PB&J factoid

I was busy last night doing all of my "prep" for the morning which meant a boat load of lunches...one for dear hubby, two for dear teenage sons, and 2 for the little kidsters. The good news is that they all are ok with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. So as I take out the bread and line it all up in an assembly line fashion (because I am an engineer after all) I start counting and realizing that I make on average about 8 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches a day!!! That's about 3 giant loaves of bread.

Then I started thinking about milk. We go through about 3 gallons a week.

I am starting to think I need to invest in a bread factory and a cow.

I used to think that formula and diapers were expensive. Well they are but so is feeding growing teenage boys! It's a challenge for sure and it's a good thing my boys love PB&J.

Why Do They Call This Yoga?

I went to my first yoga class this morning. I think they need to rename this to "Body Pretzel Twisting" which is how I felt before, during, and after. The instructor says "just put your right leg over here, your left leg over there and twist your arms back there" and I am thinking "how exactly are the human bones supposed to twist in this manner" until I look around and see other women doing it. Ugh, I think, I have given birth to 4 children through my hoo-ha so surely I can get into this plank position. Well that was the easy part. Staying there and balancing on one foot with both arms over my head for 20 minutes was the challenge.

In the end I got through it and I want to continue...not because I am a masochist (well I am sort of) but because I want to be able to master getting both of my legs behind my head. I just love a challenge.

I Am Not A Runner

I have been thinking about my insane decision to sign up for another marathon next year. It will be my second. If you weren't catching my blog earlier this year, I posted incessantly about my first half-marathon. Now after taking several months off and waiting on a clean bill of health, I have decided to get back into some sort of training.

But I am really NOT a runner at all. I know this. I don't know strategy. I have a pretty big butt and flat feet. These two characteristics do not exactly make for a runners body. But I am a goal setter and I have determination so I like to think that those two things can help carry me through some training and an actual race. Well, at least they did last time and I did finish! In the middle of the pack too, I might add.

So as I threw my body on the scale last week, it confirmed what I had already known. I need to lose at least 10-15 pounds before I get into a running schedule. Not a problem! Just set goals and get determined, right?

So I laid out a really aggressive exercise plan that takes me to the gym 5 days a week with one of those days being yoga for an hour and then bootcamp for another hour. I also laid out a pretty aggressive 1200 calorie-a-day meal plan.

I am not sure how I will incorporate this plan into my blog but I will figure it out as I go.

Mark Your Calendar

For This!

I just got a big thumbs up from my doctor and passed my physical with flying colors...everything from an extensive blood workup (had to add B Complex to the list of daily vitamins) to EKG to nuclear stress test to heart ultrasound and echo.

It feels good to be back exercising like I used to once again.

Edamame

I was recently watching a talk show and stumbled upon a conversation they were having about these.

The hostess said that if you buy them frozen and then boil them up, throw a bit of salt on them, they are a delicious snack and so nutritious for you. I have been thinking that my choices of snacks lately are not very health conscious so perhaps I should give it a try.

I found a few bags of these frozen pods and cooked up a handful and threw the salt on. They are so delicious. I can't believe I have gone all this time without them.

Now I enjoy them as a delicious snack after work and before dinner knowing that they are rich in vitamins and fiber and extremely low in calories. Give them a try!

Bon Appetit.

Keeping Healthy

Lately I have been thinking a lot about my heath. Vitamins, nutrition, exercise, screening, etc. I believe it is a good thing to reevaluate how I am doing with my overall health especially as I get older. Also, I need to be as healthy as possible so I can care and raise my children as best as I can.

Having said that I am taking several measures to do the best I can in that area including:

1. Daily vitamin intake - multi vitamin, calcium with D vitamin, and omega 3 vitamin
2. Eat 6 small meals each day which includes a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast (two slices of 100% whole wheat toast + natural peanut butter + sugar free preserves), yogurt at least once a day, and a few cups of raw and cooked green vegetables.
3. Drink lots of water - I am a horrible Diet Coke addict and it's really my only addiction (well other than my hobbies). I must concentrate on this a lot if I want to be totally committed to better healthy eating habits. But I do drink a lot of water so hopefully that counts for something.
4. Exercise - this is a tough one because I try to get to the gym as much as possible with my busy schedule. I am lucky because we recently were given some weights and a spinning bike by the owner of a newly built gym that my better half's company built. We transformed the garage into a gym so I ride that spinning bike for at least 30 minutes each day in the event that I cannot get to my local gym. That has helped tremendously in maintaining my weight and overall cardio health.
5. Health screening - I religiously go for my proper screenings such as mammograms, yearly physicals and I take advantage of the free health screenings offered at work. Today I did the cholesterol screening and I was off-the-charts good. My LDL (bad cholesterol) was 38 which is fantastic (less than 160 is good). My total cholesterol is 120 (less than 200 is good). My glucose is 84 (less than 100 is good).

Everything is pretty much in check. Just have to work on that Diet Coke and I should be in total working condition.

Back To The Gym

Yesterday was my first day back to my gym after a long hiatus.
I was dreading it a bit because even though I have been running a lot lately I have not been weight lifting and my muscles have become rather soft.

As I dragged myself in I hopped onto my favorite elliptical machine ready for pain and torture. What I found was a big surprise. It was actually a lot easier than I remember it being. Prior to marathon training, my steady elliptical level was no higher than an 8. Today I had it set at the familiar 8 and found it to be TOO EASY??? I graduated up to a 9...still too easy until I settled on a 10. Ok, if I really pushed it I could have done a 11 or 12. As I was in motion and in between my favorite iPod selections, I pondered this a bit. How could this be? Maybe all of that running really did something extremely positive for my endurance.

When I moved over to the weight machines I thought that this would be where I would really feel the effects of my absence. Again, to my surprise, the leg machines were rather EASY. I pursued the leg extensions at 70 lbs and had to move up to 90. Admittedly hamstrings were still a big tough. OK, maybe my quad muscles have really been shocked from the running so it makes sense that the leg extensions would be easier than normal. Ditto for the rest of the workout to the hip and inner thigh extensions to my ab work. It was all puzzling to me.

My reasoning is fairly simple. My frame of reference is very different now that it has been nearly a week since I ran a half marathon (I love just saying that out loud). I feel as though I have catapulted to a whole new level of fitness and that feels pretty good.

While the days of me as a skinny mini are gone (having 4 kids and being over 40 will do that to you), I have never felt more physically fit in my life than I do at this time. It feels really great. I plan on riding the momentum and hope that I can inspire others to get on board with me also.

Banana Bread Gone Missing

At the request of my Hot Husband and dearest teens I baked a yummy loaf of banana bread yesterday. Maybe I was persuaded by the amount of disgustingly over-ripe-and-practically-dripping-with-mold bananas that I had in my house. Yes, banana bread is so much better when you add bananas that have practically liquefied on the countertop.

It takes me less time to make banana bread than it does to make my bed in the morning. I have made it that many times. I have to say that it does come out better tasting than any banana bread I have ever tasted. Sometimes when I make it I try to add a little surprise for my family...something extra that peaks their interest. Yesterday it would be little tiny chunks of semi-sweet chocolate inside. Mmmmmmmmm.

I timed it really nicely. It finished baking just after dinner so as to ensure my family a really nice dessert. I took the bread out of the oven and placed it on the counter to cool. I then walked away to do a few things in the office while the bread cooled. The rest of the gang sat in the living room letting the meal rest in their stomachs. About 10 minutes later I returned from the office to the kitchen.

I came back to the counter and found the bread gone. Literally gone with a few crumbs sprinkled around. I turned to everyone ready to shout "OK I admit it..we have ants. But I didn't realize there were THAT many to have eaten this bread so fast." But as I got closer to the living room I looked at their faces and noticed everyone was licking chocolate off their lips and sprinkling the crumbs off their shirts. It was then that I realized that I DO have ants...they come by the ages of 40, 14, 12, 4, and 2. And I love them all.

There are no better words that can express to a cook how much you enjoy their food than watching the aftermath of the eating process. I suspect I will be making banana bread for a very long time to come.

Basic Yummy Banana Bread
3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed
1/3 cup melted butter
1 cup sugar (can easily reduce to 3/4 cup)
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 1/2 cup of flour
Chocolate chips, nuts or anything to add extra yummy flavor

No need for a mixer for this recipe. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). With a wooden spoon, mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour last, mix. Pour mixture into a buttered 4x8 inch loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour. Cool on a rack. Remove from pan and slice to serve.

Breakfast of Champions

This morning as I was perfoming my morning ritual of running around the kitchen packing lunches while making sure that Mr.Toddler was not feeding his hair with milky Rice Krispies at the same time searching the TiVo machine for everyone's favorite episode of Caillou "the kid who gets away with everything", I notice Mr. Pre-Teen carving out his own breakfast. Let's see if I can describe it without going into a sugar-induced coma.

A 12-ounce glass of milk with 3 tablespoons of Nesquik

A handful of Nestles Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

Bowl full of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish Crackers

Pretzel sticks for chocolate milk dipping

As my eye catches this breakfast of champions I wonder how much nutrition is in this meal. None.

But don't ask Mr. Pre-Teen about the nutrition level because he will give every effort to find that one gram of protein somewhere in the label between the 30 grams of sugar and 10 grams of fat.

At least he is trying.

I love exercise...I love exercise...I love exercise

I figure that if I keep saying it enough times it will become true. Actually I don't necessarily HATE to exercise but it's not exactly on my top 10 list. So why do I do it? Because the thing that I really do love about exercise is the way I feel after and the way I look after and that "good" feeling is a lot better than the "bad" feeling I get while doing it.

As I have previously posted, I am signed up for the Disney half marathon next January. I have my training schedule all printed out. The full out training does not really start for another month or so but I have to get back in the saddle again and start racking up miles. That is the term that marathoners use. For some odd reason our weekly miles is important to the overall training program.

This past weekend, after reviewing my training goals and mistakenly watching the making of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Calendar, I rededicated myself to my exercise program and mileage count.

My goal yesterday was 2 miles on the treadmill. The run started off good and I was flying to 1 mile until I hit the wall. Now, I won't go into too much detail on what the wall is but to quickly explain that this is the moment when all runners literally feel like they have hit a wall. Their bodies start talking to them and what they are saying is not pretty. The mind starts playing tricks. Your body starts to shut down. You feel like quitting. A good runner will have methods to get through the wall (ie, carb drink, self talk, inspiring note in pocket, friendly runner to help out). Marathoners hit the wall between mile 19 and 22. I hit the wall at mile 1.

I felt like crying. I did push through it and got to mile 2 but I realized that I have a long way to go in my training. I better start that program early if I want to make it by January. If you want to track my successes, I should have a link to my progress up shortly.

Running Like the Wind

I have not officially started my marathon training regiment even though I probably should start working on that. But it has been a few months since I have hit the pavement. Summer is such a bad season for running because it is so humid outside and takes a special kind of endurance.

My goal today was 2 miles and I did it with few problems. In fact I am pleasantly surprised at how well I was doing with respect to my cardiovascular area. It's my knees that bother me and at 41 that's not a big surprise. The knees are getting old and creaky and I guess it didn't help that I didn't stretch. I despise stretching.

The iPod helps a lot and this is a very important part of the routine. In fact I am very selective in the order in which I hear very specific songs that I have ordered in my iPod so that I will hit them at specific points in my run. I have never divulged the contents of my iPod because there is such a wide range of music. I will say that the music is not necessarily my favorite songs or favorite groups. Rather it is a collection of songs that I think get me to run faster and harder and that's my main objective.

When I run, no matter how long, I envision my race. I put myself in the moment. I daydream of how it will be when I run the half-marathon...what the other runners will look like...will there be many there that will have never run a half before like me...will there be people clapping and cheering and will that even matter to me...will I laugh at the end of happiness or cry out of exhaustion...will they say my name as I cross the finish line...will I even remember the finish line? I don't really have those answers but I do know what I imagine in my head of what that day will be and it's what will keep me going as I start my training program.