what I ate (this) wednesday

I have to say that the Olympics have taken over my life.  I am not running, sleeping, or working, I am watching the Olympics.  It really is sad because it is summer when I should be doing other things besides watching tv but I am addicted.  Especially to Ryan Lotche, well to be more specific Ryan Lotche's abs. 

Anyways, seeing as the Olympics have become such a big part of my life (for two weeks) something else has to be cut back and unfortunately that has been sleep.  I am pretty good about keeping a strict bedtime of 10pm since I usually get up between 5-6am.  But the Olympics have ripped my usual routine to shreds and I have been seeing 11's on the clock before bed lately.  Not exactly the best idea as I am increasing my mileage as I train for the half marathon in September.  But its only for two weeks, right?

Since I posted yesterday about clean eating, today I guess I am showing you the (almost) total opposite.  I am lucky to have a pretty decent cafeteria at work where they make some pretty (semi) healthy and delicious dishes for lunch.  Since I was too busy watching the Olympics last night to pack myself a lunch, I opted to buy today. So here is what I ate today for lunch!



Grilled pesto chicken on flat bread (with roasted red peppers and provolone cheese)

O.M.G. was that a good lunch.  I love pesto.  I don't eat it enough.

I think I could easily make this at home on a weekend and it would be just as good!

Now with a full belly, I just have to make it to the end of the day.  I may need more coffee!

Happy Wednesday!

Why can't I eat clean?

I have recently started to take a closer look at what I eat on a daily basis.  I pretty much always thought I was a good eater but I do have a pretty strong sweet tooth.

For some time I have seen challenges out there to eat cleaner and give up processed food.  That got me thinking about all of the processed foods I eat in a day...

Here are a few from the weekend that I have consumed:
Oreos
Ice cream
Peach rings

And most likely a few more that I am forgetting, but those are the major ones.

I also started thinking about what exactly "processed foods" means. I don't think I actually know what is and isn't a processed food.

Processed foods are foods that have been altered from their natural state.

So I am trying to revamp my diet to include less processed foods and try to clean foods in their natural state.  And it is pretty hard. 

Breakfast seems to be the easiest meal for me to eat clean because I am on a smoothie kick and so I have coconut milk with frozen banana, peanut butter, and spinach.  But peanut butter is processed, right? And I love peanut butter.

Lunch is a bit harder for because even if I pack a salad for lunch, I do like my salad dressing and I do love some cookies or animal crackers.

Dinner usually is a decent meal with a meat and two vegetables but often as bedtime approaches the freezer or cookie jar calls my name to eat some ice cream or more cookies.

Guess this whole clean eating is going to be harder than I thought, but I think it might be worth the challenge.  I just need to decide how intense and extreme I want to get with what I eat.  For me, giving up cookies (or dessert) is not really something I want to do so maybe I need to make sure I always have homemade cookies in the house which I know are better for me.

Having a garden in the back yard is definitely helping me to eat better and it is a start.  We now have even more vegetables than before in the fridge which makes choosing a healthy snack even easier. 

I am interested in your thoughts on eating and processed foods. How do you make it work?



A few articles I read: Here and Here and Here

How does your garden grow??

Remember what my garden looked like a month ago???

Well now it looks like this....

So far we have had 12 zucchini and 1 cucumber.  In another week or so I think we will be over run with tomatoes!

Happy Friday!!

Changing plans

This morning I woke up to darkness.  It was raining and lightning at 5am and so my well made plans of running a longer run were foiled.  I laid in bed for about 15 minutes thinking maybe I could fall back to sleep but I couldn't.

So I got up and made breakfast, checked the weather and by the time I had finished my second cup of coffee the rain had stopped.

The best made plans sometimes don't work out.  I wanted to run and I wanted to do this workout this morning but I guess the weather was telling me something I didn't want to admit.  I needed to take a break.

If I had run this morning, it would have been 4 runs in 36 hours for a total of 27 miles.  I had been trying to bulk up on miles early in the week so I could have more free time this weekend (Friday thru Sunday) for other fun activities.

I don't get to relax much in the mornings, my schedule is pretty packed and so a typical morning usually looks like this...

5am Alarm goes off/Wake  up

5:10am Lace up shoes and head out for a run
6am Arrive home from run
6-640am Shower, eat, leave for work
7am Arrive at work

Its a pretty hectic schedule. 

Instead of 10 miles this morning, I had two nice cups of coffee and a relaxing morning, something I don't get to do often.  And maybe I will be able to make up the miles between now and Sunday, but if not I guess that is ok too.

Now the sun is shining brightly but my window of opportunity to run has already passed.  It wasn't such a bad morning though, actually it was just what I needed :-)

End of a streak

Yesterday marked my first COMPLETE rest day in 36 days.

Wow.  Over a month of consecutive workouts.

My legs definitely needed the rest.  I had taken days off from running, usually at least one per week, but on my off days I have been filling my exercise void with active recovery by going to spinning class at the gym.

And I may be a little bit crazy for working out for so many days in a row.  But I enjoy it.  I don't always go fast every day, I usually listen to my body and see how I feel, but working out every day just makes me feel good.

I spend most of my day sitting in a chair. For the summer months, that is at the very most 10 HOURS a day people! 10 hours of 24 per day.  Yeah - I get up and walk around and take breaks and go to the bathroom and eat lunch but its still a lot of sitting. So if I don't exercise, I feel like a complete slob.


Via: Medical Billing And Coding

Apparently sitting is killing you.  And me.  So today I start my streak over again and see how far this one takes me.