I'm still here!
School started in case you couldn't tell and though I've still been getting on this machine to read things, actually producing words of my own has definitely fallen by the wayside. In fact I can't stay long today either, I want to get my workout in before I head off to class. So in bullet points:
  • I did my first workout with the KB program Husband bought for me for Christmas, and I loved it! At first the system looked too complicated to me but it isn't at all now that I got off my duff and sorted it out. Monday was a strength focused workout, today will be cardio I think (maybe core? have to check) and then Friday will be whichever today isn't. (if that made any sense.)
  • I am successfully getting up at 5:30am now though I faltered over the weekend. I want to do it everyday so that I naturally adjust to the pattern, so far so good. My master plan is to get used to it and then be able to workout every single day, but as for now I'm just letting my body take in the fact that yes, I really am getting up that early now. In the past I've jumped into everything at once and did not sustain it.
  • I've been cooking again. Not that I stopped preparing food for awhile but I would say I was assembling more than cooking. I've made roasted red pepper couscous with balsalmic glazed porkchops, sweet and spicy turnips, fettucine with chicken, sun dried tomatoes, fresh basil, and a white wine cream sauce (with parmesan), and tonight I will make a barley, chickpea salad with artichoke hearts, garlic and pesto. All recipes from a Cooking Light book I've had for ages and barely used. If I get time I'll talk about each.
  • I planned the week's menu including dinner, lunches and snacks and despite thinking it would be a huge pain in the ass, it was not so bad. I AM trained to do this after all, but even with training it's not been my favorite thing in the world. I will just develop the skill some more.

Enough yapping, I better get moving if I want to workout, get ready for school and not be stressed out getting there like I was yesterday.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Okay I give in

If you would like to see the Tucson pictures, go here. The best ones that I really wanted to share are on here, I think I labeled them all with canyon-anyway sorry to poop out but I kinda wanted my blog back, heh.

Continuation-I Will Get This Done

I meant to finish talking about that first day last time and sort of petered out-got to get this done so I can move on mentally and write about other things, I just don't want to skip past our trip-it was too great. Okay so after the waterfall we walked up to another lookout point:









Those pictures were taken to make a panoramic sequence all together but I'm not clever enough with software yet to piece that together so you get it in pieces. Pictures don't really do it justice, it was breath taking. I think I'll end this and do a separate post for the next parts. Almost through, hold tight!

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Walk About, Yoga, and Dinner

So, where was I? Yes, post massage and swim we went for a walk on property, here are some photos of cacti. Please enjoy.




And then we made it up to the waterfall which flowed decently now but supposedly shoots water out forty feet or so during monsoon season.





There's more but I am exhausted, yikes! Slept in until 11:30 today, wearing this Bodybugg doodad has me obsessed with being more active and I am wearing myself out. That's a good thing but I guess is shocking to my system. I'd gotten so into the habit of just doing my workout for the day and then being mainly sedentary the rest of the time unless wrangling the child (lovely that he is), so I'll cut this short.
Goodnight.

Monday, January 05, 2009

Last Monday for the Win

Monday morning we finally got up and hit the Cascade Cafe for brunch. I had blue corn chowder that was delicious, but I can't recall what Jason had...he had a conference call he had to be part of so he disappeared to do that and I headed back to the room to take a shower. We then headed to the spa onsite to get hot stone massages, it was awesome! I had heard that it was ok but not worth it and I have to disagree, Jason thought the same thing, we would both definitely do that again.I took one picture of the spa locker room (no one else was in there for a sec) and then a few outside by the pool (it was heated so we went for a swim afterwards.)PS click to enlarge and see the mountains in the background.









We then changed clothes, thinking there was some hiking on property and there was, sortof...it turned out to be a nicely paved trail that went up to the waterfall they sort of built the place around (didn't want to disturb it or the 300 yr old Saguaro out front) and then wound over to sort of a look out perch that had one of the most incredible views. I spent a great deal of time just exclaiming over views, it was a theme. I'll talk about that and post pictures next time.

Sunday, January 04, 2009

Groovy

Things are going well over here in the new year. I'm using the Bodybugg as intended and tracking my food on their software to compare with calories burned for the day. Yesterday was my first full day with food tracking included so it's easy to say well done so far, ha!
I want to find some good hiking boots, not crazy expensive but something to keep my ankles from rolling, ideally would keep me warm in winter but not be sweltering the rest of the year but I know that seems impossible. We went on a two and a half hr hike on vacation (also swam and did a yoga class together) and I'll talk about that but will start out with the first few pics of the trip.
If I keep waiting to make the perfect post about our vacation it won't happen so here goes a little bit. I plan on trying to make a little book about it too though I wish I had more pictures. I thought I was taking a ton at the time but it turns out? Not so much.The first night there I was too tired and my back ached overwhelmingly, I ended up having to take a nap and then barey made it out for dinner. So the first half day there? Sort of wasted because of me but I really could not have avoided the nap and felt really bad. We went to El Charro for dinner at the original location downtown. They are supposedly the originator of the chimichanga and also the oldest continuously run by the same family mexican restaurant. Been open since 1922 and the place we went was the family's home at one time. Fantastic food, here's a picture of the chimichanga I ordered, it was easily over a foot long, geez!

Jason's dinner, which was this incredible steak that was sun dried and roasted that also filled my chimichanga:

And here's the two of us, tired but happy:

Friday, January 02, 2009

2009 Just Do It This Time

It's a new year, I'm still a bit fuzzy headed from the severe reaction I had to New Year's Eve festivities and so hence forth have not visited all of your lovely blogs yet. But I will, yes.
Where does 2009 find me? I've been feeling a bit lost and confused and mad and sad and down in the dumps alternating with a determined cheerful sort of grimness.

Two major things I am thinking for myself in this new year: Following the mantra"Just do it" and asking "Is it the best thing for me today?" with a thought towards self care and care of my family. So to put these into action: Old way of living I hate to say: "Wow, the house looks like crap and there is stuff everywhere to be put away but I am so tired and I'll do it later and I'll just sit here and wallow." New way: Hmm so I've been violently ill the last day and a half and rode home for 4 hrs today and I'm beyond tired, wish I had it in me to get this place in order. Well how 'bout I go shower and then at least put a load of clothes in the wash? Hm I can take out the trash from the bathrooms and the Little One's room, kitchen, etc. Hey I'm making progress just doing a few things! Doing some Wii fit games keeps popping in my mind, I'm just going to do it since I keep thinking about it." and then I did thirty minutes of Wii fit despite running into obstacles that could have put me off. The feet that allow you to use the balance board on carpet are missing (two of them) and the remotes are almost dead. The damn thing told me I hadn't been on it in fifty days and then sarcastically called me the wrong name like it didn't know me anymore. I've done other things Wii! Get off my back yo.
House is semi cleaned up and I did a small workout (about 200 calories for 30 minutes which is not stellar but a damned site more than you burn sitting on your bum I'd reckon).
I am done talking and ready to start doing and to quit whinging so much and to spend less time sitting around (mainly online, I don't really have a teevee problem) and so there you have it.
I'm not sure what direction I'm going to go, I may kick it old school and weigh in on Fridays and report it here etc. I've avoided accountability for ages and it makes me feel a little squirmy to admit to myself and to you that I am just not happy with my current state and way of doing things and that I'm going to really do something about it. If you don't tell anyone then no one knows when you fail.
And as for the self care portion, instead of blundering along harming myself and others I absolutely vow to stop, ask if what I am doing or contemplating doing is best for me or the person it affects and then proceeding likewise. That would have ruled out the extra long cheese coney, tots and rootbeer for lunch today for sure. I'll expand more but my miniscule attention span has already wandered.
Hope everyone is well or on their way to being so.