Totally Random Tuesday – Blogiversary Edition!

1.  My Pursuit of Happiness and Skinny Jeans is one year old today!  Today I was thinking about next week’s ski vacation and remembered last year on our trip, I was blogging.  That got me wondering when exactly I started this blog…turns out it was a year ago today!

I can’t believe it’s been a year!  Some days the posts come easily and others it’s a bit of a struggle to find something to write about…but 345 posts later, here we are!  Hopefully the next year is just as much fun as this past one. 

2.  I am sore from yesterday’s WOD.  “The Chief” was killer yesterday…and I am feeling it today.  It hurts to lift my arms!  This was the first WOD that left me completely spent.  I actually laid on the floor for a few minutes after the workout to catch my breath!  I felt like a real CrossFitter!  I love it!! 

3.  Today I ate WAY too much!  My main meals were okay: 

Breakfast:  Microwaved scrambled egg sandwich with jalapeno Havarti on whole wheat toast
Lunch:  Leftover Sesame Pork Tenderloin with baby bok choy and roasted squash (I friggin’ love squash!)
Dinner:  Clean eating Cauliflower, Goat Cheese & Chicken Casserole

It was my snacks that killed me:  5 Hershey kisses with almonds, 1 dark chocolate covered cookie, 1 giant apple, and a Flakie pastry.

I haven’t had one of these Flakies in forever…but hubs had bought some a while ago for the kids and the box was just sitting on the counter, taking up space and getting in the way.  I wanted to toss the box in recycling, but there was one left…so I ate it.  BAD MOVE!  I need to get some self control and stop eating crap.  I also need to drink more water to help fill me up and make me less tempted to eat said crap. 

4.  Only 3 more work days until vacay.  WOHOO!!!

Hope your Tuesday was totally random!

How do you keep yourself from eating crap? 

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!

The Friday Five

What a week!  I am very glad it’s over and that it’s the weekend!  It’s also time for…

1.  This was a tough week.  Work was a zoo, my eating was all over the place, and my workout schedule did not go as planned.  I know I say this all the time, but

2.  I pick up my new wheels tomorrow!  They finally found a truck that had the right package in the right colour.  I can’t wait until we pick it up.  I’ve got to wait until 2:30. Good thing I’ve got a couple of hours of kid’s hockey to distract me until it’s time to go get it.

3.  The Elf for Health challenge for today was to eat a rainbow. While what I ate did include quite a few colours, it was not the healthiest food day I have ever had.
Breakfast:  Egg McMuffin, Hash brown and a Peppermint Hot Chocolate (made with fat-free skim milk).
Lunch:  Turkey, avocado club on cranberry wheat bread with sweet potato fries
Dinner:  pizza and beer – Yummo!

4.  I am actually missing running.  I don’t want to run too far, but I think I couple of short runs a week might be good for me.  Running always gave me time to sort of get away from it all and not think about anything but putting one foot in front of the other.  Given how nuts things are at work, having some time to clear my head might be just what I need.  Plus, yesterday’s meditation experience showed my just how much I need to let my brain have some down time.  I have no idea how I will fit it into my schedule.  I’ll have to give some thought to that over the weekend.  I have signed up for a 5k Resolution Run on New Year’s Eve.  At this point I’m not sure I can even run 5k anymore, since I have not run a step since my half marathon back in October.  A couple of runs a week is probably a good idea to get ready for that too.

If I’m going to run again, I’m going to need to find a cool running app for my iPhone.  I always wear my Garmin when I run, but now that I have an iPhone, I can start using it on my runs.  I’ve seen some other blogs that post screen shots from their phones with their routes on a map, with pace and distance.  I have no idea what apps they are…but some of them look pretty cool. I guess I will have to go shopping at the app store and see what I can find.

5.  I can’t wait to go to bed!  It is only 10pm as I finish up this blog post.  Normally it is closer to midnight before I finish writing for the night.  For some reason, Friday nights are a lot more relaxed around our house.  We ordered pizza for dinner and my sister and her two little ones were here with us.  They went home and we watched a movie with the kids.  Now, I just have to finish up this and then I am off to bed…about 2.5 hours earlier than usual. Tomorrow’s first kid’s hockey isn’t until 10am…so that means we get to sleep in about 3 hours later than usual.  That adds up to over 5 more hours of potential sleep than I normally get a night.  I doubt I will be able to sleep for that long, but any extra zzz’s will be awesome.

Hope you all had a good week.

What’s a good iPhone running app?

Enjoy your weekend!

Cooking with Fire!

It’s been a week since the half marathon and I haven’t run a step…..and I’m okay with that.  Hopefully I will get out once or twice a week starting soon.  For now, I’m not too worried about it.

This past week I’ve been trying to do better with my Clean Eating.  I did pretty well with my dinners, which gave me a few leftover lunches for work, but I need to do a better job with my snacking.  I’ve eaten WAY too many mini chocolate bars that we’ve got in the office for snacks.

Meals that I made this week were all from the Fall issue of Clean Eating magazines Quick & Easy Meals.  I made 4 different meals, and they were all delicious and easy to prepare.

Thursday:  Broccoli & White Bean Mac ‘n’ Cheese:  Delicious, even though I used condensed milk instead of evaporated milk!  Lesson learned.

Friday:  I made 2 different dishes Friday night, since I had time and could get ahead of the game.  One dish was Curried Chicken with Apples & Pears.  This really was a quick and yummy dinner.  It took longer for the rice to cook than it did to prepare the main dish!.

The second dish I made Friday night was Curried Chicken & Cauliflower Soup.  This was super easy to make..chop a few things, sauté up some chicken, add broth, veggies and let it simmer.  I tried it today for lunch.  Really good, but don’t forget the dollop of Greek Yogurt.  As hubs and I were eating I kept thinking that it needed something…then we checked the recipe and saw the Greek yogurt.  We added a spoonful and it just gave it a little bit of zip and tang and turned it from okay to really good.  I’ve got enough left for lunched for most of the week!  Here’s how it looks before the yogurt goes on.

Sunday:  Tonight I made Pork Chops with Butternut Apple Mash.  This was another quick and easy recipe, so the special issue of Clean Eating seems to quite properly named!  For this recipe, peeling and chopping the squash was the toughest part of this recipe.  Once the squash is peeled and chopped, it is boiled until tender, with a couple of apples tossed in during the last few minutes.  This combination gets mashed with some nutmeg, freshly grated ginger, and a bit of butter for creaminess.  The pork chops are cooked in a bit of olive oil under no longer pink, then removed to a plate and tented with foil.  Add 1/2 cup of apple cider and a tbsp of pure maple syrup to the pan and simmer until it thickens a bit.  Add a dollop of butter and whisk until incorporated.  Top the pork chops with some of the sauce and serve along side some of the squash.  Deliciousness…and the kids asked for seconds, so you know it’s good!

Now to the “fire” part of the blog.  We had a bunch of wood delivered yesterday.  Today was stacking day…and of course, it was cold and rainy while we stacked it.  It was a fairly quick job since we had the kids helping us, plus friends from around the corner came over to help as well.  Before we knew it, we had a pretty good looking wood pile and a lovely fire burning in the fireplace.

Given the crazy weather we are expecting for the next few days due to Hurricane Sandy and the “Frankenstorm” they are talking about, we may be having a few fires as we try to take the chill off.

Tomorrow I start my 2 week Mamavation Bob Harper Workout Challenge.  I’m looking forward to seeing what Bob has in store for me for the next two weeks.  It’s been quite a while since I did any strength training, so I’m sure I will feel it.  I will let you know how day 1 goes tomorrow!

For now, it’s once again very late and I need to go to bed.  When am I going to learn?

Have you made any great clean recipes?
Anyone else taking part in the 2 week challenge?

Best Workout Nutrition Choices

I saw this infographic in the Women’s Running Magazine blog I read, and they got it from Greatist. I thought it was awesome, so I am posting it here.

Get health and fitness tips at Greatist.com

What a great resource! I can’t wait to dig into the Greatist website and see what other gems I can find!

Let The Fun Begin

Today is the official start of our vacation week at the cottage. The family has gone and it is just us…well, just us until 22 of our fiends show up to spend the week with us. I still haven’t quite figured out where we are putting everyone, but that will sort itself out…it always does!

After spending $320 at the grocery store, I have supplies for a weeks worth of meals, most of them clean!

We are ready…let the fun begin!

Once all these crazy girls and their kids/husbands/boy toys get here, this will be a much different picture. I cant wait! We always have so much fun this week. It really is the highlight of our summer.

For now, I will enjoy the quiet, because it will likely be the last bit of peace we get until Friday when they all head back home and we get the weekend to put the cottage back together before we go back to reality next week.

For now, I’m going to enjoy a cold one of these…

And go sit in the sun!

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

Cheers!!

Long Run Monday

Today was long run day for me.  After yesterday’s long run being postponed due to rain, I was up at 8am today to get that long run crossed off my schedule.  After a breakfast of a Chocolate Outrage GU shot, I grabbed my water belt and my iPod freshly loaded with a my new running tunes and I was out the door.

I don’t know if it was the tunes, the perfect weather (warm, but not too hot), or the fact that I was ready for a good run, but this was the best 10km I have run in a long time.  I stuck to 10 & 1s the whole way, and finished in 1 hour and 11 minutes.  Not a land-speed record, for sure, but pretty good for me!

Tomorrow is supposed to be 4k steady, but since today was supposed to be a rest day, I might take tomorrow as a rest day to give me a little break after today’s long run and then just shift everything a day and run Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, rest Saturday and then get back on track with another long run next Sunday.  I’ll see how the week goes.  We’ve got a bunch of people showing up for the week up here at the cottage, so it might be a little crazy. Thankfully, a couple of the girls coming up are also runners, who are training, so hopefully we can out for a few runs together this week.

After my long run, I was home to shower up and then head to the running races that are part of the Civic Regatta in the village.  There are running races for girls and boys of all ages, and some novelty races as well (3 legged race, slow bicycle, potato race, etc) and we like to go and watch the kids run.  I took a pass on the 40-49 women’s race, since I figured running 10k was enough exercise for one day!

I had a lazy afternoon down on the dock, just relaxing, reading the latest Cottage Life magazine and soaking up some sun.  I really wanted a nap, but we don’t have any reclining lawn chairs here and the hammock is in the shade and I definitely wanted to sit in the sun.  The kids had a ball cruising the shore in the punt and going for kayak rides.  This is not the best picture, but here’s Jack giving Nick a lift on the back of the kayak.  They were headed to our cousins a few cottages over to pick up our tube that was left down at the other cottage earlier in the week.

We had a nice family dinner tonight to help celebrate Rory’s and my wedding anniversary.  Eighteen years!  In some ways it seems like so long ago, and in others it seems like just yesterday.  Any way you look at it, it’s been 18 great years and I’m looking forward to the next 18!  Love you, baby.

Tomorrow our friends start rolling in for our open house week at the cottage.  We need to get up early and get the kids off to sailing club, and then head into town and hit the grocery store.  I need to get supplies for a week’s worth of clean eating.  So, I better sign off here and hit my Clean Eating Magazines and build a yummy, healthy menu for the week.  I was hoping to do that yesterday, but it just didn’t happen.  Oh well, you’ve got to play it by ear at the cottage…there are no hard and fast schedules so sometimes things just don’t happen the way you think they will!

Here’s looking forward to a great week of holidays and lots of laughs with all of our friends.  I can’t wait!

Cheers!

 

The Friday Five

Finally, it’s Friday!

 

1.  I am on vacation!!!  After quite a few insanely busy months at work, I finally get a week off!  I am spending my week up at the cottage.  This weekend we will be there with family, but starting Tuesday, the family heads home and all of our friends start showing up for our annual “Cottage Open House Week”.  We’ve got quite a crew coming up with year.  It should be a super fun week with lots of laughs, a few beverages, a couple of runs, and lots of time spent outside enjoying the view.

I am just waiting for Rory to get home from work so we can pack up and head out.  I will likely have to do a bit of work while we are up there, which sucks, but it’s better than having to go into the office!

2.  I have signed up for a virtual race.  I am taking part in the Labor Day Virtual 5 or 10 Mile Race, hosted by Mommy, Run Fast.

I’ve never done a virtual race before, but figured since I am schedule to run 16km (10 miles) that weekend anyway, why not!  Laura has some great prizes available.  I’m not sure how the awards get handed out…hopefully by random draw and not based on speed, because as we all know, I’m not the fastest runner in the world!

3.  I’m running in the Memorial Run.  This is an initiative by Kym of agirlrunner who is organizing a memorial run for the victims of the Katrina hurricane in New Orleans and a few of her other friends who passed away unexpectedly around the same time.  She is asking people to donate their miles between August 27 and Sept 3 and hopes to reach 1836 miles.  Click on her run logo for more information about how to join and a very touching background story about the reason for the run.

4.  I love Rest Days!  My half marathon training schedule, designed for me by my friend, and running mentor, Kathy, gives me Friday AND Saturday as rest days.  I cannot tell you how awesome having 2 days off is.  Not having to get up early and run for two days in a row will probably be my most favourite part of this training.  Especially since Thursdays are my Tempo run and I imagine as the distance for those runs increases (my goal is to build to an 8k tempo run!!!), that a couple of day’s rest before the Sunday long run will be exactly what I need.

5.  I am dying for the next issue of Clean Eating Magazine to arrive in my Zinio account.  The Clean Eating Mag website has been referring to all sorts of yummy sounding recipes, but my digital copy has not yet shown up.  I got a notification from some other digital mag seller that they now had it and I could buy it if I wanted, but I subscribed to it though Zinio, so need to wait until it comes online through then.  I am not the most patient person in the world and waiting for it to show up is just a little bit of torture to me!  Adding to it, is the fact that it looks like it is available on their website now for new subscribers.  I may have to send an email to customer service!  Hopefully it arrives this week while I am on vacation and I can leisurely flip through it and find some delicious recipes to try out while we are up at the cottage.

Well, that’s it.  Another Friday Five is finished.

I hope you all have a great Friday and a fantastic weekend.  It’s a long weekend up here in Canada!  

CHEERS!

The End of Another Busy Day

I am so glad today is almost over.  It’s been a busy day.

I was up at 6:30 to go for a run.  It was supposed to be a 6km steady run, but I ended up just going a little over 5km, since I can’t run 6km without stopping yet.  I didn’t run the 5km without stopping.  Jack Rabbit has told me that I should not be stopping in my steady runs. The problem is…I can’t run too far without stopping yet, definitely not 6km.  I got about 2.5km today before I stopped.  When am I going to be able to run for a longer distance straight?  Ugh…frustrating!

I  think a big part of my problem and why I stop, is that I am running alone.  If I get tired when I’m running and I am running alone, which is how I almost always run, I don’t have any internal motivation to keep going.  This has always been a big problem for me.  I need to do some investigation on the web and look for some motivational pod casts that I can put on my iPod and listen to while I run to keep me going.  It would also be nice if I could find a running partner.  My sister is also training for the same half marathon, but our schedules don’t really work for running together.  Hopefully soon we will at least be able to do our long runs together.  Running alone sucks. Thankfully next week when we are at the cottage, all my girlfriends are coming up at some point in the week, so I will have lots of people to run with up there!

Work was another crazy day.  I’ve got so many things that I need to get wrapped up before I go on vacation on Friday.  Hopefully I get most of it done tomorrow and Friday can be slightly less hectic than the rest of the week has been.

Tonight hubby and I went out for a nice dinner for an early celebration of our anniversary.  On Monday, Aug 6, it will be our 18th wedding anniversary.  We will be up at the cottage with our family on that day and the following day our friends start rolling in for the week, so not exactly a romantic situation.  So, tonight, since the kids are already up at the cottage, we decide to go out for a nice dinner.  We ended up going to The Melting Pot Fondue Restaurant.  We had a “Big Night Out” dinner, which has a cheese fondue to start, salad, the main meat fondue and then a chocolate fondue to finish up.  Oh my god….so good!  Totally not on the clean eating plan, but it was a special night, so I didn’t worry too much about it.  We had a nice leisurely meal, had a few laughs, and a good chat.  We even got a complimentary box of chocolate dipped strawberries to take home with us, since we were celebrating our anniversary.   It was a very nice night.

 

After dinner, it was home to catch up on Big Brother.  We PVR’d it since we were going to be out.  The Veto was used and Frank is now on the block.  Can’t wait until tomorrow to see who is going to be out the door.  Hopefully it’s Frank!

Now, hubs is snoozing on the couch and I am furiously typing so I can wrap up this post and get to bed.  I’ve got a 4km tempo run to do tomorrow morning.  I’m terrified!  I’ll let you know tomorrow how it goes.

Hope your Hump Day was a good one.  

 

Two days until the weekend and the start of my vacation!  Come on Friday!!!