FitFeat

Posts Tagged Yardio

Winter Wonderland… and then some

Dec 22

Posted by Shari B. in Keeping Fit | 7 Comments

Hi friends!

Hope you are having a terrific Thursday so far!  Mine has been really productive.  Which is pretty impressive considering that I haven’t even left the house (I did shower and do my hair though – BONUS!). I got up and did a killer Chest/Shoulders/Biceps workout for an hour (thank you Cathe Friedrich!), then went outside to run the snowblower and shovel (another hour), tested a couple of recipes for future client cookdates, and sold a piece of furniture that I listed almost a month ago on Craigslist.  The buyer even drove all the way down from north of Denver to get it.  And in this nasty weather:

Brave soul, that one – he didn’t even have 4WD.  Just a little Toyota.  He did get stuck on our street, so a neighbor, Cory and I pushed and pushed and got him unstuck.  He’s giving this item as a gift so I hope the recipient appreciates the lengths to which he went to get it!  I sent him with a muffin to snack on on the way home and asked if he needed the ‘facilities’ since he’d been on the road so long.  I am sure he thought I was either CRAZY or just abnormally nice (I’d say a little bit of both).  Hey, if you buy something from me on Craigslist, show up on time and don’t haggle, I’ll practically invite you for dinner.  :)

If you look at the photo above, you can somewhat see how that snow is higher than my knees.  The news channels say we got about 10″ in our end of town.  Cory’s been on snow duty all year so far – I figured he should have a break today since I didn’t have to work (thanks for taking some action shots, C!).  I definitely got some cardio going on this – I was a sweaty beast when I was all done with our driveway, the sidewalk on our corner, our steps up to the front, our porch and my neighbor’s sidewalk.  I am so thankful for snowblowers!  Now if only it was self-propelled – THAT would be awesome!

I had to lean into it to get it going through all that snow!

Totally playin’ in the snow!

Because we knew the storm was headed our way, we moved up our “light viewing drive” to last night – normally we do it on Christmas Eve.  We had no idea if we’d end up with a blizzard and be housebound for a few days, so we figured we better get out while we still could.  I made a batch of vegan cranberry ‘sour cream’ muffins (adapted from Gena’s version) along with some ginger spice cookies to pack in the car.  We hit up the Starbucks drive-through (soy steamer for me, white hot cocoa for him), cranked the Christmas music on the radio, and the viewing party began.

Here are a couple of the good ones (taken with my iPhone because I couldn’t find my camera on the way out the door):

The snow had just started to fall shortly before we took off and as the evening went on, it was getting pretty slick.  We saw one car completely miss his turn and slam right into the curb on the OPPOSITE side of the street than he was aiming – at that point we figured we best get ourselves home lest WE become the landing pad instead of the curbs.

It was such a festive night – it’s one of my favorites of our little traditions as a couple.  Add to that waking up to all this snow today and I am REALLY in the holiday spirit.  I love it!

Are you getting a lot of snow this season where you are?  How’s your holiday weather looking?  Do you drive around and look at all the decorated houses?

– Shari B. =)

PS:  Thanks for all the great feedback on Keri’s guest post!  I even got some emails about it in addition to the posted comments.  Maybe I convince her to do that for us more often.  ;)   If you missed it, go check it out!

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Grill Fajitas

Sep 13

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

Hi friends!

Well we’re in the remaining days of the *3 weeks of cleaner eating* challenge.  How have you been doing?  Overall I’ve done well during the weekdays, but still have allowed some sneaky refined foods into my weekend eats.

Yesterday’s breakfast was 2 pieces of sprouted grain toast with almond butter, miso and drizzle of honey.  I had a “carb strong” meal because I was going on a cleaning frenzy the first half of the day so I needed some energy.  (I’m even SORE today from the cleaning if you can believe it!)  I moved around furniture to do some deep cleaning, did some hand scrubbing on hardwood floors then polished with the BONA mop, vacuumed our main level, our upstairs and our basement, cleaned all the mirrors in my training studio, pulled a ton of weeds in our front yard landscaping, ran the trimmer and the lawnmower in the front yard, etc. etc. etc.  I was beat!  And at the end of it I decided I miss having a 700 sq ft apartment.  The cleaning process was so much quicker!  :D

It was about 3 1/2 hours in all.  And you can bet I counted it as my exercise for the day!

Late morning I had a scoop of greens powder mixed in water:

For lunch I made some egg salad with two hard boiled eggs, chopped celery, Vegenaise and mustard, pepper and Hungarian sweet paprika.

I ate it along with a handful of baked pita chips.

Mid-afternoon I had half of a coconut cream pie Larabar and then got busy getting dinner prepped so that it could marinate for a few hours.

I was planning some fajitas on the grill, so I mixed up some lime juice, grapeseed oil, cumin, coriander, chipotle powder, a pinch of cayenne, black pepper, ground garlic and some Alderwood smoked sea salt:

It was veggies for me and chicken for Cory.  I used half of that crazy large zucchini, along with some onion, and a trio of sweet bell peppers.

I ate my ‘fajita’ without a tortilla since I was having a side of rice.

I’ve been using my cast iron pan on the grill here and there, along with my dutch oven.  It’s such a nice way to use high heat outside and not overheat the whole kitchen.  But I definitely need more practice out there, because I’m so used to being able to really control the heat on my stovetop.  It’s not quite as easy on the grill.  But it turned out OK and we had a nice little dinner and a LOT of leftovers!

Are you a GRILL MASTER?  Do you prefer using your grill to your stovetop or oven?  What’s your favorite grilled food (or just ‘cooked outdoors’ food)?  I know Cindy has been doing a lot of outdoor cooking this year (check out her solar oven!) so I bet she has some tips to share!

Have a TERRIFIC Tuesday friends!

– Shari B. =)

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These Boots Were Made for… Mowin’

Sep 7

Posted by Shari B. in Keeping Fit | 5 Comments

Good morning friends!

When I left you yesterday, I had just finished that great upper body workout (and a green juice!) and was heading off to get my post-workout food.   I picked a shake:  chocolate egg protein powder, 1/4 cup organic Greek yogurt, a little ground flaxseed, ice and water.

But when you add grated dark chocolate on the top, well that just does it.  :)   Mmm.  Tasty!

Now that I was suitably nourished, it was time to tackle the “yardio”.  I thought you might like to see my yardio get-up.  My neighbor loves to tease me about my choice of attire.

Yes, I wear winter boots with shorts when I mow.  One of my friends in high school wore some flip-flops to mow and now she’s missing part of a toe.  True story.  My feet are small enough already, thankyouverymuch – I don’t need them even SMALLER so I’m not taking any chances!  ;)

What can I say?  I’m a cautious individual!

It was a pretty dreary day so some color was in order at lunchtime.  Leftover agave lime cabbage slaw from Friday’s BBQ dinner alongside an omelet (3 whites and 1.5 yolks) with a miniature green pepper from my garden and big chunks of garlic.  If you haven’t put garlic in your scrambled eggs yet, DO IT.

Mid-afternoon teeccino with almond milk and some Mom’s Best Naturals oat cereal:

Baked tilapia with tomatoes for dinner:

But the tilapia wasn’t terribly filling so I ate the remainder of a veggie bowl from Chipotle too:

I haven’t yet figured out what today’s workout will be.  I have to do crazy hill intervals tomorrow morning with a client outside, so I’m thinking I might skip legs today so that I’m not sore for that session.  I’m going to take today as it comes!  Maybe a little Just Dance on the Wii later!  Or yoga.  We’ll see what the day brings!

Have a WILD Wednesday!

– Shari B. =)

 

 

 

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Hello Hamstrings – Make that Project Work in Your Favor

Jun 24

Posted by Shari B. in Keeping Fit | 3 Comments

Happy Friday FitFeat friends!

My sincere apologies if you’ve had any trouble accessing the blog over the last few days.  The hosting service I’m on is usually fine, but over the last 36 hours the server has been acting up!  Yesterday’s madness at least prompted me to upgrade to the newer version of the theme (style) for the blog, so it’s got a bit of a new look to it after hours on end of trying to somewhat match what it looked like earlier in the week.  I am enjoying the new color theme – it feels “happy” to me!

***

While our driveway was getting replaced, the contractor pulled out a dead aspen for us as well as two really insane bushes that we’ll never plant again (one was a juniper, the kind that stays low as a ground cover and likes to creep its way into other peoples’ yards!) so the west side of our driveway was in dire need of a little beautification.

We had to keep this on a tiny budget so we chose plants that we could get for around $6 each AND ones that were also tolerant of the intense sun and drought that side of the house would bring.  We went with one euonymous, some day lilies and Japanese silver grass (I LOVE landscape grasses!  I would use them everywhere if it wouldn’t get boring to just see tall grasses all over the yard!)

After mixing some clay buster in with the soil, laying down new felt weed cover, and digging 14 holes to plant the greenery into…

Oh and hammering the pins for this awesome “no-dig” edging we found…

Then laying out the wood chips and making a number of trips from our backyard (where the large rocks used to be located)…

… we said hello to our hamstrings!  (And quads, low back, etc!)

Holy moly can I just tell you that I forgot how intense landscaping can be as a workout??  I was good and sore the next morning (and after not getting to work out much lately, it felt GREAT!!).  I did a squat for every couple of those big rocks that I placed into the wheelbarrow so that I could get some leg work and save my low back.  Legs were DEFINITELY worked.

And now we have a prettier welcome to see when we pull up to our house!

Do you have any upcoming landscape or yard work that you turn into a workout? Longtime readers of FitFeat know that I like to turn “chores” in to exercises, such as my yardwork cardio (YARDIO) – somehow it just makes it seem more fun.  I like to workout, but I don’t like chores.  So I just change my ‘perspective’ a little.  I even do it when I’m scrubbing the tub – if you have to move anyway, may as well really focus on the muscles and make it count!

***

When I was grabbing the link for yardio, I found the one that goes to the old wordpress.com site from before I went self-hosted.  Wow, FitFeat sure looked a lot different back when I started it in 2009!

 

I love going back and reading old posts from when I first started – what a fantastic journey it’s been!  So many friends made because of this little blog!  I love it!

Speaking of friends I’ve made through the blog, today is Cindy‘s birthday so swing on over to her blog, A Sparkle a Day and say hello! Click on the pic below to read about our blogger meet up in California last year.  Good times!

Hope you are having a FABULOUS Friday!

– Shari B. =)

***

Shari Becht is a Certified Natural Chef and an ACE Certified Personal Trainer, living out her passion for healthy eating and fun exercise by making it her job!  She offers online/phone coaching for fit living and weight loss.  Visit the “What Your Last Diet Was Missing Page” for more info and read what others have to say about her service!

 

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Yardio Time is Here Again!

May 27

Posted by Shari B. in Keeping Fit | 8 Comments

Happy Friday FitFeat Friends!  It’s time for a long holiday weekend – oh yeah!  I’m very excited!

The sun is finally out again today so I took the chance to get in my YARDIO just in case it decided to hide behind the clouds again.  It was a very productive morning.  Before 8:30 I’d had a cup of coffee, made a delicious (and HUGE) glass of green juice, picked up land mines (aka dog doody), and got the yard edged, trimmed and mowed!  This is only the second yardio session of the year, because our grass hasn’t been growing much.

Green juice and grass clippings:  mmmm

Oh I should add to my list of productivity “clean up kitchen post-juicing” – what a mess!

It felt GREAT to get back to doing yardwork – I especially LOVE to run the weedwhacker (trimmer).  I need to devise a contraption or exercise that mimics running the weedwhacker because it works my rear shoulders like nothing else I’ve ever done.  Or maybe I just got really out of YARDIO shape over the last year, since I didn’t really do any last summer while I was still working at the securities firm.  :D

I also got to spend some extra yardio time moving river rocks last week.  I’m saving the big rocks…

…because we are finally (and begrudgingly) having our driveway replaced.  We could have purchased a small car (or a nice vacation to Italy or replaced all of our carpeting) for the cost of this project, but it had to be done or we were certain to get a letter from the HOA.  It’s been disintegrating at the seams for about 3 years.  And since we are adding a couple of sidewalk extensions, I’m saving the bigger river rocks to put down somewhere else.

The concrete guy is pretty cool and he has FUN yardio toys!

He even helped us pull out some overgrown bushes.

Bye bye crazy juniper, bushy spirea (or whatever you were) and dead aspen!  If we ever move into another house, we will make sure there are NO juniper bushes – this thing spread “creepers”  quite a ways into our neighbor’s grass.

So tonight as soon as MSP is off of work, we are heading to the local nursery to start looking at plants to consider installing in their place.  We need to do a little homework to find out which ones won’t grow like weeds, will work in the Colorado climate and most importantly won’t COST a fortune.  Then we have to sketch it out and turn it all in to our homeowner’s association architectural committee to see if they’ll even approve it.

Um, Dear HOA: I already ripped out those crazy bushes.  I know I didn’t ask for permission first.  But it’s your fault those crazy plants were there in the first place since you approved them for the previous owners! ;)

We can’t wait to have a fresh new driveway.  Partly because we haven’t been able to use our garage for a week, and it will be another 2 weeks before we can get back in!

And last but not least, we finally got our FIRST veggie garden planted!

(Is my husband a handy guy or what?  Check out that raised 4×8 garden bed on STILTS!!)

We planted red peppers, tomatoes, kale (of course I planted KALE – the best veggie on the planet!), cucumber, zucchini, mint, basil, scallions, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts.  We can’t wait to see how it grows!  If only staring at it would cause the plants to grow faster, we’d be set!  Because we have both been out there hovering over it every day in the week since we planted!

Have you done any YARDIO yet this season?  Planted any veggies?

I hope you have a MEMORABLE Memorial Day weekend, blog buds!

– Shari B. =)

P.S.on the subject of veggies, if you are looking for something to do this long holiday weekend:  find a viewing of  Forks Over Knives at your local theater (in all of Denver it’s only showing in ONE theater, so look for places that show indie films and documentaries).  I really enjoyed it and you really come out of it wanting to take your nutrition to the next level and improve your health.

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Like It Was The Summer of 2009

Jun 17

Posted by Shari B. in Keeping Fit | 9 Comments

Holy moly, I spent a few days away from the blog and I come back to find 96 spam messages!  Yowza!  I hope they at least count as page views toward my FoodBuzz account!  Haha!  Thank you Akismet for catching all that spam and keeping it from hitting my comments area!  You are a godsend of a plug-in!

So glad you guys liked the post about the crazy ingredients in our food.  I had a good time writing that one. Garbage in my food gets me all riled up!  :)

Today I’m having flashbacks of last summer.  I started the morning with a run, enjoyed half a cantaloupe when I got home, then got busy doing some ‘doody duty’ and YARDIO and followed it all up with a delicious smoothie.

Love it when the yard is freshly mowed:

And love it when I can enjoy my smoothie on the back patio in the sunshine:

(BTW, this smoothie was a keeper:  small banana, handful of frozen blackberries, vanilla brown rice protein, 1/2 a cucumber, spinach, romaine, flaxseed oil with 8 oz water — SO SO GOOD!)

Ahhh, just like the good ‘ol days of 2009.  ;)   Last year at this time I’d left my high stress no-fun job about 6 weeks prior and was taking the summer ‘off’ to enjoy life a little more and get some projects done around the house that I’d been putting off.  It was fantastic!

Fast forward one year and this summer is definitely on the BUSY BEE side of the coin.  Last year I didn’t have the ops admin job, the fit living business or the blog.  In the battle for where my time is spent sometimes the blog wins, some weeks the training wins, and this week (plus the next two weeks) the admin job will win because we are gearing up to relocate the office.  If FitFeat seems oddly quiet off and on between now and July 4th, you’ll know why!

***

Today’s run was with a client and it was a PERFECT morning.  Warm with blue skies and a light breeze.  We hit up my (and her) favorite hilly trail.  (And she was rockin’ her new pair of Vibram FiveFingers, woot woot!) It was a good thing I had her appointment on the books, because if not I think I may have hit the snooze button a few times.  It was a bit of a rough night of sleep thanks to a certain little dog who likes to howl and bark like mad when his dad comes home from softball late at night.  Picture me sleeping soundly one second, then needing to be peeled off the ceiling in the next. Instant adrenaline rush and impossible to sleep after that.

He looks so innocent doesn’t he?

It’s a good thing he’s so darn cute.

***

You have to check out the delicious dinner than Cindy posted on her blog.  It looks fantastic, and yes I do want to earn a parade (even if my parade would be quite short seeing how it’s only one person) so I might have to make something in a puff pastry for my hubs!  I’m sure he would love it.  I did make him a Bison BBQ Meatloaf with roasted sweet potatoes Tuesday night.  I think the parade was postponed due to inclement weather.  ;)

My meals have been a little on the boring side as of late.  Green smoothies, big salads, oatmeal, grilled goat cheese sandwiches with tomato soup, you know the usual SHARI FARE. Nothing exciting enough to share.  But I have a great new apron (five bucks, SCORE!) so I am sure the inspiration will start flowing now.  Isn’t it the apron that makes one a good cook?

Have a great day friends!

– Shari B. =)

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Yardio & Doody Duty

Sep 11

Posted by in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Hi friends!  It’s FRIDAY!  OK, no matter where you are right now I want you to holler “WOOT! WOOT!”  :)   TGIF!

So I’m still feeling Wednesday’s workout like nobody’s business.  The combination of the straight-leg deadlifts AND explosive lunges has hobbled me – in a good way!  Each of those exercises alone kicks my you-know-what, but put them together…?  Whoa.  I’m so in need of a good stretch – my hams are so sore/stiff I don’t think I could touch my toes at the moment even if someone put some chocolate on my shoe.

Then yesterday’s workout was YARDIO!!! (Yardwork cardio…!)  First step, Doody Duty ‘squat & scoops’.  Hopefully you find that self-explanatory.  ;)   (FYI folks, if you hire a service to do this for you, do them a very nice favor and do NOT run your sprinkler system within 24 hours of their scheduled time.  Just sayin’.)  Next step was the weed-whacker for a great arm workout.  Then the lawnmower with the catcher attached, which gets heavier as you go.

After a quick snack and some water (because Yardio is hard work, you know!) it was on to Part Deux: digging out sod.  Another fine total body workout.  I was sweating early on because I thought I could do this with a little garden spade.  Eventually I realized that I would be without the use of my hands for a few days if I kept that up, so I moved to a small shovel that I could hop on and force into the ground.   I am supposed to do Back & Triceps this morning, but I fear that the dumbbells will just fall right out of my hands!  We’ll see how that goes.

Yardio was apparently also exhausting for these two lazy bones cuties:

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Let’s talk about FOOD, shall we? :)

Channeling my inner surfer chick with my Hawaii Starbucks mug (thanks Jimmy!)

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Since I hadn’t had a workout yet, I had a very light breakfast.  Half a cantaloupe:

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It was gone in like 2 minutes flat – SO GOOD! I can’t even remember the last time I had one!

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Midmorning snack was a toasted piece of Genesis sprouted grain bread with some raw organic almond butter and a drizzle of raw local honey.

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For lunch I decided on an open-faced ‘wich.  Slice of Genesis toast, schmear of Tofutti (soy ‘cream’ cheese), sprouts, avocado, yellow tomato slices, sea salt & pepper.  Red pepper sticks and remaining avocado on the side. I also at the rest of yesterday’s patio salad. After the photo was snapped, I slapped a romaine leaf on the top as my ‘wich lid. 

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Followed by a little bite of heaven:

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 A little mango passionfruit herbal tea with a side of Cashew Cookie by Larabar: 

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Dinner was the reheated Falafel.  I don’t think I’ll do the reheat again.  One, you realize just how greasy they are and two they getsa bit mushy.  But the flavor was still good.  A new reader, Jen, let me know yesterday that the yummy pickled stuff is eggplant!  (Thanks Jen!) Now THAT still tastes good the next day.  :)   This was a tiny little dinner so I knew I’d be looking for food again later in the evening.  

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 And so I ate half of this little beauty for which I’d been impatiently waiting to ripen.  It taunted my on my counter for three days… ‘HaHa, I’m not ready yet!’  The minute it looked ripe I was all over it.  I saved half for today.

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And when I should have been going to bed, I was still a little hungry to I had some Kashi GoLean cereal and a splash of almond milk. 

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OK, my DAH-lings…. enjoy your Friday!  Drop a comment to let me know what exciting FIT plans you have for the upcoming weekend.  Hiking?  Running?  Cycling?  Yoga?  What will you do this weekend to thank your body for all it does for you?

 – Shari B. =)

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