WIAW #3

I've been pretty busy catching up with uni work, I think I'm almost there - but understanding chemistry seems to take me a long time!!
So anyways... today was Wednesday :D


Thanks for hosting the party Peas & Crayons :D Enjoy it every wednesday!This is kinda gonna be some random eats from the last couple of days since I forgot to photograph breakfast this morning (was a yoghurt, oats and berries mix) and most of my snacks...

Yummy chicken in a can (I know, sounds bad but tastes great!)

It went on top of a small can of four bean mix, steamfresh veg (carrot, broccoli & cauliflower), some mushrooms, red capsicum and a small amount of cheddar cheese. Trying to make myself have more dairy... testing the lactose intolerance out!! This lunch was delish. 

This was a RAW bar... apple cinnamon flavour I believe... I actually ate this yesterday ;)

I eat these like way too often...

Here's a pic from the City 2 Surf website which had me on it! Ha, barely, but I'm the one behind the insanely tall bloke in the white shirt with red bits, wearing blue shorts and a blue hat... (It's like Where's Wally... but one of my mates actually spotted me!)

Anyway, on to my workouts lately... well since Sunday's 12k took it out of me a bit, I did yoga on Monday and went for a light swim yesterday. Today I was DYING to go for a run so I let myself... probably a dumb idea since my shins are STILL playing up... but I took it really slow and only did 3km. It was great though :D Debating whether to do a weights class tonight, and then most likely I shall do spinning tomorrow morning... I'm thinking I need to take a break from running for a bit to let my shins heal properly but it's so hard not to run. Maybe when I go for the hike in two week's time it will give them a break?? Although that's still using my legs... hmm...

Now I plan on eating this delicious oat bar I made the other day... unpictured, but just imagine a yummy oaty bar with coconut on top, and bananas and raisins throughout... undercooked so very gooey!

City to Surf 2011

I have nothing huge to mention about this morning's race... I think I did it in 1.18 to 1.21 hrs, but I can't be totally sure! Will find out tomorrow when they upload the results. Right on the money with my guesstimate of time :)
I was feeling good apart from the nausea, I was up half the night with this weird stomach bug I've had for the last couple of days... but otherwise feeling pretty good.
One thing that really pissed me off - there were protesters on the sidelines. Seriously, go away! Who wants to hear you chanting negative stuff when we're having a good time? I could hear some of the other runners yelling back at them, good on them.
Then there's the people that cut in front of you (like, RIGHT in front of you) and then go really slow... ugh!
I saw one of my friends at one point and tried to catch up but then lost track of him, so I don't know how I went compared to him.
And there was someone getting CPR, like, 5 metres before the finish point :( I hope they made it... that's scary!
Met up with those from work afterwards and we got burgers - I got a sesame crusted chickpea burger with aioli on wholemeal bread... sounded healthy but my gut is not happy now - although that could be dehydration nausea also.
:D

Urgh feel sick.

12k race this morning... I'm hoping for 1hr18 - 1hr 27... but shins are a little tender and I'm not feeling well still, so we'll see. My stomach is kinda hating me this morning.
I look like an advertisement for Nike ;)

On a downer...

Not much to report today... slowly catching up with uni work!
Stomach is now playing up, may just be nerves for tomorrow, but there's no need to be nervous! I only do fun runs for fun, since I am in no way speedy enough to be serious enough to compete. I would like to beat last year's time, though.

I made this chocolate cheesecake from Taking Small Bites' blog. I accidently put in too much cocoa powder though, which is why mine is much darker than hers (and probably much richer.... I could only eat half at first... then went back and ate the rest later ;)) It was very delicious though.

I also had this for breakfast. It was pretty good, but 220 calories for that tiny little container was a bit much, I can make bigger smoothies for less ;P It was more a smoothie than juice though.

I also ate my weight in dried fruit... it was kind of a binge to tell you the truth. I'm feeling pretty down at the moment because I'm so stressed about study. I'm really behind so I tell myself there's no time to catch up with friends... so I don't... then I'm stressed because I'm not hanging out with friends. Then I procrastinate... then I'm behind again... it's a vicious cycle :( This is probably the cause of my tummy issues... too much dried fruit!

There's other issues going on at the moment too which are getting me down but I'll leave that alone for the moment. I don't want to be a downer blogger. Hopefully everything will feel better once I go running tomorrow, 3 days without is killing me!

OMG 99% Dark Chocolate...

The last couple of days I've felt pretty crappy. I think I overdid it on Wednesday's workout, so Thursday I slept in and wasn't able to go for my usual Thursday walk... I did walk around a lot on campus though, and same with today. But my legs feel like lead still! I might go for a swim later tonight but honestly I feel pretty awful, and I don't have much of an appetite either :(
I'm hoping I feel better by Sunday because it's the City 2 Surf run! So if I'm not feeling up to the swim later I'm not going to go.

For some reason blogger adds the pictures in backwards... but anyway, after uni today I stopped off in the city, and I found some 99% dark chocolate! So excited, as I've always wanted to try it. I liked it, but could only eat it in tiny bites at a time! One square took me ages to eat, it's so so rich, but delicious... I'm thinking it might be nice melted in some oats, or shaved into some kind of dessert... hmmm, we'll see :D

See? Mmmm high quality goodness.

Ooh, I found these at the same shop and got excited, they were at the counter though so I didn't grab too many... just two. There were like four or five flavours there. I think the other flavours were Ginger and I forgot what else... oh well, I'll be back :D

Here's my lunch from yesterday... it's a lunch I get really often at uni so I thought it needed picturing :) There's loads in there - beetroot, olives, bean salad, potato salad, cous cous salad, spinach, onions, olives, sundried tomato, carrot, tuna, falafel balls... probably more! It's like a buffet thing and I just grab everything and put it in. So yum.

Well, I'm off to maybe have a nap, then time for uni work I think... best way to spend a Friday night... :/

Fartlek is fun

I forgot to give credit where credit was due on the first one, newbie mistake :) But cheers to Peas & Crayons for thinking up this idea, I have found many cool blogs to follow through this concept. Anyway, on to what I ate today...

I had an empty cashew spread container... so I tried my first oats in a jar :D It was simply 1/2 cup oats, 3/4 cup soy milk, a sprinkling of chia seeds and cinnamons, and some raisins!

Mmm, those raisins were delicious in the morning.

Halfway through... yes don't mind my pyjama pants in the background ;)

Yeah, this ain't food! Here's my AWESOME Nike Lunarglide + 2 shoes... that I bought a week before Lunarglide + 3 came out... Grr... but still love them!

After run snack... vanilla protein powder mixed with about 100grams of mango yoghurt. I don't like this particular brand of protein powder... it was an "all natural" one, but there's some strong flavour in it I really dislike...

Upon lunch time, I looked in the fridge at this sorry state of food :( Severe lack of vegetables!! I didn't want those vegie sausages in the forefront either as I had them yesterday.

So I improvised and made THE BEST FRENCH TOAST EVER.... I used Woolworths Four Seed Ploughman's bread, with two eggs, a sprinkling of soy milk, loads of cinnamon, tsp cocoa powder, a splash of maple syrup, sprinkling of chia seeds and LSA (linseed, sunflower seed, almond meal) mix as the mix to dip the bread in. It went really dark in the pan which I originally thought was because it was burnt, but noo, that was the cocoa... it was perfectly cooked! Out of the pan I put on some apricot jam and a teeny bit of vanilla ice cream. I don't know what it was, but this was so yum!

Still hungry afterwards (somehow) so had a yummy yellow pear... while studying exciting anatomy. I also ate some 70% dark chocolate and had a hot chocolate & a coffee throughout the day, and dinner is forthcoming...

Had a really good run this morning. Had planned a 30 min Fartlek run... I had it all set up in my Runkeeper app to do this:
5 mins warm up
then 10 times this:
1 min x slow
2 min x steady
30 seconds x fast
then cool down.
I somehow decided that all that added up was 30 minutes... hmm, no, try 45 minutes!!! Obviously I suck at maths. So anyway 30 minutes was what I knew I could do comfortably without dying... So at 41 minutes I cut it short and practically limped home!! :) Haha. It was good fun though... I ran on the beach for about 200m, decided it was too hard (as the tide was really far in so not much sand to run on!), then ran on the footpath near the beach, then a park, on the road, back to another park where I finished it off.

That's the only exciting thing I've done today... the rest of the day has been filled with study and procrastination :D

Unsure of dinner at this stage...

Where did the strength go?

Have been slowly changing the blog around as I learn to use Blogger :) Plus I changed my name... again!

Still trying to work out how to do things, but hopefully I'll get there eventually.

Today went off to BodyPump... used lighter weights than I normally would as I wasn't sure how I'd go after boot camp... turned out to be a good choice. Where did my strength go?? :( The only part I had improved on was the pushups! Oh well.
Then I went for a 5k walk on the treadmill, bit faster than yesterday but I suppose that's because it was the treadmill...

And here's some food porn from today's eats because text only is boring :D

Breakfast this morning: cashew butter & apricot jam on "four seed ploughman's bread". I like the look of spreads on toast in pictures... I don't know why?? 

After exercise snack: raspberries and greek yoghurt...

And after I smooshed it all up :D Yummo...

Weird oat cookie type thing I attempted... with apricot jam on top! Tasted ok... needs work.

Green smoothie with banana, spinach, maca powder & cocoa powder... my usual recipe

Mushrooms with vegemite, another one of my favourites!!

Wet track pants.

Today's workout went more or less as planned, it was pretty slow though. It was raining pretty heavy and really windy most of the morning, but I was dying to get out there for a run so I went anyway.
I'm gonna go ahead and blame the fact I wore track pants on my speed - it rained very heavily in the first two minutes of my run - and they became like lead weights!!
No, really, I dunno what was up but I wasn't feeling very speedy at all. Then I went home and looked at my pace on the app, and it was what I normally run at, so I don't know what happened there.
I went for a 5km walk later on, and this arvo completed 88 pushups as part of the 100 pushups plan. They seemed easier tonight, yay :)
Feeling good too, it's 9pm and I'm actually not ready for bed already, what a shock.
Pretty productive day in general, I also did 3.5 hours study and attended uni for 4 hours worth of classes.

How do you train for a hike?

Last week's plan went sort of to plan - except I didn't do Saturdays or Sunday's planned workouts because I'd had about 6 hrs sleep thanks to work Saturday, and Sunday...worked again, plus well, my shins are still quite tender so thought I'd have another day. I'm also really bad if I have one day off, I find it easier to take another :(. But not to worry, will make up for it tomorrow!! Going to start "training" for the hike, not really sure how since I've never really trained for a hike, but I'm thinking 5km walk every day, with maybe a longer walk on weekends... plus my normal running training??? Will somehow make it so I'm not tired for Sunday's race. SO... here's my draft plan for this week....

Sunday (today): rest.

Monday: 5km (3.1m) run + 5km walk + 100 pushups program

Tuesday: BodyPump

Wednesday: 5km run + 5km walk (hills) + 100 pushups program

Thursday: 5km walk

Friday: swim + 100 pushups program

Saturday: rest / maybe yoga?

Sunday: Race, 12km (7.5 m) :D

I am feeling a little restless at the moment actually, so I might end up getting on the exercise bike for a bit tonight.

Excitement.

Excited for two things: City 2 Surf 12k next Sunday, which I probably won't do too well in - but pretty sure I'll beat last year's time!! -

Aaand 5 or 6 of us from work are hiking the Bibbulmun Track in about three weeks!! We've got a rough plan going for about 20km per day, 110 in total. It should be so so so much fun! The rest of them I'm pretty sure are fitter than me so I will definitely be pushed.
I'm planning on bringing peanut butter, of course, and maybe a giant trail mix, and probably some beans... debating what else. It's in the "no classes week" or whatever it's called. Means I won't be able to use that week to catch up on study, but I really need a week OFF study!! So I'll just have to work my butt off till then, because I'm pretty sure there's assignments due at the end of that week too.
So what am I doing writing this... better get back to it.

Oh yeah - but before I do - this morning's boot camp was KILLER! We were doing 400m sprints, swapping with our partner to do 10 x pushups, 10 x burpees, 10 x situps continuously until our partner came back from their 400m sprint, and then back to sprinting, back to pushups etc etc etc... we didn't stop the entire hour, it was hardcore!!! So tired afterwards!! I think one girl actually puked, and I had an "exercise headache" which was easily remedied with a soy cappuccino on the way to my chemistry lab... :D

First what I ate Wednesday...

Breakfast: Leftover quinoa with soy milk, cinnamon and a sprinkling of nuts. I know the pic looks gross... and actually it kinda wasn't the greatest combination, but... ok, yeah, it wasn't great. Needed some kind of sweetness!

Snack: teeny tiny banana with cashew butter and a sprinkling of cinnamon (love the stuff...)

Snack 2: Handful of nuts and seeds and raisins (sultanas? I can never tell the difference) ... mmmm.

Snack 3: I LOOOOVE THESE.... so yum.

Annnd an apple, Royal Gala to be precise.

Here's lunch - more leftover quinoa mixed with a leftover homemade soup (pumpkin), then a four bean mix, some vegie sausages (chickpea & spinach) and a dollop of tomato chutney. It was delicious.

Still hungry after lunch... so made myself up some greek yoghurt with raspberries.

Oh, and there may have been two of these coffees... real exciting photo :P

I'm not going to post dinner since I'm not comfortable taking photos of it in front of my parents :P But I think dad's planning on cooking up Venison sausages... believe it's a red wine and garlic flavour... also there will probably be more snacks.. just saying. I eat a lot.

Boot camp was good this morning... noticed I'm actually getting better at burpees! Plus there was lots of sprinting which made me happy, and it wasn't too freezing. (Why did I begin this in the middle of winter???)

Uni is getting really stressful. I'm not doing nearly as well as last semester and it's really getting me down. I'm kind of an all or nothing person, and since I feel like I'm not doing well, I'm finding it hard to get motivated to study. It's almost like, why bother now, I'm not going to do as well as I wanted!! I'm feeling really behind but nothing I do seems to catch me up.

On a random note, I watched this last night: True Life - "I have an eating disorder".

It's an episode of True Life on three people with an eating disorder (obviously..?. It was so, so interesting, and really... full on, they really went right into these people's lives and their deepest thoughts - which was what made it such a good episode. I found myself relating to the boy the most (who, on a side note, was totally hot...)

Erm... yep that's all I've got, I better go get myself motivated for more uni work.

Weekly Plan

o yesterday... or whenever it was.. I posted a weekly recap of my workouts, so this time I might post a plan in a hope to stick to it, haha (including yesterdays)

Monday: Boot Camp, 100 pushups program (did 79 - oh they hurt)

Tuesday: Did a 3km run, not feeling too well.

Wednesday: Boot camp, 100 pushups program

Thursday 5km walk, maybe something strength related in the afternoon.

Friday: Last Boot Camp!!, 100 pushups program

Saturday: swim 50 - 100 laps

Sunday: long run. again, depends how the shins feel.

I'm kinda reluctant to give myself KM's at the moment because of the way my shins are feeling. I did a bit of a run to my car last night when it was raining at uni and they hurt a bit, so we'll see how we go. I was going to cross-train today with a gym class but I've missed it by sleeping in :/

Oh, and I gained .7 kg this week. Why does this keep happening? You can't gain this much muscle every week. I must eat too much, but I'm reluctant to restrict myself...

My health...

Gasp, updating two days in a row...
Thought I'd do a recap of my week's exercise and whatnot...

Sunday: rest day (as I was working all day)
Monday: 6am boot camp sesh
Tuesday: 5.44 km run (3.3 miles)
Wednesday: boot camp sesh
Thursday: 20 min walk
Friday: boot camp sesh
Saturday 1hr at gym - 15 min run, 25 min elliptical, 5 min row, 5 min bike
Sunday (today): 30 min HIIT session on the exercise bike...

Weekly running km's (according to runkeeper): 11.5km (7 miles)

Despite this probably not looking like much to some, I actually feel like I've overtrained... well, that's what my muscles are telling me :( Boot Camp has been pretty hardcore though. It's the last week this week, and so they will most likely step it up! Hopefully I'll get a better score on the fitness test. Then I plan back to kickboxing and on to my half-marathon training plan... which I'm planning on making really, really long... like, a YEAR long. Just gotta get it all written up so I'm not increasing the K's too quick, or the speed, and allowing for holidays / courses / sickness, etc... I don't want to go at it too hard and get injuries etc.

City to Surf is in two weeks on Sunday, and as usual I'm just racing for fun, but also to beat last year's time, because every year I get a little fitter!!

Hmm, haven't been eating very well this week though. Too many protein bars... kinda thinking I might stop eating them and just go back to natural protein. And way too much bread, not enough vegetables and fruit, so I am feeling like the exercise is doing me good but the nutrition is just way below par. Surviving on peanut butter sandwiches and protein bars is just not healthy.

Today I feel fat and gross. I tried on some clothes and looked in the full-length mirror, and three weeks of boot camp, I swear, has made me fatter. I'm not more toned or anything... my stomach is bloated as hell and I looked gross. I went to the gym this morning and went on the elliptical for 25 mins, ran for 15, rowing 5 mins and bike 10 mins... only put effort in for the run & elliptical though, the rest was like a cool down. Was a good workout, but my shins hurt a bit on the treadmill :(
I don't get why the more exercise I do, the fatter I seem to get. I mean, I'm not "fat", but my legs are getting leaner while my bum and stomach are getting bigger. Your stomach is supposed to be where the fat goes when you eat unhealthy fats. I so don't understand. One day, I will understand how it all works. You'd think studying nutrition and having an obsessive nature with food and exercise and  teaching myself stuff about it would be able to lose weight the healthy way, but no, it still puzzles me.
I do no exercise and eat bad, I usually lose weight. Every time I go away somewhere like a holiday or a course, I usually lose weight. At home, I gain a kilo, lose a kilo, gain a kilo, lose a kilo, every single week, and it drives me mad!!! I've been very consistent with my exercise too (maybe not the intensity, but working out 3-5x a week, every week, for at least two years). and I eat all healthy food. I admit, I probably eat a lot, but this is because I'm still disordered with my eating... but it shouldn't be too much when you think of all the exercising I'm doing.
ARRGH!

Well, that went off on a complete tangent.

What was my initial point? I'm not really sure now... I'm planning on returning to kickboxing, maybe this week, as they've offered a "50% off for returning students" deal. As I was wanting to return anyway and money was the issue... it's like they're TELLING me to go back. Anyways... I'm gonna stop whingeing now. I'm seriously not having a good day - spent my morning feeling fat, as well as 5.5 hrs of studying anatomy. Good times :(

Will hopefully not spend my night binging...

These are a few of my favourite things...

OK, I've decided to do a bit of a picture post, as all the text entries were getting pretty boring...not that anyone actually reads this haha (plus I'm procrastinating studying for an anatomy test...)

Anyways. I took pictures of some of my favourite (food-related) things! Here we go...

My personal stash, hidden in a drawer in my room. Included is 85% Lindt dark chocolate, four bean mix (random, I know...), So Good Soy Chocolate milk, Up & Go Energise Milk (high protein), Atkin's protein bars x 2 (Cappuccino Nut & Strawberries & Cream), Growling Dog bar (wildberry), Winner's Gym protein bars (I actually haven't tasted these yet, but found them the other day and thought I'd give them a go), Whittaker's Peanut Slab (15g & 50g varieties) and 1 Lindt Dark Choc Ball. Yeah... I kinda eat too many protein bars, but I love them... they've helped me lose weight in the past, and they taste good.

The other stash.. lol. This one mum and dad eat stuff from too, so it's in the kitchen. We've got here... Roasted broadbeans (so yum! they also come in chick peas, and with a tomatoey flavour), fruit & nut delight bars (one with dark choc ripple and the other not), Be Natural bars (two flavours - currant, berry, oats & pepita / coconut, apricot, oats & chia) and I think one Macadamia & Cranberry bar there at the front. I loooooove love love nut bars of all kinds... it's all good stuff! nuts, dried fruit, and a bit of honey.

Some of my snacks for today... creatine bar (apricot flavour) I ate after boot camp & a protein ball (it tasted kinda like marzipan! yum!)

Breakfast I made for tomorrow... it's a parfait type thing.. layers of oats, then greek yoghurt that I mixed up with chia seeds & cinnamon, layers of berries, a bit of pineapple, and on the top I sprinkled a bit of cocoa powder and some random nuts and seeds.

Another view, just for the hell of it...

And here's my favourite unhealthy food... SCHNITZEL. I love this stuff. Seriously, I cannot get enough of that fried bready crispy crunchyness. I would have it every day if I let myself... had one today and it was aweeeesome. This is all kinds too - vegetarian schnitzel, pork, beef, lamb, veal, eggplant... YUM.

And here's some pineapple I cut up today to add to some smoothies maybe, or just eat as is... had a couple of slices today.

These are like GOLD in Australia right now. Each one of those babies right there is about $2.50 each, so I seriously love my mum right now for buying those for me!!!!

Sultanas. Yep, these are great for adding to my oats and other random stuff. Oh yeah, there was some in my parfait too. I mainly took this pic because of the "99% fat free" thing. Well, duh, they're fruit!!! I hate the tradition that's come out of labelling things that aren't fatty "fat free".

This stuff costs like $6-8, depending where you get it from, and lasts me probably 3-4 days. I think it's because it's imported that it's so expensive, but it's so yum :(

Here's a breakfast I eat very, very often - chocolatey cinnamon oats... these are spelt oats in the pic, with cocoa powder, cinnamon, LSA mix (linseed, sunflower seed, almond meal), and soy milk... possibly other condiments that I can't remember...?

These are yum too, especially as you can eat them raw... I often put them on pizza, or in a wrap, but never really eat them the traditional sausage way!

Went for a 5k yesterday, almost hit the 30 min mark. Sigh, haha. All these runner's blogs who I read, and they do it in like 18 mins!! Almost double!! How??? That is insanely fast. Granted, if I could lose these stubborn kilos I'd probably knock a few minutes off... but only a few...

Anyway... shins are still a little tender. Weight still staying much the same...

Hmm. Not really that much to report actually. It was so so so so cold this morning at boot camp, and I don't deal well with the cold. My hands were so freezing they were hurting, and I just couldn't deal!! We had fake rifles, and they were icy as... instead of doing squats with the "rifle" above my head I would be rubbing my hands together, or when we were supposed to run with it above our head, I held it at my waist with my hands tucked into my jacket... consequently probably a pretty shitty workout but my hands reaaaaally hurt... I'm such a woos haha. Oh well, I made up for it with my run yesterday, because it was a decent pace... kinda still feeling it this morning anyway which may have also affected my performance. Sigh. Tomorrow a "rest" day, with my walk to the train station, and Friday back at boot camp... this weekend I'm thinking a nice swim and some yoga might be in order. I miss my swimming! And yoga is needed for the sore legs...

Wow I'm boring myself... so I'll end this.

Chocolate is awesome.

I went for the best run ever today. It was just so enjoyable. Perfect temperature... a little bit of rain, but not enough to actually get wet... I just felt really good, my legs felt good, and I just felt like running all day, so even though I'm doing boot camp and didn't want to overdo it too much, I did a 4k run. It was great! and one of my fave songs came on, during which my pace went to 4.40 :D Yay. This is good for me lol.

I ate lots of chocolate today. Well, no different to every other day actually. But chocolate is amazing.
I also had some weird quiche thing mum made the other day for lunch... there was nothing really else to eat.