2012

2012 Goals:

Fitness

• strength train 2x/week
• Cardio 2x/week
• Walk the Dog 3x week

Nutrition

• Fast food no more than 1x/month
• Avoid white food as much as possible; substitute sweet potatoes for white, brown rice for white, 100% whole wheat for white bread
• eat to 80% full

Home Organization/Cleaning

• Deep clean one room once a month - baseboard, fans, vents, dust, vaccuum, throw/donate
• Do one fun/creative beautification/non-function project a month

Personal

• Once a month, go out and run errands by myself on Saturday afternoon
• Go to the High Museum
• Cook one new recipe a month

January specific:
1.  I'm going to ease back in with some light strength training, focusing mostly on core for 2-4 weeks.  I think last time, I went too fast too quickly; the primary muscles I was trying to work were fine, my core couldn't keep up, leading to the back pain.
2.  For two weeks, I'm just going to walk.  After that, I'll start incorporating some interval training, but probably not running; I think I need to get some weight off before I start running again.  So biking maybe?
3.  Since we're getting back fairly early on Monday, I can go to the grocery store and load up. 
4.  I'm going to start with the guest room to deep clean.  I need to get put the Christmas decorations back in there. 
5.  Maybe tackle the gossip bench that's been sitting there for two years?
6.  Hmm, maybe my thing to cook this month should be something with those brown bananas...

Face It Friday

Today is when I post stats to keep myself accountable. 

• weight:  1Z6.4 (I'm not so bold as to put my actual weight on here.  Z is current, when that number changes, I'll go to Y, then X...)  Still, down 10 from a year ago.
• calories: 1744 day/average (damn the wine)
• exercise:  2 for 2.  Walked with the kids and Hubs Wed.  Walked/ran 3 miles Thursday.  Sadly, I'm sore from that. 

A New Plan

So I let this space go to pot over the last couple of months.  I haven't exercised consistently in probably two months, but I haven't been too bad with the eating.  I'm down about 10 pounds from where I was a year ago. 

While there's no excuse, my explanation is that the last couple of months of Hub's student teaching were pretty tough.  I basically had to take on all of the household/kid responsibilities for a while there.  But, he did graduate and is now home with the kids for the summer.  So that's freed up a lot of my time.  So back to the mission. 

I think this go round, I'm going to focus a lot more on my nutrition and getting some general movement going on, rather than trying to stick to a hardcore workout program.  I think I was pushing myself too hard with the FBB program.  While I have decent strength in my arms and legs, my core is still very, very weak. I blame the c-sections.  But my back, especially my lower right, hurts from time to time and was really bad when I was trying to do FBB hardcore.  So I'm going to focus on walking, running, and doing some core-strengthening stuff for right now, and look at the more serious stuff in a month or two. 

On the nutrition side, Hubs is suprisingly much more on board about trying to eat healthy.  We've planted a vegetable garden and are making an effort to eat at home more with less packaged stuff.  I'm going back to tracking calories.  I'm going to keep the calories in the 1200-1550 mark and try to meet the protein and fiber goals.  I'm not going to worry about the fat limit too much, if I know all my fat is healthy fat - nuts, whole grains, lean meat, etc.

I think tomorrow I'll start a weekly report - weight, calorie intake, exercise.

Behind

I've gotten way behing in posting between the snow and a quick trip to San Diego.  Just for reference, I've done two more Define workouts (A at 3 sets, same weights and B at 2 sets, same weight).  Each of these sections of FBB workouts is supposed to be four weeks.  However, I think I'm going to stretch this to at least five weeks since the last two weeks I've only done two strength workouts.  That's fine - I'm still sticking with it!

Foiled by the snow

I'm just going to have to consider this week a wash as far as exercise goes.   Although, maybe I could do Friday and Sunday to get at least two weight training sessions in.  We down here in the ATL have been under house arrest because of the snow.  Oh well. 

One upside is that I made some awesome pasta over the weekend. 

I've had that quinoa pasta sitting in my pantry forever, so I decided to use it up.  I caramalized some onions in real butter, added the kale and sea salt, and then mixed it together with the pasta and a little glug of Amy's Roasted Garlic Olive Oil.  Sprinkled with feta and toasted pine nuts.  YUM.  I would totally make this again, but I think I'd use different pasta and add sun dried tomatoes.  I tried to to a calorie analysis on it, and it came out to approximately 400 calories.  Although I'm not sure if I got the pasta serving size correct - I'm terrible with ounces.  Add an orange and super yummy lunch.

My First Homemade Nutbutter

After having to comment on Matt's blog about my favorite nut butter, I decided that it was time to make homemade almond butter.  So I pulled out the food processor and we have this:

TA DA!  It's raw almond butter with just a smidge of olive oil in it.  When it finally came together, it was very thick.  I had wanted to avoid adding oil, but I knew I was keeping it in the fridge, so I considered it a necessity.  Besides, there's probably only a tablespoon, if that, in there.  Oh and I added a little sea salt too. 

Review:  it's pretty good, but I think I would much prefer it with roasted almonds.  I've got some walnuts leftover from Christmas in the fridge.  I think my next batch will be roasted walnut and almond butter. 
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It's official.  The jacknife on the stability ball is my new favorite exercise.  My stomach is deliciously sore today. 

You know who loves Vibrams?

PRE-SCHOOLERS!  I usually work out at the office and go and pick up the kiddos in my workout attire. Everytime I go in there, the kids are fascinated by the shoes.  I had two kids crawling between my legs in the toddler room trying to get a look at them.  A kid in the preschool room was giving me the fifth degree - "what are those?  Why are you wearing them?"  I asked him, "do you like them?"  He cocked his head for a minute, and then smiled and said "yes."  So funny.