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.

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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!

Maybe I'll blog for 40 days in a row?

Oh my gosh.  Hi everyone.  It's been like a month since my last post, which is terrible.  I apologize.  Anyway!  Here's what's up:

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I don't think we've talked about this before, but I am a workout program junkie.  I loooove getting new DVDs and systems, and I buy them far more often than I should.  Off the top of my head, I have Core Rythyms, Zumba, Yoga Booty Ballet, ChaLEAN Extreme, Rockin' Body, Insanity,  P90X, and like 4 Jillian Michaels DVDs.  And the New York City Ballet workout.  And the Pussycat Dolls workout.  I'm certain there are more I'm not thinking of, and now there's this one.

JCore Accelerated Body Transformation is a 40-day program that involves working out for 20 minutes a day, 4 days a week.  The workouts are designed to use only your body weight and to take up very little space, which is one thing that attracted me to the program.  Also, I have almost exactly 40 days between now and having to go to DC in February, so that works out as well.  The program's website boasts that you only end up working out for about 8 hours over the course of the entire 40 days, which doesn't really sound like it would be enough.  But, most of the reviews I read indicated that the system seems to work, so maybe it will be fine.  There are 5 workouts (Rev Up, Cardio Core 4x4, Fire Fit, Hardcore, and Release), as well as a Fit Test that I'll take multiple times over the 40 days.

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Another thing I liked was that there was an option to order the program on a USB drive, instead of getting all of the DVDs.  I ended up doing this because it's a little cheaper than getting all of the DVDS ($75 + shipping instead of a little over $100 + shipping), and it will be easier to travel with.

The program also includes a nutrition plan.  There are several different variations of the meal plan with different calorie ranges.  You choose the plan that corresponds with your ideal weight, which you find using your height and a chart that's given in the guide book.  I'm 5'6, and the chart says this corresponds with an ideal weight of 130 lbs and a meal plan of 1500 calories.  However, I decided to go with a higher calorie meal plan for 2 reasons.  Firstly, I'm not sure but I think 130 lbs might be a little low for me.  I am really aiming more for 145 at this point.  Also, from previous experience I've found  that I don't really like to go below 1700 calories.  I can do it for a couple of days, but then I get really hungry and eat everything which is pretty counterproductive.  For this program, a goal weight of 145 lbs corresponds with a 1750 calorie meal plan, so I decided to go with that one.  For each calorie level, you are told the number of servings of protein  carbs, fats, fruits, and vegetables.  Overall, the diet seems to be high in protein and vegetables.  I don't really eat enough vegetables, so this will be good for me, probably.

The meal plan is broken up into 4 10-day segments.  In part one, you need to cut out all added sugar, alcohol, processed foods, simple carbs, and artificial sweeteners.  This continues in part 2, with the additional removal of bread and cheese.  This is so you can see if you have a sensitivity to either of these foods.  In part 2 you are also limited to 1 serving of fruit instead of 2.  In part 3, you go back to 2 servings of fruit and bread and cheese are slowly added back; if you have a reaction (such as bloating, constipation, or runny nose) to either one, you should continue to leave them out of your diet.  The last 10 days in part 4 are for maintenance.

I think the hardest part for me will be cutting out the sugar, especially at breakfast.  When I'm trying to eat healthily I make an effort to watch my sugar intake anyway, but I will usually still have a little.  I'm not sure how difficult it will be to have oatmeal with no sugar, or yogurt with no honey.  We'll have to see how this goes.

In order to both stick with my eating plan better and be less lame at blogging, I've decided to document my JCore Journey with daily blog posts.  I'll tell you which workout I did on each day, and I'll (try to) photograph my meals.  Who knows, maybe I'll decide that oatmeal with no sugar is fine.  Or maybe I won't. Either way, I'll let you know.

So, that's it!  Tomorrow will be Day 1, and I start with the Fit Test.  See you then!

I'm a little bit late to the party....

....seeing as it's kind of winter instead of fall right now.  It's pretty much winter, guys.  But even though it's no longer the correct season I'm still gonna do this quiz I found on Cutting Out Carbs.  Because I like quizzes!  And I like autumn.  So here we go:

Apple picking or pumpkin picking?

I haven't done either in a while but I think I'm gonna have to go with apple picking.  I just think you get more out of the experience.  I mean, how many pumpkins are you really going to get, right?  Probably just one.  And they pretty much all look the same.  But when you go apple picking there are usually a couple of different types to choose from, and you can get a BILLION and it's totally fine, AND there's usually cider and doughnuts!  It's hard to beat.

Favorite apple recipe?

I love to put chopped apples into my oatmeal, along with cinnamon and ginger.  There's also a brie and apple crepe at the Paris Creperie in Brookline, MA that is delicious.

Favorite pumpkin recipe?

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There is a restaurant in Cambridge, MA called Helmand that serves a dish called kaddo.  It's sweetened baked pumpkin served with a garlic yogurt sauce and a tomato meat sauce, and it is the best thing on the planet.  It's the only dish I've ever ordered from that restaurant, and I crave it constantly.

Favorite soup recipe:

Every year for Christmas breakfast and dinner, my mother makes homemade tomato soup.  I have no idea what recipe she uses (she might have made it up, actually) but it's amazing.  I think she puts goat milk in it, which sounds weird but I promise it's really good.  A lot of people think it's really strange that we have soup for breakfast, but that's our tradition and we love it.  I remember one year my mom only made enough soup for breakfast because for some weird, misguided reason she thought people wouldn't want to have it again for dinner.  There for serious was almost a riot.  

Football: on TV or at the stadium?

So, I don't care about football.  Neither my undergraduate (George Washington University) or graduate (Boston University) schools had football teams so I have no obligatory school spirit connections.  I don't understand the rules, and I find the game incredibly boring.  For the sake of providing an answer to this question I'll say on TV, just because at home there are more options for entertaining myself while a game is on, like reading a book.  Or leaving the room.

Favorite football team to cheer for?

"Cheer" is a strong word.  Let's say it's the team with the colors I like the best.  Moving on...

Daylight savings time: love it or hate it?

We actually don't do daylight savings time out here in Hawaii, but I generally do enjoy having that extra hour of sleep on the first day.

How do your workouts change in the fall?

If I've been running I usually stop when it gets cold out.  Of course, that's not an issue out here but I'm kind of over running at the moment so I've stopped anyway.  Other than that, most of my workouts take place indoors so the changing seasons ain't no thang.

Any fashion essentials for fall weather?

I wish I had all of these.  Source.

Oh my goodness, I love sweaters and leather boots in such a way.  I was so sad that I couldn't bring any of my fall stuff to Hawaii with me.  As you can imagine, my family on the east coast thinks I'm crazy ("This is what you're complaining about?  You're sad that you live in Hawaii because you couldn't bring any of your sweaters?  Your life is SO hard, tell me more about the terrible weather in Hawaii...."  I know, okay?  I know).  But really, I will be very excited when I get to live somewhere with seasons again.  And it doesn't help that the stores out here still sell sweaters and boots and scarves, so there's all this stuff for me to gaze at longingly but not buy.

Do your meals change as the weather changes?

You know, I was going to say yes, but then I realized that regardless of the high temperatures out here I have oatmeal and hot coffee for breakfast every day anyway, and I've been making chili like it's my job (I've been using this recipe, which is the bomb).  Similarly,  when I lived on the east coast I would eat ice cream and watermelon through the winter.  So, I guess the real answer is no they don't.  However, even though the weather didn't change, when October rolled around it was time for me to start eating all the pumpkin-flavored things.  So that's something, I guess.

Favorite fall dessert?

Trader Joe's gingerbread cake with whipped cream on top.  When I lived in DC I would have that for my birthday.  I really wanted some this year but there's no TJ's out here!

Best thing about fall?

Halloween!  It's my favorite holiday.  I love dressing up, and as far as I can remember I've never been the same thing twice (possibly when I was younger, but not in recent memory, at least).  Halloween is also a great time to get skeleton-themed items, which as an anthropologist I can totally display all year long :-).

Worst thing about fall?

The way all the bugs say, "Oh, it's cold!  Better move into the house with you..."  Not a fan.

Best thing that will happen in Fall 2012?

Well, since fall is pretty much over I think I can say that in my opinion the best thing to happen was the outcome of the elections in November.  In the days leading up to the big day I was seriously scared that Mittens would take it, and I was so relieved when Obama finally pulled ahead.  

Okay, so that's it!  Now you know all about what I think of autumn things and other vital information.  Good times.  

It Wasn't ALL Bad!

My birthday loot!  We're using the poinsettia since we don't have a tree.  The gift that's still wrapped is what my parents sent Kevin for Christmas.  I don't know what it is!

The other thing I did on Sunday was turn 25!  Quarter of a century!  I’m almost like a grown up now, isn’t that weird?  It’s crazy times.

My family had mailed me a box filled with goodies and some Christmas decorations a couple of days earlier, but it came with strict instructions that the wrapped packages inside weren’t to be opened until the 9^th (or the 25th  in Kevin's case).  I got home from the marathon at about 3 in the afternoon, and pretty much the first thing I did was call my parents and unwrap my presents.  Here’s what I got:

My mom gave me these super-cute earrings she had found at a craft fair over the summer.

The first pair is little monkey faces, and the second one is bees.  I love them!

My dad got me this awesome t-shirt.  I had actually seen this shirt on a different website but hadn’t mentioned to anyone that I wanted it, so it’s totally cool that my dad knew to get it for me! 

Get it?!  I love bone jokes in such a way :p.

Finally, my brother got me a DVD of Friends with Benefits.  I saw this in theaters when it came out and LOVED it.  I’m always impressed with JT’s acting skills.

Even after my less-than-stellar marathon performance I still got to have my birthday dinner of choice, AKA the Mexican Pizza from Taco Bell.  I probably should have taken a picture, but I just shoved it in my face instead.  And before anyone says anything, I know that this food item is neither Mexican nor pizza.  No one goes to Taco Bell because they want some Mexican food; we go because we want some delicious.  My birthday Taco Bell trip is also pretty much the one time that I’ll break my no-soda rule (I feel like I haven’t mentioned this before, so I’ll do it now: I don’t drink soda.) so that I can have their Baja Blast Mountain Dew, which is the best.  I also got the caramel apple empanada, which is so incredibly delicious and I wish I could eat one every day.

The one small snag came at the “birthday cake” portion of the evening.  Since I was so sore I could barely move I asked Kevin to go out and get our Taco Bell, and on his way home I asked him to stop at Whole Foods and get me a birthday dessert from their bakery section.  He called me from the store to let me know what my options were, and I decided on the chocolate mousse tart.  This would have been lovely and perfect, except that Kevin didn’t realize until he got home that the tart was vegan and made out of tofu.

While I have certainly heard many wonderful things about the benefits of eating a vegan diet, I have to say I have zero interest in it.  I have even less of an interest in eating so-called “junk food” made out of tofu and non-dairy cream cheese on my birthday.  I had a small bite, and honestly it tasted fine, but I had pretty much decided that I wasn’t going to like it before we even opened the package.  Kevin ended up eating it, which was fine because I had my empanada and a pint of Hagen Daaz strawberry ice cream in the freezer.   

On Wednesday, my pal Nikki from work brought me in a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting.   Normally we could stop right there and it would be all good in the hood, but this particular cake was kicked up a notch by the fact that it was shaped like a skull:

And also because of Nikki's artistic knife placement.  Pretty awesome, right?!

So, all in all, my marathon-induced weep fest aside, it was a pretty good birthday :).

I Did It! Sort of.

The shell necklace is actually what we were given as our Finisher's Medal, which was pretty cool.  As you'll probably gather when you keep reading, this picture was actually taken a couple of days after the marathon.  There weren't a whole lot of smiley faces happening on Race Day.

So, last Sunday was the 2012 Honolulu Marathon.  I’m just going to start out by saying it didn’t go at all the way I had wanted it to and I’m glad that it’s over.  20 out of 26.2 miles came with a lot of tears and anger and depression, and even though I did finish, I’m still not quite proud of myself.

I’m a terrible blogger and didn’t post about it, but in November I sprained the Medial Collateral Ligament on my left knee.  While my doctor told me that I could probably still run the marathon, what this meant was I pretty much missed my last month of training to give myself time to heal.  During my earlier training I had gotten up to 16 miles, and I thought that this combined with race-day adrenaline would carry me through.  However, looking back I don’t think I was really prepared.

Everything started out pretty much okay.  I was definitely going slower than I normally would have, but I was trying to be conscious of my knees.  Things went pretty smoothly this way right up until mile 6, when I got an inexplicable pain in my right hip.  This got steadily worse until I could only run for about 30 seconds at a time before the pain was too much and I had to stop and walk.

There isn’t really a word for how disappointed I felt when I realized that the rest of the marathon wasn’t going to go the way I had hoped.  Even though I had told pretty much anyone who would listen that I knew I was going to be slower this time around, and that I was going to take it easy, and walk instead of run if my knees started hurting, I didn’t actually believe that I would really have to do these things.  It was a huge letdown when I finally had to force myself to accept that I was going to walk the majority of the race.  From mile 6 to mile 16 I did still try to run, mostly by telling myself that the pain didn’t matter and that I could make it.  Eventually, however, the pain was too much and I walked the last 10 miles.

I had approached Marathon Day with the mindset that as long as my knees were better I would be okay to run.  On Sunday morning my knees WERE better, but I still ended up not being able to run the course, and I just felt like this was incredibly unfair.  The hip pain was completely new; I had never had any problems with that joint during my training, so I couldn’t understand why it was happening.  I felt like I was weak, and that my body had betrayed me.

At this point my hip hurt while I was walking as well, and muscle soreness had started to set into my legs.  Every step was a struggle, but there was nothing I could do except keep going.  Even then, I didn’t feel like I had a right to my soreness, because I was just walking.  There were so many times that I wanted to give up, and I was so angry with myself for not being able to complete the race the way that I had wanted to.  I didn’t feel like I deserved my Finisher’s medal, or the Taco Bell I had planned to eat that evening.  I’m the kind of person who doesn’t really like to do things that they can’t do well, and I felt like I had failed.  I told myself multiple times that deciding to do this marathon was a TERRIBLE idea and that I was NEVER going to do it again!

Almost everyone I’ve spoken to since has told me that finishing at all is a big accomplishment and something I should be proud of.  During the race, I overheard another racer say, “There are only three things to keep in mind: 1) Finish. 2) Don’t get hurt. 3) Don’t be last.  If you do those three things, you’ve won.”  This makes sense and I guess it’s true, but it’s definitely taken me a couple of days to come around to it.  I feel like I put in a lot of work to make sure I’d be ready for race day, and I didn’t really get anything back.  I got the pain but none of the glory.  Even though I finished, the way I see it I didn’t have much of a choice.  My car was parked at the finish line, and if I wanted to go home (and I SO wanted to just go home) I had to get there.

I am working on changing my mindset, though.  I think that someday I will be able to look at this experience and see something good in it – probably something real cheesy about pushing forward when all you want to do is collapse, or how you can get through anything if you just take it one step at a time, or something like that.  In hindsight, I probably could very well have gone up to one of the first aid tents, told the medical services people that my leg hurt too much to go on, and had them drive me to the finish line.  In all honesty, I did think about doing this once or twice.  But I didn’t do it, and I suppose that says something, right?

At the Marathon Expo the day before the race, I got this necklace:

The pendant is made by a company called I Declare! in case anyone is interested.

I had bought it to kind of be a symbol of strength to help me get through the marathon.  When I got home on Sunday afternoon, I took it off immediately and put it away.  On Monday morning, though, I put it back on and I’ve continued to wear it so far.  Even though Race Day didn’t turn out the way I had wanted, I’m trying not to be so hard on myself about it.  I guess the charm can still symbolize strength, just a different kind than I had originally meant.