Sunday, January 30, 2011

Hearty breakfasts

I hate to admit it, but sometimes on the weekends, I miss big breakfasts of eggs and bacon. They still look good to me, but I know if I eat them, I certainly won't feel good. These days, I've been treating myself to my own versions of hearty breakfasts, ETL-style:


It's a big plate of scrambled tofu, tomatoes with basil, steamed broccoli and beans.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

The Annual 1 Hour Postal Swim

When the alarm went off this morning at 4:30 am, I sat in bed for a good 20 minutes debating whether I was going to wake up and go to swim practice. D tried to convince me to do the 1-hr postal swim workout with her this morning, but I haven't been getting a lot of sleep lately and I really wanted to sleep in. I decided I was going to weigh myself and if the number was higher than yesterday (I honestly thought it wouldn't be), then I'd go. Well, it was 0.6 lb higher which is not much, but enough to drag my butt out of bed and do the workout!

The one-hour postal swim is an annual January event where instead of doing a "workout" we get in and try to see how many continuous yards we can swim in 1 hour. I think our times get mailed to USMS and it's probably some kind of competition, but since my times are not competitive, I've never actually looked.

I can't remember my yardage from the past since I think I've only done this swim once and remember it kind of sucking. I didn't think it was going to be any better today seeing how I haven't been swimming and am not in great swim shape. But we had 3 of us in the lane and decided that we'd trade off leading by 500s so it would be easier to count and we could all take turns drafting. I did okay in the beginning but by the end, I was reaaaaaally dragging and swimming pretty slow. The coach said we started doing our 100s on 1:15 and ended at 1:30, which is a significant difference! Anyway, I was so glad when the whistle was blown and we were done. We ended up swimming 4250 yards, which is "okay" but I actually thought we might make it to 4500 yds. :)

This just makes me think about the strength I've lost since IM. I haven't been strength training at all even though it's listed on my schedule. I keep sleeping in or driving home instead of to the gym after work. I need to make it a priority again.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Broccoli Fra Diablo


I was supposed to have another dinner salad tonight but after meals and meals of salads, I didn't think I could stomach another. I was craving tomatoes (specifically, PIZZA), and remembered people on the Dr. Fuhrman forums recommending this dish. Though not consisting of pizza-like flavors, I thought this might do the trick for that tomato craving.

It was incredibly easy to make, coming together in about 20 minutes or less. I used fresh broccoli. The dish itself came out rather soupy, even though I added more broccoli than required. Perhaps my taste buds haven't been retrained yet, but I found it just a tad on the bland side. It tastes nothing like pizza (not that it ever claimed it did, but I wanted to make that disclaimer!) but was nice comfort food.

Recommended for easy, quick, and healthy. Recipe can be found
here.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Bad habits be gone

After a couple of false starts, I am ready to take 2011 on.

#1 "resolution": STOP BINGEING

I don't care about anything else. Well, I do, but that's definitely #1. I'm so sick of spending all this time and energy loathing myself, feeling guilty, abusing my body, and putting The Evil Trinity (sugar, fat, and salt) before health. I want to be a "normal" person again and eat normally. Losing a few pounds and making myself disease proof are just the welcome side effects.

Like any goal, I need to break it down and take smaller steps to get there. I'm going to start tracking the days I stay binge-free (goal is to make it to 1 week first) and make smaller weekly goals.

First set of weekly goals:
  • Read reasons why I'm Eating-to-Live daily.
  • Plan out meals for the following day
  • Limit dinner time to 1 hour. Obviously the time can be shorter than that, but no more eating after 1 hour is up
  • After dinner, clean up kitchen and immediately brush + floss until any other "wind down" activities begin.

These are aimed toward my tendency to overeat in the evenings. I'll report back next week.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Mexican Raw Stew/Soup

Today I made a Mexican raw stew I saw on Barb's blog in this post. I thought it looked interesting and didn't have high expectations but I was pleasantly surprised! I liked this, even if it's not much to look at - hah.  It looks a lot like salsa, but the flavor is more complex with the additional vegetables.

I used the same "base" of tomatoes, cucumber, celery, cucumber and lettuce, and then added the spices and rest of the suggestions to finish off the "Mexican" version. I can see how this could be adapted to lots of variations.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

I forgot to mention that Santa was fairly nice to me this year. Among the fun stuff I got, I also received some ETL-friendly items!

Yellow Eye heirloom beans from Rancho Gordo

Vallarta heirloom beans from Rancho Gordo





I'm pretty excited to put these to use!