A Full Day of Healthy Eating

January 3, 2020January 3, 2021Leave a comment

It’s 2020! To celebrate the new decade, I’ve been doing what any amateur adult would do and I’ve been eating all the bad food. And by bad food I obviously mean the most delicious food that is the worst for your body. I’m talking pizza. I’m talking taquitos. I’m talking all the chicken nuggets. Add all the soda pop and alcohol I’ve been consuming to replace all the water I haven’t been consuming and it’s safe to say I need to replenish some nutrients here.

So…

…this is my full day of eating when I’m being extra good to myself while also eating in a deficit.

(Actually it’s a combination of what I ate Monday and what I ate yesterday, but don’t tell the food police. I eat basically the same thing every day so it’s fine.)

Breakfast

My easiest meal. Mostly because it’s the same thing every day of my life.

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Jimmy Dean Delights: Turkey Sausage, Egg White, & Cheese English Muffin with Coffee (elixir of life) and my First Liter of Water

They’re easy, they’re healthy, and they’re delicious. I eat the same thing for breakfast every day. Listen, breakfast was always hard for me because as much as I try to make myself be a morning person, I am not a morning person. So I found something that works for me and that’s what I’ve stuck to for the past couple years. And of course I add Tapatios hot sauce. Only Tapatios.

Lunch

Lunch is the hardest meal of the day, in my opinion. I work at my husband’s business and if you know anything about owning a business you understand me when I say sometimes we don’t get to take lunch. If the phones are ringing off the hook or we’re short-staffed in the warehouse, we all jump in and help keep everything running smoothly at the expense of our “break-time.”

So here are my typical lunch options for busy days vs normal days:

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Busy Days (Monday): Subway Steak & Cheese Salad with their Chipotle Southwest Sauce and Sweet Onion Sauce for dressing

According to my metabolic type and personal research, my body functions best on higher protein, lower carb foods. (I am not one of those people who can have a cup of white rice for every meal and lose weight. I will bloat until I look like Violet Beauregarde.) So when I can, I opt for no bread. Our subway also has a drive-thru so on busy days I swing by there and eat at my desk. This is what I had on Monday.

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Normal Days (Thursday): Bird’s Eye Veggie Made Rotini Alfredo with Broccoli

This is still a very easy meal… but hey, I do have to stick this one in the microwave. Honestly, I don’t have time to cook at lunch and I even if I did, I don’t want to. This pasta is great and I usually throw in some leftover veggies from the night before; today was broccoli.

Dinner

As a rule of thumb for my dinners I try to make them:

Little to no carbs
A good source of protein
A full serving of vegetables
As little processed ingredients as possible

I already showed you my turkey scramble recipe, but I also love to make fish:

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Marinated Salmon with Steamed Broccoli

That sounds very fancy, but it is not at all. I get individually frozen salmon filets and a 30 minute marinade. When I get home from work, I thaw my salmon in cold water, then stick it in the fridge with my marinade for half an hour, then saute it in a skillet. Literally that easy. Oh, and I get steam-in-the-bag frozen broccoli so that gets popped in the microwave while I cook the salmon. Ta-da! A well balanced dinner.

And that’s basically it. A couple things to note:

I try not to snack on a daily basis because I can’t control myself around a good snack. I mean honestly, who can though?

I don’t count calories or macros anymore simply because I know the nutrient breakdown of the foods I eat regularly because I have counted calories and macros for so long. It’s redundant and doesn’t give me anything by writing it down anymore. I highly recommend it, though, if you don’t already have a good idea of what you’re consuming calorie and nutrient wise.

I drink 3 liters of water every day throughout my day, and a cup of decaf green tea before bed

Voila! A full day of eating. I’m slowly but surely putting together a blog about how I figured out how to eat healthy and how I make my “meal plans” so if all of this sounds like something you could get on board with but don’t know where to start, keep an eye out for that blog. It took me about six years to figure out how to eat healthy on my own so if you’re struggling, I feel you. The best advice I have is that the slower you start off the easier it will be to maintain changes. Give it time.

But okay, that all sounds very bloggy. I’m going to go now.

Did anyone else celebrate going into the ’20s by partying like Gatsby? First I took a drink, then my drink took a drink, then the drink took me.

Day 28/90: How to Re-Set

December 22, 2019January 3, 2021Leave a comment

Hey, hi, hello, internet.

Being an adult is weird… One moment you’re achieving your goals, blogging every day, hitting the gym, then the next moment your grandmother dies…

My grandmother passed away last Friday so I’ve been on a life-hiatus for the last week. When we lived in Wisconsin, we would drive to Kentucky to visit my Mamaw and Papaw every Thanksgiving. I fully credit Mamaw with my love of nature. Me being the true born city girl that I am, I never really did anything outside… until Thanksgiving. Mamaw would take me four-wheeling into the mountains; we ~~walked~~ waded in the creek for miles collecting rocks (I still collect rocks and minerals btw); we would play in the barn with the newest animals she had or walking across the plank between the two lofts; and she would sing while I played my violin on the porch (very badly as a 5th grader, but she didn’t care). She was 84 but truly acted like she was 14, in the best way. I’ll never look at Kentucky mountain or valley again without seeing her there.

Pardon the crass transition

Without surprise, I’ve fallen off the wagon as far as fitness and health goes for the past week, so I thought this would be a good time to talk about how I re-set and kick my butt back into gear.

How to Re-Set Your Goals

#1 Re-evaluate your goals

People “mess up” on their goals for a multitude of different reasons, most of them not nearly as dramatic as death, but regardless of the reason you need to first determine if it is a you-problem or a goal-problem.

A lot of the time it’s a you-problem (that sounds harsh but stay with me) where you’ve either lost motivation, or been a little too lax on yourself, or maybe it’s the holiday’s and you let yourself indulge, or maybe heavy, adult things smacked you in the face like they did me. All of those scenarios can be summed up by saying:

life happens. And that’s okay!

However, sometimes it’s a goal-problem. Maybe you got injured because your workouts were too intense, or maybe you’re exhausted from too few calories, or maybe you’re truly burnt out from being TOO strict on yourself. You have to be honest with yourself and adjust if your goals are too much to handle all at once.

#2 Let yourself change your mind!

If you need to adjust your goals, allow yourself to do so. This was going to be lumped in with the “re-evaluate” part, but I thought it was worth it’s own bullet point!

People (me, I’m people) get so stuck in their ways sometimes and don’t allow themselves to change their mind. Don’t set yourself up for failure! Adjust your goals so that they are still challenging but attainable.

#3 Be very strict for the first few days, but don’t overcompensate.

Again with the setting yourself up for failure; don’t overcompensate! Do what you would normally do to chug along towards your goals.

Think about it this way, if you push yourself too hard during your re-set you’re more likely to fail again, and then you’ll have to re-set again, and if you overcompensate again then you’ll be more likely to fail again, and then you’ll have to re-set again… You see what I mean? So start fresh. Move on. You can’t change anything you’ve already done, so do better this time around.

#4 Stay positive.

This is probably the most important part of a re-set for any goals. Your mindset can make all the difference when it comes to starting over.

Keep in mind:

You’ll bounce back quicker than before
You’ve already done this part successfully once, you can do it again
Take it day by day.
Actually, take it decision by decision.
- If someone offers you a Christmas cookie and you only get those cookies at Christmas and you really want that cookie… Eat the cookie. But then the very next decision make sure it’s a good decision. That will set you back on track.

No matter what your goals may be or why you need a goal re-set right now, I hope this blog hits the right notes for you.

Does anyone have any other tips and tricks? Motivation? I’ll take it all: Questions, suggestions, criticism, concerns, send them my way please and thank you. I will be starting my re-set tomorrow. The day before Christmas Eve. Because I am a masochistic idiot.

Wish me luck.

Okkkkaaayyyyy bye!

Mamaw

Winter Goals

December 21, 2019January 10, 20201 Comment

Good morning, happy winter!

I’ve never been good at new year’s resolutions, mainly because by July of whatever year I’ve made the goals I’ve already forgotten what they were. So I decided a while back that I was going to do seasonal goals. So here we go!

Winter Goals

Lose 15lbs and 7% body fat
No explanation required, we’re still doing a fitness thing here even if I have fallen behind. 175lbs & 29% are the numbers I’m aiming for.

Write the first draft of my novel
It’s been in the works for a very very long time and I think I have everything I need to write a complete draft, everything except the will power that is.

Stop biting my nails
Surely 3 months is long enough to kick that habit, right?

Read at least three books
I don’t do this enough.

Do at least two charcoal drawings
I have an art degree, but you’d never know by the amount of art I make.

I think seasonal goals will be great not only for mindset but also for practicality! These are all things that I want to do, of course, but I tailored these goals to be winter specific. I also want to walk our husky more often and kayak and hike, but if I decide on those goals in January when it’s 16 degrees and we’re buried in Kentucky ice, how will I get excited about those goals again in May?

I need to do things immediately or I lose interest.

The fact that I won’t be writing on my novel as soon as I close this blog will undoubtedly make me think twice about that goal when I do sit down to write. But no matter, they’re written in the blog and so they shall be.

Alrighty, that’s all!

If you have any goals that you don’t want to put off until the ball drops, tell me about them! Let’s make seasonal goals a thing. Can we do that? Is that legal?

I really do.

Pick your Goal

December 2, 2019January 3, 2021Leave a comment

I don’t have a whole lot to say this morning. Maybe it’s my commitment to this 90 days or maybe it’s a detrimental personality trait that I want to get a blog up today anyway, regardless of the length or quality. Hmm. But this is actually something that’s on my mind a lot…

…So I listen to a lot of podcasts. I really hopped on that pod-trend. And one podcast in particular that I like to listen to while I’m at the gym is the “Let’s Run” Podcast by Pahla B Fitness. (She recently changed the name, so now it’s “Fitness Matters” if you’re looking for it.) Now I feel like her YouTube channel and her podcast is geared more towards the older crowd, 40 years and above, but she is one of the most inspiring podcasters that I’ve found.

The reason I bring her up though is because she has the sweetest voice I’ve ever heard but she is perilously realistic with the advice she chooses to give. One thing that I heard from her at the very beginning of my initial weight loss odyssey was essentially:

If you want many different things, such as to lose weight and gain muscle and run a 5K, you have to pick one at a time or you won’t be able to efficiently or fully accomplish any of them.

(Disclaimer: I know that is in a cool little quote box, but that is not a direct quote from her, it’s just my paraphrasing.)

You can see how alarming this would be to a dabbler such as myself. When she was talking about this she used those three specific goal examples and I happen to actually want all three of those things! At that time in my life I was

doing tons of cardio to drop the pounds,
weightlifting for an hour 5 days a week to gain those muscles,
and incorporating interval running a couple evenings a week to teach myself how to properly run any distance at all.

I’m not saying I took her word as gospel, but I was a teensy bit crushed.

Make no mistake I was definitely seeing results but I was also exhausted. Not just physically but emotionally, too. I knew deep down in my multitasker’s heart that it wasn’t sustainable. So I decided that Pahla was the excuse I would give myself to focus on weight loss instead of a bunch of different things.

I don’t know if I’m seeing better results yet but I do feel like I can sustain this lifestyle now for as long as it takes to be completely satisfied. I don’t feel like all my goals are a race to the finish line anymore (haha, pun!).

And that’s the thing about goals, health goals in particular: I enjoy working towards something! I’ve found that the times my anxiety flares up the most is when I lose my intention for things. (To be fair that’s a chicken and egg situation because I don’t know which of those causes the other.) So why do I feel like all of my fitness goals need to be finished immediately?

Full honesty here:

To wrap up this blog all nice and neatly I was trying to think of other examples of non-health goals that I have that I don’t feel like need to accomplish as quickly as possible and apparently I don’t have any. My brain has informed me that all of my ambitions on a very tight schedule. Cool. No wonder I’m a collection of procrastination and nervous energy wrapped in skin. Love that.

We’re all works in progress anyway. No one really knows what they’re doing.

A Week of (mostly) Health

December 1, 2019January 3, 2021Leave a comment

Fun Fact: Did you know that 5:10pm in Abu Dhabi is 8:10am in Kentucky? Does that mean that I can drink while I watch this live F1 race? It’s 5 o’clock somewhere, amirite?

It’s been a whole week! (Yeah, I stopped doing the day numbers in the titles so I had to count. That’s going to get really confusing.)

A week in review:

I have acquired a Body Fat percentage scale (thanks Black Friday Amazon deals) so I will update all my numeric data next week sometime. Maybe on day 10, that’s a nice round number.
I think my body is now used to waking up early. It’s certainly not happy about it, but it’s used to it for the most part. I woke up naturally at 7am the other day. I mean, I went back to bed because I didn’t have to work that day, but I did wake up for a few minutes! I’d count that.
I’m in the routine of blogging every day! Woo!

I’ve worked out 4 of the past 6 days, eaten healthy 3 of the past 6 days (it was Thanksgiving, I have no regrets), and blogged every day! I think that’s a pretty good start.

brushes off shoulder dramatically

I’m feeling good about this. I’m feeling strong and committed.

Also, just so you all know, this website / blog won’t be entirely about health and weight loss. Fitness and health happens to be what I’m dabbling in right now and I can’t think about anything else.

This is what I’m talking about when I say I jump into the deep end with things; heath has consumed my life for the past couple months.

That novel I am writing? Nah, I gotta go to the gym.

Getting back to charcoal drawing? Nope, need to scour pinterest for healthy recipes.

Picking up my violin? I’ll do it later.

Gaming? Back burner.

I’m not proud of this quality. I’m trying to get better, which is part of the reason I started this blog. It wasn’t really intended for an audience (though I greatly appreciate anyone who gives a hoot about my daily ramblings), but it was a quick and dirty way to get my brain to do something besides obsess over my current obsession. I think it’s working! Finger’s crossed.

Okay, I’m going to watch this race now. Does anyone else watch Formula 1? Go Ricciardo! Woo!

Lola’s body is far from used to waking up early.

Dabbling Adult