Super Saturday

lauraph2009 ♦ June 6, 2009 ♦ 1 Comment

I had a lot of things I wanted to do today and I did them all. Sitting down after a busy day and a nice shower feels great.

I started my day getting up at 6:30 so I would have time to enjoy my coffee and breakfast before heading out for my run. My breakfast this morning was a “Green Monster” it is a protein smoothie that some of the healthy food bloggers make. My two favorite blogs – Jenna at Eat, Live, Run and Angela at Oh She Glows. I think Angela coined the Green Monster term and it is a good one. The drink involves spinach, milk, protein powder and fruit. It is amazing that the spinach blends in and you cannot even tell it is spinach! It is so good. I have been only adding a cup of spinach, but I think I will increase this week. I need to see how much my Magic Bullet can take!

Here is my lovely breakfast – the Green Monster and a 5 dates. I thought it was fitting to put the green drink into an glass from an Irish bar… fun.

Yummy breakfast

I have been wanting to run all week so I headed to the park where I took a nice warm-up walk and some active stretching then started on my run. I ran 3 miles in just over 30 minutes and cooled down with a 10 min walk and some more stretching. I was out there a total of 50 minutes and burned 568 calories.

When I got home I was ready for a snack. I am running out of food for the week so I had to search through the cabinets and fridge to put something together.. I came up with this delightful 130 calorie snack:

Kashi Go Lean waffles with cottage cheese and raspberries

I polished this off in no time, drank a big glass of water and got ready to head out to the garden. I was ready to do some serious weeding. There is a corner of my garden that I just cannot get control over. I worked for a couple of hours… I took some pictures with another camera but they didn’t turn out. It was entirely to bright out for good pictures so I had to go back later. I had some nice surprises in the garden today… you will see them shortly.

Back to the house for lunch. Two hours of weed pulling really works up a hunger. Again, not much to chose from in the house – I really need to get to the store! Luckily I had some lettuce ready to pick and I knew I had tuna in the cabinet… all set.

Basket of fresh lettuce and beets

I love this basket – it was one of the things my lovely daughter got me for Mother’s Day – it will come in handy this summer.

I made a huge salad with Albacore tuna and sweet pea sprouts (these are the BEST)

I ran out of plates (forgot to run the dishwasher) so I ate it out of the bowl. It was really good and filled me up for only 350 calories.

I debated on going back out to the garden, but it is in the 90’s now and full sun. I already got a little sun burn from this morning. I forgot to apply the sunscreen on my back and I am red. I always remember the front of my body! I decided to stay in and clean up around the house and catch up on some TV. I love the DVR – so many good things come on at inconvenient times. The new show I discovered is Expedition Africa on the History Channel. I have only watched the first episode so far, but I think it will be good. Last year I read a book about Stanley and Livingstone and loved it. Adventure travel stories are my favorite so hopefully this will be a good show.

After this rest I was ready to take on P90X! Today starts week 2 of my program and that means I start all over…. today is back and chest, with the bonus abs. This was so hard last week and I was sore most of the week because of it. Last week I went all out and tried to do assist pull-ups… not a good idea. I am no where near strong enough for that yet and I paid the price. I put a nice resistance cord this week and put it securely in the back door (there is a special strap that has a ball that hooks to the other side of the door). It worked great. I really felt the exercises where I was suppose to feel them.

Resistance band for back - instead of pull-ups (for now!)

Also new in the exercise room is my new chair that is needed for different exercises and some more weights. We have up to 35lb. dumbbells now.

The fancy exercise chair

Our collection of weights

The workout was great. I am still not good at doing push-ups. I have decided to modify… I read on some message boards that people do them on a chair or step bench. I decided to do mine on a low step bench. I can do them much better and get down lower. I think I will do it this way this week to see if I can get stronger. The Ab workout killed me as usual.. it is tough, but I made it. I burned a total of 640 calories. Now I was ready for another snack!

Half of a scoop of recovery powder in water and a lite cheese stick

I headed to the store to do some grocery shopping so I would have something for dinner. I decided on grilled shrimp and made a great recipe out of the current edition of Cooking Light magazine – Grilled shrimp with mango and avocado. The shrimp was marinated and grilled briefly. I also cooked up some small potatoes with onions.

so delicious

Each bite I had a piece of shrimp, a piece of mango and a piece of avocado dipped in the line sauce… yum

The perfect bite!

After dinner is was back out to the garden to get some pictures and water it. The last two days of rain have really done wonders. I have tomatoes on four of my plants, some cucumbers coming in and some winter squash and tiny green beans. It is pretty exciting to start actually seeing vegetables! Here are some parting shots for the day…