Food and Fitness Journal November 12,2013

Hey hey there everybody. Not much to write about today but overall, it was a good day. Another day in the life really! I stuck to my diet all day and really avoided temptation. It is getting easier and easier everyday to say no to the things that used to tempt me. I work in an establishment on Tuesdays that just so happens to have an amazing Italian restaurant inside of it. The smells coming out of the kitchen used to just torture me but I am getting better and better at putting them in the back of my mind. Instead of mowing down a huge plate of pasta I make sure to bring my own dinner and pack my own snacks. I also enter them into my MyFitnessPal before I come to work that way I know that I can't go over and it is already set to go. I also make sure to have a glass of water on hand so that I am less tempted to pick up other drinks like soda and energy drinks. Even when I am sitting around at home I don't get tempted to snack nearly as much as I used to. 

I also am starting to see other changes in myself. I have seen the scale go down these last couple months but I haven't seen any major changes in my appearance. Today I was comparing pictures of myself from a the beginning of summer and what I look like today and the one thing that really stuck out to me is the difference in my face. 

My face is less round and more defined. What are those things....cheekbones? ha I didn't really realize the change until I looked at this picture. I also like that my double chin is going away. 

Just a little something I thought I would share with you guys!

Feeling Good!!...Food and Fitness Journal November 11, 2013!

Off to a great start this week. I woke up this morning feeling surprisingly energized and optimistic despite the lack of sleep. I am really feeling good about this month. I feel like I am going to make great strides this time around.

Food:

Breakfast- Odwalla Banana Nut Bar, Kahlua K Cup with Coffee Mate Eggnog Latte Creamer. 

 I can not tell you how excited I was to find this after my Eggnog Latte at Dunkin Donuts. It's a way to still get the delicious satisfaction of eggnog and coffee without all the extra calories. It did not disappoint. It was creamy and slightly sweet with all the wonderfulness of eggnog. 

Lunch-Arby's Market Fresh Turkey Wrap with Cheddar and No Mayo plus a side salad.

Dinner- I made a lightened up version of Chicken Cordon Bleu. I used chicken breast that I tenderized and flattened out. I then stuffed them with feta and Fit and Active Smoked Ham. I rolled them up and secured them with toothpicks and then dipped them in milk. After that I rolled them in a coating which I made out of whole wheat bread crumbs, paprika, pepper, and garlic powder. I baked them about 35 minutes at 350 degrees. I paired it with Bird's Eye Steamfresh Chef's Favorite Roasted Red Potatoes and Green Beans with Parmesan Olive Oil Sauce. The dinner was amazing and Zach LOVED it! I am going to be making it again. 

Snacks- Mandarin orange can in light syrup in between breakfast and lunch. I had a Fit and Active Protein Energy Bar in Cookie Dough while I was grocery shopping to ward off hunger and give me some substance before my workout. It was def not as delicious as it sounded. After dinner I had a Smart Ones Peanut Butter Sundae Cup for dessert. 

Workout:

I started first by warming up with this PlyoJam Dance Workout on FitSugar. It was so much fun and man did it get your heart rate going. It is a dance inspired plyo workout so there was a lot of jumping and a lot of leg work. My glutes were on fire and I hadn't even started my real workout yet. I love workouts that are so fun I don't feel like it is torture. Click here to check it out!

After that workout I did the new workout on the Lionsgate Befit channel on YouTube. Another great workout. This one really got my sweating and by the end I was officially spent. My whole body was feeling the burn but it felt soooo good. I loved the circuit and will def add this to my list of workouts to do again. 

Scheduled Sweat Sessions And A Few Of My Favorite Things!

Hello there lovely fitness family. I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. Mine was busy and hectic but overall it was good. It marked the end of a long but glorious wedding season. I ate pretty well this weekend despite being on the go. I even fit in enough time for a good gym session tonight.

Weekend Food Recap:

Friday

               Breakfast~Log Cabin multigrain pancakes which I doctored up a bit with egg substitute, almond milk, vanilla, and cinnamon. They were wonderful and Zach loved them! 

Lunch- Honey Bunches of Oats with Cinnamon Clusters and almond milk. 

Dinner- Beef speedies and Wholy Guacamole 100 calorie pack with some multigrain tortilla chips. 

Snacks- Newton Fruit Thins Toasted Coconut Drizzled with Dark Chocolate

Saturday

Breakfast- Dunkin Donuts Turkey Sausage Egg White Flatbread with hash browns. I also treated myself to an Eggnog Latte! It was delish but a treat and will not happen again for a long time. 

Lunch-Mandarin Oranges 

Dinner- Half of a fried fish fillet and a salad with oil, vinegar, and lemon squeeze.

Sunday

Breakfast- Wholy Guacamole 100 Calorie Pack on a pita.

Lunch- Sweet Italian sausage link with peppers and onions...no bun.

Dinner- Hamburger with onion, lettuce, and ketchup. No bun. A huge dill pickle :)

Snacks- Dole Real Fruit Bites Apple Chunks. One piece of Wild Bills Hickory Smoked Beef Jerky.

Overall my weekend eating habits weren't horrible but they could have been better. I decided this week I need to really plan things out. Most of my botched workouts and cheat meals are due to poor planning and last minute decisions. I think I can do a lot better if I plan things out a bit better so I sat down this afternoon and planned out all my workouts for the week. A lot of cardio, some yoga, and kickboxing are in store and I am excited. Meal planning and prep will happen tomorrow night when I have more time. 

A Few Of My Favorite Things:

These things are AMAZING! Now they are not really healthy at all but they are packed with whole grains and fiber. I ate one a couple times this week when my stomach was really craving something sweet. It is a good replacement for a candy bar in moderation. 190 calories is much better than the 300+ that you can consume in one candy bar. 

Mandarin oranges are my best friend lately. I got a bunch of light syrup ones and have been loving them this week. They are sweet, natural, and not guilt inducing. 

Love love love this juice. I buy the big bottle and have a glass with my breakfast about 4 times a week. It is a nice and delicious way to squeeze in some extra nutrition. It is jam packed with all sorts of greens and fruits and vitamins. It's like juicing without having to make the juice. 

Workout and Food Journal...Chobani Flips Review!

Hey fitfam! I hope you are having a wonderful start to your November. Mine has been a little hectic but it is going well. I got the code to weight in for my new Dietbet this morning. Since I didn't check my email until this evening I am going to have to weigh in tomorrow morning. I am excited to get another challenge underway. I am even more excited to have other people doing it with me this time around. I have been trying to stick to the Knockout November Workout Calendar on Fitnessista but I have been doing a lot of on the fly workouts too.

I told you the other day how I finally found some of the new Chobani Flips flavors that I have been trying to find for a while. I picked up three total and I have now tried all 3 of them! Here are my thoughts....

Tropical Escape- By far my favorite out of the three that I picked up. I loved the pineapple/coconut flavor. I am a coco-nut!! Get it...nvm...but I love coconut. I thought everything paired really well together and I felt like I was eating a dessert instead of a yogurt.

My next favorite was the Nutty For Nanna. I liked that it had a natural subtle banana flavor. It wasn't overwhelming and it didn't taste artificial like some banana flavored foods can be. I also thought the almonds and chocolate paired with it really well.

My least favorite was the Peachy Pistachio and it was the only one that I don't think I would repurchase. Now I love peach and I love pistachios but I didn't like them mixed together as much as I thought I would. I loved the peach yogurt and how it had little chunks of peach. I also liked that you get a fair amount of pistachios. I think it I left them separate and ate both on their own I would like it but I didn't like the taste they created together.

Workouts:

This week hasn't been too exciting as far as workouts go. On Monday I went to Planet Fitness with a friend. We did 30 minutes on the Arc Trainer and then did upper body on the machines. We just went to each upper body machine once and did sets of 12-10-8. We increased the weight as we decreased the reps. On Tuesday I decided to do a Jillian Michaels workout that was way tougher than I thought it would be. 

This is the workout I did. It was about an hour long and it is a tough one for where my endurance is right now. I had to do some modifications as times because I was too winded or my muscles hurt. My goal is to be able to do this without stopping or modifying at some point. I think I am going to make it a point to do this once a week and track my progress. 

Tonight I am going to Planet Fitness again and doing legs. I don't have set exercises yet but I usually do weighted squats, leg press, wall sits, the inner and outer thigh machines, walking lunches, and hamstring stuff. We will see!! 

New Chobani Flavors and Other Healthy Food Finds...New Monthly Challenges!

Hey hey there healthy people!! Happy November to everyone. I can't believe that the year is already coming to a close. It seems like this year flew by for me. I am sad to see Halloween come and go as well since it is one of my favorite holidays but alas that is how the world works. November and I have a love/hate relationship. I love November because it has Thanksgiving in it but I hate it because in Upstate New York Thanksgiving means that it is going to snow. I feel like I was just getting to the point where I really love working out outside and at some point this month that will all be taken away from me. I know there are plenty of people out there who will run in the bitter cold but I am not one of them.

Anyway, with a new month means new challenges and goals. If you have been reading my blog since it began then you know that I did a couple challenges last month and that one of them was through the website www.dietbet.com. Dietbet is a website where your goal is to lose 4% of your body weight in a month. When the bet begins you put a set wager amount in the pot and all those who make their goal split the pot at the end. Check the website out for more information on how it works. Last month I had many mixed feelings on the website and didn't know if I would do another challenge. I liked the financial incentive but it made me very scale conscious and a little anxious. Well I am doing another challenge. The girls at work all loved watching my success and really wanted to make changes themselves so we all decided to join one together. This month we are doing the Holiday Shape UP on Dietbet. Wager amount is $20 which is a decent amount. Come join us!!!

I also found a lovely little workout calendar that I am going to try and follow all month. www.fitnessista.com is where you can find it. She has a nice layout of workouts for the whole month of November with days assigned to different workouts that she has created. It looked like a fun way to keep yourself from falling into the gym boredom. I have been reading her blog for a while now and was excited to see her put up a challenge.

Monthly Goals:

1. Drink more water...always a goal for me. 
2. Plan more workouts with friends. 
3. Allow myself to have cheat meals without beating myself up over it.
4. Win my dietbet. 

New Products:

I finally found the new Chobani flavors of the flips. I have been looking for months with no luck. I went to a different grocery store than normal the other day and finally found them. I didn't get all the flavors because not all of the flavors appealed to me but I picked up 3 different ones to try. 

 The first flavor I bought was Peachy Pistachio which is peach greek yogurt with pistachios and dark chocolate. Three of my favorite things in one place, you know I'm excited.

 The next flavor is Tropical Escape which is a pineapple coconut flavored greek yogurt with hazelnuts, coconut, and granola.

 The last flavor I bought was Nutty For Nana which is banana flavored greek yogurt with dark chocolate and  honey roasted salted almonds.

They all sound amazing. I haven't tried any of them yet but I will let you know what I think.

The next find is the new Newtons Fruit Thins in Toasted Coconut with Dark Fudge. I am a coconut junkie I swear. If it says coconut on it or has coconut in it than I need to have it. I actually was on a mission to find the banana fruit thins but went with these instead. They are amazing!!! They are a healthier version of the Samoa's that Girl Scout makes. You get a good coconut flavor with chocolate without feeling so guilty. Now I will not claim these to be healthy but they are a better option if you have a sweet tooth.

Last is this Full Circle All Natural Mutigrain Pizza. I bought this for my boyfriend because if I can't get him to stop eating pizza at least I can make it a bit better for him. He actually really like it. It was still fairly high in fat and sodium so it is by no means a healthy meal but it is better than the alternatives.

I Won My Dietbet and Trader Joe Cookie Butter Alternative!

Woooo I am happy to say that as of today I officially won my Dietbet. All those moments of stress and scale obsession payed off. As sad as that sounds I am excited that I won. I mean who wants to lose money? Not me!!  I am happy that I succeeded. For one, that means I lost 10 pounds this month which is a great thing and I am very proud of myself for that. For two, it means that I can put my scale up for a while and just focus on my changes elsewhere like my measurements, eating habits, how many reps of exercises I can do , and am not always just thinking “scale number, scale number, scale number.”  Like I said I don’t think I will do another one for a while but we will see. The concept intrigued a lot of my friends and if doing it with them will motivate then I may consider it but it was a bit mentally draining for me. With winning this Dietbet it also meant that for the first time in a long time I was under 200 pounds. That is crazy to me! 

Woohoo my body 20 pounds lighter! I am so happy to be able to look in the mirror and see the difference finally. It is so much more motivating when you can see the changes you are making!!

 

Also being that the end of the month is coming that also means my Tone It Up Frisky Fall Challenge is coming to a close as well as my Betty Rocker Rocktober Challenge. I honestly loved both. While integrating both challenges together I saw a huge change in my body both in endurance and strength. I loved the gradual difficulty increase of the Betty Rocker workouts and loved seeing my body get stronger and better at each of the workouts. It also gave me a lot of new body strength exercises that I can do anywhere. I loved that the Tone It Up workouts gave me a set schedule of what to do each week and allowed me to never get bored. There was a nice mix of cardio, strength training, stretching, etc… Videos each week included new ones you hadn’t seen before which made things exciting and it gave me a lot of great cardio options like interval training and stair workouts! I can’t wait for either of these ladies to do another challenge and most definatley will sign up for them in the future.

 

New Discovery That I Wish Had Gone Unfound….

So since my wondrous discovery of the Trader Joe Cookie Butter which I wrote about (here) I have found myself longing for it. That rich, creamy, sweet gingerbread taste is missing from my life now and I do not know how to go on without it. I do not live anywhere close to Trader Joes and buying  Cookie Butter online is obnoxious. It is extremely overpriced and I just could not shell out $15-20 a jar for the stuff. In a desperation to find an alternative I googled recipes on how to make my own and found that was no easy task either. Buying the cookies to make it would cost almost as much as just buying it online so I decided to look at another route and see if I could find a brand that made something similar. Well I sure did and I feel complete again. Now I do not know that this discovery is a good thing because that means that I can get this stuff anytime I want and seeing as how it is my version of crack this could lead to bad bad things. I discovered that a brand called Biscoff Spread which is made by a company named Lotus is almost an exact dupe of Cookie Butter. Like Cookie Butter is comes in crunchy and creamy and is made with a similar biscuit. It is from Europe but you can buy it in many places in the US. I found mine in good ol’ Walmart in the peanut butter sections. It is fairly priced between $3.50- $3.75 at my Walmart which is about the same price point as Cookie Butter. The jar is a bit smaller in the crunchy style which is too bad since that is my favorite. I honestly didn't notice a difference between TJ’s and Biscoff. They both have a delicious gingerbread flavor which around the same amount of nutritional value. 

Hectic Halloween and Healthy Fall Snacks!

Woohoo it is Halloween week!! Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I love all the decorations and dressing up. I love carving pumpkins and handing out candy to trick or treaters. As I got older and reached the drinking age Halloween also enjoyed going out with my friends to the bars with our Halloween costumes on. With as much as I love Halloween it was also a time of year that really got me down. Costume shopping was always a dreaded experience. All of my friends would get these cute little skimpy outfits and I would be the one wearing a frock. Now I never wanted to prance around town in a bikini but I always wanted to look better in a costume. To at least be able to find something cute!

This year is the first Halloween in years where I put on my Halloween costume and felt great. Now I know I have a lot left to do and there is still a lot of work to be done but this was a small milestone for me. A milestone that made me go "woooo I can do this after all." I was going through my phone and looking at some pictures from a couple months ago and it finally hit me how far I have come already. Seeing the difference in my photo's was really rewarding. It makes me want to keep going and keep succeeding.

This weekend was full of Halloween fun. Friday night I worked a Halloween party for work. I am a bartender and we had bands play and there was a costume contest. It was a lot of fun! I had such a confidence boost that night! Saturday I went to a costume contest with my family. We had been constructing the costumes for a long time and had hours and hours of work put into them. We all made minions!!! We won the contest and had soooo much fun. I did have a couple beers but didn't go overboard. Plus with as hot as the heads were I think I sweated out most of them.

Workout:

Today was a pretty relaxing day around the house for the boyfriend and I! We rarely get time off together so we took advantage of it and spent the afternoon watching movies and relaxing. I told him though that he had a couple options 1)Go to the gym 2)Go for a trail run or 3) Do an at home workout with me. He chose option 3 and let me tell ya he worked his butt off but so did I. Since he is just getting back in to being active I picked something that would be challenging and fun for the two of us.

It was a really fun workout and we were covered in sweat by the end. I love when he joins me in a workout but it doesn't happen too often!

Food:

Breakfast: Yoplait Light Harvest Peach Yogurt and a banana.

Lunch: A good ol' PB&J with a twist. Bimbo Whole Grain White Bread with Fit and Active Strawberry Jelly and the Jif Whipped Peanut Butter. 

Dinner: I made a slimmed down version of our favorite meal...Chicken Broccoli Alfredo! I used Priano Light Alfredo sauce from Aldis. I also cooked some chicken breasts lightly in garlic infused olive oil. We used Organic Whole Wheat Shells and I added steamed broccoli to mine! It was soooo good.

Snacks: Zach had a craving for popcorn so we made some all natural popcorn. Literally we took it off a dried corn cob. It was delicious! For dessert I ate a Weight Watchers Ice Cream Candy Bar.

I also put together some Baked Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal for breakfast for the next couple days. I found the recipe here and it came out pretty awesome! I had home made applesauce that my mom made and apples from her trees and it made it even that much better. I also prepped some chicken for the week since the oven was already on.

I am looking forward to what this week has in store. It is the end of my Dietbet...eek!!! As of this morning my goal was met so I am confident when I weigh in on Wednesday I will be on point. Now to decide what challenge to do next. I like having a challenge and having something to look forward to. I am a competitive spirit and like trying to bet a goal. I was looking into a challenge via. GNC today so I may do that one.