To Bang or Not to Bang?

Today was a perfect workout day and a less than perfect eating day. I went to the gym bright and early and did a full lower body workout FOLLOWED by a 20 minute session of HIIT on the stairmaster. Yes, I am nuts! I then worked my usual 12 hour shift. We were so busy at work that it was hard to eat properly.

Here's the breakdown:

Meal 1: post-workout EAS shake
Meal2: oatmeal, 5 egg whites
Meal 3: 1/2 sandwich (double protein bread, deli chicken)
Meal 4: orange, 10 almonds
Meal 5: Greek yogurt with 3 strawberries and some honey
Meal 6: small bowl of leftover pasta from the other day + lemon popsicle

Its not like I ate anything horrible. I just felt like I was starving all day. Not enough protein, not enough water, no veggies. Hopefully tomorrow will go a little better.

So I have been thinking about getting some "bangs". Notice these on Victoria's Secret model Alessandra Ambrosio. They are long enough to tuck behind her ears but short enough to frame her face perfectly when wearing a low ponytail.

I'm thinking about it but I can't commit. I have a feeling it would make me lose some sex appeal. I think my face might look too round. Maybe I'll get the guts to do it after California.

Well, tomorrow I have no idea what my workout will be. I did legs today, my upper body is still sore from Tuesday and I don't want to just do cardio. I think I will use my body weight to do a few different exercises in a series of circuits. Push-ups, abs, lunges, burpies, etc. I'll let you know how it goes!

Plants and Such

First of all, a BIG thank you to all of you that responded to my last post! We really appreciate your feedback! We have made a decision but you'll have to wait to hear about it (I know you are at the edges of your seats, haha).

Well, On Tuesday I had the best. workout. ever.

I did a full upper body weight lifting workout (BFL style) and then went on to do some sumo squats, kettlebell squats and mountain climbers. I wanted to pass out afterwards and I am still feeling the wonderful after effects. Feels so goooooood!

Before I go into food, I must warn you. Caution: You what you are about to see is not a figment of your imagination. You are not having deja vu. I eat a lot of the same stuff guys. Sorry it is so boring and repetitive! But it works!

Here are some of my Tuesday meals:

Post-workout shake:
The usual:

Leftovers:

For dinner I had an amazing meal. I forgot to take a pic. Figures. Just imagine lettuce topped with rice and black beans and shredded chicken and salsa and "sour cream" (Greek yogurt). Yummy!

Wednesday, I took a workout rest day. I needed it! Here are some of my Wednesday meals. Again, go back to the "Caution" statement above.

I also had some shredded chicken after work with some yellow mustard.

On Tuesday we went to a few nurseries to find some plants for this area:

The area doesn't get much sun, so we have to stick with non-flowering plants for the most part. The flowering options we saw were not too impressive. We haven't made a decision yet. We considered putting a cute little bench there but it would be constantly buried in millions of leaves = more work for us.

Here are a few plants we might consider:

These kinda look like sea grapes to me, which are pretty beachy. But these aren't as messy looking.

We'll see. Any thoughts???

Well, I am off to the gym for a lower body workout and some cardio! I am working my usual 12. Have a wonderful day!

PLEASE HELP!!!

This is our Florida home. We feel very fortunate to have bought it at such a young age. It needs a lot of work on the inside but we are fixing it up slowly but surely. We live about 1/2 mile from the beach and we wish our home looked more beachy. We don't want it to look like a Key West bar, but more of a classic coastal chic.

Anyway, I NEED YOUR HELP!!! We are getting hurricane shutters installed in a few weeks. We decided that we would put Bahama shutters on the 3 dining room windows in order to move closer to the beachy affect we are after. We are stuck on a decision on whether each shutter should run straight across the window undivided or have a typical Bahama shutter division. Now, the windows are faily narrow (26 inches I believe) and there are two more identical windows on the garage which will also be covered with Bahamas.

My husband used Photoshop in order to visualize each option. Which do you think looks better???

Obviously our poor photoshop skills do not do the look justice. Are the undivided ones too plain. Do the divided ones look too busy? Any advice/opinions would be greatly appreciated.

Option 1: I don't like either, don't get the Bahamas.

Option 2: I like the ones that are undivided.

Option 3: I like the divided ones.

Thanks in advance!!!!!

Exhausting Monday

Today didn't go quite as planned but it went well nonetheless. I didn't do my upper body workout as planned but what I did instead made up for it. More on that later...

Today ended up being a 3 meal/2 small snack day unfortunately. It seems that it is much harder to do 6 small meals on the days I have off. I'll have to work on that. For breakfast I had my double protein bread with almond butter and fresh strawberries and some 1% no salt cottage cheese.

I didn't get to eat lunch till 4pm! Craziness. Between breakfast and lunch I snacked on a handful of no salt almonds. Lunch was Subway. I ordered the 6 inch chicken breast sub on whole wheat, no cheese. It was YUMMY! Obviously way too much sodium but I drank tons of water to try to make up for it.

Between lunch and dinner I had 3 prunes. What can I say, I love them. For dinner I made some pasta with homemade sauce and chicken breasts. Don't let this blurry picture fool you, my serving was mainly chicken and only a tiny bit of pasta. It came out sooooooo good and the hubby loved it. The chicken was so tender, it fell apart as we cut it with our forks.

Now on to my workout. First of all we did TONS of yard work today. My husband had to go into work for a few hours so while he was gone I turned this:

Into this in 30 minutes. There must have been hundreds, if not thousands of leaves. This picture only shows a small portion of the front yard. This magnolia tree is my nemesis.

When my husband returned we worked on this area. The exposed soil was filled with dead bushes this morning and we chopped, ripped, tore and yanked them all out. Then we cleaned up the millions of leaves and disgusting soil that was under them. We want to plant something in this area, maybe Hibiscus???

Any suggestions??????

After slaving away in the yard we went to the park. We completed a 2 mile run and a few exercised along the way. I attempted some pull-ups, did some sit-ups, burpies and hanging abs. I am BEAT. I am going to take a nice long shower and head to bed.

I hope your Monday was as productive, but more fun than mine!

Stormy Night

I started yesterday off right with a little trip to the park before work. I jogged 1 mile in 8:55, walk 1/4 mile, jogged 1/4 in 1:55, walked 1/4 and then jogged 1/4 in 2:02. Not too bad since I haven't ran outdoors in a while and since I wasn't pushing my hardest for speed. I'll take it!

Breakfast: "The Perfect Hard Boiled Egg"

Breakfast consisted of a slice of double protein bread with some almond butter and simply fruit spread and the perfectly cooked egg. What is the perfectly cooked egg? I was sick of green yolks and waiting around wondering how my eggs would trun out. I couldn't sleep at night thinking about it (just kidding). So I use a variation of a method I read about here. Basically I put the eggs in cold water, bring to a boil and as soon as they begin to boil I take them off the heat and cover the pot with a lid. I set the timer for 12 minutes and PERFECTO! A nice, perfect yellow center. I found this method to be great for large eggs. You might want to wait an extra minute if you are using extra large eggs because the whites can end up slimey. If you want to get more technical, I've included this for your reading pleasure. Meal number 2 was created when I mixed the following:

And ended up with this chocolatey goodness. This cocoa mix is 140 calories for 4 Tablespoons, I used less than 1 Tablespoon. Worth it! I also ate 6 egg whites with this meal. It took me an hour to eat this because the whites were filling me up.

Meal 3: Chobani + 1/2 banana + 3 small strawberries + a sprinkle of dry oats + a drizzle of honey= heaven.

For meal 4 the hubby and I had some homemade North Woods Bean Soup (from my Cooking Light Soup recipe book) and a salad. I used red wine vinegar as my dressing. When I use vinegar only to dress my salad I like to chop up all the ingredients. I think it makes it more flavorful because everything is blended in each bite. A huge piece of lettuce with nothing but vinegar doesn't sound too appealing to me.

My meal:

Hubby's meal (his soup bowl was the same size as my salad bowl):

I had a small carb fest as my last meal of the day. 1 grapefruit, some almonds, 3 prunes and 1 bite of my husband's Whole Fruits Sorbet. I couldn't help myself. =)

So my husband almost scared me to death by waking me up at 3:19am. I seriously almost had a heart attack. We were having a huge storm that I was peacefully sleeping through. Turns out he wanted me to help him investigate a leak that was coming from the ceiling. We went up to the attack and noticed a leak in the roof where the fire place tube and the roof meet. Thankfully I think that is an area that could be sealed fairly easily.

Today it is still rainy. The plan for now: clean kitchen, do laundry and do an awesome muscle ripping upper body workout. Have a wonderful Monday!

No Promises, Hehe

Well, my HIIT workout went very well today! I ended up doing the entire workout on the treadmill. I was forced to make it short because the gym opens at 7:30 on Saturdays and I have to be in the shower by 8 to be on time for work. My heart was still pounding when I got in the shower and I was still sweating after the shower. Gross, I know.

Per a lovely reader's request, I am going to TRY to post pics of my meals. Don't get me wrong, I would LOVE to be a food blogger, like my dear blogging buddy, the fabulous Therese, but I'll have to see whether I am too lazy to be or not, haha. Since the request was made later in the day, all of the meals but one are in my tummy but here is the general picture. FYI: today I was really busy at work so my typical 5-6 meal plan did not work out.

One hour after my HIIT session I had sandwich thin with a small amount of almond butter and a very tiny bit of jelly. I also had a plain Chobani yogurt with a drizzle of honey.
For lunch, I had two of these (7grams of protein in each):

With a few slices of Boar's Head Low Sodium Chicken Breast (I did not eat deli meal at all during BFL).

I was starved on my drive home from work so I had a green apple and a few almonds. I needed that carb to keep me from drooling, crying and screaming for a Vanilla Cone as I pass the NOT 1, BUT 2 McDonalds' that are on my way home. Yes people, life is not fair.

For dinner I had some brown rice, salmon and 1/2 small tomato. Looks filling but the plate is a dessert plate, not a dinner plate, so the portion was just right.

With a little bit of this:

I would have bought veggies and had some with this meal but I thought we had some in the freezer. =(

So how do I rate this day? Probably a 7. Too much bread, too little protein, no veggies, not enough calories and my meals weren't spaced out right. Oh well, at least I didn't eat my co-worker's brownies.

I'll be going to bed fantasizing about some new clothes!!!