Excuse My Dust

So I decided to move my blog from WordPress.com to WordPress.org meaning I am paying someone else to host it.

The main reason I did this was so I could have more control over the layout and appearance. Unfortunately, I underestimated how much work and programming knowledge was involved, so please excuse my dust as I renovate Lovin’ Losing.

Since I’m trying to figure out most of this on my own, don’t be surprised if you see some issues or multiple changes. Right now it’s fairly stable, but there’s still a lot of things to add and change.

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Thanks!!

Tracking and Trucking

Good evening!!  I hope you had a wonderful day!! Mine has been busy and is still going.  After work I did Body Pump and then jumped on the stationary bike for 30 minutes before heading to kickball.

Menace II Sobriety is now 2 and 0.  

As far as tracking goes, here’s yesterday…

…and here’s today.  I’m sure I’ll find something to eat up some of those calories.

And…here’s the break down of yesterday’s run.  This was Week 6, Day 2 which consists of four intervals of 10 minutes running + 1 minute walking.

• Interval 1: 11:02 (.92 mi.)
• Interval 2: 10:48 (.92 mi)
• Interval 3: 10:34 (.95 mi)
• Interval 4: 9:59 (1 mi.)

Total distance covered including the walking intervals was 3.96 mi.

Woohoo!  My speed has increased a lot in the past couple of weeks!

Now I’ve got to do some work.  Talk to you later!

Making Progress

Just a quick post to let you know about today’s weigh-in.

Click to enlarge.

I am down -0.6 to 166 exactly so I’m happy to be making progress.  My goal for this week is to track EVERY single day because I am in the habit of not doing so on the weekends, which never leads to anything good.

Last night I was pre-occupied with making my entry for the Foodbuzz Nature’s Pride Bread Ambassador program, but I did manage to make a delicious dinner.

I made a chicken noodle casserole. Mmmm….Yum!

Chicken Noodle Casserole

Ingredients

• 2 chicken breasts chopped into cubes
• noodles (unprocessed, i.e. made with just durum flour, eggs, and one or two other ingredients)
• vegetables of your choice (carrots, peas, green beans)
• 1/4 cup skim milk
• 1/2 cup chicken broth
• 1 tbsp corn starch
• 2 tbsp parmesan cheese
• 2 tbsp butter or margarine
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees
2. Cook noodles as indicated on package or until al dente
3. While noodles cook, mix the rest of the ingredients (except for the chicken) into a bowl
4. Remove noodles, leaving the water in the pot
5. Add chicken cubes to pot and boil and just past pink
6. Now remove the chicken from the pot and mix all ingredients together in a casserole dish
7. Cook for 30 minutes with foil tightly covering  top of the dish
8. After 30 minutes, remove foil and cook for another 15 minutes or until the vegetables are tender.

This was very tasty!!  The husband definitely enjoyed it

Run

A couple of hours after eating this and 3/4 of my “Pie for Two” it was time for me to go on my run.  At 9:30 PM.  Man, I was tired, but I knew I needed to go so I did.  It felt great, too!!  I don’t have my Garmin with me right now to give you an interval break down, but I’ll make sure to add it to the Bridge to 10K Program tab.  Let’s just say you’ll be impressed with how much my speed has improved in a short amount of time.  I did 3.96 miles in 43 minutes, 3 of which were walking intervals.

Updated Pages

BTW: I’ve updated the pages at the top.  The old Workouts page is now the Bridge to 10K Training Program page, which is a place to document my training times so I can easily see improvement.  I’m keeping track of workouts on the DailyMile (there’s a link on the left side).  The last tab is where you see how I plan out my workouts and see my scheduled races.

Upcoming Races

Right now, I’m thinking after the Wicked 10K I will up my training to do the new Surf ‘n’ Santa 10 miler and then the Virginia is for Lovers 14K and then…maybe the Shamrock Half-Marathon!!  No committment, though.  We’ll see how my body hold up and how cold this winter is.

Plans

Tonight, after work, I’m meeting a friend for Body Pump, then I plan to do 30 minutes on the elliptical and THEN I have a kickball game. I’m tired just thinking about it.

Tomorrow I’m taking the husband out for his birthday (Saturday) to Thai food and a Bill Engvall show.  Saturday we’re driving down to his grandmother’s in Fayetteville, NC because her birthday is the same day.  It’s going to be a busy weekend!!!

Gotta get back to work now!!

 

Nature’s Pride: Apple Pie for Two

Good evening!!  I hope you all had a wonderful day!! 

Tonight, I have a special treat for you.  Foodbuzz and Nature’s Pride are offering six bloggers the chance to attend the Foodbuzz Festival In San Francisco November 5th-7th as a Nature’s Pride Bread Ambassador.

In order to win one of those six spots, the blogger has to create a unique recipe using Nature’s Pride bread and post it to their blog by October 3rd.

I REALLLLYYY want to go to San Francisco, but I can’t afford to do it on my own because we’re going to be in Los Angeles just one month prior. 

Soooo…I decided I needed to snag one of those six spots by coming up with a recipe so unique and fantastic that they couldn’t help but send me to San Francisco.

I am happy to say, I have succeeded!! No, I haven’t been offered one of those spots, YET, but after you make this recipe, you’ll be calling up Nature’s Pride and Foodbuzz yourself and telling them to send me.  Yes, it’s THAT good!!

This recipe is Apple Pie for Two made with Nature’s Pride hamburger buns.  Yep, hamburger buns.

You, can of course use wheat buns, too.  I had these white buns leftover from the Tastemaker program.  Nature’s Pride sent them to me for free earlier in the summer and I put them in the freezer to keep.

Start by pre-heating your oven to 425 degrees.

I thawed two buns for this recipe using the tops as the pie crust.  All you have to do is press them into a miniature pie pan just like you would with a regular pie crust.  You could use a large muffin pan, too.

Next, you brush the crusts with butter or margarine.  I used Brummel and Brown yogurt spread.

After preparing your crusts, mix together your pie filling ingredients in an oven safe dish.

Place the filling in the oven to cook for 5 minutes.

While the filling is cooking, take the bun bottoms and cut them into thin strips.  Flatten them slightly with a rolling pin or your hands.

Brush the strips with butter and then sprinkle lightly with sugar.

After 5 minutes, remove the filling from the oven and spoon into your crusts.

Lay your strips on top of the filling in a lattice pattern, pinching the ends together with the bottom crust.

Remove pies from the oven and enjoy!!!  And boy will you!!!

These were delicious!!  And they take so little time to make you can throw them together while making dinner and have dessert in an instant!!

They’re a little calorie dense (487 calories), so I suggest sharing with a special someone.

 

There are many alterations you could make to this recipe, to meet your needs or cravings:

• Using a muffin pan and nixing the top crust.
• Substituting Splenda or other alternative sweetener for the brown sugar
• Using wheat buns
• A different filling (strawberry, cherry, chocolate)

Whatever strikes your fancy!!

Me?  I just wanted a little vanilla ice cream with mine.

Nature’s Pride Apple Pie for Two

Filling (adapted from Paula Deen’s recipe)

• 1/4 cup light brown sugar
• 1/8 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 tbsp ground cinnamon
• Freshly ground nutmeg, to taste
• 1.5 medium apples, peeled, cored and cut into cubes
• 1 tbsp lemon juice

Crust

• 2 hamburger buns

Instructions

1. Pre-heat the oven to 425 degrees
2. Mix filling ingredients together in an oven safe dish
3. Place filling in the oven for 5 minutes
4. While filling is cooking, press top piece of bun into small pie pan or large muffin pan and brush with butter
5. Flatten bottom piece of bun and cut into thin strips
6. Butter each strip and sprinkle with sugar
7. Remove filling from oven and spoon filling into pie crusts
8. Lay thin pieces of bottom bun over top in lattice pattern, pinching the edges together with the bottom crust
9. Place pies in oven for 5 minutes
10. Remove from oven, top with vanilla ice cream and enjoy!!

 

Have a wonderful night and let me know how you like these if you make them!!

An Active Day

Good evening!!  I hope you all had a wonderful day.  I spent the usual 8 hours at work before hitting the grocery store (figuratively ) and then coming home to do a yoga video from Exercise TV.

I laid my mat out on the patio and then brought the laptop out to watch the video with.

You can see the video below.  It was pretty challenging and by the end I was sweating my you know what off.

After yoga, I prepared dinner…baked tofu with teriyaki and General Tsao’s Sauce glaze along with Kale Chips.

Both of them came out great!!

I pressed the tofu while doing yoga, cut it into squares, glazed it, and baked it at 350 degrees for 45 minutes, turning it about halfway through.

The Kale I sprayed with Olive Oil, sprinkled with salt, and then topped with Parmesan cheese before cooking at 350 degrees for 7 minutes.

I probably could have cooked the kale longer, but I didn’t want to burn it.

After dinner Josh and I went for a 40 minute walk with the dogs.  Hopefully they’ll ALL sleep well tonight.

Here’s how my day ended up….

Now, I have to get back to do a little more work and then I need to get to bed so I can go for a run in the morning,

Night!!!

Training Update

Hello!!  My posting schedule will probably be pretty erratic for the rest of the month because I’m working 60 hours/week for the next two weeks and then we’re off to L.A. for a few days.

Despite the craziness of the past few weeks I’ve been much better at sticking to my training schedule.

I had a great run Saturday morning (Week 4, Day 3 of the Bridge to 10K).  Four intervals of 8 minutes running + 1 minute walking.

• Interval 1: 11:25 pace (.70 mi)
• Interval 2: 11:09 pace (.72 mi)
• Interval 3: 11:04 pace (.72 mi)
• Interval 4: 10: 35 pace (.75 mi)

Another negative split!!

Today after a delicious dinner…(salmon with lemon dill yogurt sauce, cilantro lime shrimp, red potatoes, and steamed green beans)…

…I worked for a couple of hours and then around 9:30 I went for a run.  I decided to skip Week 5 (9+1×4) and move straight on to Week 6 of the Bridge to 10K.  This consists of four intervals of 10 minutes running + 1 minute running.

It was a perfect night and I had a great run.

• Interval 1: 11:24 pace (.88 mi)
• Interval 2: 11:23 pace (.89 mi)
• Interval 3: 11:02 pace (.93 mi)
• Interval 4: 10:28 pace (.95 mi)

Total distance covered including walking intervals was 3.86 miles!

Now, the husband is grumping at me to go to bed so I’ll leave you with this…a preview of Goliath’s Halloween costume.

 

Oh, and this…

I’m a winner!!

 I’ve already written this post once and WordPress ate it. 

Here it is again…a re-cap of yesterday’s eats starting with my mid-morning snack of an apple with a Diet Coke and Red Bull.  I had this Red Bull sitting in the fridge for a while and just decided to drink it.  I only drank about 1/4 before pouring it out.  Bleh.

 

Lunch was a bag of Baked Lays Southwestern chips (leftover from Subway) and a turkey sandwich on WW bread with RF mayo, spinach, and tomato.

 

I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat dinner until late because of kickball, so I made a big mid-afternoon snack: dip, hummus, carrots, cucumber, cheese stick, and peach.

After work I drove over to the park where the kickball game was going to be, parked, put my Camelbak on and went for a run.  This was W4, D2 of the Bridge to 10K program.  It consists of four intervals of 8 min. running + 1 minute walking. 

• Interval 1: 11:30 pace (.70 mi.)
• Interval 2: 11:38 pace (.7o mi.)
• Interval 3 (accidentally did 9 minutes): 11:56 pace (.75 mi)
• Interval 4: 11:25 pace (.70 mi.)

At least I’m consistent!

I had hoped to make a quick trip to Food Lion for a snack and drink, but when I got back to the car, my teammates were already arriving.  I just drank some water instead. 

This was the first kickball game of the season and we WON!!   AND…I made a run!! Woohoo!!

After the game I was STARVING!!  Josh wanted to go to Buffalo Wild Wings, but he was taking forever to get ready so I ate the last stuffed shell from a few nights ago.  When we got to BWW, it was packed so we went to a bar Josh likes, instead.

I ordered the Caesar Salad and Jalapeno Poppers.  The jalapeno poppers were only battered on one side and when you tried to pick them up the cream cheese slid off.  We said something to our waitress and she said something to the manager who told her they were supposed to be that way. Uh, no, they’re not.  I’ve had then more than once at the same place before and they were never like that.   As a result, I only ate maybe 2.

My Caesar salad came with the dressing on the side, thank God!  That stuff was like glue and supper strong tasting.  The salad it self was covered in Parmesan cheese.  I ended up barely eating anything at dinner.  Considering I was so hungry, let’s just say I wasn’t a happy camper.

I went home and made a peanut butter, chocolate chip, and marshmallow sandwich on whole wheat bread.  Tasty, but not exactly nutritious.

The good news is that I stayed within my calories for the day!! The bad news is that I have a bit of a sugar problem.

Now, I’m off to a meeting! Have a good day!

Progress (or lack there of)

So, yeah…I’ve officially set a record in how long it’s been since I last posted.

If there was any doubt as to why that is, here ya go:

We’ve spent every waking minute since Friday that wasn’t spent at work, fixing up our rental house because the new tenants are moving in on Friday.  I haven’t worked out and ate more than my fair share of fast food. 

When I think about WHY I ate fast food it pretty much came down to two things…

1) This was a perfect fast food excuse!  I’m busy, there’s no food around, no time to go home…etc, etc, blah, blah…

2) I didn’t want to be “difficult.”  There are NO healthy places to get food around the rental house.  This is actually complete crap because there’s a grocery store down the street.

One day I had McDonald’s and another day I had Wendy’s.  I finally tried to redeem myself and hit up the grocery store on Tuesday.  I got a frozen pizza (had to be something that wouldn’t require utensils, plates, pans, etc.) and a salad.  I only had two pieces of pizza which was fine.  The salad is still in the fridge and I expect it to be dinner tonight between the gym/running and kickball.

Obviously I should have packed food for dinner.  I was just lazy and providing myself with excuses for eating crap.

The only thing that kept me from gaining more weight is all the manual labor I was doing.  Painting, sweeping, mopping, etc. 

It’s a new day…time to move on…

Breakfast was 2 egg white and 1 egg with some chopped spinach and tomato. 

This didn’t really fill me up very well, which isn’t surprising since I entered it into my calorie tracker and the whole thing came out to 118 calories.

I’m gonna find a snack now.  Later…

The REAL PowerAde

First, I’ll give you a recap of yesterday’s run.  After my dentist appointment I parked at the gym a went for a run in the Ghent area of Norfolk.  I basically just randomly ran around and chose my route based on the streetlights because I didn’t want to stop.

This was Week 4, D1 of the Bridge to 10K program which called for 8 minutes of running and 1 minute of walking x 4.  At first I thought it was x 5 and I was dreading it because that would’ve been a pretty big jump from 5 + 1 x 5.  This was still tough though. Between the 2nd and 3rd and 3rd and 4th intervals I walked for 2 minutes instead of one.

I tried to use the lap button to record the avg. pace for each interval and each walking break, but I think I got confused at the end about whether I had pressed it or not.

Here’s what I’ve got:

• Interval 1: 11:16
• Interval 2: 11:23
• Interval 3: 11:19
• Interval 4: 11:09

Yay! I had a negative split!   While I may have lost a lot of my speed, at least I’m consistent.  I’ve got 2 months until the race, so hopefully the more I train the better my speed will get.  I don’t really plan on doing speed workouts right now.  I think that would be a recipe for injury on top of the weekly increases in time/distance.

Question: How does your body feel after a run when you’re increasing mileage?  I am SO tired after runs!  And I’m only doing like 2.5 -3 miles right now.   MY whole body aches, especially my legs.  I stretched really well afterwards, soaked in a hot bath when I got home and had Josh use The Stick on me.  I had to sleep with a pillow between my legs because they were so achy. Is this normal?

I got up this morning hoping the weather would be bad enough to have an excuse to work from home, but it was a no-go.  It was pretty windy, but barely raining.  In fact, it’s supposed to be sunny and in the 90′s by this afternoon.

I started off the morning with a Green Monster.  This is basically my healthier remake of Starbuck’s Chocolate Chip frappucino.

• 1/2 c. skim milk (or non dairy substitute)
• 1 scoop of Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirl Spirutein protein powder
• 1 tsp Maca Powder
• 1/4 c. 0% plain Greek yogurt
• 1 TBS of Dark Chocolate Dreams peanut butter
• NEW! 1/2 serving of semi-sweet chocolate chips
• Ice
• Lots of spinach

I used yesterday’s Powerade bottle for my smoothie.  Now THAT’S a recovery drink!

Back to work!

Talk to you later.

I Think It’s Japanese, I Really Think Soooo

It’s time for me to hit the hay so I’ll leave you with this…

Miso Soup

One piece of Josh’s KDH roll

My dinner box with steamed rice, tempura vegetables, 3 pieces of California roll, fried tofu (yum!), and a salad with ginger dressing.

Click to enlarge

 

Assuming Earl doesn’t do much of anything, I’ll be back tomorrow with my run recap.