“The Chief”

I just got home from the Box…and I can hardly lift my arms! Tonight’s workout was “The Chief”.

Oh my God! This workout was killer. After practicing our power cleans and working up to the weight we would do the workout at, it was down to business.

Let me tell you, this was 20 minutes of pure hell…and I loved it!

I had to scale the workout and only cleaned 55lbs. I think next time I could lift more, but the 55lbs was a good challenge…especially towards the end of the workout! In the 5 cycles, I was able to do 15 rounds plus 2 cleans. I’m pretty happy with that…and especially with my push-ups, which were strong throughout the whole workout (although I did them on my knees, they felt much more solid than they did a month ago!)

Tonight I had a great dinner before heading to the gym. I made the Clean Eating Sesame Pork Tenderloin with Bok Choy and Apple Tamari Glaze. This was a repeat recipe and it was a hit again. In fact, my older son says we need to have this more often. He is not a big fan of the bok choy, so I made corn for the kids. I also roasted up some acorn squash to round out the meal.

It was delicious, and I’ve got a lovely leftover lunch ready for tomorrow – YAY!!!

Tomorrow is a day off from the box, but I will be cooking clean again. Tomorrow is Cauliflower, Goat Cheese & Chicken Casserole. This was so good last time I made it, I can’t wait to try it again. Plus, while the casserole cooks, I should have a half hour or so to either do a kettlebell workout, Fitness Blender workout, or maybe even hit the treadmill for a run…you know, since the GoodLife half marathon is only 2 months away and I still haven’t completed a single training run!!! God, this is not going to be good! Oh well!

But now, in typical fashion, it’s late and I’m exhausted. I need to get my achy arms to bed. I’m terrified of how much I am going to hurt tomorrow. No pain, no gain, right?!!!

How was your Monday?
Did you eat clean and get a killer workout in?
And don’t forget…

Only 4 more workdays until vacay!!!

Super Sunday

Happy Super Bowl Sunday!

I am not a big football fan, but I am watching the game tonight.  I not a fan of either team, but I’d like Baltimore to win because Michael Oher plays for them.  He was the guy who the movie “The Blind Side” was about. Up until the power outage delay, it looked like the Ravens were going to run away with it.  Now, as I write, the 49ers have started their comeback and the score stands at 31-23 in favour of Baltimore.  It’s making the game interesting, that’s for sure, but I hope the Ravens can hand on for the win.  Time will tell.

Before game time, I had a pretty typical Sunday. (Oh boy…Kaepernick just ran it in to get SF within 2.  Didn’t get the 2 point conversion, so it’s 31-29 Ravens.)  My day started at the arena for my older son’s game.  After a tough loss yesterday, the boys came out strong and managed a tie today.  Given the way their season has gone, a tie is a victory for us. 

After the game I got down to menu and workout planning for the week and hit the grocery store for needed supplies.  Here’s how things look:

BREAKFASTS:  Clean eating Hash Brown Sausage & Egg Muffins (I finally made these today, after not getting to them last week).
  LUNCHES:  Most days lunch will be leftover whatever we had the night before for dinner. 

DINNERS:   I’ve got some good eats lined up for this week:
– Mediterranean veg & white bean penne
– Tamari honey chicken & broccoli with almond butter sauce
– Sesame pork tenderloin & baby bok choy
– Crock pot Sante Fe Chicken

SNACKS:  I’ve got hummus and veggies, apples, my no-bake chocolate cookies and I made some kale chips today, so have 3 containers of those as well.  Hopefully this will all help me avoid eating any crap snacks.

WORKOUTS:  My workout schedule looks like this:

• Monday:  CrossFit 8:30pm (WOD is the Filthy Fifty…it looks tough)
• Tuesday:  Fitness Blender yoga workout
• Wednesday:  CrossFit 8:30pm
• Thursday:  Hockey 7:30pm
• Friday:  CrossFit 5:30pm
• Saturday/Sunday:  who knows!  We will be out of town with my older son’s hockey team for a tournament.  That is why I’m squeezing my 3 crossfit workouts into the week rather than saving one for the Saturday class.  Depending on what time we get home on Sunday, I may try to go for a short run, or maybe swing a kettlebell.  I will leave it open and see what happens.
  

Today was a rest day for me…and I was very glad it was!  I am achy all over.  When I woke up this morning, I stretched and everything hurt!  I tried to find a part on my body that didn’t hurt.  I thought I found one with my forearms….but then I bent my wrist a different way and there it was….pain!  I am not complaining…I love it.  To me, the pain lets me know I am working hard and will be seeing results.  So far the scale hasn’t moved, but hopefully it will start to move in the right direction soon.

 
Here’s looking forward to a good week ahead.

What’s on your meal plan for the week?
What’s your workout schedule look like?

And just as I finish up….the Ravens win the Super Bowl!  Yay for Michael Oher!

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?

Totally Random Tuesday

Ola peeps!  How has Tuesday been treating you so far?  I had a pretty good day.  Here are a few things that have been going on in my world today.

1.  I recently discovered a great fitness and workout site online that has a kinds of awesome workout videos.  www.fitnessblender.com is amazing!  Today on their facebook page, they posted a 15 minute kettlebell workout.  After work, when I got home I went straight upstairs, changed into my workout gear, did a quick 5 minute warm up…and hit play on this video (if anyone knows how to get a YouTube video to insert into a post written in Windows Live Writer, please let me know…it never works for me and I have to resort to putting in a hyperlink???)
This was a nice quick workout, and a short 16 minutes later, I had this result:

I’d say this was a better way to use 16 minutes than just sitting my ass on the couch! (BTW….I LOVE my heart rate monitor!)

2. After the quickie workout, I had about half an hour until I needed to go see my massage therapist for my regular every 3 week massage.  I love massages.  They are awesome, and I really needed it today as I was feeling my workout from yesterday.   My shoulders, triceps, glutes and hammies were all feeling it today.  And I love that!  Because you know what they say…

3.  I am on day 7 with no diet soda.  One of my goals for January was to stop drinking diet pop.  I have been drinking water like mad and only really had one day (yesterday) when I was very tempted to have a pop at work.  Instead, I had another glass of water and an apple.  The apple hit the spot and my pop craving went away.  I know that diet soda is not good for me.  A little search on “the Google” and found this…which just reinforces my decision to stop drinking diet pop.

Hope your Tuesday was a good one. 

Do you know how to insert YouTube videos in Windows Live Writer?
Do you have a favourite source of online workouts?
How are you doing with your January goals?

Looking Ahead to a Great Week

Today was a lazy day, but I still got quite a bit accomplished!

The day started fairly early at the rink watching my son’s hockey game.  They played well, but in the end, lost 3-2. 

After the hockey game, I came home and treated myself to a little nap.  I was just so tired, and really didn’t have too much to do today, so just crawled back under the covers for an hour or so.  I woke up feeling a bit more rested.  I really need to do a better job of going to bed earlier.   I’m tired of being tired!

This afternoon I put all the Christmas decorations away and got the tree out of the house.  The thing shed like crazy and there were needles all over the place.  I was kind of surprised it didn’t just crumble to bits and pieces when I moved it.  Apparently we weren’t the best with watering it! 

After finishing up with the Christmas stuff, I flipped through my Zinio editions of Clean Eating magazine, and got to work on my meal planning for the week.  I’m not sure why, but I chose the Comfort Foods edition as my starting place, and didn’t get past that edition!  I found 3 fantastic recipes to include on this week’s menu:

1. Mexican Lasagne
2. Chicken & Zucchini Alfredo
3. Hearty Sausage & Cheese Frittata

I also have a crock pot recipe from skinytaste.com that will be part of the menu:  Crock Pot Sante Fe Chicken. 

I’m looking forward to eating well this week…and of course, cooking clean will result in lots of leftovers, which means I will be eating well at lunch-time this week too!

Along with my meals, I also planned my workouts for the week.  I’ve got a combination of BobHarper.com workouts and FitnessBlender.com workouts scheduled, as well as my weekly hockey game.  

In the end…this is how my week ahead looks. (today was actual food and workouts..the rest is the plan)

Tonight, after doing groceries and getting the kids started with showers and on their way to bed, hubs and I went for another walk around the neighbourhood.  It was a nice night and I covered another 3.22km.  Hubs back was bugging him, so he bailed around 2k and I did the last bit on my own.  Unfortunately my phone died before I made it all the way back home, but I know the total distance since it’s the exact same route I did last time. 
It was a good walk, and each km was faster than the one before. 
Seems like I really picked up the pace once hubby bailed on me!  I’m enjoying these walks, so hopefully I can keep them as part of my regular fitness routine.

Now, it is WAY later than I had intended to be finishing this post.  But…I got side tracked watching the season premiere of The Biggest Loser.  I’m looking forward to following the contestants as they go through their weight loss journeys.  I’m loving that Bob and Jillian are back…I actually never watched the seasons that they weren’t on.  I forgot how much people cry on this show…although I’m pretty sure Jillian would make me cry too!  MyTrainerBob is awesome….I love his website and workouts, so I’m looking forward to seeing how he motivates his team. 

I hope you all had a great weekend.

Have you got your meals and workouts planned for the week ahead?
Did you watch The Biggest Loser?  What did you think of the season premiere?

Weights and Skates

Today’s #31Days challenge was to do a strength workout. This was perfect, since I had already planned to do a kettlebell workout video from Fitness Blender.

After getting up early to go watch my youngest play hockey, I came home, changed, grabbed my iPad, selected my video and got to work. This video was awesome! There was a good warm up and then 18 different kettlebell moves and a cool down. Kettlebell exercises included swings (both 2 hand and single arm), racks, squats with press, halos, lunges, deadlifts, get ups, curls, tricep extensions, and a bunch of ab exercises. I had never done many of these moves, but they were well explained in the video and they gave good info about how heavy your kettlebell should be for each exercise. I actually got to use every kettlebell I have today, so I was pumped about that!

I wore my heart rate monitor during today’s workout. I almost forgot, but remembered at the last minute and put it on. It seemed to pick up my heart rate right away this time, but there were a few times during the workout when it seemed to lose the connection, so my calorie burn was likely a bit higher than what this shows, but I’m still pretty happy with the workout…especially the % calories fat burned.

Tonight, I played pick up hockey with a bunch of friends. It was a ton of fun, and I got to play with my hubby, which I have never done before. I had a great time until some jackass on the other team slewfooted me in the corner! Well…It wasn’t actually a jackass, it was my friend Toni’s hubby, Todd, who was playing defense on the other team. It was actually quite funny, and we had a laugh over it both on the ice and while we had a couple of beers at the bar after the game. 🙂

I should have worn my heat rate monitor during the game to see how many calories I burned. However many it was, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t enough to cover the 2 Corona and the nachos that I had at the bar! Oh well….I’m not going to worry about it. We had a great skate, got some exercise, and had a nice visit with friends after the game. It was a great way to spend a Saturday night.

Now, once again, it is super late and I need to go to bed. I’ve got to get up early and go watch my oldest play his hockey game tomorrow morning. I can’t wait! I love watching my guys play hockey!

How was your Saturday? Did you get your workouts in?
Are you planning revenge against your friend’s hubby too? LOL…just kidding Todd…or am I? 🙂