Up And Moving: No Candy Required

It’s so nice to get up with the sun!  Love the time change for the morning, although getting dark by 5:30 p.m. kinda stinks.  Oh well, can’t win ‘em all!

The daughters were off from school today, so it was a nice relaxing morning in the pj’s for us.  I took advantage of the extra time to make a bowl of Pumpkin Oat Bran…

• 1/2 cup oat bran
• 1 cup water
• 1/4 cup canned pumpkin
• splash of Silk Heart Health Vanilla Soymilk
• 2 tbsp. walnuts
• 1 tbsp. homemade almond butter

Delicious and very filling.  The addition of almond butter made it!

After breakfast, I got in a good amount of organizing and decluttering in various rooms.  It all accumulates so fast!  Especially books and magazines!

Lunch happened earlier than I thought.  The oat bran was filling, but didn’t hold me over as long as it has before.  Oh well, I ran with it and fixed up a leftover turkey sandwich on an Ezekiel Hamburger Bun with spinach.  The star of the sammie was this awesome mustard…

 

It wasn’t as zesty as Zesty!  But, it was the perfect compliment to the turkey sandwich, as were the POPchips and crunchy Gala…

Later, while I was packing up the mounds of Halloween candy, I had a little treat…

Then carried on along my merry way, pinching my nose so as to not be enticed by the smell of this…

or this…

Yes, you can smell it through the wrapper.  Uh huh.  Have I mentioned that I hate Halloween?  Yes?  Okay, moving on…

While little daughter was at dance, I decided to hit the gym for a quick run.  I wanted to do 3 miles today, but knew I probably wouldn’t be able to fit it into my 30 minute time frame.  I tried pumping up my speed, but it left me a little too winded, so I  resigned myself to the 2 miles and walked the rest at a 10% mountain climbing incline.  It felt great!

Dinner was prepped (me) and in the oven while I was gone (thanks, big daughter!), so a yummy cheesy Lasagna was waiting when we came home.  I wasn’t in the mood for it , though, plus I made it extra cheesy for the family and I didn’t think it was worth the splurge.  I decided on a Salmon Roulette with a drizzle of pesto, leftover roasted potatoes and veggies…

I’m turning into the Leftover Queen!  It’s my secret way of cleaning out the fridge :)

I ended the night with a decaf soy latte:  decaf coffee and Silk Heart Health Vanilla Soymilk…

Candy?  What candy?  Yep, I can say that now.  I am so over it.  Who needs it?  Nope, not me!  Whew!  Now to brace myself for Christmas cookies!!!  Aaaaah!!!!

ONE GOOD THING:  I’m back to running again and I love it!  So far, so dizziness and no major hip issues.  I’m going to try out a pre-5K training schedule which I’ll post about tomorrow.  I like pushing my body a little to see what it can do!

Have a great day all!

Ready For The World

I felt great this morning!  The fresh start of a new month coupled with a little extra sleep had me ready for the world.  The first thing on my mind was GET TO THE GYM.  Just ditching exercise for a few days had made me so unhappy!

Since big daughter was feeling better (still kept her home for one more day), I was able to slip out for a quick stint at the gym.  I jumped right on the elliptical and cranked it out for 45 minutes.  It felt great!  My whole mood changed and I felt ready to be back on track!  On a side note, my dizziness has gotten a lot better, so I’m going to get back to my regular exercise routines (including running – I can’t wait! <------still can’t believe I say that!) and see what happens.  I can always scale back if it acts up again.

I wasn’t very hungry this morning.  It makes me wonder if it’s my body’s way of getting me back to a normal eating pattern.  Funny, if we listen, I guess the body does it’s job! 

I grabbed a Chobani yogurt before I left and ate it in the car after my workout…before driving, Mom …

I had planned on eating something else a little later in the morning, but it got close to lunch time , so I just went right to it.  I went with a simple turkey wrap with dijon mustard and a good handful of broccoli slaw for a little different twist.  POPchips and apple on the side made this a super crunchy lunch…

 

The afternoon was a bit of a challenge.  Bowls of candy seemed to  beckon to me (I am packing them up now!), but I planned a big snack to combat the evil sugar soldiers…

It kept me busy for a while, so I was able to pretend I didn’t see forget about the candy:)

Dinner was a precursor to Thanksgiving.  Roasted turkey breast, mushroom gravy, roasted potatoes and green beans…

So delicious!

Okay, it’s a complete MIRACLE that I was even able to post this as I have been extremely distracted by little daughter who has basically been doing a three act play in front of me, jumping around like a crazy person, grilling me with a hundred and fifty-two questions about where stuff is and pretty much torturing our dog by dressing him up in random things found in my closet.  Time to go!!!

Have a great day, everyone!  Oh, and THANK YOU SO MUCH for all of your supportive comments on yesterday’s post!  We can ALL do this together!

Off to get the duct tape…kidding…kidding :)

Like Butta

Spring is on its way! I can feel it! I love when the sun is shining in the morning; the first thing I think of is going for a run outside. I decided to wait to get the daughters off to school (so much for my early routine!) then headed out. I only ran for 30 min. because I had to get myself ready to meet up with Mom and Gram later. But, it was a glorious 30 min. of Vitamin D!! I am going to try to run everday this week. Did anyone catch Laura on the Biggest Loser last night saying that if you want to lose weight, Jillian would say to do a lot of running??? That's all I needed to hear! I'm on it Jil :)

After my run, I had a lovely breakfast of whole wheat raisin soda bread and an apple with 1 tbsp. homemade almond butter. LOVE this! The husband and big daughter are diggin the almond butter, too. I have to make more! A pleasing 4 POINT breakfast...

I went to meet up with the ladies for some shopping. We stopped for a quick lunch at Chick-fil-A. I had the Southwestern Chargrilled Chicken Salad with fat free Honey Mustard Dressing. It also came with a packet of honey roasted sunflower seeds and tortilla strips. I used half the dressing and half of the seed and tortilla packets. It was a surprisingly filling 7 POINT lunch...

I got the daughters from school and headed home for munch time!!! This is always my worst time of day - remember Pavlov's dogs???!!! I got smart today and remembered a great filling and voluminous snack - POPCORN! Duh, I don't know why I don't have this more often! It's a great munchie snack and low POINT. I have the Orville Redenbacher Smart Pop 100 calorie bags of both the regular and kettle corn flavor. I opted for the kettle corn and fancied it up even more by making it Chocolate Cinnamon Popcorn! I mixed a 4 serving box of sugar free, fat free Jello Chocolate Pudding with 2 tsp. ground cinnamon. After microwaving the popcorn bag, I sprayed the popcorn with cooking spray and sprinkled on a couple tbsp. of the chocolate cinnamon mix. Yummy 2 POINT snack...

I got another trampoline workout with the daughters and then, "prepared" dinner. I use that term loosely because I mainly heated up a bunch of leftover items in the fridge and freezer! I had a 3 oz. baked chicken tender, 7 0z. (total) of sweet potatoes and roasted potatoes and 2 measly broccoli florets. Part way through my dinner, I squirted some ketchup on my sweet potatoes - where has that been all my life!!!! That was soooo good! A delightful 7 POINT dinner...

And for dessert...nada. Well, that's not entirely true. I made some more almond butter and took a spoonful to "taste test". I am loving this stuff and so is the family! So, that was my 2 POINT dessert. I'm thinking about doing either an afternoon snack or a dessert, but not both for this week. I'll see if that helps me out any in staying On Program and getting the scale moving in the right direction...

Have a good night!