What a Great Day Looks Like

Last week, while feeling particularly gross during a certain time of the month, I broke out my clean eating book.  If you don't know who Tosca Reno is, I highly suggest you check out this book on Amazon:

The truth is, I know without a shadow of a doubt that when I eat clean, I feel amazing!  What gets in my way sometimes is my own laziness.  To be successful, you really do have to be on top of planning and prepping, and honestly?  Sometimes I just feel like being lazy.  This past weekend, however, I decided to plan out a clean eating week for Monday-Friday.  I will give myself some wiggle room on the weekends, but there is no reason why I can't eat clean while at home.  I work from home, so I rarely go out for lunch or breakfast, so that part is easy.  My husband will eat pretty much whatever is in front of him, so that's not a problem either.  

Here's a look at what today looked like:

Breakfast
7 AM
Biggest Loser Oatmeal Protein Pancakes (2)
No sugar applesauce, 1/2 C.
Brummel and Brown Yogurt Butter (1 tbsp)
Coffee with Skim Milk
3 slices turkey bacon
*Note: I put a smear of the butter on each pancake and then I dip it in the applesauce, then eat what's left of the applesauce with a spoon the normal way.

Snack
10 AM
Fuji apple
Smuckers natural chunky peanut butter (2 tbsp)
Water

 Lunch
1 PM
Tuna avocado salad on whole wheat wrap, with spinach and tomato
Tangerine
Water
Note:  Just mash up an avocado and then mix in a can of tuna.  Season to taste.  I just used ground black pepper and a small squeeze of wasabi sauce.  I think I might skip the wasabi sauce and add just a pinch of salt tomorrow.

Snack
3:30 PM
Chocolate brownie Quest bar
Coffee with skim milk

Dinner
8 PM
Stir fry:
Sesame oil
Trader Joe's Seafood Blend (shrimp, scallops, calamari)
Broccoli slaw (just the veggies, no other ingredients)
Mushrooms
Onion
Brown basmati rice

Snack
10 PM
Plain Greek yogurt
Raw organic honey (1 tbsp)
Nature's Path organic ancient grains granola with almonds (1/4 C)

This is more food than I EVER eat when I'm not eating clean, and the calorie count is not bad at all.  This ended up being 1845 calories according to My Fitness Pal.  My goal is 1400 per day with more whenever I exercise.

Speaking of exercise- I had an incredible day at the gym today.  I'm having to take some PTO before the end of the year, so I've been leaving every day at 3.  It's awesome.  I spend a little time straightening the house and then I do whatever I want until my husband gets home.  I knew I was going to go to kickboxing at 6:30 tonight, but I figured I'd go get in some extra weights and whatever else I could squeeze in before the class.  I ended up with 30 minutes of weights, 15 minutes of the elliptical on level 15 to really burn out my legs, an hour kickboxing class, and then met up with my husband on the treadmills and did a 15 minute interval session of 1 minute run/1 minute walk. Talk about tired legs!  Now realistically, I can't spend 2+ hours in the gym every single day, but it was nice to choose this today over sitting at home on the couch for three hours being unproductive.

I hope I can keep up the good work with the clean eating this week to break me out of my upswing in pounds that happened around my birthday weekend, which was almost a month ago, so I have to get a move on.  I was down a smidge this past Saturday, but I had my period, and I still need about 4.8 pounds to get back to where I was, and then obviously I'd really like to keep moving down.  I start Galloway training for the half marathon in a few short weeks.  If I could lose 5-10 pounds before then, it would really help.  The lighter I am when I run, the less it hurts, obviously!

Why Birthday Month Sucks

I love October, I really do.  The skies are bright blue, the weather is mild, and that month contains a lot of important dates.  My birthday, my husband's birthday, and our wedding anniversary, all within six days of each other.  Whew!  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you gain five pounds in two weeks.  Crap.

It all started out well enough.  I was exercising, I was eating well, although not really doing my best a tracking, I was just kind of enjoying the ride.  My birthday arrived and I was really great during the day because I had requested Cheesecake Factory for dinner.  We had company coming in that night as a surprise for my husband's birthday, so I knew the huge menu would please everyone.  Plus, who am I kidding?  I wanted cheesecake for my birthday.  I splurged on dinner, having the Bang-Bang Chicken and Shrimp, but I chose brown rice.  I chose the Skinny Mojito, but I had two.  I chose pumpkin cheesecake instead of snickers or s'mores, like my husband and his friend did. See, I tried!  Ugh....

It all just kind of spiraled out of control after that night.  There was spinach dip.  There was cheese.  There was loads more alcohol than I normally drink.  There was a brewery tour with bar food, paired with bowling alley food.  There was hangover food consumed the next day.  And more bar food during football game watching. Then Italian splurge for our anniversary, paired with LOADS upon loads of Halloween candy.  To the point of feeling sick. I do not like waking up and feeling disgusted with myself for days on end.  I have never craved vegetables more in my life.

So am I shocked that the scale was up a whopping FIVE pounds today?  No.  Not at all.  Am I pissed?  Sure, but I can't take it back.  All I can do is make a plan of action.  Triathlon season is over, so I don't have those built-in workouts to rely upon anymore.  I had to develop a plan to conquer the damage I did these last couple weeks.  I need it to kind of roll into the holidays so that I don't keep spiraling.  I needed a reward system too- something to work for.

NOVEMBER FITNESS CHALLENGE

• Complete 25 days of working out within the month of November.  This is a BIG goal.  It basically only gives me one day off per week, when I've been more used to three days off per week.  I know I need to step up my game, so this is how I'm going to get through November without continuing to pack on pounds throughout the holiday season.
• Complete the November Abs and Thighs Challenge from well-girl.com.  These are simple exercises (like 2 a day) that target thighs and abs.  I always look at these challenge thingies I see online and want to do them and then immediately suck at them.  I'm tired of sucking.
• Reward:  A "fancy" new workout outfit.  Here's the thing about me.  My workout clothes are ALL bargain bin items.  They have pretty much all been purchased at TJ Maxx, Marshall's or Old Navy.  I often long for the cute outfits I see in places like the Nike Store, or Dick's Sporting Goods, but hold back because of the price.  Also, a little part of me feels like I don't deserve nice workout clothes until I hit my goal weight.  That's stupid thinking.  I deserve nice things no matter what I weigh.  But I want to feel as if I have earned it.

Another reason I want go get so heavily back in the groove of working out is that starting December 7th, I am going to start training for the Rock-N-Roll Raleigh Half Marathon!

I am training with the Galloway program, where if you are a certain pace (read: slow, like me), you train by doing intervals.  I will be most likely doing a 2 minute run/1 minute walk at about 12 minutes/mile.  Maybe I will get into the 11 minute/mile zone by the end of it, but I don't really care.  I picked Raleigh for my first half marathon because that is where I went to college.  Off an on, I lived there a total of about 10 years, and I have a lot of great memories there.  The route goes through downtown, the back side of the NC State University campus, and back through a neighborhood that I used to live in.  A hilly neighborhood, but a beautiful one, with lots of old houses.  I know it will be a HUGE trip down memory lane, and that will make it special, and probably a little emotional.  I will probably cry- so maybe I need to buy some fancy new sunglasses to cover that up.  I'm not sweating the fact that Raleigh is pretty hilly, because so is Charlotte, and that is where I'll be doing my training.  Many of my former triathlon training buddies will be joining me in half marathon training.  I am looking forward to solely focusing on training for just ONE sport instead of three.  I also want to add weight training into the mix on my off days from running.  I AM SO EXCITED!