Results of Fit Chick Express Holiday Challenge

It occurred to me that I never really posted my results for the Fit Chick Express Holiday Challenge. As mentioned in yesterday’s post, workouts sort of tapered off at the end of the month, but I did maintain the same weight and according to my tape measure I actually did shrink a teeny bit.

At first I was thinking I must be messing up in my measuring, but I’ve been thinking that I can see more definition in my upper arms, so it makes sense that I must have lost some fat there. And if I lost some there, I could have lost in other places, no? I won’t list all of the measurements, but I just wanted to mention it because it certainly feels like a success. I’m sure that at some point in the future I’ll be joining another one of Angie’s challenges!

Food Blog?

We didn’t do a real grocery shop or meal planning last weekend, due to the snow storm, and I’ve had other things to catch up on so I haven’t got back into the food blogging yet. But I thought I would share a couple of recent meals with you.

On New Year’s Day, we got together with a group of friends for a Chinese Potluck. Normally you’d think you would take one dish to a potluck, but Husband tends to get a little excited over picking recipes so we ended up making four things.

One of the dishes that we made was completely gone by the end of the night, but there were leftovers from the rest that gave Husband and I a couple more meals.

Onion Pancakes with Chicken & Veggie Stir-Fry

Spring Onion Pancakes was to be on the appetizer menu of a favorite Chinese restaurant we used to go to. We came across the recipe while flipping through our collection of Chinese Cookbooks and decided to give it a go. They turned out to be quite tasty, and we came home with leftover batter for dinner the next night!

The veggies can be blamed on me; I often find there is a lack of vegetable dishes at potlucks, and if we were having Chinese I wanted to make sure I had stir-fried veggies. We basically chopped up a bunch of veggies, put them in containers and them them with us, along with our wok and a Black Bean Garlic sauce. It did turn out to be the only veggie dish, but we still came home with enough chopped veggies for two more meals. We added chicken and there was dinner.

Hot & Sour Soup and More Stir-Fry

Husband can’t do Chinese without his soup., so we took a long a big pot of Hot & Sour Soup; I think he made extra on purpose so we could have leftovers.

The second night, we again added chicken and this time chopped up a red bell pepper as well, as there weren’t quite enough veggies left.

Husband Cooks Dinner!

Tonight, discussing dinner on the way home, Husband said he was hungry. I knew I wanted to exercise, and cupboards are still a bit bare, so I suggested he could make himself some soup and I could find something to eat when I finished exercising.

Husband said that was silly, he’d make enough soup for me. I said I thought he was hungry, but he said he could wait. So I did my exercise thing, hopped in the shower, and came out to dinner – all ready to be eaten.

I’m thinking we should make this a regular weekly thing.

And Treats

Last but not least, we decided it was time to try out our Anniversary gift from my Sister.

Neat, hey? I used half milk and half Unsweetened Chocolate Almond Breeze, since I have an iffy relationship with milk. I wasn’t sure how well it would froth up with the almond milk, but it worked like a charm!

Perfect treat on chilly evening. Thanks sis!

October Review/November Plan

Completely forgot about this yesterday - I really was so tired and feeling crappy last night.

How Did I Do Overall?
So, October was Month One of the Fit Chick Express Lose 10 lb for the Holidays Challenge. I received an e-mail from Angie yesterday with the following questions:

It's been one month since we started the challenge!

*How are you doing?

*Have you set your weekly and monthly goals?

*Are you tracking your foods and getting in all of your workouts?

*Have you taken your measurements and before pictures?

My main goal has been to follow the workout plan, but of course I am making an effort to eat sensibly as well. The workouts went well, the eating was sometimes good/sometimes bad...In other words, pretty much status quo.

As usual, I tracked my workouts and almost got them all in. Food was being tracked via photos on the blog.

I did take measurements, but not really any "official" before pictures. As I stated at the beginning of the challenge, I don't actually expect to lose 10 lbs (based on experience), it's more about holding my own over the holidays.

October Workouts:
I'm actually pretty happy with how I did - I stuck to the schedule right up until the last week when life just wasn't going according to plan. I doubled up one night and did a strength workout and a cardio session, but I still ended up being short two workouts (1 strength, 1 cardio). I can live with that.

The fact that Angie's Challenge workouts are short really helps. Most of the time it's pretty easy to squeeze them in. If I have time, I will add on a bit, but if I don't have time for extra, at least I managed to do something.

Here's the recap:

Oct 29: Workout A + Treadmill walk/jog[40 mins]
Oct 27: Sun Salutation Flow #1 + Gentle Hatha Yoga #1[40 mins]
Oct 26: Workout B[20 mins]
Oct 25: Treadmill walk/jog[37 mins]
Oct 23: Workout A[20 mins]
Oct 22: Treadmill walk/jog[37 mins]
Oct 21: Workout B + extra strength/cardio[30 mins]
Oct 20: Treadmill walk/jog[30 mins]
Oct 19: Workout A + extra supersets[30]
Oct 18 Treadmill walk/jog[35 mins]
Oct 16: Workout B[20 mins]
Oct 15: Treadmill walk/jog[45 mins]
Oct 14: Workout A + light cardio[30 mins]
Oct 13: Treadmill walk/jog[30 mins]
Oct 12: Treadmill Warmup + Workout B[40 mins]
Oct 10: Treadmill Interval Walk[60 mins]
Oct 09: Cardio Warmup + Workout A + Stability Ball/Pilates/Yoga[30 mins]
Oct 08: Treadmill walk/jog[45 mins]
Oct 07: FCE Holiday Challenge October Workout B[20 mins]
Oct 06: Treadmill walk/jog[30 mins]
Oct 05: FCE Holiday Challenge October Workout A + Treadmill walk[45 mins]
Oct 03: 2 hrs in the garden
Oct 02: Treadmill walk/jog[45 mins]
Oct 01: Treadmill walk[47 mins]

November Plan:

For November I have a new workout plan - Intervals are still on the schedule for cardio, but two new strength routines to look forward to.

I'd also been kicking around the idea of tracking calories for a while, and as I mention in my post from earlier this evening, after seeing that Angie and Lynn have re-committed to Weight Watchers I decided that for this month I will start tracking my calories again. Ultimately, I'd like to never have to count again, but for now I feel like every once in a while I need to see how I'm doing.

So that is my goal for November, and to keep up with the food blogging as well, as I do think it helps.

Getting Focused

Two weeks of the Holiday Challenge behind me – two weeks of workouts done! And I think I’m ready to get back on track with my nutrition as well.

It seems that every so often I go through this crap eating phase, then suddenly I’m done with it. I’m ready to eat healthy stuff and not even missing the cookies and M&M’s. If only I could eliminate those crap phases…

I’ve mentioned this before, but I spent quite a few years really trying to lose weight and not getting anywhere. The only thing I ever managed to do was maintain where I was. As frustrating as it was not to lose weight, I was grateful to at least be maintaining.

Over the last little while my weight has slowly started to creep up and I couldn’t figure it out. What was I doing differently? Recently it hit me – I’ve stopped trying to lose. I won’t say I got to a place where I was happy with my weight, but I came to the realization that I’m not going to be the weight that I was 15 years ago, not without making myself miserable. So I stopped trying.

I’m not entirely sure what the solution is – I don’t want to live the rest of my life “dieting”. But I don’t want to gain any more either. I thought that I was doing ok with me eating, not perfect, but not terrible. But I’m thinking there are obviously some issues somewhere. So I’m going to try.

For now, that means getting back to what I started trying to do in the summer – just paying closer attention to what’s going in my mouth. For a while I felt like I was getting a pretty good grip on things, but then things went a bit off track. So that’s my starting point, and I’ll try to keep figuring things out as I go along.

So, today – quickly because I’ve been sitting at this computer for more than long enough already…

First thing this morning, finished off the rest of my Bolthouse Smoothie from yesterday.

All packed up, ready for the day:

At work, heated up my steel cut oats with some blueberries and added a little maple syrup & Almond Breeze. With coffee:

 

Lunch, around 1 pm - Thai Green Curry Soup – made yesterday and I have to say it turned out really well.

I got out for a short break this afternoon. The sun was shining, but it was windy and chilly – Environment Canada weather page said 7 degrees. Have to remind myself that once we hit this time of year, sunny does not necessarily mean warm.

Around 3 pm, ate my Honeycrisp apple. 

For supper, we had the bland leftovers from last night. I jazzed it up a bit.

I added a small can of diced tomatoes, some sliced green olives and Sweet Chili & Peppers Grill seasoning. I put the leftover sausages on top and put the whole thing in the oven while I did my workout.

Today was Supersets. I did the exercises in the plan, plus added some of my own: Reverse Lunge with Bicep Curl (3 x 12 reps), Tricep Extension and Glute Lift (3 X 12 reps), then an extra set (12 each) of hammer curls and tricep extensions, 1 set of stability ball crunches and 1 set of back extensions. That took me 30 minutes.

Then I went upstairs to a pretty good smelling supper. Came out of the oven looking like this:

Threw together a quick salad.

 

Husband had the sausages and a big bowl of the rice and beans. I had rice and beans, to which I decided to add some cheese. Honestly, I’d rather have cheese than sausages any day.

This was much better today. Husband thought so too.

Usually if I’m having meat, I share some with Frank the cat, but since I didn’t have meat tonight I shared cheese. He seemed pretty happy with that.

There’s still leftover rice & beans. I divided it between two containers – one in the fridge for lunch tomorrow and one in the freezer.

And now it’s bedtime. Good night!

Lose 10 lb for the Holidays Challenge: Week 1

One week down and...how many weeks til Christmas?

One of the requirements of the challenge is weekly progress reports. So here I am for week 1.

Workouts: Check. 3 X Strength & 3 X Cardio with intervals. That was almost a given for me - getting in the workouts is the easy part.

Eating: Not quite check. I did okay during the week, the weekend was not so great. Considering my weekend was 4 days, that's not a good thing.

I signed up for the Challenge for the workout plans. I enjoyed the Fat Blasting Boot Camp and I was happy to sign up for something similar again. I didn't - and still don't - expect to lose 10 lbs. Not that it wouldn't be good for me to lose 10 lbs, I've just got to the point where I feel like it's not gonna happen.

However, I have been gradually gaining a few pounds over the past year. It scares me a bit, to tell the truth. And I feel like I don't know what to do about it. But if I don't want it to continue, I have to do something...

First step - I started food blogging.

Second step - signing up for this challenge.

But I guess I'm not really giving either one of those things 100% as of yet. The problem that I see right away: I get sloppy on the weekends. So that is Goal #1 - take control of my weekends from now on.

New FitChickExpress Challenge

I mentioned a few days back that I was starting a new fitness plan/challenge to count down to the Holidays. Officially I the start of the challenge was yesterday but it was the middle of the day before I realized that so I'm starting today.

Some info about the challenge:
Basically here is the deal. Our "Lose 10lbs for the Holidays" will provide you with all the following.

*A New Workout for each month... Oct, Nov, Dec.
*Quick Metabolism boosting Video workouts for you to follow at home.
*4 weeks of Meal Plans that virtually guarantee to burn fat fast.

What YOU are required to do:

*Post weekly updates on your progress, meals and workouts
*Take before and after measurements. Photos are optional, but for your benefit, at least take them for you.
*Help support and motivate others in the challenge.

I, of course, am most interested in the workout plans. Meal plans and I do not really get along. Plus, I had already done my meal planning and grocery shopping for the week by the time I saw the meal plans posted for the first 4 weeks. I also did not take a photo or record measurements. Honestly, it was a really busy weekend, and I just didn't get to it.

I don't actually expect to lose 10 lbs (though that would be lovely), but I will try to do measurements and a before photo next weekend. And I will look at the meal plans to see what I can incorporate.

So, today...

Breakfast & lunch are already posted.

After work, it was first things first...taking my baby out for his walk.



I keep thinking that we aren't going to be able to keep this up much longer and he's just going to have to get used to it...



But look at that face!



I guess it will happen soon enough. I'm certainly not trying to hurry winter.

Then I got in my first workout for the challenge. Today was a strength circuit. It went really quick - not sure how long it took because I was watching a demonstration video. It was a superset workout, so I would watch two moves, pause the video to complete the exercises, then watch the next two...and so on. There were 6 exercises in total, so I'm going to guess about 15 minutes to complete without any breaks?

Then I decided to go upstairs and get supper. I was thinking I might, for a change, get some pictures while we still had light, but it didn't happen.

First a simple salad of cucumber, red bell pepper and tangerine (I had a spinach & arugala mix but it had gone slimy. Yuck).





And for the main course, leftover Indian Chicken Curry. One of these days I am going to do a post on curry. I've been thinking about it for a while, even started writing it once...But somehow I just never have the time to do it justice.

Anyway, made curry Saturday night (after my exploits in the garden and washing all those carrots, so it was late and I was tired). I did take a photo of what I think is the fun part - mixing the spices:





I heated up the leftover curry and basmati rice in the same pot because the best part is eating the rice that has soaked up the curry sauce (I think) and I didn't want to waste a bit of it. With that, and the bad lighting, it doesn't necessarily look all that great, but trust me it was excellent!





I watched a bit of TV (anyone watching FlashForward? really interesting so far) and cleaned up the kitchen. Then came down and did a 30 min walk on the treadmill.

And now I have a cat demanding his good night treats and I'm pretty much ready to turn in. Good night!