Ibuprofen makes me hungry? Weird...(VERY random post!)

This whole resting thing is one thing. But to be so hungry when I'm not working out is...ODD! Very odd indeed. I'm proud of myself for taking my rest in stride. It's mentally kind of challenging but it's good for my body I suppose.

My knee isn't hurting now which is good. It just feels a little tweaky still. I'm down to 1 ibuprofen 2 times a day. Not bad. I'm still resting it until Friday (I think). When I say rest, I mean I'm resting my knee and my whole body. I feel all right about that. I mean RESTING...nothing.

I found, for me, a GREAT treat! Yummy! It's this agar agar pudding recipe and I made it into Matcha Green Tea Pudding this morning. OMG! DELISH! I LOVE my matcha and this was just another way to love it! So tasty!

Matcha Protein Pudding Recipe

Basic agar agar "jelly" from this recipe - 1 1/3 cups almond milk and 3 heaping teaspoons agar agar flakes

Once set, add in whatever you want. Here's my matcha measurements:

1/2 batch of agar agar "jelly"

1/4 - 1/2 cup almond milk

1 T matcha green tea powder 

1 scoop protein powder

Blend all together with immersion blender or in blender or food processor. 

To be honest this didn't go at all as I thought it would and I left the stove on when I thought I had turned it off. But even with all of that, as the blogger of this recipe said, it is fail proof. It still worked like a charm. Can't WAIT to make some strawberry pudding...YUM!

Here are a couple of photos I've taken and keep forgetting to post so these are kind of random...but random is good, right? Right?

Mochi & Matcha

I had this for breakfast the other day! Brown rice mochi and matcha green tea protein shake! Oh boy! It was DELISH! And also my other breakfast time companions - Nature's Plus Source of Life liquid multivitamin and Carlson's Fish Oil. I take one tablespoon of each. I like the liquid vitamin because I can take what I need. Full dose is supposed to be two tablespoons. As for the fish oil I have 1 tablespoon in the morning. I would like to split that up during the day but I always forget if I try to do 1 teaspoon at breakfast, lunch and dinner. In addition to those I take calcium, vitamin D, evening primrose oil and Celadrin daily. Find what works for you and take your vitamins and/or minerals.

Oatmeal cooking

Egg & Egg whites cooking

This is pretty much the scene on my stove each and every morning. Sometimes I switch it up but generally speaking I have egg whites and/or eggs and oatmeal. LOVE my oatmeal and the eggs help me get some veggies in since I like them better with eggs!

Yesterday's breakfast

This was a very big breakfast for me - 3 egg whites, 1 egg, 1 zucchini, 6 mushrooms, 1/2 cup oatmeal, 6 strawberries, 4 walnut halves! DELISH! I always eat my eggs first and treat my oatmeal as "dessert". GREAT way to start my day. Look at all those nutritious items! AWESOME!

I have a new best friend I think I am going to love to hate! It's THIS!!!! The RUMBLE ROLLER!!

Compact Rumble Roller

Rolling the ol' IT Band with this? Yes, pain is what it would be called. Owwwww!!! But on the neck is sheer bliss. The upper back? Again some pretty good pain. The glutes feel good as do the adductors. And on the latissimus? SHOOT ME! SOOOOO painful! Since that is an area that is always super tight on me, rolling on it with this torture device roller is super duper painful!!!


I must go make my dessert now. Hmmm...what will it be? What will it be? I must go decide and I'll let you know tomorrow! Yippee!!! Goodnight!

Oh, Blogger, how I missed thee!

I had started writing a great post yesterday and then Blogger messed it all up. Now I don't have my post, nor any changes I made to my blog on Wednesday before they did their "scheduled maintenance". Ugh! So frustrating! So now I have no idea what I was writing about yesterday. Let's see if I can recall.

One thing I was writing about was my knee pain. NOT good. I overdid it last week and didn't listen to myself "myself" said to not work out lower body again less than 48 hours after my intense workout. I'm what they call a fool. But oh well. Lesson learned...yet again! HA! Running the stairs and having sore calves on Sunday, inline skating sprints on Tuesday, heavy glutes and hams on Thursday and glutes and hams plus some quad on Saturday = KNEE PAIN!

So here it is Friday and I've worked out twice this week - on Tuesday and today. They were both great workouts but I really can't do much with my lower body. Oh well. That's the way it goes. Rest, ice, roll baby roll!!!! And I've been doing the stretches and rolling shown in this FANTASTIC video:

Thanks to Bret Contreras for directing his followers to that video. This guy has a lot of great stuff. I can help myself with a lot of my pains, it looks like.

It's Friday and I'm ready for the weekend. Anyone else feeling unmotivated or is it just me? What is WRONG with me? Hahaha! I think I don't want to pack up my stuff to get my floors redone. It sounds like a pain in the neck! That's okay though. It must be done and in the end I will be happy about it!!!!

Whoa! Where did the week go?!?

Apparently I've been a little busy this week. And to be honest with you I wasn't feeling great, both mentally and physically. But today I'm back on it. I had to straighten up my food a little and get in a couple of good workouts. But I'm back at it. Even though I go out of town in a few days I went and bought a bunch of veggies yesterday just so I can eat well until I leave! Very important. I was on a slippery slope this week but I'm back again. Whew! I don't like that feeling like I'm eating wrong and then eating even more wrong and then totally out of control, tired, lazy...you know the drill. The holidays can be overwhelming like that. And I think that combined with my side business selling caramels this year I've been very overwhelmed! Very! So I regrouped and here I am!


Last night we had our office party at an Italian restaurant. It was delicious!!! I had bread and olive oil and bread and butter!! Then I had some of their focaccia which was basically very thin pizza crust (think of a cracker) drizzled with olive oil and a sprinkling of rosemary and salt! DELISH! Then it was on to salad with roasted veggies and lemon dressing - also very good. Then I had scallops with wild mushroom sauce and we ordered gnocchi for the table with tomato sauce. It was divine! This restaurant is known for their gnocchi and it was light in texture and just scrumptious!! Then it was time for dessert. Everyone at the table ordered some apple thing that sounded good but not great. My boss ordered chocolate mousse and I ordered custard with caramel sauce! OH MY! It was so ridiculously good. Everyone tasted it and they all said they should have ordered that. The caramel sauce tasted just like MY caramels! It was ridiculously good. So very tasty!

I just found this article on Men's Health and since I just finished my little guest appearance on Gina's video on rolling, I found Rule #7 of this article very apropos! So don't forget to get your roll on! Very important.

7. Massage Your Muscles
PVC piping does more than make a daily guest appearance on HGTV. It can actually save your muscles. That’s because foam rolling—with a PVC pipe, foam roller, or even a tennis or lacrosse ball—is the best exercise you’re probably not doing. When you lift weights, sit, stand, or breathe, the quality of your tissue can be altered. Little adhesions build on your muscles. Think of the adhesions as knots. I don’t know about you, but when I have a knot in my shoelace, it’s a pain in the ass to fix. Now imagine tons of knots all throughout your muscles, inhibiting your every movement. Doesn’t sound fun, right?
Foam rolling helps remove these knots from your muscles, so you improve the quality of your tissue. It doesn’t always feel good, but the results are better than sex. (Ok, that’s a lie. But still, please foam roll. It’s my big hope for 2011)

Today I started out with a meal of puffed kamut cereal and an egg white omelet with zucchini and cherry tomatoes. My second meal was a big fat salad with cucumber, zucchini, celery and cherry tomatoes with a dressing made with just 1 tablespoon of olive oil. I added some rotisserie chicken and a little hummus and it was fantastic! So veggies are up today! Yeah for me!

I'm going to do a circuit later and then I get to relax with my BF and get ready for one more day of work and then I'm off for Christmas vacay!!! WOOHOO!!! I can't wait to relax and enjoy! That's the part of the holidays I really love - family time, laughter, games, enjoying each other's company! Can't wait!!!!

Have a great Sunday and get ready for this final week before Christmas and then one more week until the new year. Are you ready? Work on your goals and be S.M.A.R.T. - specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely! New year...new time to reach bigger and better goals!!

“To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe." ~Anatole France (French Writer, member of the French Academy and Nobel Prize for Literature in 1921, 1844-1924)

Weekend update and Video Clip - foam rolling!

Hello hello there! So over the weekend as I told you I went to San Diego. I met up with Gina and Traci and we made a video on using the foam roller. A little snippet is below.

So this is just a little clip of the video that I recorded with my ex-coach/mentor, Gina Aliotti-Silva! It was such an incredibly beautiful day on Saturday. So we shot our video at the bay in San Diego and it was really fun. The full video can be seen on Gina's website. If you haven't checked out her site, you definitely should. She has a 2-day free trial that you could try out just to see the content if you would like! It's an amazing site...amazing place for competitors and non-competitors alike.

I had some difficulties this weekend. It all started on Friday night with wanting to do a circuit workout from Gina's site but my computer was acting up and wouldn't play it! Aargh! So I wasted a good 30-40 minutes there and should have already been finished with my circuit. I just decided to do a card deck workout instead. Finished that and headed right into my "caramel factory". Started making my caramels and after the butter, sugar, and corn syrup had been added, here comes the cream and half & half. Well, guess what? On the second round of that I realized that it was curdling! The half & half was rotten with an expiration date of Jan 16, 2011!!! UGH!!! That was awesome! NOT! So off to the grocery store I went to get a fresher one that was not spoiled! And then it was back in the caramel factory. Saturday actually was a great day! I drove down and back from San Diego.

In the middle of the night on Saturday night there was the sound of water overflowing. Yes, my bathroom sink had backed up and was flowing all over the bathroom floor!!!!!!!!!! AAUGH!!!! I took one look and since it wasn't overflowing anymore I went back to bed. I really couldn't deal with it at THREE in the morning!!!!!!!!!!

Kind of threw off my Sunday but that's okay. Still got some things done but just not quite as I planned. So to be honest I was more than ready for Monday. And so my week began. And here we are already 2 days down and just 3 to go. Then it's weekend time again. Work one day and then off for Christmas VACATION!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! I can't wait! Love Christmas vacation and hanging with the family and enjoying the laughter and craziness! Can't wait!!

Hope everyone is having a great week and enjoying this holiday season so far!

I'm on a ROLL!

So, I promised to talk about my "rolling". I wrote earlier about the foam roller. Well, this photo is my "Rolling Arsenal"! We have the "not too hard" foam roller, the black "pretty hard" short foam roller, the pink practice baseball, tennis ball, "Neck Noogies" (2 tennis balls stuck together), NEW blue Myo-release ball, wooden foot roller! Yes, it's a virtual spa at my place! Won't you join me for a roll? I LOVE the new blue ball...LOL! Not to be confused with blue balls...that's funny! I love it for rolling my hips/butt. It's fantastic. It's also very good for the front and rear delts as well as chest. LOVE it!

Love the Neck Noogies for along the spine. That feels great as well. The baseball and tennis ball are great for more of accupressure in one spot. The foot roller...oh yes...that's a fantastic tool. Just roll the heck out of your soles. So great! And of course the good ol' foam rollers are pretty good for anyplace you can think of.

I don't have time to write about the resistance stretching but I will definitely get to that by the end of the week! As for my new supplement, I just started it yesterday and I'm curious to see how it works. I have some joint pain in my hip and have been looking for relief in a most natural way because as most of you know, I don't like taking drugs. This supplement is Celadrin. This is the link: http://www.celadrin.com/ My coach referred me to it. From what I gather online it works sooner than glucosamine which I've tried before and didn't really get results from. I'll let you know in a week and also in a month if it seems to be working.

Meals today were pretty similar to yesterday's. But dinner was this great recipe that my personal chef friend told me about. It's from Real Simple magazine. And it's just that, real simple! Or if you're going to be grammatically correct, really simple

Scallops w/ Snow Peas and Orange Zest

Ingredients
2 teaspoons plus 1 tablespoon olive oil
16 sea scallops (about 1 1/2 pounds)
sea salt and black pepper
Zest of 1 orange
3/4 pound snow peas, halved lengthwise

Heat 2 teaspoons of the oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high to high heat. Pat the scallops till very dry, season with salt and pepper, and cook until opaque throughout and golden brown, 2 to 3 minutes per side. Transfer to a plate and cover to keep warm; wipe out the skillet.

Heat the remaining oil in the skillet over medium-high heat. Add the snow peas, orange zest, and salt and pepper and cook, tossing, until the snow peas are just tender, about 2 minutes. Serve with the scallops.

It's really tasty and quite easy. The most time consuming thing, if you do it, is stringing the snow peas. I'm used to doing that and don't like the string on the snow peas but that's personal preference I suppose.

Workout today: 

Assisted pullup - 3x15

One arm cable row - 3x8

Hammer Strength lat pulldown - 3x15

Biceps cable curl w/ EZ bar - 3x15

DB curls - 3x15

Hip lifts - 3x15

Ab lift on decline bench w/ 10lb plate - 3x15

Roman chair - 3x15

AM fasted cardio - 35 minutes elliptical -my bed and I had a fight this morning and it won for a while :-)

It's off to have my 7th meal, chocolate mint protein tea! Yummy! Goodnight and I'll write more tomorrow. Sweet dreams!

“Sleep is the best meditation." ~ Dalai Lama