6 Week Challenge – Week 3

Today’s entry will be a summary of the challenge so far.

CSA Day: Mario Edition

Today’s CSA included Mario turnips! Hahaha! What better to do than to reenact some classic veggie-throwing Mario goodness?

Also included were:
– Beets
– Kale
– Romaine
– String Beans
– Broccoli
– Peas
– Turnips
– Multi Grain Bread

We’re heading to Costco right now to pick up some protein to go with all this veggie goodness. We’re going to pick up some frozen fruit, too, and start having smoothies in the morning.

I’m thinking of sending messages to my sister and her hubby to get a good recipe for borscht, and I might get a little daring and put cheese over the broccoli…

If you have ideas on how to eat these great veggies, leave your thoughts in the comments below!

Sh-Boom! Life Could Be a Dream

 

The title is inspired by the track that is playing in the background as I write this post.  I am such a lucky person.  Gainfully employed, completing my degree, happily in love and married, and about to buy my own home…. what’s not to love?  Life really could be a dream.

This morning when I came to work, my mom was approaching my desk with a gift for me:  It’s a binder with copies of execises that she’s collected from her experience at the gym.  There are BOSU workouts, bootcamp style interval workouts, etc.  And on the cover: a Post-it note that says “Because you are loved!!”

I told Mom how I’m getting back into fitness and ready to really hit it hard, and this is her way to encourage me.  🙂 I definitely have the warm fuzzies at this point.

Yesterday, I signed up for The Academy with Nerd Fitness:

 

The premise seems to be that it will guide me back into the fitness lifestyle by enticing me with the opportunity to level up my real life person instead of a digital character.  It plays like an RPG, except you get experience by doing things in real life.  The quest lines that you see there (General, Academy, Warrior, etc.) correlate to the type of training that you want to be doing.  I want to get started with the basics, so I’ll pursue the general quests first, then progress to The Academy and eventually start tackling some of the Ranger class quests.

I got 25 exp points for taking my ‘before’ photos, and I’ll get 25 more for taking my measurements.  The general quests start with small, easily accomplished goals and then work up to more challenging ones.  It’s just the inspiration that I need to get going without diving into the deep end and getting injured again.

We move in 2 weeks (if I’m lucky) and I have been dreaming about setting up a basement gym.  I’ve got images of rubberized flooring, inspirational posters, and blaring music dancing in my head.  Jeff wants to burst my bubble by reminding me that we have low ceilings, but then I remember that I’m short and go back to dreaming 😉

Can I have it? Pretty please?

So that’s what we’re up to 🙂 I’ll be sure to keep you posted.  Stay classy!

Playing with Paleo

It is so good to be BACK! I’ve been thinking a lot today how I’d like to organize this blog and I started trying to think of alliterations that could lend themselves well to my blog content.  Work Out Wednesday is easy, and Menu Monday.  But how do I fit in all of the other things to talk about?  Well–there’s every other blogger in the blogosphere.. and then there’s me!

I guess the name of my blog gives me a little bit of a scapegoat away from formatting and structure 😉

Lately, I’ve been experimenting with the Paleo plan.  NerdFitness has a fantastic starter’s guide to the paleo diet that I highly suggest you check out.

nerdfitness.com

One of the hardest things about starting a paleo eating plan is ‘wtf do I eat?’  I mean, think about it!  The average American diet (at least, in the midwest) consists of cereal for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, and pasta for dinner.  I was honestly stumped! What, besides eggs, could I eat for breakfast?

Well–anything.  Who says you can’t have a steak at 9am? 😛 Granted, I usually don’t, but that’s the gist of it.  Food is just food.  There aren’t rules around what time of day you can eat the food.  So, I dove in.  I ate a lot of eggs.  I got tired of eggs.  I ate a lot of salads, I got tired of salads.  I ate a lot of bacon, and then I realized I should not eat near as much bacon…

It prompted me to buy a cookbook.  The one that came highest recommended from the Nerds of NerdFitness was Practical Paleo by Diane Sanfilippo.  I’ve made a number of recipes from the book including the broiled salmon, pumpkin pancakes, swirly quiche, chorizo meatballs, and pumpkin cranberry muffins.  We’ve used the seasoning mixtures to spice up the meats we generally use, and eating has been a lot more whole-foods focused.

Now! All that being said, I’m not 100% of the way there 😦  There are still times where I get caught up in the “I don’t feel like it” attitude.  I had nachos tonight, and I’m still eating at the gas station too frequently.  When I did 1 week of about 80% paleo, I dropped 6 pounds.  SIX WHOLE POUNDS!! I also felt more energetic and pretty excited about staying committed.

Then life happened, and stress eating, and convenience.

It’s a lot more effort to plan ahead, cook, and deal with all of the food associated with paleo eating. The dishes in the sink below?  That’s just from cooking breakfast and prepping lunch:

Now imagine that for 2 people 3x/day, 7 days/week.  Our grocery bill has skyrocketed and our dishwasher never gets a break.  This week (Saturday to next Saturday) my goals are to have 5/7 days 100% paleo (excluding cheese.  I love cheese.  me and cheese have something special going on.)

I’m hoping to drop some weight and feel happier/healthier by the end.  I certainly appreciate you rooting me on! If you know me IRL, kindly refrain from offering me non-paleo food.. if there’s a treat at work, for example, just tell me ‘thanks! you do good work! Have a fantastic day! *high five*”

Cheers to the coming week!

-Megs

Things I’m Digging

1. Albacore Chunk White Tuna in water.

Sometimes, you  just have to eat tuna.  One of my resolutions was to eat lunches and dinners from home more often and today I ended up eating tuna sandwiches–twice.  It’s probably not the healthiest option for every meal, but when you’re already running late (another resolution I’m working on), it’s super easy to just grab the can, grab a couple pieces of bread, and go to work.  My cafeteria has condiments readily available so I just mixed it with low fat mayo, pickle relish, and call it good.  Luckily this morning, I was also able to grab an apple and a pepper to munch on, and I had some apple sauce, almonds, and cheese sticks already at work.  Tonight–I was not so ravenous, but we were still hangry and ended up making tuna sandwiches for dinner too.

Ugh. I might not be digging chunk white tuna much longer, though.. when looking for an image to spice this one up, I learned that adults are only supposed to eat chunk white tuna (not the same as chunk light tuna) 3x/month or risk elevated exposure to methylmercury.  Great. 😦

2. Guild Wars 2

This may be where the list ends because, really, that’s what I’ve been focusing on, lately.  I love to play with my guild mates and the game just offers so much variety and challenges.  The game helps to meet some of my social needs because I can link up to play with real life friends, too.  Depending on the mood, we can go exploring, questing, seek dynamic events, fight dragons, raid dungeons, or compete in player vs player action.  Here are some screen shots I wanted to share with you:

My character, Aminarra Westin, sporting 3 versions of armor

This ice crystal shows just how detailed this game can be..

This is what ‘stealth’ looks like in this game… Go ahead, click the link to make the image bigger.

This is the boss at the end of Twilight Arbor… and this dude is nuts! The sound files of the creaking wood overwhelm the audio and lend to the magnitude of this foe.

This weekend, I’m going to think about some prerequisites and goals surrounding gaming because this one  turns into a time-suck pretty quickly.  It’s so engaging and entertaining that hours can fly by and I barely notice.  One Saturday, I had a piece of toast for breakfast and did not get the urge to eat until 8 hours later.  I guess that’s one way to lose weight 😉 j/k