FitFeat

where daily feats & eats can be adventures in themselves

Posts Tagged exercise

There’s a Fire Up in Here

Jan 29

Posted by Shari B. in Marathon Training | 10 Comments

Good morning and HAPPY FRIDAY friends!  Wahoo!  TGITW (Thank goodness it’s the weekend!)

Sorry to disappear on you yesterday.  Tues/Thurs are my BIZ-EEEE days and I had two additional pieces of fun in my Thursday that kept me away from the computer.

One was a visit from one of my all time best buds after she got off of work, where we polished off about 3/4 bottle of our favorite Riesling and jibber-jabbered non-stop for two and a half hours.  It was such a wonderful time.

The other exciting thing on Thursday was my little brother and his wife welcomed their second baby into the world!  Unfortunately I live 1300 miles from them, so I won’t be seeing Baby #2 anytime soon.  Thank goodness for webcams!  :)   I was really hoping the new baby would wait until next Wednesday so that we could share a birthday, but she must have been in a hurry to meet her big sister sooner!

Speaking of birthday, MSP wanted to share with me what my gift would be a little early because it would require some ‘trying on for size’ before he could order the actual gift.  That got me curious!

In addition to reading “Born to Run“ currently, Matt from No Meat Athlete has inspired me to want to give barefoot running a go.

MSP heard that and decided to gift me with some VIbram Five Fingers!  SO EXCITED!!!

Image from Vibram FiveFingers

In anticipation of the arrival of my new fitness ‘gadgets’ I decided to get a head start on Wednesday.  Barefoot running is something you must start SLOWLY because all that running around in my fancy Nike SHOX will have changed my gait and most likely weakened some of the supportive structure of my lower legs and feet.

I did intervals of a different sort on the treadmill this time:  shoes on, shoes off, socks on, socks off, shoes and socks back on, shoes off, etc.

I did 3 miles, about two of which were ’shoeless’.

OK, first:  holy calves of fire, Batman!  Not so much DURING as much as the days following.  I have some DOMS going on in my calves the way I figure I would if I did 1000 sets of heavy calf raises.  You should see me trying to walk DOWN a set of stairs.  Comical.

Second, it was so FUN!  You feel so much ‘lighter’ on your feet, almost springy because it truly forces you into a completely different gait.  Apparently I’m a heavy ‘heel-slapper’ in shoes and that just won’t work barefoot.  You need to be more onto the balls of your feet, while still letting your heels come down lightly.

Afterward, I did about 15 minutes of deep yoga stretching because I knew my legs were going to need it.

Then yesterday I did another 30 minutes of yoga, including a LOT of downward dogs to hit those calves a bit.

I won’t be using my new “unshoes” during the marathon, because I don’t think there’s enough time to safely transition to that distance.  But I definitely plan to use them as much as my calves will allow during my shorter training runs.  Maybe the marathon after this one… ;)

And I have to give props to our good friend Bo, because he had FiveFingers YEARS ago before they were trendy.  And I think I remember teasing him about his crazy looking shoes. :)   Bo, I’m eating my words now and you can tease me all you want to get me back!  ;)

Today’s question:  Any barefoot running ‘aficionados’ out there? Read “Born to Run”?

Friends, have a FANTASTIC Friday!  I’ll be back tomorrow sometime after my 9 MILE training run.  I really hope my calves stop crying before I head out or it will be a L-O-N-G 9 miles…

– Shari B. =)

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

My Style Miso

Jan 10

Posted by Shari B. in Recipes | 5 Comments

Hi friends!  Happy Sunday!  It’s going to be 50 degrees today and I couldn’t be happier!  MSP and I are going get out for a REAL outdoors run!  Oh yeah!  Then on to meet one of my best friends for some SBUX action.  A great start to the day!

Since I posted the book review yesterday I didn’t recap much from Friday, so I’ll rewind a bit.

Friday’s workout was 30 minutes of intervals on the TM (5.0, 5.5, 6.0, 6.5, 7.0 mph for a minute each then repeat) followed by 20 minutes of shoulder strength (KB overhead presses, KB side raises, rear delt rows, YTI).  Shoulders are truly one of my favorite muscle groups to work on.  I’ve had a heck of a time getting my rear shoulders to grow so I’ve really given them a lot of attention lately.

Saturday’s workout was another round of Physique 57 on DVD.  I’m getting better!  I even increased my weights on some of the moves!

***

Friday eats were of the usual sort for me.  I made “Now and Later” smoothies:

One to drink "NOW"

And one to drink "LATER"

The combination of greens, acai and a purple to-go container do not make for pretty food photo ops, that’s for sure.  That’s one UGLY smoothie!

Both smoothies had a couple of clementines in them and I would like to know who has the fun job of having to put one of these on EVERY single one:

I had leftovers again for lunch, so no exciting photos at my desk.  But what WAS exciting when I got home was getting to try my first Umeboshi Plum!

Raw veggies, raw goat cheddar, dollop of hummus and UMEBOSHI!

You know that face you might make when you bite into a lemon?  It was kind of like that at first.  It’s sour and SALTY.  But then you get into the flesh and you can kind of tell it was fruity before being pickled.  Definitely interesting.  They are highly alkalizing, but high in sodium too, so one every few days is plenty.  This is not an item that you pile onto your plate.

After posting my blog Friday I moved on to iTunes to see what I could spend a giftcard on.  My latest favorite cardio song is “Tik Tok” by Ke$ha. Yes, I’m still listening to music for teens.  Not sure how I’ll ever break that habit.  Although, her lyrics are definitely NOT appropriate for teens, I quickly found!  But for $6.99 on iTunes I couldn’t resist just getting the whole album.  She has some great high-tempo beats to run with!

It's a party at my PC...!

I made some My Style Miso for dinner, meaning I didn’t follow a recipe I just kind of threw in what I wanted.  Thought I’d share it with you in case you’d like to make some too!

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup vegetable broth
  • 3/4 cup water
  • 1/3 cup dried shiitake mushrooms
  • 1/2 sheet Nori (folded and cut into strips)
  • 1-1/2 tsp barley miso
  • 4-5 shakes nama shoyu
  • handful fresh organic spinach

Bring broth, water and dried mushrooms to a light boil.  Simmer with bubbles for about 7 minutes, letting the mushrooms reconstitute.

Fold the nori and then cut into strips with kitchen shears, add to broth along with the spinach and the nama shoyu to taste (I used about 5 shakes of the bottle) and simmer for 3 minutes to let the seaweed and shoyu do their thing!

Using a measuring cup, take some of the liquid out of the soup pot so that you have something in which to dissolve the miso.  You only want about 1/2 a tsp to each cup of liquid with your miso soups (Thanks for the tip Alicia!) so I mixed 1.5 tsp of the brown barley miso into my liquid, stirring well till dissolved.  Then remove soup from heat (or turn down to LOW) and add the dissolved miso to it.

Stir it through with the rest of the liquid and serve after a minute or so.

The shiitake mushrooms made this dish feel ‘meaty’ and it was actually pretty filling all on it’s own that night.  You can make this so many ways, adding leftover brown rice, changing up your greens, adding tofu, etc.  As mentioned before, light broth soups are a great way to curb your appetite when you are trying to watch your portions.

Enjoy!

***

Well friends, I have an outdoor run calling my name right about  now!  See you soon!

Have a SUPERB Sunday!

– Shari B. =)

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Cuts Like Buttah

Dec 28

Posted by Shari B. in Handy Kitchen Tools | 5 Comments

Noooooo…. I’m not ready for the long holiday weekend to be over!!!  This is always my favorite weekend of the year!  Do we HAVE to go back to work?  :)

If I was the type of person who called in sick (but I’m not), today would be the day for it because somehow I managed to hobble myself yesterday.  During a workout, of all things.  I’m not even sure what movement did it, but it has something to do with my hip flexors.  I stretched off and on all day yesterday, did some yoga, all to no avail.  I have yet to pop an ibuprofen though.  That is the absolute last resort.  I know, I’m weird.  But once you get all that garbage out of your system, it’s a tough choice to put it back in.  Since April 1, I’ve had two Advil and that’s IT.

It’s a little better this morning so I’ll take the morning off of working out, and soak in the tub instead to see if that loosens anything up.  I exercised all 4 days of my long holiday weekend.  Tomorrow is my planned ‘rest day’ so I’ll just flip-flop my days.  This is my cue that I NEED more core strengthening work if a few days of core DVDs cripples me!  Ha!

Yesterday was a nice, normal veggie-filled food day.  A 30 oz. green smoothie in the morning:

A Banana Bread Larabar during the 10:00 a.m. showing of “Sherlock Holmes”:

A super-sized Shari salad in the 11″ bowl (I’ve missed my big bowl…) with spinach, dulse, roma tomatoes, spiralized zucchini, nutritional yeast, chia seeds and topped with 1 tbsp of Annie’s Goddess dressing.

With a side of baked kale (that looks burnt, but it’s not).  It’s red kale so it has a deep purple/red color:

An easy, early “dinner” of Ezekial toast with almond butter and raw honey drizzle, with a side of decaf  (the Broncos game was still on and I didn’t want to miss anything making a meal):

And an evening snack of two Wasa light rye crackers smeared with Tofutti (the ‘un-cream cheese’) and sprinkled with cumin and Mrs. Dash:

It was a fiber-licious day to be sure! :)

Riley got a dose of fiber too (of the synthetic variety) thanks to ripping her Christmas gift to shreds.  Poor stuffed squirrel.  Riley was too tired to even flee from the crime scene:

I, on the other hand, take much better care of MY Christmas gifts.  :)

As mentioned I have a bunch of them to tell you about (because I am incredibly blessed to have received so many great gifts from my family).  One of which is a new set of AWESOME knives from my mom. When I was visiting her back in September, I was crazy for her RADA knives and utensils.  I had two small RADA knives that I’d received as gifts back in 1991 and they LOOK like they’ve been used a TON.  My mom had the cool extras like a tomato knife, a peeler, and all sorts of other neat knives.  So I was thrilled when I opened a wrapped gift containing a whole SET of these cool tools.  It’s hard to see through the curtain of hair here but there’s a silly grin on my face (and apparently Riley and Rascal are just as excited about my gift):

They are SHARP!!!  I guess all of my other knives must need sharpening, because I forgot how nice it is to slice through food like it’s “BUTTAH”  :)

The potato peeler worked like a charm peeling this mango:

If you have a foodie in your life, I highly recommend gifting them with something from RADA.  I’m so impressed.  And I can tell you that these will be used every single day in this house!  I even rearranged my knife drawer so that I can keep them in their gift box and have easy access to them as I’m prepping veggies every day.  And I just noticed that they are available through Amazon.com so you can bet I’ll be adding these to the FitFeat “Favorite Things” Store!

Thanks for the GREAT gift, Mom!  PERFECT!

Today’s question:  Do you have a favorite brand of knife or prep utensil that you use daily? Drop a comment to share with us!

Have yourself a MARVELOUS Monday, friends!  I’m off to hit the tub and then to work!  See you next time!

– Shari B. =)

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

My Mug Runneth Over

Dec 26

Posted by Shari B. in Keeping Fit, Product Review | 7 Comments

Good morning blog friends!

I hope that each of you had a fabulous day yesterday, whether you were celebrating Christmas or celebrating that it was Friday.  Ours was another fun-filled day.  I spent a lot of time working on the blog, trying to get a particular plug-in to work (no luck yet).  I also did some rearranging of the widgets in the sidebars and footers.  I finally took the time to set up my affiliate link with JustHost, where FitFeat is hosted.  So if you have a blog that is not currently self-hosted, and you decide to go that route, feel free to click on JustHost from the banner in the sidebar and if you sign up, they’ll know I sent ya!

I have so many things to share that I don’t even know where to start!

I suppose since I’m writing this post at 6:38 in the morning that I’ll start the post in much the same fashion as I start every single day:  with coffee.

Early readers of my blog know that I have a thing for coffee mugs, especially Starbucks coffee mugs.  My mom included two new SBUX mugs for my collection this Christmas (thanks Mom!)  I used the “Ohio” mug right away.

You know it’s a long holiday weekend with lots of spare time when one arranges their mugs for photos:

Those are just my mugs from Starbucks.  I have another group of fun mugs NOT from the BUX.

MSP also surprised me with mugs for Christmas.  He found two really unique ones.  A “Dunk Mug”  that has a slot on the bottom to hold your cookies:

Is that genius or what??  Now I have a place to store my Newman O’s while they are awaiting their dunk into almond milk!  :)   The second mug was just as fun:

There has been a lot of coffee and cocoa drinking going on at my house in the last few days, playing with my new mugs!  (Apparently I’m easily entertained!)

It was definitely a ‘kitchen’ theme for my gifts this year and I feel so incredibly blessed to have received such loving and thoughtful gifts.  I’ll be detailing them in the days to come.  One of the gifts Santa brought was a SPIRALIZER!!  Wahooo, happy dance!  You’ll be sure to see some zucchini pasta pics very soon!

***

Because we’ve had more snow, I’m exercising indoors and dreaming of a warmer day soon to get out for another run.  In the meantime, to keep any exercise boredom at bay I’ve done a few days of DVD fitness, one of which was Cathe Friedrich’s CORE MAX.  (FitTV shows edited versions of her videos daily, calling them Cardio Blast, if you ever want to check out her training.)  YOWZA – it’s been a long time since I’ve focused on abs for a solid 30 minutes.  My abs were burning so bad I thought for sure that the next day I’d be curled up in the fetal position, unable to get out of bed.  As it turned out, my core was the right amount of sore.

However, where I DID feel it the next day …  was in my neck muscles!  I guess that means I need to spend some more time holding my head up in different angles besides just standing.  It felt like I’d been doing this:

The 30 minutes went by quickly, my abs were crying at the end, and as usual she worked me HARD.  I pretty much give anything Cathe produces “two thumbs up”. Her “Legs & Glutes” video is my favorite of DVD fitness.   I mix it in from time to time (I’ve had it for YEARS) and it never fails to absolutely fry the lower half of my body.

Today’s discussion topic:  Do you ever workout to DVDs or audio fitness?  What’s your favorite and why? Drop a comment and let us know!

Have a SPLENDID Saturday friends!

– Shari B. =)

Tags: ,

Exclamatory Addiction

Dec 17

Posted by Shari B. in Cooking, Keeping Fit | 8 Comments

So I happened to be re-reading yesterday’s post right before I composed this one and realized that the first TEN sentences were punctuated with an exclamation point.    I must have had some seriously HAPPY coffee while writing that one.  (I actually punctuated that last sentence with an exclamation point and backspaced to add a period instead.  Not using exclamation points while writing [or smiley faces for that matter] is like holding down a person’s hands who needs to gesture while speaking.)  Apparently I am super-enthusiastic while writing my blog.  I’ll try (…try…) to tone it down somewhat!  (Aw crumb, I already used one!  This is hard!)  :)

But I digress. 

Yesterday’s ‘organized exercise’ was 30 minutes of speed intervals on the treadmill.  I woke up on the PMS cranky side of the bed and stood around in my gym trying to decide what I wanted to do for exercise while MSP was getting down to business with back & biceps.  I needed to do legs, but the smith machine and the ball were in use.  And I wasn’t in the mood for step-ups or lunges.  So cardio is what I went with.  Maybe by FRIDAY I’ll get some official ‘weight training’ in.   By ‘official’ I mean work actually done in my gym with dumbbells and other fun toys made of iron.  And not heavy boxes of marketing materials.  Since my cardio session was pretty short in the morning, I figured I’d come home after work and maybe squeeze in a Tabata session for weights.  But I moved around enough of those heavy boxes again while at the office and got so much movement that I was truly exhausted by the time I left.  

No complaints here though – I’d prefer some physical activity to go along with the desk job.   You’ve heard of the “secretary spread” (if you haven’t, hit up Google today) and it’s definitely something I’ve experienced in the past with desk jockey jobs! 

NOTE:  I just googled it and there are TWO definitions (who knew? and Oh MY!!).  For the record, I meant this one relating to hips getting wider and NOT the other one which I won’t even link to from my blog.  This is a PG show, folks.  :)

Tuesday’s FitFeat EATS went down like this…

Totally yummy breakfast of a toasted Ezekial flourless sprouted grain english muffin with raw almond butter, raw honey drizzle and cinnamon sprinkles.

img 1005

I made my “Green Smoothie To Go“  for later.  It was meant to be a mid-morning snack, but actually ended up as lunch.  Check out the little green smoothie junkie EYEING my drink.  He’s  hoping I’ll drop it while taking a one-handed photo.  That’s quite an intent stare!

img 1008

This particular green goodness had 10 oz water, BIG fist o’spinach, 1/2 banana, a mango, 1/2 peeled cucumber, small fist o’sprouts and 2 stalks of celery.  I feel so CLEAN after drinking these!  :)   The green smoothie was then sipped on from about 1:00 to 3:00.  I’d packed a Curry Lentil soup, but didn’t get a chance to eat it.  :(

I did have an unpictured Chocolate Coconut Lärabar as my mid-morning snack. 

After-work snack was two Wasa Light Rye crackers, smeared with Tofutti non-dairy ‘cream cheese’ and sprinkled with cumin and Mrs. Dash Tomato Garlic Basil.  That was followed by airpopped popcorn kernels (1/4 measured before popping).

img 1009

I’ve been craving pita pizzas all week so we had them for dinner.  I even turned down an offer by MSP to pick up something for take-out!  (GASP!!)  That’s how AWESOME these things are!  Can you guess which are mine?  :)

img 1011

You’d be correct if you picked this one!  img 1012

An Ezekial sprouted grain pita topped with olive oil, minced garlic, nutritional yeast, zucchini ribbons, roma tomatoes, kalamata olives, chopped artichoke hearts, marinated mushrooms and a sprinkle of red pepper flakes.  Whew - that’s a lot to fit on a tiny little pita! 

And an obligatory side salad of spinach and turnip greens.  (I’ll have you know that MSP actually ate some of the turnip greens in his salad!)

img 1013

Is it Friday yet?  I feel in dire need of a weekend to catch up on things! :)   I’m really looking forward to the long holiday weekend next week!  Wahoo…..

And there I go with the exclamation points again…. :)

Have a TERRIFIC Thursday, friends!

– Shari B. =)

Tags: , , , , , ,

Flipping Dogs and Snowy Oats

Dec 16

Posted by Shari B. in Keeping Fit | 8 Comments

Hola WEDNESDAY!  My crazy overscheduled Monday and Tuesday are over!  Ahhh, I can take a deep breath!  Good thing I got that yoga in on Monday to give me some extra zen to get through!  :)   Thank you to everyone who commented with their favorite yoga poses yesterday!  And if you haven’t yet, please feel free to still comment on that one!  Fallon taught me what “Flipping the dog” was – and apparently it’s nothing like “Flipping the bird“!  (Good thing!)

Tasty, healthful EATS help too when schedules are crazy!  Keep the nutritional stress to a minimum, especially when the mental/physical stress is elevated!

Yesterday just before my early morning client training session, I had half of a Coconut Cream Pie Lärabar.  Have I told you today how much I love thee, Coconut Cream Pie?  You sure go great with coffee, with oatmeal, with exercise!

Then post-session I had a bowl of old fashioned oats (1/3 cup measured dry), topped with a tablespoon of rice protein powder, cinnamon, almond milk, a few raisins, and a dusting of unsweetened coconut.   It looks like it snowed on my breakfast! 

img 1001

One of my clients has been making her green smoothies the night before and then taking them to work the next day.  I never let mine sit.  They always get slurped through a straw immediately.  But I’m trying to get a better routine down for my hectic schedule at the moment so I thought I’d take a cue from her and make my smoothie “to-go”.  This one had 8 oz water, one banana, big fist o’ spinach, sprouts, 1/2 peeled cucumber, and 2 celery stalks.  I packed it in a Rubbermaid jug to be shaken up in later.  I “ate” it around 10:45, about 3 hours after blending and it was still quite tasty!  :)   (It was refrigerated in my lunchbox that whole time in case you were wondering!) ;)  

img 1003

Also packed up my lunch to be assembled later in the day.  A large spinach salad with HB egg, sundried tomatoes, dulse, and nutritional yeast.  1/4 of the avocado and half the roma tomato were added at 1:00 when I ate it, along with two spoonfuls of the marinated mushrooms. 

img 1002

And for dessert, an EXTREMELY dark chocolate, which almost tastes like you are eating right out of the unsweetened cocoa powder tin.  Yowza!

img 1000

We had our holiday party at the office from 3:30 on, so my afternoon snack and dinner consisted of pita chips with hummus and two glasses of pinot grigio.  When I got home, I had three crackers with some raw goat cheddar.  That was it on the eats for the day.  I can tell you that I am already hungry for breakfast!!  I didn’t eat enough yesterday!

Yesterdays exercise FEAT was not organized exercise per se, but was heavy duty nonetheless.  We received two PALLETS of marketing materials that we will be stuffing at work today.  In my nice dress and heels, I was moving HEAVY boxes around, getting them sorted and ready to go for today.  It was quite a workout!  I definitely feel it this morning.  And I’m still feeling Monday’s YOGA as well!  (And I made sure to NOT wear heels today!)

Well friends, it’s time for breakfast and then out the door!  Hope your week is going well so far! 

Make it a GREAT day!  Did you fit your FIT in yet??  ;)

– Shari B. =)

Tags: , ,

Ice Ice Baby, Dance Dance Lady

Dec 11

Posted by Shari B. in Keeping Fit | 8 Comments

Well hello there FitFeat friends!  Happy Friday to you!  Second-to-last shopping weekend before Christmas – are you on schedule? 

I’d say it’s beginning to look a little TOO much like Christmas inside our house.  I present exhibit A.

img 969

No, that is not a freezer in dire need of defrosting.  Look very closely – zoom in!  That would be the INSIDE of our guest bedroom window.  This next photo might make a pretty postcard if only the ICE were on the OUTSIDE!! 

img 965

This is apparently what a few days of below-zero nights and days in the single digits does to our windows.  We’ve lived in this house for 4 years and have never seen this happen – it was 1/4″ thick at the bottom, at least!  Need new windows much?  (Know any blogs giving away windows instead of VitaMix blenders?)  You’d think we lived in a house that was 100  years old.  It’s only 12 years old!  

I am showing you these pictures so you have proof of why I haven’t been outside running.  Or dog-wogging. 

(And as a side note for the record, yes it is true – Heather is giving away a VitaMix - you have until Sunday so get on over there and enter!)

Speaking of blending, someone is anxiously awaiting their green smoothie … and it’s NOT me!

img 976

Rascal now knows that when he hears the sound of the blender, he gets a little green smoothie poured into his bowl.  (And judging from that roll of pudge behind his neck,  you can see that he could use a few green smoothies in place of his “lean” dog food… I think I want our money back.  It’s making them FATTER!)

26 ounces for me… 3 oz for each of the pups! 

img 977

Lunch at work today was a vegan Sunshine burger patty topped with 1/4 avocado, a slice of tomato and a drizzle of peppercorn ranch.  It was perfect.  If I can’t SEE sunshine, at least I can eat some.

1 burger

A tall soy steamer on my way home.

img 979

A quick-n-easy veggie wrap for dinner (Nasoya FF mayo, 1/4 avocado, tomato, spinach, sea salt & pepper on a whole wheat tortilla. 

img 981

I also had a GINGER cookie that has been taunting me since Sunday.  Just had to do it.  :)

Thursday’s exercise was a TOTAL BLAST.  As usual I bored of the treadmill after 32 minutes and had to move on to a little BOOGIE session!  And the songs that were coming from Pandora.com were so good I couldn’t stop!  So I got another 40 minutes of DANCE  DANCE CARDIO in my basement.  Too .. much .. fun .. to actually be counted as exercise!  But my heart rate stayed in the 150’s so heck yeah it counts!

During my training client’s session Thursday morning, we saw an ad for the new Wii game called “Just Dance”.  Have you seen this???  I am SO going to rent it.  It looks silly yet insanely fun!  Now I won’t have to hide in the basement to get my dance on … I’ll be able to do it right in front of the TV!

If this is the only way I can get MSP to dance with me, I’ll take it!  :)

Have a FANTASTIC Friday, friends!  Make it a FEATful day!

– Shari B =)

 

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Thanksgiving Full of Kale

Nov 27

Posted by Shari B. in Keeping Fit | 5 Comments

Hello again blog buds!  Hope you have had a productive “Black Friday”!  I have, but I’m still WAY behind in my xmas shopping!

To recap our Thanksgiving, it was an absolutely BEAUTIFUL day!  It started a little too early for my taste shortly before 4:00 AM, but sometimes that’s just when my body decides it’s time to get up.  I spent the early (and QUIET) morning hours writing yesterday’s blog post, then catching up on my recorded chick-shows while the rest of the household members were sleeping.

We started the morning with the SOYsage Gravy and Biscuits (recipe in the Build-A-Meal tab if you didn’t see the post).  Then because it was over 60 degrees outside :)  we went out for a hilly power walk.  It was only 3.26 miles, but since the hills were steep we felt like we got a great workout (at least that’s what my glutes and calves told me!)  

I had a green smoothie when I returned.  I’ve been missing these the past week!  Some days when I feel chilly, a green smoothie just doesn’t always sound good because the idea of it makes me feel chillier!  Luckily it was warm enough yesterday to crave one.   Still rockin’ the festive green & red thanks to the cranberries. 

img 873

Later I made a BIG batch of baked kale chips.  Two trays of kale.  And guess what I did?  I ate it ALL!!!  Every last bite of kale!  I didn’t INTEND to eat all of it – I INTENDED to make it for something to snack on during the Broncos game.  When it came time to actually sit down to our Thanksgiving meal, I wasn’t very hungry – I’d eaten THAT much kale!  :)   I guess if you are going to overeat something, nutrient-rich kale would be the food to choose! 

img 876

We each had some time to relax for a bit, then it was time to make phone calls to family members & time for me to get busy in the kitchen (with cooking, that is!) 

Finally time to eat our holiday meal!  Wahooo!

Here is MSP’s Thanksgiving plate:  roast turkey breast and mashed potatoes, both covered with gravy, along with some mac-n-cheese spirals, cornbread and unpictured Crescent rolls (because truly it’s not Thanksgiving without Crescent rolls!)  Oh, and a side of beer!

img 879

And here is my plate (or bowl, I should say):  Heavenly Ginger Curry Squash soup, with a side of 1/2 baked sweet potato.   And a glass of Riesling on the side.  It doesn’t look like much, but it definitely filled me up.

img 882

I had also intended to make a sweet & savory broccoli salad, but to be honest I was so darn full after eating the kale that more greens just didn’t sound appealing at all!  We both had PLENTY to eat and were soon relaxing on the couch to take in some football and a movie.  (FYI “Funny People” with Adam Sandler is anything but FUNNY — just a heads up.)

Even the puppies got a little GREEN action in their bowls for the holiday – here’s Rascal chowing down on chopped organic cucumber and sprouts:

img 860

Overall I had a VERY healthy Thanksgiving.  My only real ’splurge’ for the day was a piece of apple pie.  It clocked in at 580 calories, so rather than flood my system with more calories in one sitting than it should handle, I cut the pie into two pieces.  I had one-half late afternoon, and the other as an evening snack. 

You know your “Healthy Holiday Eating Plan” was a success when you hop on the scale the day after Thanksgiving to find that your weight is down 3/4 of a pound from what it was the day BEFORE Thanksgiving!  Now that is something for which to be thankful!  ;)  

– Shari B. =)

Tags: , , , ,

Dance Dance If You Dare!

Nov 19

Posted by Shari B. in FitFeature, Keeping Fit | 8 Comments

Hello FitFeat friends! 

Thank you for the great feedback in yesterday’s post about what fitness and nutrition topics you might like me to cover in future posts.  Cindy requested some more in-depth exercise instruction, preferably with photos.  Joan liked the idea of my attempting to put up some video instruction.  Tray would like more recipes.  Fantastic suggestions — thank you!  I’ll do my best to get more of that going for you.

Yesterday’s exercise included 50 minutes of cardio:  30 of it spent on the treadmill speedwalking at an incline, then 20 minutes of BOOGIE TIME!! 

Some of my best cardio sessions have been from random dancing (among other random things, i.e. yardio, snowblowing, etc.)  My heart rate while on the treadmill stayed neatly in the upper-130s.  But when it was time to get my dance on??  It shot up into the 160s, which is what I want!  And time spent dancing to get my heart up goes by MUCH FASTER than being on the hamster wheel treadmill.  It’s fun and you don’t need a gym membership to do it!

Get together an amazing playlist on your iPod or MP3 player, strap on your heart rate monitor, dim the lights a little for effect, and close the blinds! 

It’s home-clubbin’-time! 

1 dance

No, that's not me...!

Hop around, throw in some jazzy jumping jacks, skips, jump-rope movements, it doesn’t matter!  No one will see you so just have some fun with it!

My playlist yesterday was short since I was only doing 20 minutes, but these songs get me in the mood to groove!

The point is that exercise can always be made to be fun.  You shouldn’t have to trudge through boring cardio workouts ‘just to get your minutes in’.  Be creative, have a little fun, and you’ll reach your fitness goals that much faster!  (And no, there will NOT be an embedded video of my dancing!) 

Do any of you secretly boogie for cardio??  Drop a comment!

Have a TERRIFIC Thursday!

– Shari B. =)

Tags: , , , ,

Get Adobe Flash playerPlugin by wpburn.com wordpress themes