My Downhill Descent! (1/12/12-1/14/12)

I made it back to work on Thursday after two days at home with no car. Let's just say that I stopped being so disciplined and I can see how it can be a battle to stay on task. It's definitely a struggle at times. It takes work to get out of the habit of being lazy! LOL! But the good news for me is that I look at every Monday as a new beginning! I'm looking at each new week as a chance to start over again and get it right. So here's to Monday! Bring it on!

Food:
Rather than talk about my very POOR food choices of this past week, I will talk a little about my plans for next week and for getting kind of a head start. I am starting the PALEO 45-day challenge. This is a diet plan through the boot-camp that I attend (sporadically at this point). Anyway, this will be difficult for me because it doesn't allow you to have dairy or sugar (or sugar substitutes). There are other specifics as well that I can't remember at this point, but I will post about it and let you know how it's going. I really want to try to do this religiously because it is supposed to be good for you and help you feel better and perform exercise routines more effectively, etc. I think that's why I have been indulging more this week. I'm trying to "cram" in all the stuff that's bad for me. All that food definitely tastes good, but I also notice a difference in the way I feel when I'm eating better to when I'm eating "junk."

Fitness:
My goal for next week is to follow my running schedule AND my boot camp schedule. I know that 5:30 a.m. is early, but it will be worth it in the end. I want to be BUFF! LOL

Finance:
I have not been as careful this week with finances as I was last week, but I am much more careful than I have been in the past. I did buy a 6-inch sub and a pick-two at Panera on Thursday, but I started the week with $40 cash and ended with about $7 at the end of the week from "non-essentials" My spending habits overall are improving. Now I just need to find a better deal for internet service. I am paying $65 after taxes right now through Time-Warner. If anyone else knows of other deals, let me know. I see that Verizon is $49.99, but that's before any taxes, so I'm not sure how much of a savings that will be. I thought about getting T.V. with internet for my mom and having her contribute for that, since I don't really watch T.V. It would give her something to do in the winter. Just thinking. I haven't made any changes yet. Just looking for ways to cut costs and keep up with my goals. :)

Ohhhh Boy! (1/10/12-1/11/12)

OK - So today I am putting Tuesday and Wednesday into one post since they have pretty much become one big continuous day of stress! Ugh! There were admittedly some good points along the way, thanks to great friends! :) I guess I have to start with Monday night when my car died. :( That kept me out of work on Tuesday and I thought about renting a car for Wednesday in case my car was unable to get fixed on Tuesday. Unfortunately, I didn't think of that option until late Tuesday night when I made the reservation at Enterprise, which began a series of unfortunate events! I know this story isn't specifically related to the topics in this blog, but I'll just finish my story and then start on the categories (cuz it sorta relates; bear with me).  Anyway, I called my friend Don to ask him for a ride to Enterprise at 7:30 when he finished work. He came to get me and while he waited (He got to see firsthand how sneaky HK can be about taking her meds), I received a message from Enterprise (that I didn't see until we were on our way) stating that they did not have cars until the afternoon. I was going to call a few places right after I stopped at my car (still in the bank lot) and the bank parking lot Nazi stopped me and to tell me that my car can't stay there until the evening and that he "NEEDS" that spot or he's gonna tow my car!

NOTE** This post was started on Wednesday and I am finishing it now (On Saturday), so it's a bit disjointed. Sorry.

As you see from my "note" above, I started writing this and it's pretty much a venting session about my crappy experiences on Wednesday. To finish the above story, I called my brother Kevin and he thankfully gave me use of his AAA services (That's Triple A, not AA - although at this point alcohol should have been consumed! Ha ha).  Anyway, in the end it all worked out and I had my car towed to Jamie and Rob's house, he fixed my car and even dropped it off for me. What a guy! :)

OK - So here we go with the categories. Some of this will be more like true confessions! Here's the first and the worst of them......

Food:
I started off with good intentions when Stacia and I went to dinner on Tuesday night. I thought I might be a "little" bad and I tried to make the smart choice for dinner so I ordered the salmon. I hemmed and hawed over what to order and ended up with the salmon because I figured it was healthier than pasta. It was good, but at dinner time, I was really wishing I ordered the pasta! LOL. I did also have a roll with butter, which was scrumptious! AND I had a glass of wine!

As if all of that wasn't bad enough, I pigged out on breakfast Wednesday morning! After I discovered that I had to have my car towed, I was stressed and I just ate everything in site! LOL That included pancakes, eggs, home fries, and bacon! If I'm gonna admit everything, I might as well put it all here. Someday, I will look back at this and be appalled (Ha ha!).  And then at night I ate a giant candy bar! Then I just stopped keeping track! Yikes! See how that downward spiral happens?

Finance:
There is good and bad in this category. Let's begin with dinner.. Between the groupon that I had and my wonderful friend (You know who you are! :)), I didn't spend any money for dinner on Tuesday night.  I was GOING to rent a car to go to work on Wednesday, but since that fell through, I saved about $50-$60 on a rental, not to mention the cost of gas and since I had personal days to use anyway, it wasn't really that big of a deal, although I felt bad and I had to catch up on things and make up visits, etc.  The other positive is that I didn't have to pay to get the car towed because of Triple A.  Finally, while I did have to pay $180 to get my car fixed, it was much less than I would have had to pay if I had to go to a "regular" garage. Thanks to my nephew Rob for taking care of me! :) And for the door-to-door service. I also spent money on said breakfast above and had to buy a phone card to continue my cell service. :)You know I can't live without a phone!

Fitness:
Ummm... I really have nothing to say in this category, except that I have been verrrrry, verrrry, verrrry, ......BAD!  I will not make any excuses, but no boot camp and no running since Monday.

That's all for the Tuesday, Wednesday post!

Monday (1/9/12)

Here's is yesterday's entry all on it's own. This is also so I can post the training program for the week.  I will start out with fitness today. Here it is:

Fitness:
             

3

Stretch & Strengthen

3.5 m run

6 x 400 5-K pace

3 m run + strength

Rest

Rest

5-K Race

Got the strengthen part in due to my boot camp at 5:30 am. Yes I went! Whoo-hoo for me! :) As for stretching, not so good today. I am poor at stretching. I thought about going to yoga, but then remembered that I had a meeting for CASHA (Capital Area Speech and Hearing Association) so off I went. :)

Food:
Today was not a great day regarding food choices, but not a total bust either. :) The worst (but oh so good!) food choice was that I had 7 pieces of Ghiradelli dark chocolate with caramel. I feel like this is true confessions! OMG! Thank god I did boot camp, huh? I had the bag sitting in my car and I was between visits at work snagging an internet signal from Panera and I just figured I should finish the bag rather than have it hanging around. That's smart, right? And since I am also curbing any unnecessary spending, there won't be any more unless its a gift! :) I'm pretty good at justifying, huh? Anyway, I DID pack my lunch and I had a salad with leftover steak from Sunday's lunch.

Finances:
I had to fill up my car today and I think the total was about $53.00. I brought my lunch to work once again and did not buy any extras. That's about all to report today!  See ya tomorrow! :)

I'm Baaack! (1/4/2012-1/8/2012)

OK - So just as in exercise, once you fall off the wagon, it's tough to get back on again! I have had ups and downs in all three of my categories of Food, Fitness, and Finances, but not anything horrible.  As my friend Leah says, "2012 will not break me!!"  I am with you sister! I am home today due to car trouble. I pulled into the parking lot of the bank in town last night to talk on my phone, and when I went to turn the car back on....NOTHING! Not even a sound. So here I am! In my head I am also wondering how much this is going to cost. Luckily, my nephew Rob is going to take a look at it for me and I know I won't get ripped off. So, I will take this day to update my blog and catch up on my paperwork for my job.

Food (Wednesday-Friday):
Since it's been a week since I've written, I'm not going to list all of the foods I've eaten for a week. If you REEEEALLY want to know, you can probably log onto myfitnesspal.com and look me up, but it's really not that interesting. I will give you a basic overview of my ups and downs, but it really has been pretty good overall with a few slip-ups.  So, I packed my lunch every day during the work week and I also recorded my foods at the website above.  I also made breakfast most mornings or simply had a banana with peanut butter.  The flavored creamer that I have with my coffee every morning is probably my biggest downfall. I also made it a point to make dinner each evening as well, which I did successfully most of the time.  Friday night my brother and sister-in-law invited me out for dinner at Dragon Garden, so I went and tried to decide wisely in order to keep up with my good eating habits. I chose the steamed chicken with sugar snap peas (Or something like that). It also came with steamed white rice. It was very good and there was plenty of it so I came home with leftovers! Yay!  One of the slip-ups of the night was that I couldn't resist the crunchy fried things (You know what I'm talking about? Don't remember the name. LOL) dipped in mustard or that sweet and sour sauce. Yummy!  And the fact that they were sitting right in front of me made me keep eating more. Ooops! ;)

Earlier in the day on Friday as I was out and about for my job, I was feeling extremely hungry for some reason. Having eaten all of my lunch, there was nothing left and I was on a hunt for something to eat that wasn't TOO bad for me. I started out at the Cracker Barrel store because I have a gift card for there and I was also trying to conserve cash. As I suspected, there was nothing "good" there or even a little "bad." Everything was loaded with fat and calories and there was nothing really worth that much of a cheat after all my hard work.  So, off I went to the next place. I ended up at a small gas station mini-mart. After examining several of the food items there, I settled on a bag of pretzel rods at 110 calories for 3 rods. This seemed to satisfy my cravings and I didn't feel too bad about my choice.

Food (Saturday and Sunday): 
My true confession for Saturday morning....I had eggs benedict with ...home fries. I was trying to decide between that and pancakes and I thought that would be a less guilty option, but I'm not so sure. Oh well. I don't think I had any lunch because I was full from breakfast and I had some beef stew (made by John's mom), which was delicious and a very small bite of macaroni and cheese. I sooooo wanted more, but I was good. :)  I was a bit irritated on Saturday evening so I had a glass of White Merlot, which was my only alcoholic beverage in 2012.  John also made us some popcorn with butter, salt and pepper. It was so yummy that we ate it all!

Sunday morning I started the day with oatmeal that John made for us and coffee. For lunch we had steak and veggies, which was deeeelicious!  I went to Jamie and Rob's for dinner where we had Chicken and Dumplings, which were also delicious :) and for dessert I brought over some cheesecake from Gabriel's.  This was also delicious and I'm sure it had a million calories.

Fitness:
Again, I fell of the wagon for a few days. I missed 3 days of my running schedule out of 6 so I did 50%.  There's no where to go but up, right?  I missed boot camp on Wednesday and Thursday and didn't run, Friday was a day of rest (according to the training schedule) and I didn't run on Saturday. But... On Sunday I did do my 6.2 mile (10K) run at UAlbany, despite my initial desire to skip out on the 10K and only do 3 miles. I felt pretty good afterwards and I only walked a little. I keep trying to push myself to walk less and jog more. It will get easier each time (That's what I keep telling myself. LOL!).  That's about it for fitness today. Kinda lame, I know.

Finances:
I spent a total of $3.20 this week on a snack (said bag of pretzel rods in the above food section), but did not spend any other money on food, other than the grocery store last Sunday.  My brother treated me to dinner on Friday night and my friend treated me to breakfast on Saturday morning (Score for me both times! :))  I did spend some money on Sunday on some gift cards, toiletries, and special dessert for a total of $53.  Oh yeah, and John bought me a coffee on Sunday on our way home from our run! Woot woot for me! :)

I will be writing about Monday later today too and that should catch me up! A special shout out to Stacia for reading my blog and checking in on me to make sure I am doing what I need to! Thanks Stacia! :)

Day 3 and Still Doin It! :)

OK - So it's only day 3, but I am doing what I need to do so far. I have even been tracking my food and exercise using the website http://www.myfitnesspal.com/. Check it out! It logs your food and calculates the calories. I make sure to put EVERYTHING that I eat so that I am not cheating. I started it on the 2nd and so far I have been under my calories each day. Yay! I want to stay right within the range and don't want to go too low of course, because that's not helpful either. OK, so here are the three F's for today:

Food:

• Breakfast: Banana w/2 TB of peanut butter, coffee with creamer
• Lunch: Salad w/mushrooms, tomatoes, and cracker barrel cheese, Italian dressing
• Dinner: Chicken w/lemon-pepper seasoning, Ronzoni smart choice pasta, brocolli, glass of milk
• Snacks: Applesauce, 2 Clementines

Fitness:

My marathon training schedule called for a 3-mile run and I did it! Even though it was bitter cold outside, I made myself go out and did 3.2 miles. I didn't run the entire way and did do some walking, but I completed it nonetheless. Tomorrow is boot camp at 5:30 a.m.  I am tired already. LOL. The difficult thing for tomorrow and Thursday is going to be fitting in a run with it being so cold out. Tonight was brutal! I may have to do my running indoors at the gym on the treadmill. Tomorrow calls for 30-minute tempo run. Here's the description taken from the Hal Higdon website:

Tempo Runs: This is a continuous run with a buildup in the middle to near 10-K race pace. A Tempo Run of 30 to 45 minutes would begin with 10-15 minutes easy running, build to 15-20 minutes near the middle, then 5-10 minutes easy toward the end. The pace buildup should be gradual, not sudden, with peak speed coming about two-thirds into the workout. Hold that peak only for a minute or two. I consider Tempo Runs to be the "Thinking Runner's Workout." A Tempo Run can be as hard or easy as you want to make it, and it has nothing to do with how long (in time) you run or how far. In fact, the times prescribed for Tempo Runs serve mainly as rough guidelines. Feel free to improvise. Improvisation is the heart of doing a Tempo Run correctly. Here's a link to that site if anyone is interested: http://www.halhigdon.com/

Finances:

Not too much to report here. I packed my lunch today, so I didn't spend any money on food today. I did have to put gas in my car, but I actually found some money in two different pockets and was able to use it for gas. I had about $22 and spent $20 for gas. The good news is that there was no unnecessary spending. :)

So Far, So Good. :)

Food:  
Today was a pretty good day food wise and I really tried hard to stay on track. Here's what I had:

• Breakfast: Oatmeal w/brown sugar, 1 1/2 cups of coffee with my coffee-mate creamer (Decreasing this vice will have to come later. :))
• Lunch: One piece of Tilapia w/lemon-pepper seasoning and mixed veggies with a little bit of olive oil
• Dinner: Ronzoni Smart choice(or something like that) pasta (2.5 times fiber of regular pasta), broccoli, with a bit of olive oil and sprinkled parmesean cheese
• Snacks: piece of cracker barrel cheddar cheese, Chobani yogurt, 2 Clementines, Hot cocoa

I also had one very small piece of chocolate to satisfy my craving after lunch and before I went shopping at the supermarket. Thankfully, John was there to "talk me down" LOL because I really wanted something more originally, but I sipped my water instead.  I was also disappointed when I went to have my Yoplait greek peach yogurt, which I bought to try and it was missing from my fridge. I then realized that my mother had eaten that instead of her own yogurts. :( Guess I will have to start putting my name on my things from now on, especially since I am trying to budget.  Oh, well... On to the next category for the day.

Finance:
So, as you can see above, I did go to the supermarket today so that I could get food for the week. Some things are necessary, even with a goal of not spending money. Ha ha ha. So, I was hoping to spend $50 or less and my total was around $53.00. I bought some chicken so that I could make a crock-pot stew from a recipe book for the Paleo diet, which I just received. (I'll talk about that more in a later post). Anyway, I needed a few ingredients for that including diced tomatoes, butternut squash, and of course the chicken, which I will use for other things as well.  I also had to buy garbage bags, which I buy in a larger package because it is more cost-effective. Overall, I consider this a win for me, considering I don't usually budget my groceries and just buy whatever I feel like and usually on a whim. This trip, I actually went in with a list and pretty much stuck to my list.  No other money spent today other than my 30-cent toll on my way home.  Tomorrow I will have to spend money on gas, but I will try to go to Stewart's on Freeman's bridge road, where it is supposed to be cheaper. :)

Fitness:
I did not make it to boot camp this morning at 5:30 am, because I was not near home and because it was my last vacation day to "sleep in."  That being said, I am committed to staying on track with my fitness goals so I made it a point to go to Best Fitness where I currently have a membership. I did some leg machines and then took a yoga class, which qualifies as my strengthen and stretch on today's half-marathon training schedule. Tomorrow calls for a 3-mile run. I was going to do a group run in Scotia but they changed the location and I am afraid that I will get lost somewhere else.  I will however make it a point to run on my own if necessary.

Happy New Year! :)

The new year is off to a good start so far. I gorged myself with chips and dip, soda, chocolate and pizza last night as a final "bad" eating night. LOL. Anyway, this morning I had a banana with peanut butter and a cup of coffee with my flavored caramel vanilla Coffee-Mate creamer. Then John and I went to SUNY Albany and participated in the Winter Series #2 run and did 3.5 miles. It took me 44:13 to complete. Pretty slow, but I am hoping to improve my times each time I run. :) I haven't spent any money yet today! Yay! John bought us coffee and a bagel to split after the run on our way home. I also resisted the cookies that were offered at the end of the race.

So far for today, here are the synopsis of the three F's:

Food

• Banana w/2 TB of Peanut Butter
• Coffee w/Vanilla Caramel creamer
• 2 Orange slices at race
• Small slice of bread with a bit of jelly
• 2 banana halves
• Half of a poppy seed bagel with cream cheese

Finances

• No spending so far at 3:00 PM (John bought us coffee and bagel :))

Fitness

• Ran 3.5 miles in 44:13