Bad Day

It was just one of those days.  I've had a lot on my mind lately and I am just easily distracted.  Getting work done efficiently is a chore, so the day just dragged on, making me tired.  Food-wise I did just fine, but due to my returning back pain, there was no exercise.  The pain isn't nagging, it is sharp when I move a certain way.  I will be taking it easy for a few days.  I am afraid I didn't listen to my own advice last week and do just that: take it easy.

Tonight, for the first time since I was perhaps seventeen, I ran out of gas.  Fortunately, I was following a friend somewhere and had a helping hand to easily fix the result of stupidity.  Tuesday morning I step on the scale for the first time in months.  Will tomorrow be any better?

Cya then,

M

What I ate today and how I exercised:

Breakfast ~ Egg White Delight McMuffin and coffee on the road.

Lunch ~ Protein Bistro Box and coffee

Dinner ~ Left over chili and minestrone

Exercise ~ none

2 Days Until Weigh-in

In case you didn't read the reboot post from about four weeks ago, I held off weighing myself until October 1st.  I know full well that I put on weight this summer. Probably a significant amount. Unfortunately, my personality is such that I can get easily discouraged and might pack it all in if faced with a setback. Knowing the score could trigger such event.  So I waited.

There are no, or shall I say few, rules with regard to this self-made program.  But one sure rule of thumb is this: Weight goes on far faster than it comes off.  I can only hope that this month of very hard work which I put into myself will undo whatever damage was done since June.  Either way, I can only move forward with positive action.  I cannot undo the past.

Today was a good day of hard work.  Two exercise sessions and healthy eating.  And so it will go, one day at a time, until I reach my goal. If that is by the previously ascribed deadline, great.  If not, the end goal is the same.  Health, happiness and educating others on well-being based on my experiences.  Thanks for coming along for the ride.

Cya Monday,
M

What I ate today and how I exercised:
Breakfast ~ One egg, one slice of toast and a dollop of pesto all mixed up in a bowl.  Yum.
Lunch ~ One bowl of chili and a bowl of minestrone
Snack ~ One banana
Dinner ~ Some rotisserrie chicken and more minestrone
Exercise ~ Three miles of walking in the morning and a half hour workout late in the day.

Saturday 09.28.13

Decent day today.  I got most of what I wanted to accomplish done, including cooking a big batch of my minestrone soup and some grocery shopping.  My exercise was fit in and it was a fairly uneventful Saturday.  My only regret was that lunch, while not calorically reprehensible, was basically crap.

I felt like my blood sugar was crashing while at the grocery store and opted to have my lunch right then and there, in the form of popcorn chicken.  A bad choice I know, but for 340 calories on the run, I righted my blood sugar.  It was just devoid of any nutritional value.  At least I made up for it with a gagillion servings of veg at dinner with a bowl and a half of minestrone.

Cya Sunday,
M

What I ate today and how I exercised:
Breakfast ~ Cereal w/banana and almond milk
Lunch ~ Popcorn chicken
Dinner ~ Minestrone Soup ala TDT195
Exercise ~ Power walk around the lake: 2.5 miles

Soup's On!

I'm not shy about my love for soup.  The Wife loves a good bowl as well.  The other day she said she had a desire for some broccoli soup. Always happy to oblige a request to feed someone, I happily volunteered.  I recall a while back seeing a Gordon Ramsay show where he made the simplest of broccoli soups and won a heads-up competition with it.  While this one is extremely similar, it has a couple little additions to suit our tastes.

This couldn't be easier.  It helps, however, to have a good size steamer and decent blender.  And, of course, the fresher the broccoli, the tastier the end product will be.  If you don't have a steamer, boiling the broccoli works as well.

Broccoli Soup

Ingredients
8 cups ~  broccoli florets and stems, cut to equal size, stems trimmed of tough exterior
6 cups ~ water
3 tsp ~ salt
1 tsp ~ fresh ground pepper
1.5 Tbsp ~ Olive Oil
2 Tbs ~ Dijon mustard
3 ~ roasted garlic cloves

Optional garnish ~ toasted pumpkin seeds, toasted pignoli, toasted walnuts or feta crumbles

Method

1. Steam the broccoli until tender.  Extract individual pieces once they easily pierce with a knife.  USE TONGS!  Steam is hot. Offload to your blender.  DO NOT DISCARD THE WATER!
2. Cover your broccoli filled blender half way with the steamer water.
3. Add the rest of ingredients and blend until smooth.  Add more water if necessary.  You may not require all of the water and you may need to blend in batches.  TIP: Remove the center cap of your blender lid and cover with a towel. Hot liquids expand in a blender and it can explode if you do not do this!
4. It's ready to serve! Garnish with your choice of accoutrements.

Cya tomorrow,

M

What I ate today and how I exercised:

Breakfast ~ Egg White Delight McMuffin and coffee.  I bought bagels for a customer and it took incredible control not to eat one slathered with cream cheese.

Lunch ~ A Protein Bistro Box and Decaf Skinny Caramel Macchiato

Dinner ~ Rotisserie chicken, brown rice and seaweed salad.

Exercise ~ My back felt much better, so I tempted fate and did a 30-minute workout at the gym.  I feel good! da da da da da da da... I knew that I would. da da da da da da da.

Back Again

I used to have a co-worker who'd joke "I had a weak back about a week back." Well ask me in about a week and I will tell you the same.  I felt a twinge yesterday morning when I awoke and thought it would iron itself out as I moved around throughout the day.  It gave me no trouble during my workout last night, yet this morning, it was more prominent.  

So today I went without exercise.  I will need to double up in the next few days, but I won't risk doing damage that will take me out even longer.  I've had spells in the past that laid me up for weeks.  Stay tuned...

Cya tomorrow,
M

What I ate today and how I exercised:
Breakfast ~ Cereal w/almond milk
Lunch ~ A seafood soup and 2 maki sushi rolls
Dinner ~ A salmon burger and roasted cauliflower
Exercise ~ none

Salad Days

salad days

pl.n.

A time of youth, innocence, and inexperience:

Ah, yes.  Those days when we were young and happily ignorant.  Was it just then or are most of us blissfully ignorant today?  Probably a little of both when it comes to the things we eat.  I am a firm believer that we ignore our gut instincts and throw things down our pie hole that we inherently know aren't good for us.  Enter Mr. Salad.

One of the things I like about Panera Bread is that they list the caloric content of each and every menu item right up on the menu board.  I spend less time there these days due to the overwhelming desire to eat everything in their bakery, but for lunch and some mobile office time, it's a good choice.  Today's choice for me was "You PICK 2" option, which included their low-fat chicken noodle soup and the new Roasted Turkey Wheatberry Salad (Wheatberries are delish!  Who knew?)  The YP2 offerings are roughly a 2/3 sized soup and a 1/2 sized salad or sandwich.  My salad, as listed on the board, was 230 calories. The soup only 80.  Add in an apple as a side and I'd be getting a very tasty and fairly nutritious lunch for around 390 calories and 16g of fat.

Now, my wife, being the nutritionally savvy person that she is, has always said that salads are traps.  What she is usually referring to are the calories and fat in salad dressing.  People think they are eating responsibly and all they are doing is making the healthy bits a delivery system for a ride to Cholesterolville.  This wasn't necessarily the case today, but the theory is the same.  I spotted the trap and defused it.

I received my lunch tray and what I saw was a gorgeous salad with copious amounts of bleu cheese covering the top.  The "Salad Artist" of the day painted my creation with a little too much bleu.  When I extracted the offending cheese-bombs, they amounted to about an extra two tablespoons of crumbles, which equals an additional 110 calories and 9g of fat.  That's a far cry from the posted menu board promise.

The lesson here is that you need to be your own defender of dietary intake.  It's great that mindful restaurants such as Panera are listing the caloric content of their menu items freely (except in NYC where it is law), but the $8.00 an hour food prep kid, isn't as concerned with staying within those guidelines.  Don't lie to yourself when you see the mountain of bleu cheesy goodness or a salad drenched in dressing and think, "Cool!  Who'd have known you can get all this for only 210 calories?!"  You can't and your bathroom scale will know, that's who.  110 extra calories is no big deal, but the habit it stems from means that 110 is multiplied many times over the course of a month, or even a week.

Cya tomorrow,

M

What I ate today and how I exercised:

Breakfast ~ Cereal w/almond milk

Lunch ~ My very tasty, yet dissected salad, soup and coffee

Dinner ~ Homemade broccoli soup and a grilled chicken breast

Exercise ~ A 30-minute PF Express workout 

Tuesday Recap: 09.24.13

Not much to report today.  It was a busy day at work and I came home to help a friend with some car issues.  The old me would have used this as an excuse to blow off exercise.  The new me drove to Modell's afterward and bought himself a headband to keep the sweat out of his headphones, so he could listen to his audio books and pod-casts as he exercises.  After my Modell's excursion to buy a snappy black Air Jordan terry headband, I walked the lake at a modest rate, ear sweat free.  It's the little things...

Cya Tomorrow,
M

What I ate today and how I exercised:
Breakfast ~ An egg, ham and pesto sandwich.
Lunch ~ A bowl of New England clam chowder and a chicken Caesar salad
Mid-afternoon ~ Starbucks Skinny Iced Decaf Caramel Macchiato
Dinner ~ Pressed for time, since I put exercise above cooking, I grabbed a Quick Chek Protein Pack, consisting of a hard boiled egg, some apple slices and an almond concoction that I think had carob chips mixed in.  That part wasn't best bites of the week.
Exercise ~ 2.5-mile, 45 minute lake walk