Hump Day

Hey All -

Happy hump day.  Today was a bit of a struggle for me – I think around 2 o’clock this afternoon, my body realized the switch I was trying to pull – ie becoming a morning person!  I was sooo tired this afternoon, and tonight I fell asleep on the couch. But back to a re-cap of the day…

This morning I enjoyed a glass of iced coffee with a twist! I added a scoop of Aria protein powder to my skim milk, coffee and ice. It was great – my Aria is vanilla flavored, and I could taste the flavor in my drink, and it was a pretty good addition.

Ben and I discussed coffee today.  He prefers hot coffee, and I sometimes prefer iced coffee – not only in the summer.  Here is weird reason for why I love iced coffee – I can drink it faster!

For breakfast I had another sesame bagel with peanut butter. It was very good, but tomorrow I hope to go back to stove top oats.

The bagel did the trick though – and kept me going until a little bit after noon for lunch. I think the extra protein from my Aria might have helped, too.

For lunch I made another wrap – this time with garlic hummus, lettuce and the last of the grilled turkey on a whole wheat wrap. The wrap was really great!
Preparing the Wrap:

Wrapped up:

Not pictured, but consumed at lunch were carrot sticks. After lunch I snacked on 1/3 of a cup of Honey Nut Cheerios.

At 4:45 I had my afternoon snack on my way to getting my hair cut.  I was so excited to try my first PURE Bar… I loved it!

This bar did remind me a lot of the Larabar – but the consistency was different, and the bar was thinner… When I eat Larabars it takes me forever to eat them, they are so dense and filling – I love taking my time eating them (sometimes I take an hour just munching on them). I was able to eat the Pure bar on the run – and it kept me full for three hours!! I love anything that will keep me going for that long. Click here to see the ingredients and nutritional information on my ChocChip Trail Mix bar. I highly recommend it!

I started dinner tonight around 7:30… I was tired by this point after a long day at work and running errands – and relaxing while  getting my hair cut in Coolidge Corner at Michael Salon.  I fell back on an old stand by – broccoli, brown rice and steamed chicken wantons.  I had a bit of an accident with my dipping sauce – more of it ended up on my plate than I intended.  Oh well!

DUring dinner Ben and I watched Out of Africa  -  what a great movie. If you have not seen it, I highly recommend watching it. Not only are Robert Redford and Meryl Streep amazing actors in the movie  – but the film is beautiful. You will feel like you are in Africa while you are watching the movie. I loved it.

After dinner I was hungry in a little while and Ben and I both ate a peanut butter cookie from a bakery near my mom’s house. We took three cookies back with us from our weekend in Providence. The cookies were good!

OK, I  am going to try and get a good night’ sleep so that I can wake up early and have another morning – with some oatmeal.

See ya’ll tomorrow!

Tuesdsay – running, and a new camera!

Hey All -

I am happy to report that I woke up early again today! I was up at 6:30 and I enjoyed the coffee I had prepared the night before (I love my coffee maker’s auto brew feature!) and read the paper for a few minutes before starting my day.

I really was not hungry right when I woke up, so I had my bagel and peanut butter at work at 8:15 this morning.  Yet again, I was without a camera, but today I took a [lame] picture of the bagel with my phone’s camera…

I was curious to see how long the bagel would keep me going this morning, because I was not sure when I would have time for lunch. It definitely did the trick, and I had lunch around 12:45 after a nice twenty minute walk outside.

For lunch I had some of the turkey (left over from last night), grilled red peppers, carrots and a small soup (chicken florentine, 8 ounces @ 166 calories) from Au Bon Pain.  I added the turkey into the soup!  The lunch was perfect and I did not have an afternoon snack until I was headed home, and I enjoyed [a little less than] half of a Cliff Zbar.

Once I got home from work I walked to the Newtonville Camera shop where I talked to a man about getting a new camera. Today I purchased a new Olympus FE-370 and so far I love it.  I walked back home very pleased with my purchase.

After getting home, I changed into my spring time running clothes – shorts, a tank top and a long sleeve tee-shirt. I ran four miles and burned over 500 calories!  The hills in my neighborhood are killer… but it was a good outing. Because of my soar legs the last time I did the hills, I took two breaks in the middle of the outing to stretch my legs…. I’m hoping I will feel a difference tomorrow morning. After the run, I cooled down by walking for five minutes and then stretched again.

I had six or seven whole wheat crackers and 16 ounces of water when I first got home, and soon after I started making dinner.

Tonight I enjoyed another whole wheat wrap – but this time with a Dr. Praeger’s Tex Mex veggie burger (I love these things!) along with salsa, sour cream, lettuce, grilled red peppers and light cheese. I also had a glass of skim milk to get some more protein in my system. Here are a couple of pictures with my new camera!

It might just be me, but I can see a huge improvement with the new camera! I LOVE IT! It is so awesome.

I am hungry right now… and I might enjoy a Vitamuffin top in a few minutes, but I’m not sure.  I have to make sure to get to bed early tonight so that I can wake up at my new “normal time” to have a nice morning before heading off to work.

See ya’ll tomorrow!

Friday

Hey Guys -

Well, it’s Friday. TGIF. This morning I went to the grocery store to get a few things for this weekend. Our friends Nicole & Dwaine are staying with us over the weekend so I needed to stock up on coffee and breakfastie things and snack things. Milk, grapes, apples, coffee, peanut butter (we’re almost out of Teddie) and I also needed instant oatmeal for next week at work.

I came home to make my stove top oats, and discovered that we are somehow out of OATS!!!! I briefly thought about walking back to the the store, but that was not happening. I am actually at home sick – with a head cold, and other stuff. So going to the store at all was a struggle.

I was so mad when I discovered that I did not have oatmeal for breakfast. I was so excited to make them on the stove and add some great stuff to them.  Oh well. I settled on one of the instant oatmeal packages I bought at the store.

Because I did not go to Trader Joe’s, I had to decide what type of oatmeal to get at the store. I settled on Quaker Oats weight control oatmeal – the banana bread flavor.  The oats are 160 calories, 6 grams of fiber, 3 grams of fat and 7 grams of protein.  The oatmeal actually tasted really good, and kept me full for a while. I also had a glass of skim milk along with the oatmeal.

I had lunch a few hours later.  At first I wanted a bowl of soup, but I noticed there was left over tuna in the frige (from my lunch on Wednesday) so I decided to use it for lunch.

Here is what my plate looked like for lunch:

The wrap was very special. A weird combo of things, but it was soooo good!

The wrap was a whole wheat one from TJ’s (130 cal) the first layer of the wrap had a sprinkle of lite Mexican cheese from TJs (60 cal) I heated the wrap up in the microwave… then I added a lot of lettuce, tuna, and a tablespoon of hummus (8, 45, 25 cals) on the side I enjoyed carrot sticks (12 cals) and a bunch of red grapes (68 cals) for a total of about 350 calories for lunch.  The lunch was soo good and filling! I really enjoyed it.

Now if only this headache would go away. I’m going back to bed.

Long time no post!!

Hey Bloggies -

Wow, I cannot believe how long it’s been since I have posted! I am sorry. But trust me, I have not forgotten about you guys!

So, today at work I was wondering where I was going to start this post off… eventually I figured I would start with Friday.

Friday morning I had an amazing bagel from a great Jewish bakery in Brookline.

Kupel’s Bagel is at 421 Harvard Street in Brookline. They have wonderful, amazing bagels!

I had an onion bagel and I spread a little bit of Earth Balance on top of it.  Surprisingly, I was hungry before lunch time – which I thought was really weird! Usually a bagel keeps me so full for most of the morning, but no such luck on Friday!

For lunch I had a great wrap from the UMASS campus caf – my friend Katherine and I walked down from our office to grab lunch. It was a nice walk and I got a great sandwich, too!

The sandwich was on a spinach wrap, with four slices of roasted turkey breast, lettuce, cucumber, tomato, red onion and dijon mustard.

Along with the wrap, I had a small bag of Baked Lays, which was about 120 calories.

For dinner on Friday night, I met my friends Lauren and Coral at Teatro on Tremont Street in Boston.  Teatro is a great place for dinner, drinks, etc. Because we were not ordering full dinners, the three of us sat at the bar and had a great time. Lauren ordered an individual sized pizza (which I had one piece of), Coral ordered a pasta dish and I ordered a white bean dip (amazing!!) and we enjoyed our time together. If you have not tried Teatro, I highly recommend it!

After the food, the three of us went to the movies and saw Bride Wars. It was hilarious! The three of us (having planned our fair share of weddings in the past, I guess) really enjoyed the movie – even if it did get bad reviews!

At the movies I enjoyed a small popcorn, too!

That’s a wrap up for Friday… I’ll do another post for the weekend soon!

I am now back on the blog, and I am welcoming myself back after a brief and unintentional vacation! 

Friday

I had a great breakfast on Friday! I remembered that we had some packets of instant oatmeal (no sugar added even!) and I grabbed one to take with me to work along with a banana, and a to-go packet of Barney Butter. Great combo!

I warmed up the banana in the microwave for 15 seconds, then I mashed it in the oatmeal bowl while I waited for my water to heat up. Then I combined all of the ingredients together and came up with my breakfast bowl of oats! It was sooo satisfying and kept me going all morning long!

For lunch I had a chicken salad wrap, I made the chicken salad from canned chicken which I found in our pantry…. when I opened it up this morning, I thought I was making tuna salad… I was surprised!

I mixed the chicken together with a teaspoon of Miracle Whip and then added red pepper flakes, garlic, and ground pepper to the mix. That really gave it some nice flavor!  At lunch time I made the wrap. I piled on some mixed greens onto a small tortilla wrap, and then added the chicken salad. It was sooo good – I could have had two! But instead, I snacked on some grapes. Here’s what the wrap looked like before I rolled it up:

Now that I’m looking at the wrap, I’m reminded that I added some mustard to it – because I left the hummus at home by accident. Oops!
Here is what the rest of the lunch looked like:

But I never ended up having the pudding. I brought it back home with me.

I was very glad the weekend had arrived after work on Friday! I did not do much last night, but I relaxed after a long week – the first five day work week in a while! I’m so happy for the weekend

Hope you are all enjoying your weekends so far!  Here in Boston we are preparing for yet MORE SNOW – they are calling for 8 – 10 inches in our area tonight!  It seems like it will never end!  Well, I guess that is winter in New England for you!

Tuesday’s re-cap

Hi All-

Sorry for not posting yesterday – but here is a recap.

I started the day off with cold cereal which kept me going until well past my normal lunch time (shocking)! This was probably because the cereal was Kashi Vive which is a good source of fiber and the protein from the milk was a perfect mix to keep me going for a while.  (For those of you who are Vive experts – there are a few honey nut Cheerios sprinkled in there as well!)

I used part of my lunch time to take a walk with some colleagues. We walked for 27 minutes and I burned 126 calories according to the heart monitor. Not bad!

For lunch I had another meal of left overs… this time instead of the pasta bake, I just took some of the left over plain pasta and added some TJ’s tomato sauce.  It was good and it was nice to have some carbs after the walk… to add more protein to the meal, I enjoyed my vanilla Chobani with a sprinkle of TJ fiber cereal on top.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the afternoon we had a retirement party at work. I loved the food that was served – an amazing assortment of veggies! I had carrots, red and yellow peppers, celery, and cucumber sticks along with two crackers and a piece of french bread. Fantastic! (I went back for seconds on the veggies) There were dips and cheese available – but I stuck with the veggies and crackers.  I also enjoyed a small piece of cake later. 

I worked until after 5pm yesterday, which got my gym time off to a later start. I went home first, to see if Ben was going to come with me – but he had work things to do, so I went by myself. I did 35 minutes on the elliptical machine and burned 307 calories. I wanted to do weight training after the cardio, but the gym was packed and I was hungry (and it was 7:30 by then) – so I went to Trader Joe’s to pick up some things for dinner, and then home to put everything together.

For dinner I made a Morning Star veggie burger, and put it in a wrap along with lettuce, garlic hummus, and a little bit of mustard to spice up the show! Unfortunately, our TJ’s was running low on fresh produce and I did not feel like stopping at another store before heading home. But I think the veggies I had this afternoon, along with the lettuce I put in the wrap will give me enough servings for the day!  Here is what dinner looked like:

Along with the wrap I had a Stoneyfield “Lots of Lemon” yogurt:

I enjoyed dinner while watching the first episode of The Biggest Loser.  I was glad that I had gone to the gym before watching the show!  ;)

I am happy to say that I feel like my meals today were more “on track” than the last few days have been.  At first  I was a little stressed out about how I had been eating over the holidays and around my birthday – but I am no longer worried about it.  It feels good to be back on track!

I will post tonight with a recap of today’s happenings.  See you tonight!