JCore Day 14

Sorry everyone, I'm so late in getting this up.  This is from Sunday, Feb. 10.

Hi, friends!  I had a nice, relaxing Sunday.  This was an off day for JCore, so no workout today.  I spent the first half of the day in bed watching Twin Peeks, and then we switched gears a little bit and spend the second half in bed watching a Hindi-language movie - Mere Brother Ki Dulhan, for anyone who likes that sort of thing.  Imran Kahn, what a cutie :).


Breakfast: Peanut butter and banana protein smoothie.

In Brookline, MA, where I used to live, there is a little crepe place called Paris Creperie.  My pals and I would go there all the time, and on most of my visits, I would get a smoothie called the Jimmy Carter - peanut butter, banana, milk, and fro yo.  As far as I understand, Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer (as well as being a president) which is why this drink deserves his name.  Let me just tell you that the Jimmy Carter was the BEST smoothie.  It's the only kind I ever ordered.  My version used vanilla protein powder and ice in place of the fro yo, but was still pretty delicious.      


Lunch: Broccoli soup with leftover pork.

This was the very last of the pork, and I was sad to see it go.  I'm fairly certain we'll be making it again soon, though.


Snack 1: Pickles

Snack 2: Tortilla chips and hummus.

Dinner: Chicken curry with brown rice and chickpeas.

This is kind of like deconstructed curry, but I mixed everything together before I ate it.

I found the recipe in Health magazine, in an article about uses for bananas.  I left the bananas out when I made this (Kevin didn't want them) so I don't know what that would have tasted like, but I bet it would have been good.  It was good even without the bananas, though!  I had never really made curry before but it wasn't too hard, and I was really happy with the way it came out.


Tomorrow is the first day of Boot Camp class at the gym!  I'm kind of excited, I think it will be fun.  I'm also excited because yesterday I signed up for my second Warrior Dash!  It's seriously in like 2 weeks, so I need to start getting ready, but it's going to be great.  I had so much fun at the last one!

JCore Day 13: Fit Test 3

The Workout: Fit Test 3!

I'm happy with my results this week.  I improved on pretty much all of the exercises and used fewer of the modified forms.  I put all of my fit test data into a chart so I could more easily see my progress:

Not too bad, right?!

The Food

Breakfast: Almost omelette with egg whites, leftover ground beef, and green beans.

This was originally supposed to be an omelette, but I ended up having more filling than egg to surround it so it wouldn't fold properly.  But, by that time it was too late to turn it into scrambled eggs, so I just had a pile of stuff on my plate and that was fine.


Lunch: Pork with butternut squash and green beans.

Exactly the same as yesterday.  There's still pork in the fridge so maybe I'll have it tomorrow too!


Snack: Justin's honey almond butter.

I was about to head out to go to a party and I didn't want to be starving when I got there.


Dinner:  James Bond-themed extravaganza!

My supervisor at work and her husband threw a party celebrating the 50th anniversary of the James Bond series.  They kind of went all out, it was pretty cool.  Upon arrival, we were each given a water gun that had been spray painted black to appear more official - although some had been painted gold for a little extra fancy, I got one of those!  Placed around the lanai for people to look at were copies of James Bond magazine and a coffee table book about Bond Girls.  There were also various James Bond movies playing on different TVs around the house.  There was a martini bar complete with instructions on how to make a few variations, as well as another area to make mixed drinks.  The appetizers were all named after movies, like A View To A Kill Crab Mold, and The Man With The Golden Gun Cheese Board.  I had tried to eat a little lighter throughout the day to make room in my calorie budget for party food, and it's a good thing I did because there wasn't a ton there that I was okay to eat.  Here's what I had:

Granny Smith apple slices, 3 fried chicken drumsticks, 3 Triscuits, and some crab mold.

The fried chicken obviously wasn't the best thing in the world to eat, but it was pretty much the only source of protein considering I couldn't eat the cheese from the cheese board or any of the mini pizzas  There was some Octopussy sushi, but I was not inclined to eat any.  I couldn't figure out what was in them, and I haven't graduated from California rolls to actual raw fish sushi yet.  A little later I had a second plate with a few more apple slices, a little more crab mold, and 3 Town House crackers.

Then came dessert.  We all know how much I love dessert.  There was so much to choose from; Diamonds Are Forever Cupcakes, Moonraker Cookies, Die Another Day Skull Cake, In Her Majesty's Secret Service Cheesecakes, License to Kill(er) Brownies, From Russia With Love Cookies, Guava cake, and fruit skewers:

Is that James Bond back there?  Quite possibly!

Can you guess which plate is mine?  ;-)

I had a small bite of Kevin's cupcake and a teeny tiny bite of his brownie, but that was it.  Luckily I had saved my fruit portion for the party so I could eat fruit instead.  I also had 2 small cups of coffee with half and half from the Spy Who Loved Me Coffee Bar.  I logged everything I ate, and (assuming my calorie counts for things were accurate) I ended up only going over my calorie limit by about 55 calories, which isn't bad at all.

JCore Day 12

Omgyesit'stheweekend!

The Workout: Release

I actually don’t know if I can really categorize Release as a workout, exactly.  It was more of a stretching session; it was very slow-paced, and included a fair amount of yoga moves.  I didn’t really get sweaty at all.  My legs and arms were a little tired this morning, probably from TRX, so holding some of the poses was a little difficult, but nothing too bad.  My favorite part?  Jay saying (repeatedly), “Let go of that stress!  It’s just you and I, nobody else.”  A) You and me.  B) Clearly there are two other people in the video with you, so I’d say no, it’s not just you and me.

The Food

Today starts the first day of Phase 2 of the nutrition plan, which means no cheese or bread, and only one serving of fruit.

Breakfast: Oatmeal applesauce pancakes with Justin’s honey almond butter.

This is the last of the batch I made last weekend.  I'm not sure yet if I'll make more this weekend or not; now that I've dropped down to 1500 calories a day, ~ 600 calories is a lot for breakfast (about 380 for 3 pancakes + another 190-200 for the almond butter, depending on the flavor).

Lunch: Slow-cooker pork with green beans and butternut squash.

I super love this pork, and it goes so well with butternut squash.

Same as yesterday, pretty much.

Snack:  Tortilla chips and guacamole.

This guac is kind of a weird color, I know.  While making it, Kevin declared that it was "too green" and added  salsa until he achieved the desired hue...which was pea soup color, apparently.

Someone from work brought me a giant avocado from a tree in his yard.  I’m sorry I didn’t take a picture, because it was seriously huge, about the size of a large mango.  I brought it home, and Kevin immediately wanted to make guacamole with it.  So we did!  I do have to say that it’s kind of fake guacamole – made by mashing the avocado and mixing it with store-brought salsa, onion powder, lemon juice, and salt.  But!  It still tastes delicious, and I’m happy to eat it. 

Dinner: Taco salad! 

We don't have any bowls that are an appropriate size for salad, so I had to use this giant mixing bowl instead.  Instead of ground beef I used ground pork, and the dressing was a combination of salsa and Greek yogurt.


This afternoon the Whole Foods in my neighborhood was hosting a Local Product Fair, so Kevin and I went to check it out.  There were booths for all sorts of local businesses, selling things like ice cream, raw honey, jewelry, produce, and bath products, to name a few.  I definitely like to support local businesses when I can, so I was happy to be able to pick up a few things.  One booth was selling different types of fruit, most of which I had never eaten or even seen before.  I grabbed a few that looked interesting to me:

I remember that the yellow fruit is called an egg fruit, but I don't remember what the brown and purple/green ones are, other than that they taste like a "brown sugar pear" and need to be cut open and eaten with a spoon, respectively.  The pineapple is a particular species called a Honey Cream pineapple, and was recommended to us by another customer at the booth.  It's supposed to be sweeter and lower in acidity, and the other customer told us that the tops had been removed because the species is patented (you can totally grow a new pineapple plant by cutting out the top and part of the core and planting it).

Allow me to geek out for a second, if you will.  The Hawaiian name for the Honey Cream pineapple is Meli Kalima.  The first thing I noticed about this is that the Hawaiian word for honey, 'meli,' is very similar to the Latin word for honey, 'mel mellis.'  This surprised me, because I didn't think that Hawaiian was a Latin-based language.  I did some Googling, and found a book excerpt that was very long and convoluted and confusing, but it may have said something about how Polynesian languages might maybe be able to be traced back to Sanscrit, as can Latin, possibly.  Maybe.  I really don't know.  If anyone has any ideas I would be interested.

Okay, now that we're done with that tangent, the other thing we found at the Local Product Fair was a booth for a company called Chic Naturals.  They make roasted chickpea snacks in a bunch of different flavors.  I've always been interested in trying roasted chickpeas, so I was happy to see that the booth had free samples of the different flavors that they sell.

The little sign on the table is letting us know that these products are gluten and nut free!

All of the flavors were really, really good.  They're also a good source of protein and fiber, as well as being relatively low in fat.  A serving size is an ounce, which is usually about a quarter of a cup.  After trying all the flavors, Kevin and I decided to get 4 bags:

The flavors we got were: Spicy Barbecue, Hawaiian Sea Salt & Herb, Maui Mocha, and Sweet Citrus.

We got two savory flavors and two sweet ones.  The only flavor we didn't get was the chocolate-covered ones.  Not to say they weren't good - they totally are.  But, as you may imagine, I don't really need to have chocolate-covered things in the house right now.  The sweet flavors are (obviously) much higher in sugar and consequently much higher in calories than the other flavors (about 130 calories per serving vs. around 100 calories for the savory flavors), and the Mocha flavor in particular is higher in fat than the others (about 4.6g compared to 2.3g).  I might wait until I'm done with JCore to have those two.  But, the savory flavors are fair game.  My personal favorite (besides the chocolate ones) is the Hawaii Sea Salt flavor, which according to the guy at the booth is their best selling flavor.  I seriously can't wait to snack on these guys!

JCore Day 11

Hello hello, everyone!  I had a pretty good day today.  I made some new pals, and I went in water for the first time since like August (I'm the worst person to live in Hawaii, I have no appreciation for beaches)!  Here's some other stuff that my day contained:

The Workout:

Today I did Fire Fit again, but it wasn’t really great.  The warm-up involves a lot of skipping, which immediately made my head hurt so I took it down a notch and did the modified moves (which mainly involve marching in place instead skipping).  Throughout the workout I felt like I was moving slower and at a lower intensity than normal, and I took a lot more breaks than usual.  So, I don’t really feel awesome about how this workout went today, but at the very least it was better than nothing.  I also had TRX class in the afternoon, and that was really good.  The instructor switched up the format of the class today so that the focus was more on strength training than cardio.  This was good for me because I love strength training :).  After TRX, I went to my new pal Sonya's apartment to swim in her pool (although I don't know how to swim so it was mostly just floating).

The Food

Today starts the first day of Phase 2 of the nutrition plan, which means no cheese or bread, and only one serving of fruit.

Breakfast: Oatmeal with pumpkin and turkey.

I’ve had pumpkin in my oatmeal before, but usually when I do I add maple syrup and cinnamon and pecans.  Since I’m not supposed to be having added sugar, this time I added salt, pepper, onion powder, allspice, a little ginger powder, and some chopped cracked black pepper-flavored turkey (I believe we’ve already discussed how I feel about black pepper-flavored things).  Pumpkin tends to work just as well in savory dishes as in sweet ones, so this turned out well.

Lunch: Slow-cooker pork with Brussels sprouts and butternut squash.

This pork was super yummy and super easy.  I mainly used this brown sugar pork recipe, except that I used powdered garlic instead of garlic cloves, and I skipped the additional brown sugar/cinnamon topping at the end.  I know that this goes against the JCore no-added-sugar rules, but this was the only recipe I could find on short notice that I had all the ingredients for (I realized I needed to start cooking something for the next day about 10 minutes before I had meant to be in bed).  And it’s delicious, so I’m only kind of sorry.

Snack:  Greek yogurt with applesauce and Wheat Chex cereal.

I almost completely forgot to take a picture!  

Since I’m assuming cottage cheese is included in the category of cheese (which I shouldn’t be eating), I imagine I’ll be having a lot of yogurt over the next 10 days.   

Dinner:  Grilled Tequila Chicken & Portobello Mushroom Stack from Big City Diner

After pool time, Sonya and I went to get dinner.  I had originally planned on getting a salad, but then this chicken dish looked good, and I thought it would be fairly healthy as long as I asked for the tequila cream sauce on the side.  It's a good thing I did, as it turns out, because it was kind of gloppy and somehow managed to not actually taste like anything.  The chicken itself was delicious - although I didn't remember until I had eaten an entire piece that I wasn't supposed to have the cheese on top...oops.  Definitely no cheese tomorrow!  The other thing was that I took a bite of mushroom and could tell immediately that it had been cooked in butter, as had the spinach.  They were both super good and I still ate them, but it reminds me that I should probably ask how things are prepared before I order them.  I ate all of the veggies, one of the chicken breasts, and about 1/3 to 1/2 cup of the brown rice and brought the rest home.

Alright, so if you are super observant you may have noticed that I changed the kind of cereal I put in my yogurt today.  Recently I’ve been liking Corn Bran Crunch cereal in my yogurt, but then I noticed I was developing a tendency to save up most (if not all) of my carb portions until the end of the day, and then eat them all as dry Corn Bran Crunch right before I went to bed.  This is probably not the greatest of ideas.  I had read somewhere that Wheat Chex is a good cereal for snacking because of it’s high fiber and vitamin content, so last night at the grocery store I decided to compare labels.  Compared to Corn Bran Crunch, Wheat Chex is lower in sugar and sodium, higher in potassium and fiber, and has only about 5 ingredients 4 of which I can readily identify (the 5^th is a preservative, that’s fine).  The one thing Corn Bran Crunch had going for it was that it is much lower in calories (90 calories for 3/4 cup, vs. 160 calories for the same amount of Wheat Chex).  But, I knew that wasn’t the real reason I wanted them.  I wanted them because they taste like Cap’n Crunch.  

In that moment I was reminded of an episode of one of my favorite TV shows.  There’s a scene where one of the characters is talking to the town psychologist, looking for advice.  The psychologist has this really great line where she says, “You already know what you should do; you’re just looking for permission to do what you want.”  For some reason that line has always stayed with me, and last night in the store it came back.  So, I got the Wheat Chex.  I told myself that if I was really sad about not having the Corn Bran Crunch I could buy it again next time, but honestly the Wheat Chex are fine.  They are a little less sweet, but I feel like this is probably a good thing.  At the very least it will probably discourage me from using them as my ONLY carb source. 

JCore Day 10

Woohoo, it's Wednesday!  Almost the weekend.  Two more days, we can do it!

The Workout

Today I went to the gym during my lunch break and did 30 minutes on the Stair Master.  I was impressed with myself because I did the whole 30 minutes without stopping, which is a big improvement from last time where I had to stop and rest every 7 minutes.  I listened to the Rock of Ages soundtrack (the movie version), which is totally awesome and helped keep me going.

The Food

Breakfast:  Oatmeal applesauce pancakes with Justin's maple almond butter.

Just as delicious as on Monday (I also forgot to take a picture, so you might notice this is actually the same picture as Monday).



Lunch:  Chicken salad with low-sodium Triscuits and grapes.

I usually don't advocate eating chicken salad with a spoon, but the kitchen was out of forks and you gotta do what you gotta do.

I made the chicken salad with half a can of chicken, black beans, and a wedge of Laughing Cow Light Garlic and Herb cheese (2 wedges would have been better, but I was all out).  I had a handful of grapes before I went to the gym, then finished up the rest with lunch.



Dinner:  Tomato soup with chicken and feta.

I threw the other half of the can of chicken in here for added protein.



Snack: About 15 tortilla chips that I totally didn't take a picture of.


Okay, so tomorrow starts Phase 2 of the JCore nutrition plan.  The main changes here will be that I will cut out cheese and bread and I'll drop down to only one serving of fruit each day.  The other thing I'm going to do is drop down to the 1500 calorie plan.  This is the plan that was suggested for me in the guidebook, but I was worried that 1500 calories wouldn't be enough for me so I chose the 1750 calorie plan instead.  One of the first things I noticed was that it was almost impossible for me to get the recommended amount of protein, so I cut out a serving and dropped down to 1650 calories a day.  This has been mostly fine so far, but I'm still noticing that I frequently don't eat all my protein or vegetable servings because I'm too full at the end of the day.  So, for this next phase I'm going to try the 1500 calorie plan and see how it goes.  If I find that I am too hungry, I'll try adding in an extra serving of protein or vegetables and see how that works out.

JCore Day 9

Hey, it's totally bedtime, so this will be quick.  Here goes:

The Workout: Hard Core

As you can probably assume, Hard Core is a core workout.  There were no sit-ups or crunches at all, which I appreciated since I hate sit-ups and crunches.  Instead, there were a lot of plank- and side plank-based moves.  There were also exercises designed to work the lower back and the hip flexors.  Thanks mainly to TRX, I’ve been noticing that my abs are getting stronger.  This means that even though I did eventually have to switch into the modified versions of the plank moves, I could start almost all of them in the original position and could stay in the original position for longer than I expected.  Overall I thought it was a really good, complete core workout.  Although, maybe it was just my perception after waking up at 5am, but Jay did seem a little extra perky right off the bat (during the very first move: “Come on!  We’re warming up!  Oh yeah, this is the warm-up!  Did you think this was the workout?!”  No, Jay.  No one thought this was the workout.).

Breakfast: Strawberry peanut butter taco and turkey bacon.

This was really good!  I’ve been on kind of an almond butter kick lately, so the peanut butter was a nice change.

Lunch: Chicken with broccoli and Brussels sprouts.

I almost forgot to take a picture of this.  Remembered just in the nick of time.

Snack 1:  String cheese and grapes.

This was light enough that I didn’t mind eating it just an hour before TRX (usually I don’t like to eat less than 2 hours before class).

Snack 2: Low-sodium Triscuits with Smucker's Simply Fruit peach fruit spread.

I was just feeling kind of snacky.  

Dinner: Pork chops with black beans.

Kevin got barbecue sauce beans, but barbecue sauce has a lot of sugar in it so I didn't want to have it.  Instead, I had fancy ketchup beans, which were fine.

I also had about 60 oz of water during the day, which is almost unheard of for me.  I'm really working on getting enough water consistently.  Before bed, I had some gummy vitamins.  You know how I roll.

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.