Thursday 22 July 2010

Breakfast:  Whoops.  Still "learning" to stop before I snarf down my breakfast, I guess.  I had 1 slice of flax toast with about 2 Tbsp peanut butter and 1 Tbsp of sugar-free apricot jam, plus the usual (coffee+almond milk+half-and-half) x 2.

A note: I'm finally trying what my doctor suggested a couple of months ago and cutting back my metformin to one 500 mg tablet per day.  I'll be taking this at night, since dinner is typically my larger meal and my morning numbers are still not quite where I want them to be.  We'll see how this experiment works.  

I went for a half hour swim on the way to work today.  The swimming itself went okay, but I scared the poop (figuratively, if not literally, Brooke! ;-) out of the guy I tried to split lanes with, and I was chided by the aqua fit instructor for not getting a verbal OK before getting started.  I usually do, and I thought he noticed me sitting there on the edge when he came along to make his turn, but he was all heads-down and into his swim and I wasn't sure how to address him. No harm done (except to my pride), and lesson (begrudgingly) learned. A minor blip, but it nevertheless put me into a bit of a funk.

Post-swimmy snack: Chia-green tea porridge and one square of dark chocolate.  Even this didn't "defunk" me.

Debby asked about chia seeds.  They're a great source of a lot of good stuff.  MizFit did a guest post over here on Cranky Fitness about all the good qualities of chia seed, and I was convinced that I had to give it a try.  It may have been coincidence, or maybe just getting more fiber in general, but my LDL cholesterol finally dropped below the "ruh roh" number after I started consuming it regularly.  I liked that it has protein, packs a lot of fiber, and has more omega 3 than flax seed, and you don't have to grind it up to get the omega 3 goodness. (I still love the flax and use it to add volume to oat bran and protein pancakes.)  Some people don't like the texture chia makes when it gets wet (MizFit provided other ideas for consuming it in this post), but I do; it's like comfort food.  I don't care for it in soup, but sprinkled on salad or made into a porridge with tea (green tea, of course, for maximum superfood-i-liciousness) works for me.  Oh, and I love it in coffee, too.  But by mid-morning, I've usually moved on to tea.

I buy mine at Whole Foods.  My Whole Foods has it in either the way-out vegan food, nuts, and bulk bin aisle, so I get extra tempted to buy nuts or dehydrated kale or other strange new foods to try.  I prefer the whole seeds, but sometimes the ground fiber supplement chia is on such a good sale that I feel like I have to buy it instead.  I don't like the texture as much, but it is lower in calories per serving.  Many people buy it online.

The defunking called for some serious measures: Sushi lunch with a work buddy!





Japanese food is so beautiful.  And don't you just love all the little dishes?  We were at this tiny table, and I had to laugh at all the little dishes crowding around on it.  And better yet, someone else was going to wash them!

We split the tempura and I had some tuna sashimi with shredded radish, ohitashi (cooked spinach-which I think was supposed to have fish flakes, but perhaps they withheld them for the gaikokujin), miso soup, and chicken teriyaki on a salad. I ate pretty much all but the salad...it had gotten a little wilty and the dressing was more mayo-tasting than I usually care for. My work buddy is a savvy lass, and she was therefore not surprised when I whipped out my cell phone and explained this was my "weird food journaling thing".

"The 72% Solution" for afternoon snacking:  Had the 6 pieces and peanut butter.  Yum.

Dinner: Thing 2 is so fascinated with my photo food journal.  She wanted to take a picture of tonight's dinner.  I had salad with Italian dressing, 4 oz steak with steak sauce and grilled onions, and cauliflower with olive oil and garam marsala.

...and a little wine for the whiner.

Dessert:  Nuts (cashews removed after photo by Thing 2, our "curly nut" squirrel) and one of Mr. Handsome-and-Handy's chocolate chip cookies.  I hopped on the stationary bike at home for 22 minutes to mitigate the blood glucose effect and to help improve my mood.

(image source: Wikimedia Commons)

What's Eating Me:  All of these things (the exercise, the food) helped a bit to make me feel like I was caring for myself and cared for by my family.  But I still felt kind of funky.  So I poured it all out to Mr. Handsome-and-Handy.  Telling him about the pool incident led to me venting a bit about feeling like I'm not fit enough, followed by will-I-ever-achieve-my-crazy-ass-athletic-dream?  (Poor husband, having to listen to all that.  Maybe I'm descending into perimenopause madness or something?)  I had felt really good and confident about spin classes and BodyPump, running and swimming.  But this summer, I've been taking Pilates, which is crazy-hard for me.  It's the day right before BodyPump, but that changed to "Cardio Sculpt," which the instructor is gleefully making harder than her old BodyPump class; and this week she was on vacation and the substitute did a completely different, faster paced routine with bosu balls and hand weights and tons of ab work.  She had the studio looking like the deck of a fishing vessel there at the end, all of us flopping around on the floor and gasping.  "Summer of Core" is shaping up to be anything but peace and love, but I might at least be able to do a well-formed roll-up at the end of it.

So...what is my crazy-ass athletic dream?  Gradually doing longer and longer triathlons, until I either finish an Ironman event or just get fed up with the hassle and get it out of my system.  I don't even know why I want to do this; it's hard work and painful and long-term (not to mention expensive). (See "descent into perimenopausal madness.")  So, yeah, I'm taking it with a grain of protein powder; as Mr. Handsome-and-Handy said, "Well, I want to be an astronaut...."  I guess the good part about my dream is that remote as it seems now, I can at least take it in stages appropriate to my life right now.  I can't just quit my job and train for longer triathlons.  I refuse to let triathlon training take me away my family, who gets precious little of me now: I already work full-time outside the home and have to take some time each day for at least my bare minimum, 30 minutes x 5 days fitness requirement.  So it looks like I'll be doing sprint distance for awhile, at least until the Things turn into Surly Teens Who Do Not Need Mom Anymore.  (Yeah, I know, that's when they'll need me the most, paradoxically. ;-)  I feel like I need to get faster (so I can fit longer distances into the time I have) before I can move up to Olympic distance (.93 mile swim, 24.8 mile bike, 6.2 mile run).  But even that feels depressingly far away at this point.

Well.  This is a bit more than just a food log today, but I think I just needed to put today in context.  Sometimes when things are eating me, I'm eating things.  Which doesn't really serve my crazy-ass dream well, does it?