Insanity Update

I did it! I completed Day 1, which is the Fit Test. You do a bunch of different moves, as many as you can, for one minute. In between each is a 90 second rest. It was REALLY hard!!! I'm not sure if ill be sore tomorrow but I definitely feel like I'm gonna puke right now and it's not going away.

You're supposed to log your progress every 15 days, so here goes:

Day 16 - Insanity and: What's in my fridge?

Yesterday I spent hours trying to play the P90x videos that Marvin downloaded on my computer. Looks like the trusty old mac is SO old that it can't access the formats. Luckily, he also gave me Insanity - which looks potentially harder but less complex (no equipment needed). So last night, during Bachelor commercials, I watched as many before/after Insanity youtube videos that I could. I became inspired and excited as I saw the results (and by the way, Insanity is a 60 day program) of all different kinds of people: young, old, obese, pregnant, post-pregnant, in shape, out of shape, etc. I thought: I CAN DO THIS AND I WILL START TOMORROW.

Welp, here I am on the couch and not starting. Today was a rough day at work for some reason and I have a massive headache, so no Insanity for me. I will try my best to start tomorrow.

Today was a pretty simple real food day.

Breakfast:
-2 Coffees
-Steel cut oats w/ honey

Lunch:
-Vegetarian Lentil Soup
-Carrots and red peppers with hummus

Snacks:
-LARAbar
-KIND bar

Dinner: (I made an awesome dinner tonight)
-Whole wheat pasta with chicken sausage, roasted yellow peppers, and cannillini beans in tomato sauce

Dinner - before. I LOVE the al fresco all natural chicken sausage. It's delish.

It made so much! Using my new pyrex :D

I also had a tiny salad for dinner with apple cider vinegar

My refrigerator has been looking real different since real food dominates my life. Slowly, everything is being with organic or all natural products. At the same time, I try to be as thrifty as possible. Almost all of this stuff I got on sale - and I buy mostly all my fruits and veggies from my favorite organic store in Brooklyn. They are SO cheap. Here's what the inside of my fridge looks like now:

Top: Pickles, grated parmesan cheese, organic tomato sauce, leftover beans, Tribe cracked red pepper  hummus,  Yogi's organic sun dried tomato hummus, organic 1% milk, water.

Middle: oreos (left over from making oreo bombs for work), plain greek yogurt, cherries (2.99/lb), blueberries ($1), blackberries ($1), eggs, parmesan and pecorino cheese

Bottom: carrots ($1.50), celery ($1.50), clementines (&4.99), raw coconut flakes

My fridge is also usually filled with these poland spring sparkling waters. They sell them for 99 cents at CVS and I can literally drink like 5 a day.

Day 15

I stayed home from work today!

I have no idea why, but, I could not sleep AT ALL last night. Marvin was here, which usually signifies a night of broken sleep... but he was actually pretty quiet. I laid there the entire night, wide eyed and exhausted, until my alarm went off at 5:30. There was no way I could go into work... with a headache already creeping up behind my eyes. So I made the best of it and convinced Marvin to stay home with me :)

We had a lazy day an I got some work done. I also got about 4 hours of sleep, which was good because now I'll be fine for tonight.

Breakfast:
-Raisin Brain with organic 1%

Lunch
-Tuna with fat free mayo on 2 slices WW bread.
-Carrots and red peppers with hummus

Snack
-2 samoa girl scout cookies. Oops! Forgot I ordered these from Marvin's niece last month

Dinner (ordered from Good Health cafe)
- Good Health Salmon Salad - "A bundle of fresh veggies and salad, hiziki seaweeds. Topped with grilled salmon in teriyaki - Homemade carrot ginger dressing"
- I also got some vegetarian lentil soup but didn't eat it

I'm soooo excited that today I got my pyrex set!! I bring lunch to work everyday - and lately have been bringing more and more home-cooked leftovers as opposed to salads. My plastic rubbermaid tupperware was getting sort of gross from all the freezing/reheating. Plus, even with PBA free tupperware, its still not GREAT to microwave food in it. So I ordered a 7 piece pyrex set (only $18 on amazon) and its so cute!

Day 14

Yikes. Not feeling so hot today. For what reason did I spend the ENTIRE day drinking yesterday? I do not know. Also not looking forward to digging out the Jetta later...

Breakfast:
-Cereal w/ blueberries
-Iced coffee with milk

Lunch

-Leftover spaghetti squash

Snacks

-Cherries

-Celery with reduced fat peanut butter

Dinner (on the menu)

-Pork chops (boneless) with shake n bake

-Mixed salad

Day 13 - frozen blueberries

Today I discovered an amazing treat! I froze some fresh blueberries so that they would last longer... This morning, I took some out for my cereal and popped one in my mouth. Yum! They are like little frozen blueberry candies. I've frozen grapes before but sometimes find that the skin separates from the flesh when eating them frozen and it grosses me out. The frozen blueberries were yummy all around :)

Nemo really screwed with my car. Thankfully I have Marvin to help me dig it out this weekend.

I saw a turtle dove today! I have never seen one in real life before. It really just looks like a white pigeon but it was still cute!

I almost got into a mini fight with Marvin because he was supposed to come into the city to hangout with me, but changed his mind. I know he needed to stay home and shovel for his parents and help them out, but I was still annoyed. However I wound up having a VERY fun-filled day with friends.

First I went to one of my favorite brunch spots - Macondo - with Rosa. You order a brunch item + one drink and then have unlimited mimosas for 2 hours. The mimosa flavors are outrageous and use all natural ingredients - Vanilla orange (grated vanilla beans and fresh squeezed OJ), OR Raspberry mint (fresh raspberry puree with crushed mint leaves). I LOVED the raspberry mint. Its just sweet enough and makes your mouth feel minty after each sip.

To eat, I ordered to Huevos Rancheros. Basically, 2 eggs over easy with cojita cheese, salsa, and chopped chorizo, over a tortilla.... served in a piping hot skillet. This was honestly the BEST brunch I've had in awhile. We also got guacamole with yuca chips.

Overall, very "real food" friendly. Unfortunately I had 5 mimosas which clearly was not the best way to Start a Saturday afternoon.

Another thing I love about Macondo are the bathroom walls. They are chalkboards and a huge bucket of chalk sits temptingly on the ledge by the sink. So there's plenty of reading material while you pee, plus... you can add some of your own words of wisdom :)

Open kitchen at Macondo

Raspberry mint mimosa

Huevos Rancheros

My bathroom wall art

My new favorite thing is getting a Manicure or pedicure while tipsy. I just love the feeling of my hands or feet being massaged while I let the buzz take into effect. Also, my lowered inhibitions encourage me to choose more colorful colors :P

After our manis, I went back to Rosa's and had some sliced cheddar cheese with Bourbon. An odd mix, but we were SO cold and wanted something to nibble on. I lazily stared out the window as Rosa got changed for our next adventure

Next, we took a cab to "Bourbon St" over on Restaruant Row, one of my least favorite places in Manhattan. Restaurant Row is filled with fancy looking (but cheaply run) restaurants where scantily clad women stand outside and hassle you with their menus. It reminds me a lot of South Beach.... the food is terrible and overprices, but somehow tourists LOVE it.

At Bourbon St, I caught up with some old coworkers at my friends birthday party. I also had... er... 3 more bourbon and ginger ales and one honey BBQ chicken wing.

By 10:30 I was very drunk and ready to go home. Amazingly I got a ride all the way back to the UES, and made myself a bowl of whole wheat spaghetti to suck up some alcohol. I fell asleep watching Justin Bieber on SNL (which I obviously DVRed for later)

So overall....

Breakfast

-Cereal with blueberries

-Skim vanilla latte

Lunch

-Huevos Rancheros

-Yuca chips & guac

Dinner

-Whole wheat spaghetti

Snacks

-Cheddar Cheese

The Cheats:

-5 mimosas

-3 bourbon & gingers

-1 chicken wing

Day 12 - Nemo

How is Warm Bodies #1 in the box office?? Why are people so obsessed with zombies?

In other news, we're writing How-To essays in my 5th grade class. One girl submitted her topic to me: "How to go in your attic when there's a raccoon in there and it has rabies."

What the Fck??????

So.... Lets see if I can survive the blizzard this weekend.

A lot of my food today was actually inspired by Julie. Yay!

Breakfast
-LARAbar (banana bread) (thanks Jul)

Lunch
-Shake N Bake chicken
-Quinoa
-Half baked sweet potato

Dinner
-baked spaghetti squash with homemade tomato sauce and grated Parmesan (thanks Jul)

Snacks
-pistachio nuts
-mix of while grain popcorn, golden raisins, chocolate chips (thanks Jul)
-one beer
-cherries/blueberries/strawberries mix

Day 11 wanting salmon

B
-Coffee
-Kashi cereal w/ milk

L
-Shake n bake chicken breast
-Celery and carrots w/ white bean hummus
-Apple

D (same as last night)
-Shake n bake chicken breast
-sweet potato mash

And here come the snacks....
-KIND bar
-remaining celery, carrots with white bean hummus
-2 glasses of red wine


Just watched Top Chef from last night and they are in Alaska. They did this amazing challenge where they basically went and caught salmon, then cooked it. It looked soooo good. I can't imagine having it that fresh!!