No Clever Title Here

I woke up feeling much better yesterday, only a slight headache but overall I felt refreshed. I ate breakfast almost as soon as i woke up because I had a 9am bikram yoga class. They say not to eat at least 4 hours before but I woke up around 6 so that was the best I could do. I had a toasted 100% whole wheat bagel by Thomas’. I put a little almond butter on one half and cherry jam on the other. The cherry jam was made by my friend Sarah, she even picked the cherries herself. Now that is what I call local food! Along side the bagel, I had about a half a glass of milk.

bagel

Around 8 I headed out to hot yoga, it is a half hour drive and I like to sit in the room about 10 or 15 minutes before hand to get used to the heat. This was my third class and I was expecting it to go great. When I walked in the room, the first thing I noticed was that it was loaded up with really thin young girls wearing next to nothing. I felt very intimidated though this was also the first time that I wasn’t the heaviest girl in the class.  As the class started, I had a feeling that it wasn’t going to go as well as I had hoped. Immediately the sweat was pouring down my face and into my eyes and the room seemed even hotter than before. Upon glancing up, I realized that I had placed myself right under the heat vent. Good job! Soon, I became really nauseas and had to sit out for a bit and this kept happening throughout the standing poses. Once we made it to the floor poses, I seemed to be much better. Though, I still wasn’t able to do fixed firm or camel pose. Fixed firm makes my knees scream in pain and Camel makes me want to hurl. A few people in the class sit out fixed firm everytime so my guess is that I am not the only one that feels pain in it.  Once class was over, I was revved up and ready to go.

I got home and realized that I was starving and dear husband wasn’t hungry so I decided to try one of the Kashi Roll bars I bought just a few days ago. I guess when I bought it the “protein” bar portion of the label didn’t click with me. I was expecting a fun granola bar and that, my friends, it was not. At first bite, I thought it was OK but by the middle I was taken back to my atkins days eating those grainy nasty protein marketed as low carb on the go meals. I guess for someone who likes protein bars, it is probably really good but for me, it wasn’t.  Which is disappointing, I had great expectations and I had already envisioned myself buying them in bulk on Amazon. But instead, I’ll probably pass along the other one I have to someone I know will appreciate it.  I really don’t know who that is but I will find someone. I could always put it in the caddie lounge at work, food doesn’t last long in there at all.

anyone want the other one?

Anyway, after a shower, we headed out for the day. I had planned on staying home all day and cooking but I was full of energy and wanted to go do stuff. Since we hadn’t planned anything, we just kind of winged it. First we went to Ukrop’s for the salad bar. For my readers that aren’t from VA, Ukrop’s is a local grocer that falls into the more upscale catergory. They have an amazing salad bar, local produce and a rockin health/natural foods section.  Everytime I get the salad bar there, my eyes are WAY bigger than my stomach. On my salad, I had spinach, toamtoes, edamame, green peppers, red peppers, fresh salsa, chopped egg, this yummy seed mix and some garlic expressions dressing. The dressing is cider vinegar, chunks of garlic, olive oil and other spices. One the side I had some three bean salad, seafood salad and tuscan salad. And for dessert, we got some waldorf salad, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries and raspberries. I only ate about half the salad, all of the seafood salad, most of the three bean salad and one bite of the tuscan salad. Then I had a bite or two of the waldorf salad and berries. It was a wonderful lunch.

yummy salad bar

dessert

After lunch we headed to Costco. In light of my recent banning of Walmart and Sam’s Club, we needed a membership to a bulk place and we chose Costco. We signed up for a membership and then kinda tooled around and looked at stuff. Mainly the food 🙂 We didn’t buy anything because the lines were long and since we didn’t really need anything it wasn’t worth the lines. After Costco, we headed to Barnes and Noble and got a Starbuck’s. I again got a tall vanilla latte. We roamed around Barnes and Noble until it was time to meet dear husband’s family for dinner to celebrate his brother’s birthday.

another vanilla latte

We met at Red Lobster, not my first choice but it wasn’t my birthday. I get so annoyed at places like this because the wait is so long and it just seems silly when there are plenty of great local places to get better quality food. But I digress. I still didn’t get up the nerv to bust out my camera with his family so there are no pictures. I ordered a combination plate with coconut shrimp, stuffed flounder and crab legs. It came with a side salad and a baked potato. I ate the side salad with blue cheese dressing and the shrimp, flounder and crab legs. I gave the baked potato to dear husband,  I just wasn’t in the mood for it.  I do have to toot my own horn a bit and say that I did not eat any of the cheese biscuits or the butter for the crab. The problem with buscuits for me is the ability to stop at one. I could probably eat about nineteen of them before my brain says enough. So, I decided to just stay away and to my surprise, dear husband said they weren’t that great anyway.

After dinner, we went over to Kroger to look for this bread that I keep seeing on blogs and I can’t seem to find it. It is made by Arnold’s and it is called flax and fiber. They didn’t have it either so we went home empty handed. Once home, I was feeling very dry mouthed and dehydrated. This is a side effect of one of the medicines I take but I thought that maybe it was from hot yoga. I had read about drinking coconut water to rebalance electrolytes so we headed back out to Kroger. We bought a One 100% coconut water and I gave it a try. Oh, it was not good. Not good at all, it kind of reeked of a litter box and didn’t taste much better. Needless to say, I only had a few sips.

To get that nastiness out of my mouth, I decided that I needed some chocolate. I popped a vita-muffin in the microwave and topped it with a little light whipped cream and a few chocolate chips. The muffin was warm and the cream slid off before I could get a nice picture so you guys get to see one of my food photography bloopers 🙂

whipped cream overboard

After the muffin we headed off to bed. It had been a nice long day and I was ready for a nice long sleep.

The Great Kitty Rescue (Part 2)

What a day it was yesterday! The morning started out fine, even though I was worried about our kitty friend. I had my typical breakfast with a twist. I had the oats, bulgur, wheatberries and flax seed but I had some PB & CO dark chocolate dreams peanut butter and raspberries on top! It was pretty tasty. I can see myself getting really hooked on that peanut butter.

a new twist on breakfast

When I got to work, everyone was in a panic; the internet was down. I reset the server, router and modem and nothing changed so I had to call our provider. The ensured me they would be out before noon to fix the problem. Besides all of the inquiries about the internet, I was able to really get alot of work done. We were joking that The Pro had cut the lines to see in productivity increased. Around mid morning, I felt pretty hungry so I had a Target brand granola bar. I don’t have any pics because I left my camera at home (bad food blogger!). And for lunch I wanted to escape the madness so I offered to go pickup sushi. I had a shrimp dynomyte roll, a fresh veggie spring roll and couple bites of waldorf salad.

After lunch, I was able to get all my little piles of work caught up and head out on time. I went to my second bikram yoga class. This time, I was able to do more and the heat was more tolerable. The rivers of sweat pouring out of my arms, legs and head didn’t shock me as much. I made it through all of the standing poses without resting but some of the floor poses made me dizzy. One thing I noticed was that I would feel that way mostly after drinking water. Next time, I am going to try my best to avoid drinking during the class. For kicks, I wore my heart rate monitor watch and I burned almost 650 calories which is pretty impressive. When I left, I felt really good but exhausted.

When I got in the car, I called dear husband. He had taken our new kitty friend to the vet and I wanted the scoop. And guess what. She is well, no kitty diseases but she is also pregnant. Yes, thats right, pregnant. The vet warned us that our male cat may have trouble getting along with her and that he may kill the babies! If anyone has any advice on how we can avoid this, I would really appreciate it. So, this is the best pic I could get of her, she would stay still long enough for me to get a good shot. She looks kinda wild but she really is cute!

not the best pic but she is still cute

When I got home, I heated up some snobby joe’s that I had cooked on the weekend and topped them with provolone cheese and yellow mustard. I wrapped it all up in a whole wheat wrap and served it with salad topped with oil and vinegar. It was good, tasted like a bean buritto. The dear husband really enjoyed them as well.

snobby joes

After dinner, I had a major sweet tooth so I had a bowl of oatmeal chocolate hazelnut biscotti ceral (from Target) with some milk. It really hit the spot but I wasn’t able to finish the bowl. Shortly after the cereal, I was off to bed, it had been a really long day!

a sweet treat

Hot Yoga Friday

What a day, yesterday. I got up super early yesterday so that I could get to work early. I was going to my first hot yoga (bikram) class and I needed to adjust ny schedule a little. More on that later. I woke up pretty hungry, my stomach was growling even as I was getting ready. I finally calmed it down with a bowl of hot grain cereal (that i finally got our of the freezer), it has wheatberries, oats and bulgur. I mixed in some ground flax seed and topped it with a banana and some almond butter.

TGIBreakfast time

At work, the day started with a bang. One of the projects I have been working on is our new website and yesterday we went live. I was running around all morning long changing everyone’s email settings to they would get their email. I even went to the maintenance department twice which would make a total of 3 times the entire year I have worked there. I wonder if the maintenance department of other world class golf course require rubber gloves to touch anything? But I digress.

By the time I made it back to my desk it was almost noon and I was ravenous. I barely had time to even have some water which was worrying be because of the hot yoga class. I decided that I would have all natural peanut butter on a whole wheat wrap when The Chef and T talked me into the the member lunch special. T even gave me a little bite of hers to help me decide. The member special was a sirloin tip salad with balsamic reduction topped with feta cheese. I wasn’t really in the mood for beef but I was still pretty tasty. I hope the picture is OK but there was someone in my office when it came and I felt kind odd about taking a picture so I did it really fast and only took one. I guess that as my time with this blog goes, I will get over that.

beef...it is whats for lunch

After lunch, I had a few sips of my cinnamon latte I made at home but it wasn’t really doing anything for me so I put it away. The rest of the afternoon was hectic. I have major deadlines on Fridays and because my morning was busy being the resident IT guru, I hadn’t had time to do any of my “real” work. It seemed like the clock was moving faster than I could work. My phone wouldn’t stop ringing and the fellow staff had a number of questions about the new email/website. It was an intense day and when it was over, I was literally running out the door 10 minutes later than I wanted. I was worried about not making it in time for the hot yoga class.

The Prius didn’t let me down. I put the pedal to the metal and made it there in time. My friend Jessy had told me that if I could get there in time to lay on my mat before the class started that it would help me acclimate to the hot tempature of the room. I got there about 20 minutes before class started and was able to fill out the paperwork and get changed. When I walked in the teacher said “This must be your first time” and I meekly said yes, she told me that I looked scared. I was sure I did because I was. I quickly changed and quietly put my mat down in the back of the room as instructed. It was hot in there! And for some reason, when I walked it in it shocked me as if I hadn’t been expecting it. First I laid down, sat up, laid, sat up. I couldn’t figure out what to do. Some people were in child’s pose, one girl was hanging out in downward facing and other were just sitting quietly.

At promptly 4:30, the teacher walked in, clapped her hands and said “Everyone up” and like little soldiers we all stood. The class began with some breathing exercise and sweat was already dripping down my face into my eyes. I knew I was sweating, obviously but it really dawned on me how much when we put our arms towards the ceiling the first time and I could see sweat pouring in little streams down my arms. Then in our first forward fold I saw sweat popping out of the pores of my legs. I had never seen sweat like that.

The class continuted and I was doing pretty good. A few times my brain was asking me what the hell I was doing there but I resisted the urge to flee. I didn’t feel and dizziness or nausea until AFTER the water break which I found to be really odd. A couple times I had to just stand while the others were in the poses and even a couple times I had to sit all the way down. Some of the poses felt easy and some of them felt really hard. I noticed towards the end of the class that bending forward was really getting the dizziness and nausea going so I was really gentle with myself. I wasn’t able to go as far as in a normal class on some things but was able to go farther in others. It was really an odd yoga experience.

Right on the dot at 6pm the class ended, she told us the lay as long as we needed to. I tried to stay still and just lay but I was really ready to go. I probably only stayed a minute or so. On the way home, I had some odd sensations in my head. My jaw felt really tight and I felt I was kind of unable to focus. I wonder if I should haved stayed a little longer. I also wonder if I was clinching my jaw during class.

I arrived home to find that dear husband had made us lovely salads for dinner. It was spring mix, cukes, almonds, dried cranberries and crumbled goat cheese. Which was awesome,  I had really been craving goat cheese lately from reading Jenna’s blog the past few days. I heated up some Sister Shubert’s whole wheat yeast rolls to go on the side, topped the salads with some oil and vinegar and dinner was ready. It was delicious! The odd thing was that I wasn’t really hungry even though it had been about 7.5 hours since I had last eaten. I blame that on the hot yoga because lunch was pretty light and I had avoided eating before class because that can increase nausea.

another salad

After dinner, I delved into my book again. I am reading How to Survive your diet by Linda Moran. It is a pretty interseting book about not dieting, which of course is what I am doing. I keep falling asleep while reading it so though it is a very short book, I haven’t even read half of it. So, in true form, I fell asleep while reading. I was had wondered if the hot yoga was going to keep me up but I was actually really relaxed and I had a great night’s sleep. I’ll be doing that again.