Drink breakfast on the way to work for more energy with a fruit smoothie

August 27, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Breakfast has pretty much always been a struggle for me.  I probably eat breakfast about once a week at best.  By “eat breakfast”, I’m counting anything more than my usual liter of water.  I like fruit for breakfast, but I’m really lazy about preparing anything.  I know, I know… you don’t have to “prepare” fruit, but come on… pull out a knife, cut the grapefruit in half, get out a spoon, dig into it… who’s got time for all that?!  So, I usually just rush off to work and fill up my water bottle when I get to the office.

Occasionally we’ll have some Naked Juice in the fridge, which is probably my favorite juice.  So much fruit packed into the bottle.  Tastes great, but man, it’s expensive!

So, in an effort to take in some breakfast and get some “good” calories in the a.m. to keep me going, I finally tried making my own fruit smoothie this morning.  It only took me about 3 minutes to make, even though I almost faltered under the perceived and anticipated “effort” (ridiculous how hard this is for me!).

Smoothie recipe:

  1. 1 grapefruit (just peeled it, pulled it apart into a few pieces and threw it in)
  2. 1 cup of baby spinach leaves (it was actually a “handful”, but can you say that in a recipe?)
  3. 1/2 – 3/4 cup of frozen mixed berries (again, who’s measuring here?!)
  4. 1/4 cup of water
  5. Chuck it all in a blender, whip it up and ENJOY!

It turned out great!  This not-so-descriptive recipe turned out 3 cups of finished product: a medium thickness, cold, easy-to-drink smoothie.  A bit tart since there is so much grapefruit, but I loved it.  I drank it down over my ten minute drive to work and it really kept me satisfied till lunch and I had much improved energy for the morning work session.

I’ll look forward to a repeat tomorrow and maybe start mixing in some other fun things :-)

Filed Under: Diet

Slowing down a bit with a Cold

August 26, 2008 By Leave a Comment

This week is going to be tough because I’m fighting off a sore throat and cold.  I’m trying to get some extra rest and not overdo things, so I’m sticking to just the combat abs portion of my workout.

Any thoughts about working out when sick?

I’m a little concerned that I won’t make much progress given that I’m sick this week and will be on vacation next week.  Who knows – since it’s a trip without the kids, there should be plenty of time to exercise… but will there be the motivation?    We’ll see how it shakes out.

Filed Under: Training Notes

Lots of lateral movement for no yardage gain

August 25, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Okay, I’m excited for college football starting up this week.   That said, after stepping on the scale this morning and pulling out that cursed measuring tape, I felt like the running back who doesn’t see a gap so he starts running back and forth avoiding tackles… until he finally gets taken down a couple inches behind where he started after having sprinted about 30 yards back and forth.

Okay, if none of that made sense, maybe this will:

Weight: 214.8 lbs.
Waist: 39.5 inches

Looks about the same as last week, but about 0.6 lbs heavier.  That’s after riding my bike FOUR days to work and putting in 6 hours of manual labor on Saturday helping my brother-in-law refinish his wood floors.

I think it comes back to the fact that I’m eventually going to have to change my eating habits to see some real progress, but I’ll resist a little longer since I’ve got a vacation coming up next week and it’s pointless to try and eat better on vacation (at least for me!).

I caught a bit of a cold, so that’s slowing me down a bit so far this week, but we’ll see what exercise I can eek out despite feeling a bit congested, etc.

Well, there it is.  The weekly weigh-in wasn’t too happy this week, but I did create a handy dandy graph to start charting my weight and waist week over week.  The trend line is heading the right overall direction, so if I’m patient, I think I’ll continue to see the progress I’m looking for.

p.s. – if you visit the progress page, don’t forget to heed the *warning* at the top of the page!

Filed Under: Weigh-in

A mixed bag this week

August 20, 2008 By 1 Comment

This week it’s been quite a mixed bag of exercises.

Biking:
I rode my bike into work Monday and Tuesday, but I have a meeting today so I’ll be taking the car.

Combat Abs:
Continuing to start each day with Matt Furey combat abs and hoping that it keeps the waistline shrinking.

Push-ups:
The hundredpushups.com program has been tough to keep up with.  I repeated week 2, then moved on to week 3 but had to drop down a “level” to be able to keep up, but my hand is hurting so I’ve toned it down a bit.  I’ll see if I can re-start week 3 next week after “freestyling” it this week :-)

Misc:
Last night I was up late helping my brother-in-law paint his new house for a few hours, so I felt like that was a workout unto itself.  Enough that I could barely peel myself out of bed this a.m. and *drive* to work.  Tomorrow I’ll get back on that bike!

If anyone has any workout tips or ideas, feel free to share via comments or email!

Filed Under: Training Notes

Finally dropped another pound – I’ll take it!

August 18, 2008 By 1 Comment

Well, I finally dropped another pound – almost.  Depending on how you look at it, it’s only 0.8 lb lower than my low after the first week, but I shook off nearly three from last week, so that’s good news!  I’ll take it!
This week’s weigh in…

Weight: 214.2 lbs.
Waist: 39.5 inches

I think riding the bike was a good addition to the workout schedule.  Hopefully as I bike more days per week, I’ll see the trend continue to melt off some pounds.  I think the Combat Abs helped keep the attack going on my waistline – breaking through the 40 inch mark is something I never thought would be a great accomplishment, but again I’ll take it!

Filed Under: Weigh-in
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