What a jerk!

Dinner tonight: Jerk fish. Verdict: delicious.

According to Wikipedia (what else!) Jerk is a style of cooking native to Jamaica in which meat is dry-rubbed or wet marinated with a very hot spice mixture called Jamaican jerk spice. Jerk seasoning principally relies upon two items: allspice (called “pimento” in Jamaica) and Scotch bonnet peppers (similar in heat to the habanero pepper).

The 12WBT recipe has dried thyme, allspice, brown sugar, soy sauce, ginger, chilli, oil & onion in the marinade. Once marinaded, the fish was char grilled and was served with steamed chat potatoes and a green salad. It was a really tasty meal.

Now for the week in review. This is a milestone week so there was fitness test to do as well.

Monday – I braved the early morning for another walk but with so many layers on I probably looked like the Michelin Man. Be prepared was today’s motto as I prepped Mondays meals as well as Tuesdays as I was going to the movies after work.

Tuesday – from jelly arms at the gym to getting good/not so good news from the physio to seeing The Great Gatsby, today had it all. No popcorn, pop tops or wine at the movies. Diet Coke and yoghurt & berries I had prepared the day before kept me going.

Wednesday – a 900g loss! A very filling egg white omelette for lunch at a Canberra institution: Gus’s to celebrate (belatedly) Ruth’s birthday.

Thursday – another meal out. This time breakfast with work colleagues at a nearby cafe. Another omelette. No grumbling gremlins today! The highlight? Getting next weeks menu plan in my inbox. Love it!

Friday – challenging my core and my balance on a Swiss ball. These things are best done in the privacy of my own home.

Saturday – another awesome SSS including a 1km swim. Also repeated the pushups and plank tests that I last did 4 weeks ago. Have improved immensely In push ups department! Finally faced my fear: Brussels sprouts. Traumatised as a child but decided to give them a chance. Discovered that oven roasted Brussels sprouts are delicious. Who would’ve thought!

Sunday – sleep in yay! And because I enjoyed the Brussels sprouts I had yesterday, decided to have them again today. This time I char grilled them. Yummo! Definitely worth a second chance if the last time you had them was as a child. I also re-did my measurements today and have lost a total of 3.2cm, mainly legs and hips. Biceps are increasing

Tonight’s meal: Jerk Fish

Upsy Daisy Day

Did you know that it is National Upsy Daisy Day today? No? I thought as much.

This day is a day set aside to encourage you to face the day positively, and to get up ‘gloriously, gratefully and gleefully’ each morning.

National Upsy Daisy Day, an “unofficial” National holiday (US) was created by Stephanie West Allen is 2003. Her desire in creating National Upsy Daisy Day was to make humor, laughter and a positive attitude part of the Upsy Daisy Day way.

To be honest, I can’t say that I got out of bed gloriously, gratefully and gleefully this morning. No sireee. Mr CJ was working this morning so got up at his usual time and brought me a coffee before leaving, at 5.20am. However, I didn’t have to get up for another hour as the pool/gym doesn’t open until 7am on weekends. This gave me an hour when evil CJ tried to convince me that I didn’t need to swim today.

That just a gym workout would be enough…

In fact, maybe a walk later in the day might be enough…

Despite the fact that today is my SSS.

Truly, I’m better off waking up just before the gym opens, have my coffee, get ready and go. No time for thinking. No time for evil CJ to think up lots of reasons why I don’t need to go.

So I used the 10 minute tactic this morning: show up, do 10 mins and if I’ve had enough, call it a day. It was really the swimming that I was resisting. I was okay with doing the gym workout. But true to form, once I got in the pool I forgot about the 10 min rule and completed my swim session: 1km.

This was followed by 6 x 25m of pool walking in the shallow pool.

Up in the gym I alternated between bike and treadmill: a total of 20min on the bike & 25 min on the treadmill. In between there were lunges, squats, push ups, bridges, SSS twisting crunches and planks. Total time in the gym: 1hr 04.55min.

Continuing with the new food/recipe challenge, I made kale chips this afternoon which were delicious. And tonight for dinner, with the lemon & chilli marinated pork and roast pumpkin, I am having roasted Brussels sprouts with toasted almonds.

So all in all, I think I had an upsy daisy day!

“Everyday is a gift and if we remember that as we rise each morning, it will help us carry a good attitude throughout the day, whatever the day may bring us. Life is full of challenges and bumps in the road, it is our attitude that helps us over the bumps and through the challenges to move onward with a smile.” – Upsy Daisy Day, National Day Calendar

Thought for the day

Lift. Sweat. Repeat

It’s Thursday. That means its weights day. Some days operate like clockwork. And some days its a bit more random!

Ever have one of those days when you always seem to be chasing your tail? When you’re always about 10 steps behind? Yep, today was one of those days!

However I had a great weights session this morning. I was on a tight time schedule because I had an 8am breakfast date – with work colleagues at Sugacube cafe. So I was focus personified at the gym this morning. I included lunges today, as well as bridges with my feet on a bench. There were more push ups, lateral raises, assisted chin ups, chest press, biceps curls, dips as well as abs. I increased my weights so it was a hard but challenging workout. Definitely lots of sweat involved!

Despite my best intentions to get to breakfast on time I ended up being 20 mins late. Not that it mattered. Service was really slow and no-one had ordered yet. Because the cafe didn’t have gluten free bread I opted for a mushroom, tomato and shallot omelette which was delicious and very, very filling. In fact, I didn’t need anything further to eat until lunchtime, and even then I only had a small snack.

Next weeks meal plan popped up in my inbox this morning. Highlights include French toast with banana, berries & maple syrup for breakfast (can’t wait to try this), roasted beetroot and zucchini salad with goats cheese for lunch, and beef, pumpkin and prune tagine for tea (even Mr CJ will approve of this.

And next week’s challenge will be a huge challenge for me: to get to bed early. In bed by 9.30pm and lights out by 10pm. This will be interesting but I’m up for the challenge!

Down, down, and staying down….

Weigh in day today and I’m 900g lighter. Woot! Finally some decent movement in the right direction. If I had one of those big red hands (as seen in a certain supermarket ad) I’d be doing the down, down, and staying down dance! In 4 weeks the total loss is 1.4kg so all’s good.

And I’d like to say that being 900g lighter made me glide effortlessly through the water this morning in my swim session but no such luck! However, they did have the bulkhead in place so we were effectively swimming in a 25m pool. This initially did my head in during the warm up, trying to count laps – so many of them! But I soon got into the swim of things (hehehe!) and had no further problems with counting. My only problem was being careful not to bump into the bulkhead as there was no line on the bottom of the pool to indicate that I was reaching the end. Bang, crash, thud, ouch!

Next I was in the shallow bath…er…pool, to do 6 x 25 m of pool walking. The reason I called it a bath is because it’s so warm. I couldn’t swim in it – I would overheat very quickly. It was a bit tricky this morning as I had to navigate my way around women with kickboards or foam noodles, a man with a snorkel, and a group of women socialising – they were having a nice old chinwag.

Home, and I completed 5 sets of 10 reps of push ups, bridges (did some with my feet on a chair – that’s progress if you hadn’t realised!) and dips.

All of this before breakfast!

I met my awesome friend Ruth for lunch today. It was actually a belated birthday lunch as Ruth’s birthday was a couple of weeks ago now. We had lunch at Gus’s – an institution in Canberra. It was the first café to have outdoor seating and I think he actually broke some laws in doing this. In the 18 years I’ve been in Canberra I have never been here so I decided today was the day. And it was great. I had a very filling egg white omelette with smoked salmon and toast and Ruth had a sweet potato and pumpkin soup with basil pesto toast which looked delicious.

They tried to tempt with dark chocolate at work this afternoon but I didn’t even hesitate before saying no. I was quite content to eat my apple and almonds.

Food for thought:
“Waste not food! 1 in every 7 people in the world go to bed hungry and more than 20,000 children under the age of 5 die daily from hunger. “ – World Environment Day website
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Has potential but needs more work

It was so, so very cold this morning. Thanks goodness I wasn’t walking today but instead going to the gym for the first of the two weight sessions for the week. My car doors were iced shut and required some force to get them open!

There were several occasions at the gym when I forgot to check what weight had been selected and would go to do my first lift, or push, or pull and the damn thing wouldn’t budge. Oooops, obviously Hercules or the Incredible Hulk had used the machine before me! Once I had done my weights, cardio and abs it was a race to get to the showers before the hordes descended from both the spin class and whatever other cardio class that was on. It’s every woman for themselves then, hairdryers and straighteners at twenty paces at the ridiculously tiny bench with inadequate lighting. And try applying mascara after an upper body weights session, when the arms are still feeling jelly-like and fine motor movements are almost impossible to perform. How I haven’t poked my eyeball is a mystery!

Breakfast was a crumble with cinnamon yoghurt – it was a bit like dessert. Serving it in a glass might have had something to do with that – it looked very pretty with the layers of strawberry apple puree, natural cinnamon yoghurt blended with cinnamon and topped with granola, which I had crisped up in the pan. I wasn’t sure that lunch was going to be filling but again it surprised me. Today it was turkey and avocado rice cakes. Very moreish. Dinner? Creamy vegetable pasta bake – I was a bit heavy handed with the nutmeg (accidentally) in the white sauce and it did overpower the dish somewhat.

This afternoon I had my weekly physio appointment. Everything is going to plan. Most of the time the hammie feels okay but then I go and move a certain way, or do a bigger kick than usual in the pool, or sit for too long – then it hurts. Its three weeks today since the injury happened. But I can now include lunges and hamstring curls, and then later in the week attempt squats. And next week I can try the elliptical trainer. Woot! But no running. Seems like I flunked a particular test this afternoon. My report card says she has potential but needs to do more work.

This evening I saw The Great Gatsby movie with work colleagues. The special movie offer, through work, included popcorn (or choc top) and a glass of bubbly in the price of the ticket. I had a diet coke and there was no shortage of takers for my popcorn! I had a small container of natural yoghurt with berries, which I had prepared the night before, as my snack. You could almost see my halo glowing! And how did I find the movie? Baz Lurhmann puts on a great spectacle – all razzle dazzle, glitz and glam and there was no shortage of it in this movie. I loved the clothes and jewellery. Absolutely stunning. And while it was a long movie, I wasn’t clock watching so that says something.

Monday Meals

This morning I dressed warmly for my early morning walk given that it was sub zero temperatures outside (truly I must be mad!). I froze last week when I attempted an early morning walk and I wasn’t about to endure another sufferfest. So it was on with fleecy run tights (2XU make the best), woolly socks, tracky pants, singlet, fleecy long sleeved top, big, thick fleecy jacket that zips all the way up, headband, cap and heavy duty winter cycling gloves. Take that jack frost! And then it was out to brave the elements for a 45 min walk which ended up being just a shade under 5km. So next week my goal will be to walk 5km in that time.

Once home, and after removing a few clothing items so I could move freely, I went through a mini circuit of push ups, single leg bridges and triceps dips – 5 sets of 10 reps each. Then I backed up with full sit ups, crunch pulses and plank, two sets of each. What a great way to start Monday morning.

This morning’s breakfast was banana quinoa porridge. Apart from the portion size (I used a small bowl so it wouldn’t look so tiny!) it was delicious but then again I do love quinoa. Some people love lentils (me, not so keen) but I love quinoa. For anyone who has to eat gluten free this is a great addition to the diet – quinoa can be used in place of couscous, makes a change from rice or pasta, and the flakes can also make a porridge, or added to a muesli mix. I’ve never tried the quinoa flour – maybe I should add that to the list of new foods to try this week. The banana was halved lengthways, drizzled with maple syrup and cinnamon and popped under the griller for 5 minutes. This then topped the quinoa porridge.

When everyone else had take away coffee for morning tea I had balsamic and basil strawberries with ricotta. As part of this week’s food challenge ie try something new, I am trying to incorporate some variety into my snacks. While I abhor same old, same old when it comes to my meals, I very rarely change what I have for snacks. Normally I would have fruit, or nuts, or yoghurt, maybe some corn thins with cottage cheese. Time to shake things up!

For lunch I had satay egg, carrot & cucumber corn thins which were surprisingly filling. Go figure! And tasty.

Afternoon tea came and went. I ate an apple and some almonds while busy with work.

Dinner time! Finally! It was a case of arriving home and getting stuck into cooking as soon as I walked inside. No rest for the wicked! However the result was delicious grilled lamb with pumpkin, green beans, feta and pine nuts. Genius!

And finally…a hot chocolate before heading off to bed. But not before packing my gym bag for tomorrow morning, and also my swimming bag for Wednesday morning, as I am going to see The Great Gatsby after work tomorrow. I also cooked tomorrow’s dinner tonight so I can just heat it up once I get home from the movies.

The secret to the 12WBT program is to do like the scouts: be prepared!

“From this moment right now sitting there in your chair (take note of the time on your computer), you can choose to be different. Now. Not later, now. Not next week, today. Not when you’ve thought about it some more, now. Not when it’s convenient, now. And not because you’ve somehow arrived at the mystical ‘right time’ or you’ve had some kind of spiritual revelation or emotional breakdown but just because you’re sick of giving in to fear and wasting your time and talent. It’s that complicated and that simple. You have power, potential and possibilities on tap.” – Craig Harper, Motivational Speaker