food journal 17/06/11

I went to bed early last night so I didn’t get a chance to post my eats. Today was a leftover day because I didn’t have a minute to spare to cook dinner last night.

Breakfast

- 1/4 c egg whites with 2 pieces of high protein sprouted grain bread and mustard

Lunch

- leftover barley risotto

Post Workout

- small banana + vegan protein powder + water

Dinner

- leftover thai coconut stirfry with rice noodles

Dessert

- 1/2 cinnamon bun
- 1 cookie

Fitness

It was shoulders and abs day from my Superset Routine. I’m loving the supersets. I can tell that my muscles are working differently because I’m so sore a couple of days after my workouts! And I’m pretty much in and out of the gym in 30 minutes.

I came home after the gym and went for a 3 mile run at a steady 10 min/mile pace.

Later my friend Tina and I went for a 3 mile walk and got to hear all about her recent vacation to Barbados! I saw all her gorgeous pictures from the island and it made me want to go on a Caribbean vacation. For beach vacations I’ve only ever been to Mexico once and Florida twice. I usually prefer to go to a mountain than a beach (like New Hampshire), a place with lots of culture (like Montreal and Boston) or a place I can be really active (like Norway).

What’s your ideal vacation?

Weightlifting PDFs

Breakfast

High protein Oat bran pancake. I got the idea for this from reader and regular commenter Samantha. It had:

1/4c egg whites
1/3c oat bran
1 T coconut flour
pinch of baking powder

Combined and pan fried until golden. I topped it with 1 T all natural PB and 1 T unsweetened coconut.
The texture was denser than a normal pancake but I still liked it. I would make it again for sure!

I also had a side of pineapple.

Lunch

- Royal Gala apple
- Potato Leek Soup

Post Workout

- vegan protein powder, 1 c. water, 1 small banana

Dinner

- Thai stirfry with rice noodles. In the stirfry was onions, lemon grass, peppers, firm tofu, coconut milk, fresh basil, coconut milk, and lime juice.

Dessert

I was baking again tonight. More Winning Chocolate Chip Cookies. And now I`m sick to my stomach from eating too much cookie dough. I probably ate enough for 4 cookies, at least. Ugh.

Fitness

It was back and biceps day from my superset routine.

I decided to leave out cardio today because my legs are still killing me from Monday and I wanted to give them a break. I can barely walk. I’m currently walking like a retarded child or, as Matt put it, “You look like a speed walker in slow motion”. Nice.

In other fun news, I updated my Weightlifting Page to include printable PDF workouts you can bring to the gym with you

Here’s my current routine:

food journal 14/06/11

Breakfast

I like doing leftovers for breakfast. They’re quick, easy, and usually filling.
- Chicken thigh with capers cooked in white wine.
- sauteed cabbage and sweet peppers

Lunch

-grapefruit
-cottage cheese with peanut butter and cinnamon
-2 pieces of homemade high protein sprouted wheat bread

Post Workout

-smoothie with a banana, 3 strawberries, vegan protein powder, and water (out of soy milk—still delicious)

Dinner

-salad with romaine, cucumber, avocado, sunflower seeds, and thyme.
-dressing: 1 tsp dijon, 1 tsp, honey, 1 tsp pmegranate molasses, 1 tsp apple cider vinegar

Dessert

- cinnamon bun! (toasted)
- a few reese’s pieces

1954 cals; 43% fat/ 39% carbs/ 18% protein

I managed to get 91g of protein today but the fatty ridiculously high calorie cinnamon bun put me over the edge. I need to stop baking.

Fitness

I did my superset routine today, supersetting 3 chest exercises for 4 sets and then 3 triceps exercises for 4 sets.

Chest
Incline Dumbbell Press
Push-ups
Dumbbell Flys

Triceps
Cable Rope Pushdowns
Cable Rope Extensions
Bench Dips

Dips are practically impossible after 2 consecutive triceps exercises so I had to modify them a lot by bringing my feet closer to my body.

My legs were still intensely sore today after yesterday’s leg workout but I ran anyway. I did intervals. Man, it’s been SO long since I’ve done intervals I forgot how quickly cardio can go by!

Treadmill HIIT

400m @ 5.5mph
400m @ 7.5mph
Repeat 5 times (for 3 miles total)

It took me just over 28 minutes to get my 3 miles in and I was really cranking it in the last 400m.

food journal 13/06/11

I’m food journalling again this week.

Breakfast

Scrambled Egg whites (1/4c) with 2 slices of high protein sprouted wheat bread (homemade! recipe to come) and dijon mustard.

Lunch

- Mishmish! (aka as apricots) This is probably the only fruit that I consistently call by it’s Arabic name because I really like to say mishmish.
- 1 chicken thigh cooked in white wine with garlic, capers, and lemon juice.

Pre Weightlifting

Cottage cheese with strawberries.

Post Weightlifting

Smoothie – 1 banana, 1c. unsweetened soy milk, 1 t all natural peanut butter, 1 scoop vegan protein powder

Dinner

-Barley risotto with kale and romano beans

Dessert

- chocolate chip cookie

Fitness

I did my superset routine and intended to run afterwards. That didn’t happen. My legs were jell-o. I could hardly use the gas and brake pedals on my car when I drove home. THAT’s a good workout.

Since I skipped the run, Matt and I headed to the park to play a little catch instead.

I’m working on making PDFs for all my weight training routines so you can print them out and bring them to the gym with you if you’re interested. I’ll keep you all posted

Randomness

Matt and I picked up a new food dish for Bagigis since her plastic one was chewed up and basically disgusting.

Bagig’ is terrified of the thing and keeps barking at it!

I’ve had to try to make a trail of kibble Hansel & Gretel style to get her close to the thing.

Eventually I had to bribe her to eat from the bowl by putting peanut butter in it!

Success!

food journal 26/05/11

Breakfast

-leftover vegan oil down from dinner last night

Lunch

-leftover vegan corn and black bean chili from dinner on Tuesday night ( love my leftovers)
-2 spinach fatayer (recipe)

Snack

- Gala apple with a tsp of regular peanut butter (not the natural stuff, unfortunately)
- a bit of Granola, unpictured

Dinner

Two weeks ago I went to a local burger place and had a terrible terrible veggie burger and I was really disappointed. Tonight`s dinner more than made up for it (and this is why I prefer to eat at home)

Tofu Slider with Peppers and Onions on a Homemade Spelt Bun with a side of roasted broccoli.

In the sandwich was:
- a spelt bun that I baked
- tofu marinated in Saw`s Sauce from my Alabama care package and then pan fried
- sauteed red and yellow pepper and red onion.
- Dijon mustard
- Spinach

I had two of these though the first was so messy to eat that I just at a deconstructed version the second time around.

Dessert

- 2 snickerdoodles (plus some cookie dough) that I made for Matt to bring to his Track Meet in London tomorrow.

All in all: 2254 Cals; 40% fat/ 50% carbs /10% protein

Workout

Leg Day I hate leg days. I skipped the abs because my abs are still sore from yesterday’s Jackie Warner workout.

On a Week of Food Journalling

It`s been 7 days of taking pictures of all my food as a Food Journal. Are you bored yet?
I only forgot to photograph one day. Frankly, I can’t remember what I ate all week… I’ll have to look back on the posts:

18.05.11
19.05.11
20.05.11
21.05.11
22.05.11
23.05.11
24.05.11
25.05.11

By the Numbers:

# Of Times I ate Homemade Meser Wat leftovers: 3
# Fruit: 7
# Salads: 2
# Bean Salads: 4
# Cookies: 6
# Instances of Bread: 7
# Eggs: 2
# Servings of Brown Cheese: 2
# Missed Dinners: 2 (One consisted of a Moon Pie the other was booze)
# Instances of Meat: 0 (unless you count the part of the boxty I ate before I found a bug in it)

What I learned:

I eat a LOT of bread. And fruit. And cookies. I guess it’s not a huge surprise. I like the sweetness of fruit and I bake a lot of bread and cookies so they’re always around.

My meals don’t have enough green vegetables. I try to incorporate them as much as possible but I think I fall short. I should aim to include a salad as a meal (or with a meal) at least once a day.

I seriously had 2 beers for dinner? Who AM I?

Taking pictures of everything I eat isn’t as annoying as I thought it would be but I still find it kinda embarrassing.

Favourite Meals:

Fresh pita with a mix of tahini and date molasses. Fat and sugar on carbs? What’s not to love here?

Matt’s vegan corn and black bean chili. (And I love Matt for always making our chili vegan without putting up a stink about it)

This modified Grenadian Oil Down that I made for dinner tonight. Delicious.

And now…

I don’t know if I’m going to keep up the food journalling or not. I like it better than calorie counting because it’s visual but I don’t see how much I’ve eaten until the end of the day when I load all my pictures. So unlike calories counting I don’t really know how many calories I’m eating throughout the day.

I think I’ll keep it up for a little while longer. Thoughts?

food journal–25/05/11

Breakfast

- 2 little spelt buns that I proofed on Monday and baked last night; I wasn’t happy with the flavour of these guys. 1 bun was eaten with with jam (unphotographed) and the other with Norwegian brown cheese

- banana—nice and brown, just like it’s meant to be

Lunch

-leftover vegan corn and black bean chili
-2 spinach fatayer (it was supposed to be 3 but one accidentally got stuck in the toaster at the office and burned to a char)

Snack

-stress at work drove me to the candy dispenser for Skittles. 20 minutes later I sugar-crashed and fell asleep at my desk. (I only got 1 red skittle?! Damn you, candy dispenser)

- once I got home I ate another one of those little spelt buns, plain. They’re really small I swear.

Dinner

Doesn’t this look amazing?

It’s supposed to be a Grenadian Oil Down but I took liberties with the recipe. In the end it came out phenomenal—a very tasty, stick to your ribs, West Indian flavoured stew.

I took the recipe from Sasha at Global Table Adventures one of my favourite blogs. She’s cooking dishes from every country in the world in alphabetical order (she’s at the G’s). How awesome is that?

I had already started the prep work for the recipe when I cut into the yucca that I just happened to have lying around (what can I say, I’m impulsive in the produce section!) and found that it had gone bad. I subbed parsnips for the yucca (the only other root veggie I had lying around) and it turned out fabulous!

In the mix is carrots, parsnips, celery, onion, spinach, coconut milk, curry, and dumplings (aka spinners and sinkers).

Workout

Yesterday I went out for a 5 mile run which felt super quick compared to the distances that I’ve been doing lately but it also felt really tough on my legs. My legs felt like lead and then I started to develop pain in my right knee and my left heel/ankle.

Considering the discomfort of the run I was pretty surprised to see that I ran it in 50 minutes which about a minute/mile faster than I have been running lately.

Today I came home and did an Eoin Finn yoga podcast and followed that up with Jackie Warner’s 20 minute core workout. I still suck terribly at that core workout—I’m always doing the easy modifications! I’d like to make it my goal to have Jackie’s 6 pack but I think that would be highly unattainable.

food journal 24/05/11

Breakfast

-mountain bread with equal parts tahini and date molasses topped with banana slices
-some granola (unpictured)

Lunch

-spinach salad with cucumber, avocado, and savoury. I forgot to put any sort of protein in the salad so it wasn’t very filling
-celery sticks

Dinner

- Matt was on dinner duty tonight. He made a chunky vegan corn and black bean chili with fresh cilantro. It was, as all Matt’s chilis are, spicy.
- one and a half spinach fatayer that I made last night.
- glass of Alabama sweet tea, this stuff is gooood.

food journal 23/05/11

Happy Victoria Day to all.

Yesterday I found out the most amazing news! I won a KitchenAid stand mixer from the Pioneer Woman! And it’s in yellow! I can’t wait to get it in the mail. I was ecstatic when I found out (but now Matt won’t know what to buy me for my birthday.)

How pretty…

Breakfast

- 1 egg, sunny-side up with a toasted bun topped with mashed avocado, salt, pepper, and wasabi
- mango slices

Lunch

-More leftover Meser Wat (yes, I’m still eating leftovers of this stuff. Luckily, it’s delicious.)
-carrot sticks
-sweet tea from Summer’s recipe with peach slices (It was phenomenal, thanks summer!)

Dinner

Dinner was at my Nonna’s house tonight. In my dish was:

- lemony Greek style potatoes from a recipe that she found in the Windsor Star
- 4 pierogy
- a piece of Furlan cheese
- bean salad

Dessert

- we finally dug into the Colomba from Easter (needless to say it was a bit stale)
- iced coffee

Workout

I meant to do a 20 mile run yesterday for my marathon training but I got completely bored out of my mind so I quit at 12 miles… how terrible is that? I don’t know if I should go for the 20 miler next weekend or if I should just start tapering. Anyone have input?

food journal 21/05/11

Today was a weird day when it comes to eating. Even more than a normal Saturday’s unstructured eats.

- I had to skip breakfast because I had to fast for a blood test
- I didn’t have a proper lunch because I spent the day shopping in the States
- My dinner had a bug in it. True story.

So my meals today were mainly liquid or miscellany from the Lebanese grocery stores that I hit up after my bloodwork.

Breakfast:

I went to a couple of Lebanese grocery stores on Wyandotte and every time I go I have to pick up some nougat candies. I didn’t wait until I got home to dig into these babies:

Once I got home I had half of a giant mountain bread smothered with a mix of equal parts tahini and date molasses. It’s delicious, trust me.

- Right before I left to go shopping I had a cucumber with sea salt.

Lunch

I went shopping with my friend Tina who, thankfully, brought snacks with her. Lunch was a granola bar and an iced coffee from Starbucks (which was unphotographed but looked something like this)

(source)

Dinner

- It started off with a delicious boxty stuffed with corned beef and cabbage from an Irish pub in Novi. I’ve never had a boxty before and I really really liked it (It’s like a potato crepe!). About 1/3 of the way through it I found a little fly in my veggies and sent the dish back.

So dinner ended up being a Magner’s Cider at the pub and a Mill Street Brewery Wit at home.

Workout

Shopping! It’s cardio, I promise.

I got a cardigan (I subscribe to the philosophy that you can never have too many cardigans), an owl necklace, and a pair of earrings from Forever 21. I wore my purchases home because that’s what you do when you live in Canada, shop in the States, and don’t want to pay taxes on what you bought.

(I wear sunglasses indoors. What?)

Another method to avoid paying duty is make the customs officer uncomfortable by telling him you bought hundreds of dollars worth of lingerie. Try it.

The contents of the bag are between me and Victoria.

I’m off to polish off my liquid dinner. Cheers!