FINALLY! JCore Day 8...again

It finally came!  That took waaay longer than expected, but I’m so glad it’s finally here so I can get back on track.  So, you may have noticed that I'm repeating Day 8.  Last time, I wasn't feeling well so I took a rest day that I planned to swap out with an actual rest day later in the week.  But if I were to do that now, I would be off from the calendar I made, and I don't want to make a new calendar.  I could just say that today was Day 9 and keep going without swapping anything out, but then I would end on Day 41 instead of Day 40.  So, because I'm stubborn and resistant to change, we're going to say that this is the Real Day 8, and last time was the Fake Unsanctioned Day 8.  Just go with it.

The Workout:  Fire Fit

This video contained balance moves, plyometric moves, lunge-based moves, and plank-based moves.  I had to take a lot of breaks during the lunge-based moves, but I feel like I did better on some of the balance moves than I had the last time.  Jay also doesn't disappoint on the silly exercise names (a move that is literally just skipping in place is called 'Oh No!'  Burpees are called 'Really??'  Yes.).  But as always, the workout was pretty tough and I was kind of crazy mad sweaty by the end.

No joke.

The Food

Breakfast: leftover oatmeal applesauce pancakes.

On Sunday I made a giant batch so that I would have leftovers to eat throughout the week.  Today I topped them with Justin’s maple almond butter, which was a super, super delicious choice.  I’m thinking next time I might replace half or all of the applesauce with canned pumpkin or mashed banana.  Also, this time it wasn’t until I was flipping the last pancake that I realized I had forgotten to add cinnamon or vanilla to the batter, so that’s something to do next time as well.

Lunch: I forgot to take a picture!  But it was slow cooker chicken with green beans and butternut squash.  It actually wasn’t very interesting to look at, so it’s probably fine that there’s no picture.

Snack 1: Greek  yogurt with applesauce and cereal. 

 Like I do.

Snack 2: Grande skim cafe latte from Starbucks.

This is A cup of coffee, but not
necessarily MY cup of coffee.
(Source)

My pal Stan from college was on-island for the weekend, which was cool.  He stayed with me and Kevin on Sunday night, and then I met up with him after work today for a bit of a chat and some coffee.

Snack 3:  Feast your eyes on this guy:

Okay, this was not actually my snack.  Don't worry.  I just took it to bring home to Kevin, although he did share a tiny (tiny, seriously!) bite with me.  It was delish, as I'm sure you can imagine.

Dinner:  Red pepper and tomato soup.

Sorry this is blurry and terrible.  I seriously don't even know what that's all about.

Easy, breezy, beautiful.  

Anyway, I’m happy to get back to JCore.  Even without doing the workouts, however, I’ve still been trying to follow the nutrition plan.  While it’s still sometimes difficult to get all of the protein that I should during the day, I’m finding that I do like having more protein in my diet, especially at breakfast.  I’ve pretty much stopped snacking between breakfast and lunch, which I’m sure is because the protein is keeping me full (although, this isn’t really news, I shouldn’t be surprised by this).  The one thing that does concern me is that yesterday I tried to donate blood, and I was turned away because my iron content wasn’t high enough.  I was really surprised by this, given how much more protein I’ve been eating in the last 3 weeks.  The donation center gave me a handout that included a list of foods that are good sources of iron, most of which I eat on a regular basis (things like chicken, pork, broccoli, green beans, whole grains, etc.).  The only other thing I can think of is that it’s almost that time of the month for me, which may affect my blood iron content.  They said I can try again in 2 weeks, so hopefully it will be better then.

In other news, I forgot about JCore for a moment last week and signed up for a Boot Camp class that’s happening at the gym on base. The class is Monday and Wednesdays, 4:30pm – 6:30pm, starting next week. From the class description it sounded like the class will involve both and exercise portion and a nutrition portion, which should be interesting. I totally wasn’t thinking about JCore at all when I signed up for this, but since the JCore workouts are only 20 minutes each, I think it will be fine. I should be able to do JCore in the mornings before work, and Boot Camp/TRX in the afternoons with no problem.