9:23

9 minutes and 23 seconds.

It was 9 minutes and 23 seconds of hell.

It was 9 minutes and 23 seconds of awesome!

Tonight was my CrossFit intro class….and I loved it!

After a quick chat with Michelle, my coach for the session, about what I would be doing tonight, and signing the waiver (letting them off the hook if I dropped dead during the workout!), it was into the “box” to get to it.

We started with a 500m row to get warmed up.  Then we went through each of the exercises we would be doing in the workout.  We did air squats, sit ups, push-ups, and pull-ups.  We did a few of each move to make sure I had correct form and make any adjustments needed to ensure I would be able to do the move without doing any damage to my old bones!

So, the workout that I was to be doing, for time, was:

• 500m row
• 40 air squats – squatting down so my butt just touched a medicine ball
• 30 sit-ups – with hands touching floor behind my head and then touching my toes
• 20 push-ups – boy style with a hand raise (touching my chest all the way down to the ground, lifting my hands briefly off the floor to give them a rest, then pushing back up off the ground)
• 10 pull-ups – I needed the assistance of a band to be able to do these

It was 3-2-1…GO!  The row was good, and I completed it in 2:19 – which was right where Michelle wanted me to be.  Steady, without over exerting myself, since there would be a lot of workout left. 

After the row it was right into squats.  I’ve been doing air squats in my Bob Harper workouts, but I’m pretty sure I don’t usually get down as low as I went tonight.  I learned that when I squat, my knees fall to the inside a bit, so Michelle had me think about trying to push the mat apart with my feet.  This made sure my knees couldn’t “cave” and actually made the squats a bit easier. 

Next came 30 sit-ups and I have to say I rocked them.  For me, this was definitely the easiest part of the workout.

The push-ups were a challenge since I can’t really do a push-up from my toes…well maybe 3 or 4.  So we modified these to the push-up with a hand raise. This gave my arms/shoulders a chance to rest during each push-up.  They were tough, but I made it through.

Last came the pull-ups.  This was the part I was most dreading since I can’t do a pull-up!  But, with the assistance of the band, I managed to squeak out 10.  The first 6 were okay, not easy, but okay.  The last 4 we planned to do 2 sets of 2…but I couldn’t put 2 of them together…so I did 4 sets of 1, with a short rest in between.  I did 2 other ones that didn’t count since I couldn’t get my chin over the bar .

In the end, it took 9 minutes and 23 seconds for me to complete the workout.  I’m pretty pleased with that time.  Before we started Michelle said my goal was to finish in under 10 minutes.  I did it…and I can’t wait to do it again!

I signed up for a 1 month membership, that allows me 3 visits a week, to see how it goes.  I will need to be organized and be sure I schedule my time well.  The way CrossFit works is you sign up in advance for the classes.  You can sign up for classes up to a week in advance.  This will be good for me and I will be able to build my meals around this new schedule.

Each day on the CrossFit Central Newmarket website they post the workout of the day – “WOD” – as well as what the WOD will be for the next day.  I have already signed up for Friday’s Fundamentals class at 5:30.  I will be checking the website tomorrow to see what my Friday workout will be!

I’m super pumped to go back on Friday and see how it goes.  If I can fit it in between hockey games, I’d like to go to Saturday’s 11:30 class as well. 

When I got home from CrossFit I ate dinner.  I didn’t want to eat before I went for my session – no sense puking on the first night!  So, I ate when I got home.  Hubs had made taco salad since the kids had been asking for it all week.  He put mine in the fridge for me and it was awesome! So tasty:

After getting the kids to bed, I started to write this post, and still wanted a little something to eat.  I remembered that I had found a recipe for some Dark Chocolate Chip & Walnut No-Bake Coconut Cookies.  I bought all the needed ingredients on the weekend and just needed the right time to make them….and this was the right time!  I followed the recipe, but added in a couple of handfuls of raw shelled pumpkin seeds just because I had some in the cupboard and my package of coconut wasn’t quite 2 cups, so the “dough” was a bit runny.  I put them into the freezer to set and then forgot about them….until hubs came home from his meeting and said he wanted a snack.  To the freezer I went….

They were awesome and hit the spot.  I had 1, hubs had 2, and I’ve got 22 other ones in the freezer for when the chocolate craving hits. 

How was your Wednesday?
Did you do anything that scared the crap out of you?
Did you love it as much as I did?

Tomorrow is a Big Day!

What’s the big deal about tomorrow?  I’m going for my CrossFit introductory session…and I’m terrified!

I’ve been watching CrossFit videos on YouTube and I’m inspired, in awe, and even more terrified. This is some insane stuff. I look at the women in the videos and I look at myself….and I don’t think two things can be any further apart!

Seriously….look at how fit these women are!

See why I’m scared…I can’t do any of that…just thinking about doing it makes every muscle in my body ache!

I’m sure I won’t be jumping into any of those things on the first day.  Thank God!  If I survive Day 1, and manage to go back for Day 2, there is some hope that one of these days, well off into the future, I will be able to do at least some of these amazing things.

The only way to find out is to try…and I’m doing that tomorrow.

I will let you know how it goes.

Monday…

Happy Monday, everyone!  After a rough start to my day, things turned out pretty well for a Monday.

The rough start was a 2 hour drive into the office.  It sucked!  There was a bit of snow and traffic just crawled.  It is so frustrating, but I’m learning to not stress about it.  I get to work when I get to work, and there isn’t much I can do about it.  Since I’ve accepted that, my road rage has gone down significantly!

Today was a good food day…until just now, but I will get to that.  Since I didn’t get to make my Sausage & Egg Muffins, I went with my go to breakfast of ham & cheese scrambled egg bake and my usual Tassimo Chai Latte (only 80 calories versus the 210 of the Starbucks version). 

Lunch was a trio of leftovers:  stuffed chicken, roasted cauliflower and broccoli, and some peas and corn.  A complete leftover meal from the special request my son had the other day.  It was not quite as good as the first time around, but it was still pretty good.

Dinner was the Lean Green Bean’s Cheesy Mexican Quinoa. I didn’t really realize this when I planned my menu for the day, but the dish was perfect for Meatless Monday!  I have made this dish once before and it was awesome – a little on the spicy side since I went a little overboard with the spices.  Today’s dish was much more tame, but still delicious!  
and there were 3 leftover meals….so I am a happy girl. 

While the dish was baking in the oven I had just enough time to get my workout in.  I had originally planned to do a Bob Harper circuit, but when it came time to actually workout, I was more in the mood for another kettlebell workout.  I choose this workout from the Women’s Health Magazine website:

I did the circuit twice and this is how it looked calorie wise:

It was a pretty good workout, not too hard or challenging, which is probably okay, since I’m starting to feel all those swings that I did yesterday.  I’m feeling it in my hamstrings, glutes, shoulders, upper back, lats (??)…just about everywhere…and I love it!  That’s how I know it’s working! 

You may remember that on Saturday I called CrossFit Newmarket Central to get some information.  Well, today Michelle – the club’s owner – gave me a call back.  I got a bit of info about pricing and where the gym is located and booked a trial visit for Wednesday.  I’m terrified!  I can’t believe I am doing this.  I can’t do a pull up.  I can only do about 3 “boy” pushups. I can’t hold a plank for a minute yet.  BUT…I want to do all of those things.  Maybe CrossFit is what I need to get me there.  I guess I will find out on Wednesday! 

These videos are so motivating!  “We’re the machines!”

Hope your Monday was a good one!

Are you a machine?

Plans for the Week Ahead

Today was a good day.  It started with another trip to the arena for my older son’s hockey game.  They lost, but we kind of expected to lose today – the team they played against has the best player in the league on it (who was actually on our team at the beginning of the season, but they pulled him off to give him to the team right below us in the standings.  Now they are in first and we are in last….yes, we are still a bit confused about why they did this, and a little bitter too!)  Anyways, the game was quite good and my son played well, so despite the loss, we consider the game a success.

After hockey I got to work on planning my week of food and workouts.  My week is going to look like this:

After I made my plan, I made my grocery list for all the supplies that I would need to the various meals, and hit the grocery store.  It was a successful trip, except for 4 items that I needed:  cilantro, zucchini, chorizo, and chicken sausage.  I will have to go back to the store when the recipes come up in the rotation and I need those ingredients. 

Tonight for dinner I did a Clean Eating repeat of Chicken and Goat Cheese Strudel.  (click here for the recipe)  We had all forgotten just how good this tastes.  The only bad part about it is there is just enough for dinner and no leftovers.  Next time I might actually make 2 strudels so there is some left for a few lunches – hubs would have had another piece if there had been any left.  To go along with the strudel, I sautéed up baby bok choy with some garlic and added some soy sauce and tangy Thai sauce to give the bok choy just a bit of flavour.  All in all, a very good meal!  This isn’t the best picture, but here’s how it looked. 

After dinner, I was hoping to make my the hash brown, sausage & egg muffins that I’ve planned for breakfasts for the week.  Unfortunately one of the ingredients I needed – chicken sausage – was one of the items that I wasn’t able to get at the grocery store today.  I guess I will just have another ham & cheese scrambled egg bake tomorrow.  Hopefully after work tomorrow I can run into the grocery store and pick up those missing items so I can make the egg muffins tomorrow night and have them for breakfasts for the rest of the week.  

I managed to get a workout in today.  After groceries I did a 25 minute kettlebell workout.  This one I modified from a workout I saw on CultFit.  The original workout was a swing workout that was 5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-14-13-12-11-10-9-8-7-6-5.  It didn’t say, but I think this was how many swings you were supposed to do in a minute…at least that’s what I did.  I ended up doing it a little differently to get in a few more swings.  I modified to 5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19-20-19-18-17-16-15-14-13-12-11-10. At first I was wondering if maybe this was not how it was supposed to be done since 5 swings in a minute isn’t that many and there was a lot of time standing around waiting for the next minute to start…so for the first few swing sets, I did that many in 30 seconds instead of the full minute.  By the time the number of swings started getting up there, the minute was the perfect amount of time.  I was able to get all the swings in with enough time left to get my breath back and be ready to swing again.  In total I did 345 swings and was dripping.  I love kettlebells!

Now the weekend is just about over and I’m already looking forward to the next one. Only 5 days of work to get through!

How was your weekend? 
Are your meals and workouts planned out  for the week?

Saturday Hockey, Scraps and Food

Today started with a bit of a sleep in – YAY! Our first hockey game of the day was wasn’t until 9am, which meant we didn’t have to get up until shortly before 8. That was a great! During the week things start hopping around here shortly after 6:30 and that is so early- so 8am seems like a real treat. Tomorrow will be even better since hockey isn’t until 10am!

This morning’s hockey game was a great one. It was close, with both teams playing so well.  Both goalies were amazing, and in the end, our guys won 2-1. It was a very fun game to watch and the kids all had fun on the ice – which is what it’s all about!

I probably should have come home from the game and got my workout out of the way, but instead I headed up to my scrap room and spent a good chunk of my day finishing up titles and journaling what was needed in three different scrapbooks that I had been avoiding for about a year! I had quite a successful afternoon, finishing all of the odds and ends and finally putting the page protectors on all three albums. I had quite a sense of accomplishment when I finished up.

I probably should have got my workout in when I finished with my scrapbooking, but that didn’t happen. You will see that is a bit of a theme today 😦 Instead, I sat on the couch, chatted with hubs, and read blogs and twitter.

We ended up going out for dinner to a sports bar and watching the Leafs play while we ate. I enjoyed a couple of Coronas and our meals were very good. Hubs and I split the specials of the day – I ordered the Thai Shrimp Stir-fry on Basmati Rice and he ordered the Chicken Enchilada with Taco Salad.  The Taco Salad may have been the best taco salad I have ever had. Both meals were very good. The stir-fry was probably healthier, but the Taco Salad that came with the enchilada was amazing! It had lots of zing and the jalapeños were some of the hottest I’ve ever eaten.

After dinner I hit the couch to watch the last period of the Leafs game and got started on this post. The Leafs lost and I’m still working on my post. All this means that I didn’t get my workout in today
😦 Tomorrow I will have to do a better job and make up for missing today’s workout. I was planning on doing some kettlebell swings today, so will have to do them tomorrow now. Hopefully I will also get out for a walk around the hood, or maybe even a run.

One thing I did do today, that is somewhat workout related, is make a call to the CrossFit "box" in my town. No one answered, so I had to leave a message…hopefully someone will call me back and I can go over and take a look at the facilities, get some info on the fees, and set up a trial class/workout. I’m still not convinced I’m CrossFit material, but when you watch the CrossFit videos you can’t help but get motivated and want to be a part of it. I will let you know how it goes. Check out this video to see what I mean.

(Hopefully that worked!)
Doesn’t that just make you want to do a WOD?

How was your Saturday?
Did you get your workout in?
Did you eat anything especially tasty?

The Friday Five

Is it Friday already? This week seriously just flew by! Love it when that happens! Here is this week’s Friday Five.

1. Last night for dinner I created my first Clean Eating meal from scratch without a recipe! My son had made a request earlier in the week for chicken, broccoli, and corn & peas. I guess all of my Clean Eating magazine recipes were just a little too creative for him (although he loved and ate them all) and he was craving some basic, comfort food. I didn’t want to just bake a plain old chicken breast, so I took a look in the fridge to see what I had on hand and just started cooking! In the end I made chicken stuffed with spinach and ricotta. I know this is not a brand new creation, but it’s the first time I’ve ever made it and I didn’t use a recipe. I just eyeballed everything and threw in whatever I thought would taste good – which in the end turned out to be green onions, garlic, spinach, sun-dried tomatoes, and S&P. I think I did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself!

I didn’t have enough broccoli to feed all four of us, so I added some cauliflower too and roasted them in the oven. Man, roasted veggies are soooooo good! In the end, the dinner was a success and got a thumbs up from Jacko!

2. Club soda with lots of ice has become my new favourite cold drink (aside from Corona, of course!) A nice tall glass of club soda with ice and sometimes a little shot of Mio water enhancer has become my new 3pm treat at work. I don’t even miss Diet Coke anymore!

3. I did some scrapbooking today! I know this may not seem very exciting, or Friday Five worthy, but the fact that I actually scrapped a page today is a big deal. I am so far behind in my scrapping, it’s not even funny. Scrapping more was one of my big goals for last year and I failed miserably. It just seems that life is so busy, there just isn’t time to scrap…or if there is time, something always seems to come along and bump my scrap time. Today I left work early so I could take my son out for lunch after he wrote an exam. After lunch we came home and aside from writing this post and maybe squeezing in a workout (which isn’t going to happen today), I didn’t have anything to do. So, I poured myself an nice tall glass of club soda with ice and headed up to my office/scrap room. After spending a bit of time putting all the crap that seemed to collect on my desk away, I flipped through a few of my scrapbooks and found the pages that needed titles or finishing touches and planned out what I would do. In the end, I made the title page to one of our family albums. I hate making title pages, so most of the time skip them. There’s just too much pressure when making the title page and I’m really not all that creative so it takes me a long time to come up with ideas of what to do. Today I cheated a bit and hit Pinterest in search of title page ideas. I found one that I could scrap-lift and in the end I’m quite pleased with how it turned out. Simple, but nice. You can see the original that I copied from on my iPad in the background.

4. I need to start running again soon. The GoodLife Fitness Toronto Half Marathon is 99 days away! Aside from a few runs to get my legs ready for the Resolution Run on New Year’s Eve, I haven’t really run at all since the Niagara Half back in October. I’m going to try to run twice a week, just short runs, until the middle of February when I’ll start an actual training schedule. I’d really like to do a 10 week training schedule, but will probably end up with a 12 week schedule, since those are what I have on hand. I just find by the time the race gets here I’m getting a bit tired if running. Hopefully I will get to train with my sister again for a lot if the runs, because running by myself SUCKS. I think that is a big part if why I don’t really love running. I’m not very good at it and if I’m out there alone for lots of miles it’s really tough. When I run with my sister, it seems easier – which I’m guessing is due to the fact that we chat the whole time we are running. It makes the time go by faster…and that’s definitely a good thing when the mileage starts to creep up!

5. I am very curious about CrossFit. I’m reading more and more blog posts, and seeing more and more WOD pics on Pinterest that talk about CrossFit. It just sounds like such an amazing workout. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to do many of the exercise they do there, but it sounds like the encouragement you get from the coaches and other members is so helpful you can’t help but improve. This post from Lindsay from The Lean Green Bean makes it sound like the best place to workout and get stronger. There is a CrossFit in my town, and if I can squeeze it in, I might go check it out this weekend.

Happy Friday, everyone!
Do you do CrossFit? Is it really as great as they say it is?

Baby, It’s Cold Outside!

Holy cow! It is freezing outside today. This morning while I was driving to work it was -21 Celcius (which is about -6 Fahrenheit). However you want to look at it, it’s friggin’ COLD! It gradually got warmer throughout the day, and it’s around -12 now…still cold, but not so bad.

Anyways, enough about the weather, although I will mention it again a little later in the post.

I had another good day food-wise. Breakfast was another ham & cheese scrambled egg bake. These quick and easy breakfasts are hitting the spot for me and keeping me full right up until lunchtime.

Lunch today was a little later than usual since I had to go to the dentist at noon. I ate once I got back to the office around 1pm. I briefly considered eating at the food court in the mall where my dentist is, but made the right decision to go back and eat my clean leftovers. Today I enjoyed the last of the Spaghetti Squash with Chicken & Pears. It was just as delicious as it was the first night. I also enjoyed some snap peas with jalapeño Greek yogurt dip. This lunch was much healthier and probably much tastier than anything I would have found to eat at the mall. I made a good decision! 🙂

Tonight’s dinner took a last minute change. Originally I was planning on a relatively simple dinner of baked chicken (possibly stuffed with spinach and ricotta), broccoli, and corn. This was a special request from my son. I even stopped at the SuperStore to get some chicken breasts since I forgot to take any out of the freezer before work. Then, I walk in the door after work and as I’m searching my magazines for the recipe for the stuffed chicken, the phone rings and it’s Junior asking to eat dinner at his friend’s house. Figures! So, rather than make his “special dinner” when he wasn’t going to be here to enjoy it, I put the chicken in the fridge for tomorrow, and instead whipped up a super quick, super tasty Clean Eating recipe: Spicy Spinach and Chickpeas.

The recipe has paprika and cumin in it, to give it a bit of spice, but I kicked it up a notch with some added Sriracha! Yummo!

Here’s what you’ll need for this dish (from Clean Eating Quick & Easy Meals 2012):

2 tsp olive oil

1 bag spinach

1 clove garlic minced

1 15oz can of chickpeas

2 tbsp whole wheat bread crumbs

1/2 tsp sweet paprika

1/4 tsp ground cumin

salt and pepper

1 tsp red wine vinegar

Cooking instructions:

Heat oil in a large skillet and add garlic and spinach. Cook for 2-3 minutes until spinach is wilted.

In a bowl, combine chickpeas, bread crumbs, paprika, cumin, S&P. Add this chickpea mixture to the skillet with the spinach and cook until the chickpeas are heated – about 3-4 minutes.

Remove from heat and stir in the vinegar.

As is, this recipe serves two, so I doubled it, since I had 3 to feed, plus wanted extra for lunch. Each serving is 1.5 cups for 345 delicious calories.

Originally I was planning on doing a workout while the chicken was baking, but when I changed the dinner menu, there wasn’t any “bake” time anymore. After dinner I didn’t really feel like working out, and was feeling pretty tired. So, I did the obvious…dragged hubs out for a walk around the hood with me! He was less than enthusiastic since it is freezing outside, but I made him bundle up and off we went. The plan was to head out along our usual route and stop in and pick up our little guy from his friend’s house along the way. After a short visit, I bundled back up and finished the rest of my walk alone, while hubs brought Junior back home. In the end, despite it being -12 degrees out, I enjoyed the walk and wasn’t cold at all. I was dressed for it and the cool temps were a good motivator to keep a good pace! Here’s how the walk looked tonight: 32 minutes and 183 calories burned!

After the walk I sat on the couch and watched TV totally guilt free!

Now, it’s almost midnight and I need to get my butt up to bed. 6:30am comes early!

How was your Wednesday?
Are you managing to stay warm in this ridiculously cold weather?

Recipe Roundup

I am quite happy to say that today was a pretty good day food-wise. 

Yesterday’s breakfast was so good, I had pretty much the same thing today (minus the blackberries, since I ate them all yesterday).  Lunch was not the best – well, it was delicious, just not the “cleanest”.  I had to go to the mall to deal with some cell phone stuff for my company, so my colleague and I ate at Il Fornello.  It was $10 pizza day.  I had a thin crust Diavolo pizza…spicy saprosetta, hot chili peppers, black olives and basil…totally delicious, and I enjoyed every bite.

Dinner was another new Clean Eating magazine recipe – Cauliflower, Goat Cheese & Chicken Ramekins from the June 2012 issue.  This dish is supposed to be prepared in individual ramekins, but I don’t have any of those, so I just cooked it all in a casserole dish.  It took a little longer than the recipe said it would, but it was worth the wait…this was another hit! 
It was also a super easy recipe.  Basically you chop everything up, mix in a few things and throw it in the oven.  I am too lazy to type out the recipe, so I took a picture of it from my digital edition on my iPad.
The chicken wasn’t quite cooked after 30 minutes at 375, so I cranked it up to 450 and gave it another 15 minutes or so. 

While the dish was baking, I had just enough time to squeeze in a workout.  (I love when recipes give me enough time to workout while they simmer or bake or whatever!)  I hit the Fitness Blender website and looked through the workouts.  In the end, I settled on a 25 minute “Red Light Green Light Workout – Glutes, Abs, and Cardio Workout”.  This was as series of 2 minute exercises with random intervals of work and rest. If it works, here’s the video (why can I not get the actual video to insert…ugh…it is driving me crazy!  For some reason the plug in isn’t working)  Anyways, here is the link to it http://www.fitnessblender.com/v/exercise-detail/Red-Light-Green-Light-Workout-Glutes-Abs-and-Cardio-Workout/du/  It’s a neat concept with the red light/green light thing…you go hard for however long it might be and then get a short break.  I liked it.  In the end, my 25 minutes of work resulted in this:
This was not quite the level of calorie burn they said this workout should achieve (201-306 estimated by the Fitness Burner people), but again, it was better than what I would have burned had I just sat on the couch while dinner cooked, so it’s all good.

Today I did something that I can’t really believe.  I think I must be a bit crazy, because I voluntarily (with a little encouragement from my sister) signed up for the Goodlife Toronto Half Marathon on May 5. 
I guess deep down I must really like running, otherwise I might actually be crazy to keep torturing myself like this!  I suppose this means I better get my butt back out there a couple of times a week to be ready to start training hard in a month or so.  I need to find a training program.  I will either find something online, or I might use the schedule my friend Kathy created for me for the Niagara Half I ran last October, but maybe shorten it a bit, so I’m not so sick of running by the time the race actually gets here. 

And finally, I have been asked for the recipe for the Spicy Corn Chowder that I made yesterday.  It really was good, and very easy to prepare.  Again, I’m lazy, so here’s a picture of the recipe taken from a screen shot of my Zinio copy.  I discovered that the recipe was in the Comfort Foods magazine as well as the new Clean Eating 3 Cookbook.  Anyways..here it is.  I hope you give it a try.
 
Alright..that’s enough for today!  I’m off to bed. 

Do you have a good half marathon training schedule you could share with me?

Does anyone know why I can’t insert videos that actually show up as the video when I’m posting from Windows Live Writer?  I’ve tried to use the Plug-In but it’s still not working….ugh! 

Cheers!

Cleaning Up On Monday

Happy Monday!

Normally I am not a fan of Mondays, but after the bad food weekend I had, I was looking forward to a fresh start and getting back on track.

Today I was determined to eat clean all day and get a workout in.

So, here’s what was on the menu today.
Breakfast: 2 eggs (scrambled in the microwave) with a slice if ham, slice of cheese and some blackberries.

Lunch: Leftover spaghetti squash with chicken and pears.

with a delicious Clean Eating Dark Fudgy Brownie for dessert…which, by the way, was amazing! (Special thanks to my sister Erin for sharing her yummy baking)

Dinner: I tried a new recipe tonight – Clean Eating Spicy Corn Chowder, from the Best of Clean Eating 3 Cookbook.

This recipe was easy, tasty, and in true Clean Eating fashion, made enough for 3 leftover meals. I’m starting to wonder if maybe I have smaller servings than they suggest in the recipes, because I almost always have leftovers?? Oh well…I love leftovers!

I also had a couple of apples for snacks today – one this afternoon and one tonight while watching Californication. All in all, I’m quite happy with my food choices today…so much better than what I ate this weekend!

While I was waiting for the chowder to simmer, I headed upstairs and got a quick workout in. I didn’t really have a plan, but I knew I wanted to swing a kettlebell. I’m reading 3 books right now about kettlebell workouts. They all say how great the basic 2 hand swing is, so I thought I would do that tonight. I set my timer for 20 1-minute intervals..and then I started swinging! I did 20 swings per minute. At the beginning I had lots of time left in my minute to rest/recover, but as each minute went by and I did more and more swings, I had less and less time to rest. In the end I did 400 swings and was a sweaty mess at the end of my workout. I wore my Polar HRM and this is what the workout looked like:

Not bad for 21 minutes, and much better than just sitting on the couch!

Tomorrow I have more clean eats on the menu – YAY!!! I don’t what my workout will be yet, but I’m sure I will find something good on the Fitness Blender website. I’ll see what I can find tomorrow.

Today was a good day. I’ve gotten the week off to a good, clean start. Looking forward to keeping it going all week long!

How was your Monday?
Did you eat clean?

Goodbye Weekend

The weekend is almost over. While it was a very good weekend, I’m not sorry it’s over. I ate so many bad things, it’s not funny.

Saturday alone, according to MyFitnessPal, I ate and drank 3447 calories…a mere 2247 OVER my recommended calorie intake! Isn’t that INSANE!!!

Today was slightly better…after a lunch that was less than ideal:

My dinner was MUCH better….delicious and clean! Spaghetti squash with chicken and pears.

This dish was from the November/December 2012 issue of Clean Eating magazine. It was easy to prepare and tasted great. I was so happy to be eating something so tasty and clean, instead of more fast food and restaurant food. There was enough left for 2 lunches, so I will eat well at work the next few days too.

I’ve also got some great meals planned for the upcoming week as well. Dinners for the week (and hopefully a few producing leftovers for lunch) include:

Cauliflower, goat cheese & chicken ramekins

Curried chicken with apples and pears

Spicy corn chowder

Spiced spinach and chickpeas

Mustard chicken

I’m continuing to read my kettlebell books and I’m excited to get started on my kettlebell program. I haven’t got it all planned out yet, so this week I will probably do workouts from Fitness Blender and some of my old Bob Harper circuits. I also hope to get out for a few more walks, either during my lunch break at work or in the evenings at home. After the weekend I had, I need to be sure I’m active with some form of exercise everyday.

I’m never really excited when a weekend is over, but I’m kind of glad that this one is soon to be behind me.

How was your weekend?
Did you stick to a clean eating weakend…or did you completely fall off the wagon like I did?

Here’s looking forward to a great week ahead!