Metabolic Efficiency - Day 16 - Thanks a Latte

Sixteen days into my metabolic efficiency study and I'm really getting used to this! Packing my lunch is probably one of the more challenging tasks, as I need to make sure I bring enough food for the day. If I run out and get hungry before the day's up, I can either 1) go hungry (not ideal), 2) raid the vending machine (they do have trail mix) or 3) go out and buy something from somewhere... I actually try to keep a stash of raw nuts in my desk drawer to prevent 1,2,&3, which is why I think my fat intake was on the higher side for the first week or so - a relatively higher nut intake. It's really easy to reach for them when I start to get hungry instead of heading upstairs to the breakroom for my next meal. However, I think I've been pretty successful bringing enough food each day!

Today I actually was able to get a run in over my lunch break. I did 45 minutes on the treadmill. Before starting the hamster wheel session, I started with some neuromuscular warm-ups and then some dynamic warm-ups. I haven't run in almost 2 weeks so these were especially important (though I try to do them before every run). I also made sure to take it easy on the run. After the warm-up I walked for 5 minutes and then eased into a jog. Then I "ran," but I kept my pace low to keep me in my aerobic zone. I wear the heart rate monitor for this. It started to creep up towards the end of the workout (I have a lot of fitness to gain back from all my inactivity since the Fall Series!) Except for my hip flexors tightening up, my legs felt strong. And I had plenty of energy...I did not feel nearly as tired today as I thought I would from my limited sleep these last few weeks. I eased back down and walked the last 5 minutes and then did a few more dynamic exercises to cool down. I stretched out my hip flexors and foam rolled for a couple minutes and got back to work.

OK, so now on to my meals! Don't have too many photos since I ate a lot of leftovers.
Breakfast was the same as yesterday - banana, strawberries, and blueberries in my protein-cocoa-peanut butter yogurt mix. I have to say this definitely rivals cereal and oatmeal!

Around 11am it was time for a snack so I had some edamame and a couple clementines.

Nice pre-run snack!

When I got back from the gym, I grabbed my carrot/apple/pear/raisin salad topped with greek yogurt and cinnamon and headed to a meeting.
At 4:30 I was a bit hungry and due to my evening schedule, that was dinner time. I had leftover chicken w/swiss chard & kidney beans, tomatoes, green chilies, topped with a slice of gouda cheese. Again this was really good, even as leftovers! See day 15 for the picture.
After finishing this I went home to let my dog out and then headed back into town for a Pikes Peak Tri Club board meeting. I'm the outgoing president (going out to be VP) and we had our last meeting of the year. I wasn't hungry there, but was a little thirsty so after the meeting I got a medium soy latte to go and enjoyed this on the drive home. No flavor, no sugar added, so it's really just drinking a glass of warm soy milk with espresso. I do hope they made it decaf like I requested...

Metabolic Efficiency - Day 15 - Kitchen Nightmares

Well, maybe it isn't as bad as the title suggests, but I did make quite a mess in the kitchen tonight!
Let's start with my weigh-in, as it is Wednesday. I weigh myself in the morning right before I shower.
My weight was 135.5lbs, Down 0.1 lb from last week. Well within normal day-to-day changes. My body fat came in at 23.6%, which is actually 0.2% higher than last week, but I think that's well within the normal error of the base-model body fat scales. The real test will come next week when Kelly from the UCCS Peak Nutrition Clinic does another ISAK skin fold test. But weight is relative, so even though we might have ball park numbers for weight targets, body composition should be more of a goal than specific weight due to the contribution of muscle mass!

Today was a "rest" day when it came to working out. I really wanted to go for a run over lunch, but if I don't get out in time, I can't go because I have a 1pm meeting every Wednesday, and I didn't make it out today.

On to the nutrition!
My breakfast was similar to yesterday, except I had strawberries and blueberries (microwaved to thaw from frozen) instead of the raspberries. This held me for over 4 hours - including a PT session! At 11am I had a can of Muir Glen organic tomato basil soup, most of the rest of the green and red peppers from yesterday and   an egg/egg white scramble I made before work. I actually mixed the eggs into the tomato soup and that was really good!

soup is great during the winter months!

Once 2:30 rolled around, after my meeting, I had this carrot-pear-apple-raisin salad with greek yogurt and cinnamon. This was really filling, especially paired with 1/2 c. of edamame (no photo).

shredded carrot, apple, pear with raisin, greek yogurt and cinnamon

I also snacked on some kale chips that I made the other day. emptied this out.

kale chips are gooooood.

I got home and was a little hungry so I had a small bit of my "survival mix" before taking care of some dishes and getting tonight's dinner cooked. So what's for dinner?
I had chicken tenders and swiss chard I wanted to use so I googled 'swiss chard chicken' and many recipes came up. I never really follow them exactly, so here's what I did:
Cooked the chicken in the frying pan with some olive oil and once cooked, took the chicken out of the pan. To the hot pan (it still had enough oil in it) I added 1/2 yellow onion, chopped. Sauted for a couple minutes then added garlic. Then I added a can of diced tomatoes with green chiles, a drained can of kidney beans and the swiss chard. Once the chard was wilted down I added the chicken back in and seasoned with black pepper and the juice from 1/2 a lemon. Here's what it looked like:

For my meal I had a spinach salad topped with beets I had sliced and sort of roasted (I say sort of because I didn't know what I was doing - I just put the sliced beets in the oven for a while). The chicken/swiss chard mix got topped with a slice of smoked gouda cheese. I loved the kick the green chilis gave, and the smoked gouda made for a nice flavor combination! I wasn't terribly hungry, which is why the plate isn't full, but it was enough to satisfy me for tonight!

But where is the nightmare, you ask? That comes in because I actually made spaghetti for my husband. The pot boiled over, and I got a dry strand of pasta on a burner, which, you guessed it, burns. The spaghetti sauce got a little messy on the stove as well. But my meal tasted great (and I'm guessing so did the spaghetti), which made up for any mess I may have made. And don't worry, he's getting the swiss chard chicken dish for lunch tomorrow.

Metabolic Efficiency - Day 14 - Chick-fil-A

That's right, Chick-fil-A. But I'll get to that in a bit.

Today is day 14 of my Metabolic Efficiency Study. It's hard to believe it's already been two weeks! Have I found this hard to do? Surprisingly not at all. Do I miss whole grains? Sure - there are a lot of healthy ways to eat grains, but if you saw my summary report from yesterday, my activity levels is pretty low.  And because for the time being I have a desk job, if I'm not working out, I'm pretty darn sedentary. At least the walk to the cafeteria and back to get coffee in the morning gets me about 2/3 mile round trip, so I'm able to get carbs from fruits, veggies and beans. Are the holidays interfering with my eating. Not really. I could be "super strict" and not enjoy the holiday parties, but what fun is there in that? The key is not to over-indulge, and I think I've done a pretty good job at that. We need to enjoy our food and not think about good or bad. And we need to think about why we eat the way we do. Is this plan for everyone? No. What are your end goals? Mine revolve around an Ironman race, so I'm taking some extra steps to be as fit and efficient (both metabolically and physically) that I can.

OK - now on to what I ate! My favorite breakfast: yogurt, whey protein, cocoa, fruit and peanut butter. Powerful way to start the day. For fun let's count fruit and veggie servings again. I'd say two servings of fruit.

Did I ever mention that I like LOVE peanut butter

Not shown is a mid-morning snack of grapes, cantaloupe and cottage cheese. Two more servings of fruit. Looks an awful lot like yesterday's afternoon snack.

I went to the gym over lunch and did a strength training session - body weight exercises. I'm working through a book called You Are Your Own Gym and really like how the workouts are efficient, balanced across muscle groups, work multiple joints and are body-weight focused.

Back from the gym I eat my "lunch." A carrot and spinach salad, the last of the pork tenderloin topped with salsa and a couple clementines. Let's go with two veggie and one fruit serving.

Salad and pork tenderloin with salsa. 

A little later I reach for some green, red, pepper and jicama I had cut up last night. I ate maybe half, so that'd be the equivalent of one pepper plus some jicama. One serving on the conservative side.

one red pepper, one green pepper, and some jicama

 4pm rolls around and I'm planning on hitting the pool after work so I eat an apple with some almond butter. One more fruit serving.

After work I do hit the pool and do about 30 minutes of easy swimming. I bet you're wondering where Chick-fil-A comes in? Right now! There is a CFA right by the pool and I wasn't in the mood to cook (happens to all of us every so often, right?) so I went inside. The photo below is one of the reasons why Chick-fil-A is one of my favorite fast foot chains. (Their cookies & cream milkshake is another, but I passed on that tonight). I got a grilled chicken garden salad and carrot-raisin salad. Yum! What I didn't notice is that they actually have a version of this salad with fruit on it. I'll have to try that next time. But let's say this is three servings of veggies/fruit.

I did not eat the croutons in the photo. Promise.

There you have it. I got to enjoy my favorite fast food restaurant and get a quick meal. And today I count 12 servings of fruits and veggies. Wow! Come back tomorrow - it's week 2 weigh in day!

Metabolic Efficiency - Day 13 - Fruit & Veggie Count

Today was relatively uneventful and I didn't take many pictures today. So let's count servings of fuiMy morning started with a bowl of yogurt mixed with vanilla whey protein, cocoa, a banana, fresh raspberries and some peanut butter. What a delicious way to start a Monday morning! Two fruit servings here.

I had an early morning (7:45am) physical therapy appointment where they continue to work on my chest, neck, and upper back so I can gain some additional range of motion. No injury - I'm just wicked tight so I swim slow. But I really don't have normal range of motion. I aspire to be average one of these days. The session starts with a nice (relative term here) massage and then I do some strengthening of my rotator cuff and some core work. The core is not for my shoulders, but it's always good to do!

Back at work and around 10:30 am I eat the leftover eggs I had scrambled with spinach, zucchini and chickpeas. Two veggie servings here. A little before 2pm I had my second lunch of leftover salmon with the zucchini (guess I had leftover zucchini today!) and shitake mushrooms.  I also snacked on a few regular raw mushrooms.  One and a half veggie servings here. I headed back over to PT (it's right across the street from where I work) as I had a real massage scheduled. She just worked on my legs. I must have a really high tolerance for pain, as I was dozing while she dug her elbow into my calf. Yowzers!

More work and then I'm getting hungry before it's time to go so I get my fruit and cottage cheese. These grapes were really sweet! An awesome afternoon snack! Two fruit servings here.

the container was full when I started, empty when I finished.

Now I'm home and have to figure out what's for dinner! I have a fridge full of fresh veggies, so I get out the kale and make some kale chips. Snack on a few of those. I realized I never used the beets I got, so I sliced those up and baked them for a bit. I'll used them in a salad tomorrow night. I chopped up some red and green peppers, along with some jicama that will go in my lunch tomorrow. Does anyone else have a dog that loves bell peppers? They are Juno's favorite vegetable. Every time I cut one up she's right there so of course I share with her. Probably half a serving snacking on the kale and peppers.
My actual dinner ended up being leftover pork, cauliflower, and salsa from last night. A slightly smaller portion, but the same meal nonetheless. And it still tasted delicious. I'll go with one and a half servings of veggies at dinner.

Total fruit and veggie servings: 9.5
Not a bad day...See you tomorrow!

Metabolic Efficiency - Day 12 - CAKE!!!

the kid in the green was talking to himself all morning "i want cake, cake, cake" hilarious. That could have been me as a kid (and adult!) 

Hope I got your attention with the title! Today was my nephew's third birthday party, so there was, you guessed it....cake. I have a saying..."where there is cake, there is Nicole." Yeah, I like cake. A lot. I'm the one who will take the big corner piece because it has more frosting. I don't think any cake is too sweet for me. You know those huge pieces of chocolate cake you get at a restaurant that should probably be shared with 6 people? I could down one of those solo if presented the challenge. Although now since I don't eat as many sweets it my be a little more challenging than in the past.

Here's how my day unfolded. I got up and did a short core workout (that I feel now, thank you very much). I had one of my delicious breakfast smoothies then headed to walmart to get Joey's birthday present. OK I spoiled him with this one.

can you say Buzz Lightyear?! 

I arrived at the birthday party location, a place called My Gym - a fabulous idea for a birthday party for 3 year olds! They had a blast and we had fun watching them play on all the kiddie gym equipment.
Here's what was set out for the not-so-young kids:

Did I eat any? Nope! Passed the first test. The kids played for about an hour and then it was cake time. Buzz Lightyear/Toy Story cake time. Look at all the happy kids!

mmmmm....cake!

I am happy to announce that I only had one bite of cake. My mom shared with me and it was good. But that's it! One bite! Phew! After the party I headed over to their house to watch Joey open all his presents (and get the car). The 1-2-3 assembly that was stated on the box was really 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9...but my dad and brother got it figured out in not too much time. But on my way there, I realized I was pretty hungry. So I stopped at Albertson's and found some survival mix. What else do you need if you didn't eat cake?

dried fruit and mixed nuts

At their house I had a little snack of some ham and turkey lunch meat and a slice of cheese. This actually tided me over for quite a while!

On my way to meet a friend, I swung by Whole Foods and picked up a salad for later. Ate this after I got home later that afternoon. And I got some coffee. I don't mention it much here, but I do drink about a cup (a big cup) of coffee most days. Usually I mix half decaf and half regular, today it was all regular. Watching 3 year olds run around can really wear you out!

Feta cheese, pecan, cranberry on spring mix greens with creamy balsamic dressing

After this snack I headed to the grocery store to stock up for the week. I found this in the produce section. I think it's a new kind, but most people wouldn't have trouble getting in 5-9 servings of this each day.

why didn't I learn about this vegetable sooner?!

OK now I'm home and a little hungry, so I snack on some more of the survival mix and then start cooking dinner. I'm making two dinners, one for me and one for my husband. In the past I would have just been lazy and had what he wanted (hot wings, potato skins and beer) but since that's what he was craving for tonight, I heated that stuff up for him and made myself this:

That's pork tenderloin (oh so moist!) with the leftover avocado salsa from yesterday and some cheesy cauliflower. Childhood favorite way to eat cauliflower...delicious!

So...there you go! I made it through several temptations to eat not so well and came out successful! And I did really, really enjoy that bite of cake!

Metabolic Efficiency - Day 11 - Half way there!

Day 11. Only ten more days in my "study" after today. Am I noticing anything? Hard to say, but I do think my jeans are a tad looser. I definitely have energy despite not getting enough sleep all last week. I've been staying up too late (working) and only getting about 6 hours of sleep, which isn't ideal. I could feel that I am tired, but I think because my blood sugar wasn't going through surges, overall I felt I was able to get through it. I got 8 hours of sleep last night and hope for another 8+ tonight and through next week, which still might be hard due to everything I need to get done.

Alright, so let's look at the foods for today!
Breakfast started with just a banana and peanut butter. I wasn't terribly hungry after last night's meal (my estimates on TrainingPeaks have it at 1400 calories! yikes). But it fueled my strength training workout and my easy bike workout. After my workout I got showered up and then cooked up some eggs and veggies.

2eggs + 1 egg white, 1/2 zucchini, spinach topped w/salsa

Around 2pm I needed a snack so I chopped up an apple, mixed it with some raisins and a few pomegranate kernels I still had, topped with greek yogurt and cinnamon.

yum!

5pm I needed a snack so I made a smoothie with banana, frozen strawberries, soy milk, vanilla whey protein and a tiny bit of peanut butter. No photo of this but it was good!

8:30pm it was time for dinner so I made this:
Chicken tenders (you can't see it well, but there is ~3-4oz of chicken breast under the salsa. The salsa is avocado, corn, tomato, red pepper and red onion tossed in a tiny bit of olive oil and a few splashes of balsamic vinegar. Tim really like this. It's good on salmon too.

there is chicken under there, I promise!

So that was today. I ate a bit less than usual today, but probably because I ate more than normal yesterday. Come back tomorrow for the day 12 update and what I did at my nephew's 3rd birthday party. Will I eat cake??

Metabolic Efficiency - Day 10 - Another Holiday Party!

Here we go! Ten days into my metabolic efficiency study and I've got yet another holiday party looming in the evening. Shall we dig in to the day?

The day in the typical fashion, smoothie for breakfast. One of these days I'll remember to get a picture of these smoothies. I really enjoy consuming these - I could have these several times a day. every day.
That tided me over until about 11am, but I just had a quick snack before heading off to a meeting. A clementine and some mixed nuts. When I got back from my meeting I was definitely ready for a meal. Lunch was a spinach and baby carrot salad, leftover black bean chicken from the meal the night before with another clementine for "dessert." This was actually quite filling.

ahhhh I found the black bean in the black bean chicken!

When I got home ~5pm I was hungry and knew I needed a snack before heading up to Lone Tree for the holiday party. I had some greek yogurt with pineapple and strawberries (from frozen fruit so they look a little soggy but still delicious!), and used some cinnamon for extra flavor.

And here we go! Holiday Party #3 of the season...
First stop - the bar so I could enjoy a Fat Tire. I sipped this all night.

I didn't take pictures of the appetizers the waiters were walking around but here's what I ate:
2 deviled eggs, one salmon flavor, one chicken. Salmon was good, chicken not so much.
1 piece of proscuitto wrapped cantaloupe.
2 cheese stuffed mushrooms.

At around 7:30pm we sat down to dinner. The salad had some sort of granola with dried cranberries and mozzerella cheese (I think). This was really good!

The main course - salmon topped with pineapple salsa on a bed of wild rice pilaf with grilled vegetables. I'll just say that the salmon I bake is MUCH better. This was dry. I ate about 3/4 of the rice and salmon, but I did eat all the salsa and the grilled veggies.

It's not a holiday party without dessert, and when you are trying to eat metabolically efficient, isn't carrot cake the way to go? I'm guessing this cake was previously frozen. It tasted good, but not super fresh. But you bet I cleaned my plate!

I guess this was my deviation meal for the week. Overall it was actually pretty healthy and the portions were quite reasonable. I enjoyed it for sure, but I also am enjoying the meals I am eating during the week. I'll see you back tomorrow!

Metabolic Efficiency - Day 9 - Eating Out

Another day of successful eating (I think!) with a curve ball thrown at me in the evening! Here's how I got through. And let's count the fruit and veggie servings (best ballpark figure anyway) while we are at it.

What I ate:
Breakfast was an uber-delicious smoothie. I think the vanilla whey protein helps make them taste like milkshakes. I crammed 3 servings of fruit into this one - banana, blueberries and cherries.
Midmorning, some mixed nuts (keep 'em in the desk drawer) and leftover apple/pear/raisin/tofu salad from last night. Two more servings of fruit here.
I swam over lunch and when I got back to my desk I had some celery, almond butter and 2 clementines. One fruit and one veggie serving.

enough to get me through a 2pm meeting!

 After a meeting I had my "lunch" (at 3pm). Spinach salad, 1/2c of chick peas and some scrambled eggs (made them last night). That's one more veggie serving.

made the eggs the night before. Filling meal, actually!

About 4:30 my husband calls to tell me he's on his way home and if he wanted to go out to eat to "celebrate" the bonus I got at work. Sure, as long as they have metabolically efficient foods! But the place he chose certainly did so I agreed. We ended up at Fusion World Cuisine. Plenty of options!

When we got there, I was hungry, but knew I didn't need a lot to eat. They had a three-course asian meal special - soup, appetizer and entree for a reasonable price. So that's what I did, except the entree is going to be lunch for both of us tomorrow! I ordered lettuce wraps, hot and sour soup, and black bean chicken. I'll add one veggie serving for the lettuce.
Total fruits and veggies: 9

the lettuce wraps and I "splurged" on two pieces of Tim's calamari!

hot and sour soup

the main course...black bean chicken (without black beans??) .

I ate about 3 bites of the chicken and a couple green peppers and called it good. I was full - no need to eat more. This plate of food is enough for both me an my husband to have lunch tomorrow. I'll just give him the rice that came with it (not in the pic).

My exercise: I swam for 30 minutes easy over my lunch break, about 1250 yards. Stretched for a few minutes in the not-so-hot hot tub.

And that's it! I was able to execute control at a restaurant by ordering reasonable options and only ate until I was full. We'll see if I can do the same tomorrow...it's another holiday party!! I do know I pre-ordered a salmon dish...

Metabolic Efficiency - Day 8 - More Carbs!

Based on my summary profile from last week that showed I had eaten less than 40% carbohydrate intake, I focused on getting a few more carbohydrates in today. Let's see how I did!

Breakfast was my yogurt/whey/peanut butter/fruit mix. Today's fruit of choice was 1 cup of frozen blueberries (microwaved to warm goodness) and of course a banana.

I got hungrier earlier than usual today - maybe they worked me harder at my physical therapy appointment this morning? Or maybe it was all the sweets that were getting set out at the PT clinic for their holiday potluck. Brownies, danishes, apple cake, ... it looked really good! I kept asking if it was metabolically efficient, and the docs were trying to convince me that a cheese danish was. At least I'm not a sucker for cheese danishes or I might have believed them! Whatever the reason for my additional hunger, I ate my second meal/snack around 10am instead of 11am today.

This meal was fruit salad with greek yogurt. I also snacked on a a bit of my nut/raisin mix while sitting at my desk. A little after noon I was hungry again and was able to get my lunch eaten - a can of Amy's vegetarian chili - before a 1pm meeting.
That filled me up quite a bit and I didn't get hungry again until 5pm on my drive home so I munched on some carrots during my commute.

Dinner time! I had a spinach salad and half of my leftover zucchini and salmon from last night and then a great dessert. I chopped up an apple, a pear and added tofu cubes and raisins. Then I sprinkled it with cinnamon and a little cocoa and microwaved it. Not bad at all!

chopped apples & pears, raisins, tofu and cinnamon.

The results: 50% CHO, 24% fat and 26% protein for today. Success! I probably don't need to go over 50% carbs at this stage.

Today was also the weekly "weigh-in" day for my study. I came in at 135.6 lbs / 23.4%bf (vs. 136.2 lbs / 23.8%bf last Wednesday). It shows some slight improvement, but half a pound is within normal fluctuation. Certainly it is in a direction I don't mind going. But the number on the scale is just a number, which is why I'm having Kelly Ping at the UCCS Peak Nutrition Clinic perform the ISAK skinfold test before and after my study. That will be a better gauge of any body composition changes than my home scale.

See you tomorrow for day 9 updates!

Metabolic Efficiency - Day 7 - A week!

Wow - so I've made it through a week of metabolically efficient eating. And lived to tell about it. ;-) If you didn't see my summary post of the data so far, you can find it here. Based on that data I need to try to bump up my carbohydrate intake a little. Even so, my energy levels are stable and when I get hungry I'm not ravenous. It all seems so...simple. I'm getting used to eating this way, and except for the little bit of bread and cookies this weekend, no whole grains! Remember, this isn't because whole grains are "bad" (see this article on why foods are not bad) but we're backing off foods that might cause an insulin surge and be an instant burn. I want my body to learn to rely on fat burning, and I know it already knows how to burn carbs quite well.

So let's look at today's meals:
Breakfast (no photo): Banana-strawberry-cherry smoothie. (yogurt, soymilk, cocoa, vanilla whey, fruit in a blender). Heaven on my drive to work.
Snack #1: (similar to a snack yesterday - no photo): fruit salad of pineapple, clementines, cantaloupe, strawberries with cottage cheese. I'm sure I also grabbed a handful of mixed nuts at some point.
Lunch: "unstuffed pepper" I was scouring the fridge before heading to work and came up with this - green pepper and then the "stuffing" of my leftover black beans, salsa, and tofu. Microwaved the "stuffing" and alternated bites. Actually stuffing the pepper would have been too messy for my desk.

unstuffed pepper

Snack #2 (no photo): On my way home I ate some celery, carrots and almond butter.  It was a quick trip home as I had to be somewhere at 5pm, so I made a quick protein shake (soy milk with vanilla whey powder).
Dinner: I was definitely a bit hungry when I got home at 8pm, so I quickly made sauted zucchini with shitake mushrooms (and some garlic) and baked salmon. Honestly, I think I make a darn good baked salmon. It was seasoned with salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Not shown is a spinach salad topped with a few pomegranate kernels (or whatever you call the ruby red delights from the pomegranate). Note: my dad used to make veggie stir fry with zucchini, yellow squash, etc when I was younger and I never ate it. But look at me - I cooked zucchini and ate it...and it wasn't zucchini bread!

baked salmon, zucchini and shitake mushrooms

Exercise: I made it to the pool today! A good thing, especially because this month has a swim focus in the USAT National Challenge Competition.  Thirty minutes of easy swimming followed by some stretching in the hot tub. Great way to spend my lunch hour!

I hope you are enjoying my posts. Feel free to leave comments and share recipes. Let me know how my blog might be helping you! See you back here tomorrow!

Metabolic Efficiency - Day 6 - Back to work

It's Monday and after weekend of holiday gatherings and my "deviation" meals on back to back days, it was time to make sure I was back on track. But really, as I didn't deviate too much it is pretty easy to do! And since I'm back at work, as long as I bring enough food to keep me satisfied, I'm golden!
Today's nutrition:
Breakfast: greek yogurt with fruit, cocoa, and peanut butter. Similar to yesterday but with some blueberries in addition to the raspberries and banana.
Brunch/lunch: Leftover frittata from yesterday and mache salad.
Afternoon: mixed fruit salad with cottage cheese and carrots.

pineapple, strawberries, cantaloupe, and clementines.

Then there was dinner. The picture doesn't do justice to the yumminess of the chicken. Chicken tenders with sauted onions, garlic, rosemary, red wine vinegar, topped with walnuts. One of the recipes Kelly (the RD from UCCS Peak Nutrition Clinic) was Rosemary Chicken. I didn't follow the exact recipe, but it gave me the idea to do this! Sides are green beans and salad. I used my leftover cranberry sauce (which I did end up sweetening with Agave nectar) as the salad dressing.

Exercise for today:
A morning visit to the PT for more work on my neck, shoulders, and back. Of course she gave me some core exercises to do.
After work I decided to hop on my trainer and see how my legs felt. I aggravated a nerve at the end of September with all the cycling I did, so I decided to stay off the bike for a couple months (and the doc recommended that). But I talked to the PT about it as well and she gave me an easy exercise to do and in a week it is much improved! So I thought I might try some easy spinning today to see if it gets any worse even with the exercises. So far so good!

Let's see - otherwise, how am I feeling? Other than being a bit extra tired from not getting enough sleep, I'm feeling good! When I get hungry it is muted - I am not feeling hunger swings. I just get a bit hungry a few hours later and so I eat again. So for base energy levels, I'm doing well. I'll probably add more activity over then next two weeks of the study and see how it goes!

Metabolic Efficiency - Day 5 - Holiday Party #2

What a day! With the party on Saturday night I didn't get to bed until midnight. Slept until a little after 7am and thought I'd better get the day going. Today was Holiday Party #2 - latkes at my parents' house for Hanukkah, but I also needed to get groceries for the week.
After a breakfast of greek yogurt, cocoa, banana and fresh raspberries, I made my shopping list from a suggested meal list that Kelly Ping (RD with the UCCS Peak Nutrition Clinic) sent me earlier in the week.

a little variation on the morning meal - greek yogurt so no added whey

 I drove to the grocery store listening to Splendid Table. As I pulled in the parking lot, the host was suggesting a meal to a caller living in Germany and mentioned Mache salad (pronounced mosh). I had never heard of it, but what do you know, I saw some in the produce aisle so I bought some to try! really a small greens salad. Pretty good. Had it for lunch with this egg white frittata that Kelly sent me. Fabulous!

lunch - mache and egg white frittata with onions, diced tomatoes, shitake mushrooms, smoked salmon and black beans.

 This meal actually tided me over until dinner, which was latkes and some munchies with the family. In the meantime I went shopping to pick up some gifts and was pretty wiped out when I got home around 2. I needed a nap but there was too much to do (laundry, dishes...all that good household stuff that doesn't magically get done...unless you pay someone to do it for you!)

We got to my parents' house around 5pm. Just in time for some Weihnachts Bier from BierWerks in Woodland Park. But just half a glass for me.

these are some sort of fried veggie chips. zucchini, carrots, green beans, beets and some others. Really good!

 Here's the entire munchie spread. I ate plenty of carrots and celery. But a couple of those bowls were praline-style pecans. Had a few of those, too!

 Now for dinner - these are ricotta cheese pancakes topped with cranberry sauce. Very good, I actually ate three.

these didn't last long.

mom's potato pancakes (latkes) with apple sauce. I just had these two.

And as tempting as these are, I only had one!

rugelach - a cream cheese based dough with cinnamon, chopped walnuts,  raisins (or currants) and this year mini chocolate chips!

There were also oatmeal raisin/cranberry squares so I had to try one (and just one!) of them. So I probably noshed a bit, but I've been known to eat a lot more in the past! Mom's rugelach rocks! Here's the recipe. Again, I was satisfied, ate enough but not too much. Enjoyed some holiday treats in moderation. Saturday and Sunday dinner were my two deviation meals for week #1. The good part is that I'm not craving the sweets! I'll get put to the test again once again in a few days...the next holiday party is Friday night.

Happy Hanukkah!