JCore Day 7

(Sorry everyone, this is totally yesterday's.  I fell asleep while writing again...)

We went to the zoo today!  I love zoos, they're so much fun.  Despite all out intentions and efforts we were pretty lazy this morning, so we only go out there about an hour and a half before it closed, but that was fine.  We saw so many fun animals:

The best was this guy, a Golden Lion Tamarin:

It had been all the way on the other side of the enclosure when we got there.  Then, Kevin said, "Hey, monkey!  You know, there's some bananas over here!"  He pointed and said, "Bananas!" a couple of times, and then the tamarin came over and starting eating!  It was pretty awesome.

The Workout

Fit Test 2!  I did a lot better this week, so I'm pretty happy with the results.  I just realized I forgot to put up my results from Fit Test 1, so here are both:

Fit Test 1
Popsicle Right: 15
Popsicle Left: 16
Leaning Tower of Pisa Right: 15
Leaning Tower of Pisa Left: 15
Charlies Angels Right: 20
Charlie's Angels Left: 19
Breakdancers: 6
Pick Me Ups: 8
Thread the Needle: 20
Get Ups: 5

Fit Test 2

Popsicle Right: 19 (modified)
Popsicle Left: 19 (modified)
Leaning Tower of Pisa Right: 24 (modified)
Leaning Tower of Pisa Left: 23 (modified)
Charlies Angels Right: 36
Charlie's Angels Left: 34
Breakdancers: 18
Pick Me Ups: 10 real, 8 modified
Thread the Needle: 60 (with breaks)
Get Ups: 8


For the Popsicle and Leaning Tower of Pisa I modified the move by putting my toe down for balance, and for the Pick Me Ups I modified by going to my knees halfway through.  I'm sure I had similar modifications during Fit Test 1 but I forgot to write them down.  I'm hoping that by Fit Test 3 I won't need to modify anymore.  Also I have no idea what the names of these moves are about.

The Food

Breakfast: Toast with almond butter, turkey bacon, and a cheese stick.

Snack/Lunch: Green beans and broccoli with Laughing Cow cheese and milk.

Dinner: Fish sandwich with pineapple cole slaw and salad.

The little piles of bread on the side are from my bun; I didn't think there would be  sesame seeds on it, but there were!  So I peeled the top layer of bread off.  It also came with a little cup of pineapple cole slaw, which was great.

For dinner we went to this cheeseburger place in Waikiki called (wait for it) Cheeseburger Waikiki:

Even though I didn't get one, the burger selection was great.  I just figured that chicken or fish would be healthier, and since I both always cook myself chicken and never cook myself fish, I went with the fish.  It was really good, it had some sort of sweet chili/teriyaki sauce which was nice.  Kevin got a hamburger that was stuffed with bacon and cheese.  I had a bite and it was so amazingly delicious.  I ordered a side salad with my sandwich, but Kevin of course ordered (delicious) fries.  I meant to only eat one, but I totally ate four.  They were great, though :).  

JCore Day 6

Hello friends.  I didn't get to the zoo today, unfortunately;  I was too busy staying in bed and watching Farscape and The 10th Kingdom.  We're going to try to get out there tomorrow so hopefully that will work out.

The Workout

Cardio Core 4x4.  I feel like I had a little bit of an easier time with it today.  Also, one of the backup/background people in the video is named Sarah and it's kind of fun to hear Jay say things like, "How you doing, Sarah?  Looking good!"  Keeps me going :).

The Food

Breakfast: Egg whites and banana ricotta toast.

I also had a latte, but we've seen the picture for that like 4 times already.


Snack/Lunch:  Cottage cheese with strawberries and ground ginger.

This was meant to be a snack, but I didn't eat it until about 2 (breakfast was at like 9:30-ish) and I didn't eat again until like 7, so it kind of served as my lunch.


Dinner: Double decker chicken burger on an English muffin with hummus and Laughing Cow cheese, butternut squash, green beans, and milk.

I had kind of a weird eating schedule today, and I ended up eating almost half of my day's calories in this meal.  I feel like most of the time you wouldn't want to backload your calories in this way...right?  I don't really know, but I figure if it's just one day it's probably fine.  My burger was really good.  I used two patties because I was super hungry and one seemed like it would too small.  The one problem was that it ended up being to tall for me to fit into my mouth!  So I split it into 2 open-faced burgers and that was fine.  Also, I got a new brand of milk, and I like it much better.  This time I have Archer Farms organic from Target. and it's pretty good.  So far, the brands of milk I like tend to be the organic (read: expensive) ones, which is kind of unfortunate, but whatever.  I also had an orange a little bit after dinner:

So, I totally did not eat enough veggies today.  I had about 1/3 of my recommended amount.  But, get this:  I got in all of my protein servings!  I'm pretty impressed with myself.  We'll see if I can do it again tomorrow.

JCore Day 5

Hooray for Friday!  I’m so happy it’s the weekend.  I haven’t been getting enough sleep for the past couple of nights, and I’m pretty exhausted.  I’m looking forward to being able to sleep in, as well as run some errands and get a few things done around the house.  We also might go to the zoo tomorrow!  Here's what I did for Day 5:

The Workout

Today was Rev Up again.  I think this video might be a little harder than Cardio Core 4x4 (at least for me), and I watched the clock a little more than I had yesterday.  Again, I did the modified versions of the balance and lunge-based moves. 

The Food

Breakfast: Toast with ricotta cheese and sliced bananas and Lemon Zinger tea.

I found this breakfast idea on An Edible Mosaic.  I thought it was really good; the banana was sweet enough that it didn't need sugar, and I pretty much love anything with ricotta cheese.  Luckily for everyone I remembered to grab a picture halfway through!

I've been drinking Lemon Zinger tea because I don’t mind it without sugar (though of course I would certainly prefer that it had sugar).  I tried to have some chai tea with no sugar the other day, but it was no bueno.

Snack 1:  Egg whites with avocado.

So I could finish off that second avocado half.  I went with garlic and onion powder again today, but I’ve been thinking about trying it with soy sauce, or maybe some salsa. 

Lunch:  Last night’s leftover gross chicken with butternut squash and green beans.

After last night’s salad I really had no intentions of finishing the leftover chicken (I was going to make Kevin do it).  But I didn’t get around to doing all of the cooking I had really planned to, and there wasn’t much else for me to eat for lunch.  So, I took the leftover chicken and washed off the gross sauce.  All in all it wasn’t bad, with the veggies the chicken mainly just tasted like chicken.  Every now and then I would get vague taste of the sauce, just a little hint of, “I used to be gross, you know…”  But other than that it was fine.  I also had some cherries!  But I forgot to take a picture until I was mostly done:

Snack 2: Pecans and string cheese.

Dinner: Cereal and milk.

I was too tired to cook, this was easy.  And I had enough carb portions left over, so it was fine.

I’m having some issues because although I’m following the portion plan as well as having one less serving of protein than recommended, when I log the food in my calorie tracker it always comes out to be more than the 1750 calories I’m supposed to be having.  I’m not quite sure what the deal is; I’m not eating too many portions of anything.  Maybe I’m choosing the wrong foods?  I’ve been trying to stick pretty closely to the recommended foods from the guidebook, but sometimes I do make substitutions that I think will be okay.  Over the weekend I’ll take a closer look at what I’ve been eating so far to see if I can find what the problem is.

It's also sometimes hard when my sweet boyfriend tries to serve me dinner and dishes me up an unspecified amount of food, which I don't want to eat without knowing how much I'm eating, and then sometimes I empty the dish out so I can re-measure it, and I'm grumpy because I'm tired of having to be so uptight about my portions and he isn't helping at this particular moment, and then he feels bad because he was just trying to be nice, and then I feel bad because he was just trying to be nice....we had a small issue with the cereal, could you tell?  

Luckily for everyone tomorrow is Saturday, which means I can plan my meals as I eat them instead of needing to have most of what I'm going to eat ready to go the night before.  I can sleep in and catch up on my errands, and my reading, and just generally relax so I'll stop giving my boyf the stinkeye when he pours milk on my cereal before I'm ready :p.

JCore Day 4

Hello there, pals and gals.  I meant to post this last night but I totally fell asleep in the middle of writing.  Here's how Day 4 went:

The Workout

Today was an off day, so I didn't do a JCore workout.  I did go to TRX class this afternoon, though, which was really good.

The Food

Pre- Breakfast:  I was extra hungry this morning so I grabbed a latte before work:

Breakfast:  Egg whites and avocado.

This is a recipe I found in Martha Stewart's Power Foods cookbook.  It looks weird, but it's totally delicious.  I added salt and pepper and onion powder and garlic powder and it was great.  I made the eggs using these cool thingos I found at the convenience store:

www.geteggiestv.com

These are cool because I can use them to make hard-boiled egg whites!  They are a bit difficult to clean, though, little bits of egg kind of get everywhere.  It would be better if I had a dishwasher, but alas.  I also had some blueberries:

But I was full from the eggs so I saved them for later.



Snack 1:  Greek yogurt with strawberries and cereal.

This was okay, but not particularly awesome.  I usually eat Greek yogurt with honey or maple syrup, and the strawberries weren't really sweet enough to make up for the lack of these things.  The cereal I used is like the Safeway version of Kashi GoLean, I think.  Also, can we just take a moment to think about how much more delicious 2% Greek yogurt is than 0%?  Just contemplate that for a second.......alright, great.


Lunch:  Sweet potato with chicken, black beans, and feta.

This was great and probably the best lunch I've eaten this week.  I love sweet potatoes so much.  I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that they're probably the best orange vegetable.


Snack 2:  Cucumber and hummus.

Easy.


The Dinner Ordeal:  Salad with chicken, currant tomatoes, butternut squash, and Caesar dressing.  I forgot to take a picture because I was too busy trying to be finished with eating it.  Here's the deal:

I grabbed this kit specifically for the cracked black pepper sauce, because I love things that are black pepper flavor.  For super serious if something says that it's black pepper flavored I will more likely than not buy it.  I legit just bought some black pepper flavored string cheese from Target today.  You're supposed to cook up your chicken, pour on the sauce and let it cook a little more, and then serve it with a salad topped with the accompanying dressing.  Here's the thing, though - as soon as I poured the sauce over the chicken in  the skillet the kitchen started to smell like church.  Specifically the part of church where the priest or whoever does his thing with the incense burner.  As you may imagine, that's not really a smell that you want to associate with something you plan on ingesting.  I kept hoping that it would get better, but it really didn't.  When I finally tasted it, it was very sharp and very spicy, with an almost bitter aftertaste.  I didn't like it.  I thought it was pretty terrible, in fact, and considered throwing it out and eating something else.

What saved it was the Caesar dressing.  The flavor of the dressing covered the flavor of the sauce enough to make the chicken bearable.  Still, it wasn't the greatest-tasting thing I've ever had.  A little later I had one of my new string cheese so that I would have a better pepper-flavored-item experience:

It was great :).

The JCore nutrition plan is really reminding me of the P90X portion plan in that each day you can have a certain number of servings of different food groups.  I’m starting to remember that I was having difficulty with getting in all of my protein servings with P90X, a problem that I’m having now as well.  The JCore guide book says that you can adjust your daily calorie limit up or down by adding or taking away a serving of a food group (except for fruit, for which you’re supposed to stay within the assigned limits).  I have decided to decrease my protein servings but I’m still having trouble getting enough, and often end the day with a serving or two still missing (or, as often as possible considering that I've only been doing this since Monday).  One thing I really like about the JCore program vs. P90X is that here dairy products are included in the protein group, whereas with P90X dairy was its own group.  This means that I can, and absolutely do, use things like milk and cheese and yogurt to help meet my protein requirements. 

Another thing I’m starting to remember is how expensive it can be to try to eat all of this protein daily.  Although I am getting a fair amount from milk and cottage cheese, I’m still going through a lot of meat (mostly chicken so far).  While I was doing P90X I had started to look into protein shakes as a substitute.  The problem is I don’t really love protein shakes.  That is to say, there are some out there that are pretty good, but in my experience they tend to be the ones that are also full of sugar.  For the rest, the best I’ve been able to say so far is something like, “Oh, this one’s not bad for a protein shake…”  On the other hand, I also don’t particularly like having a hunk of meat as my afternoon snack.  The JCore guide doesn't mention protein powder on the list of recommended protein sources, but I figure if I had a shake it would be sort of like if I were buying the Body-Lite shakes.  I don’t know, I’ll think about it.  

David Bowie, JCore Day 3, and What I Ate Wednesday!

Happy Wednesday, everyone!  Kevin and I just got back from the movies, where they were having a special showing of Labyrinth!  I loooove that movie, it's my #1 favorite childhood movie and it was really great to be able to see it on the big screen.  Singing and Muppets and David Bowie and his eyeshadow and his hair - it just doesn't get better than this, friends.

Source

Now that we've talked about that, here's how things are going on the JCore front:

The Workout

Today I did Cardio Core 4x4.  This video was entirely made up of floor-work, with lots of leg lift variations and exercises in the plank position.  I used the modified versions of a lot of the plank moves, just because my upper body strength is terrible/non-existent.  I liked this video for a couple of reasons.  First, the time seemed to go by much more quickly today than yesterday; I was seriously done before I knew it.  Second, the JCore website claims that these workouts will engage your muscles from multiple angles, and I definitely got that sense today.  Also Jay was a little calmer today, which was nice, although he was still a bit silly at times (“We’re gonna do the Running Man!  Run away from that fat!”).

The Food

Breakfast: Oatmeal with figs, pecans, and feta cheese.

I made the jump into savory oatmeal, and it was AWESOME!  I’ll definitely do it again (I’ve been thinking of a variation involving feta cheese and caramelized onions and maybe some turkey bacon).  The one shortcoming was that 2 dried figs equaled an entire fruit portion, which was kind of sad because 2 dried figs do not have a lot of volume.

Snack 1: Cottage cheese with pumpkin pie spice and vanilla.

Since I used up my whole fruit portion in my oatmeal I didn’t put anything into my cottage cheese today (I guess I could have taken my fruit portion from lunch, but then I would have been sad at lunch instead).  It wasn’t bad, but I definitely prefer it with strawberries.

Lunch: Salad with pecans, feta cheese, sliced ham, and currant tomatoes.  Totally forgot to take a picture again.  Here’s a picture of the tomatoes instead:

I love these guys, I think they’re so adorable!  I also had a cup of cherries on the side.



Dinner: Whole grain pasta with grilled chicken, and edamame.

I forgot to take a picture of the edamame but they looked the same as Monday's edamame so that's probably fine.


Snack:  Fake latte.  I forgot to take a picture of this as well, but it pretty much looked exactly like this one from yesterday:

So far, the most difficult part of this system is planning out and preparing all the food. It really takes up a good amount of my time in the evenings to plan out what I'm going to eat the next day (at least up to the second snack), make whatever needs making, and pack it up so it's ready to go in the morning. It's definitely helpful to make big batches of things like grilled chicken and hard boiled eggs at one time so that I can eat them all week, but then I run into the problem of getting bored with eating the same things over and over.  Like, it's Wednesday, I've only been doing this for 3 days and I'm already so tired of chicken.  Hopefully once I get further into the program I'll be able to streamline my process a little so that it won't take as much time.

JCore Day 2

I was supposed to post this yesterday!  But I didn’t.  Sorry, blogoverse.   Here’s how things went:

The Workout

Today was the first official workout of the program:  Rev Up.  In this video you do a series of exercises for 30 seconds each.  Each move flows into the next without any breaks; there aren’t even any distinctions between the main workout and the warm-up and cool-down.  Because each move goes right into the next in this way it was a little difficult to follow the progression at times, but I imagine this is something that will improve as I become more familiar with the videos.  I did modified versions of most of the balance moves, as well as some of the lunge-based moves since my knees are still a little wonky.  As for Jay, he was very perky and very excited and he NEVER STOPPED TALKING.  I tuned him out after a while, which was fine.

I also went back to TRX class today after almost a month-long absence, which was so exciting!  I love TRX, and I’m glad to be back.

The Food

Breakfast:  Almond butter and sliced strawberry sandwich on whole wheat bread. 

This was delicious, and I was really happy with it.  It actually kept me full for longer than expected, which was nice. 

Snack 1: Cottage cheese with strawberries.

Since I had gotten hungry between breakfast and lunch yesterday, I decided to take part of my breakfast and save it as a snack.  This worked really well so I’ll probably do it again tomorrow.

Lunch: Blueberries, chicken salad, and cucumbers.

I used an entire can of chicken and some Greek yogurt (instead of mayo) to make the chicken salad, which ended up being about 7.5 servings of protein.  I also used an entire cucumber.  At first I started out just scooping the chicken salad onto the cucumber slices one at a time, but this was really a two-handed endeavor.  I wanted my lunch to be more one-handed so I broke the cucumber slices into fourths and just mixed everything together:

This was really filling (I actually didn’t finish it all), so I saved the blueberries for after I got back from TRX.

Snack 1:  Chicken with barbecue sauce and a fake latte.

FYI everyone, we have like no table space in our apartment so we eat sitting on the bed.  This is why all of my food pictures from home have sheets in the background :p.

I don’t think I’m really supposed to have barbecue sauce because of the sugar content, but I really have a hard time eating just plain chicken and I couldn’t think of anything else to put on it (it totally doesn’t help that I overcooked the chicken and it’s pretty dry).  I made the latte by heating up a cup of skim milk and mixing it with some instant coffee.  This one tasted kind of gross, though, so I only drank about half.

Dinner:  Bell pepper and sweet potato tortilla chips with hummus.

I basically had snack for dinner, and I think this is fine.  The bell pepper sounded like a great idea until I started eating, at which point I only wanted to eat the chips.  However, I needed to get my veggies in so I ate most of the pepper (Kevin helped me out with  the last couple of slices).  The chips were great, although eating the majority of my day’s carb allowance as tortilla chips probably isn’t the healthiest of ideas.

Snack 2: Better fake latte.

This one was made with a different flavor of instant coffee (this was Starbucks Via Columbian while the first one was Starbucks Via Verdana Blend) and was much better.  I feel like I’m probably going to have most if not all of my skim milk in latte form from now on (i.e. from now until February 15 which is as long as I plan to consume non-fat dairy products).

I should also mention that the JCore system recommends 4 supplements: Zero-Lite, which is a metabolism-boosting drink, Body-Lite, which is a snack replacement shake, Recovery-Lite, which is a post-workout drink, and Multi-Lite, which is a multivitamin.  I am not, nor do I have any intentions of, taking any of these, although the JCore website says that they are recommended for “optimal results.”

JCore Day 1

Hi pals.  I'm too tired to make a big thing out of this, so I'm just gonna bang it out.  Here we go:

The Workout

Since today is Day 1, we started with the Fit Test.  This is a series of 10 exercises done in succession for 60 seconds each.  The goal is to do as many reps as you can in the 60 seconds.  The guidebook comes with a tracking sheet for you to record how many reps of each exercise you do.  You repeat the Fit Test on Days 7, 14, 28, and 40, each time striving to complete more reps of each exercise than you did the last time.

To me the exercises seemed to be very focused on core and balance.  Balance isn't really my strong point, so I did have a bit of trouble with some of them.  In terms of difficulty, the moves themselves aren't particularly hard to do; however, I was definitely sweating by the end, and I often needed put my foot down to stabilize myself during some of the balance moves.  I'd say this Fit Test is easier than the Insanity Fit Test, but then again most things are easier than Insanity.  Towards the end of the day I started noticing that my butt was a little sore, which is a good thing I guess.  The video (and I imagine all the rest of the videos as well) is lead by Jay Cardiello, the creator of the program.  My first impression of Jay is that he's a little overly enthusiastic for my tastes, but this is fairly easy to ignore, so far at least.

The Food

Breakfast

Breakfast today was oatmeal with blueberries and cottage cheese with strawberries.  No sugar in either.  The cottage cheese was fine, I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I had expected to.  The oatmeal, however, was not awesome.  I don't know what I expected, but it was significantly less delicious than I wanted it to be.  I'm thinking that as an alternative I may start exploring some savory oatmeal options.  I'll keep you posted.

Lunch I completely forgot to take a picture of, but it was salad with grilled chicken, black beans, pecans, mixed frozen veggies, and dressing made out of hummus, apple cider vinegar, and a little soy sauce.  I also had a cup of cherries on the side.

Snack

Snack was edamame with about 3 tablespoons of mixed nuts.  I forgot to bring in salt for the edamame, but I found a small packet of parmesan cheese in the kitchen and that seemed to work just fine.  I actually also forgot to take a picture of this meal until well after the fact.  So those are totally empty soybean pods in the picture.

Dinner

Sorry that this picture is terrible.  I was trying to simultaneously hold my milk, keep the plate from  sliding,  and take the picture on my phone without making it super obvious that I'm not wearing any pants.  

Dinner was sliced chicken with mixed veggies and whole wheat pasta, along with a glass of skim milk.  Not very exciting.  Also I hate skim milk.


Mostly today was fine.  I did get hungry in between meals sometimes.  I also ended up not eating all of my recommended portions of protein or fat, so probably the best solution would be to add in another snack somewhere in my day.

Okay, I'm asleep.  I'll be back tomorrow!