Friday Favorite Five (A Day Early)

This blog will at some point evolve into a daily-updated food, exercise and healthy living blog. Right now, I'm still brainstorming blog topics, and figuring out how to integrate blogging into my life.

I'd like to have an easy Friday posting. It is of course Thursday. I'm going to be flying all day tomorrow, so this FFF will be today! Almost Friday Favorite Five.

1. Grooveshark

• I love Grooveshark. If you don't know what it is, it's like Playlist.com and Pandora made a baby! It has an online streaming radio option or the make your own playlist (or listen to someone else's) option. It's fun to make playlists with different themes (Workout, Swanky Dinner, etc.)

2. Justin's Nut Butter

• I can't begin to describe my love of various nut butters in the variety of flavors available. I have a dozen jars of different brands, nut, and flavor combos in the fridge and cupboard. These Justin chocolate nut butters?? Stop. I bought four chocolate peanut butter squeezable packets at Sprouts the other day. I already at them all. I bought them to eat with sliced apples. They're sooo good. Like a less sweet Reese's PB cup. 

3. Flipping Out

• Basically I love all of the Bravo programming. Reality TV, but less trashy? I think? Anyway... Flipping Out is a show on Bravo starring Designer/Real Estate Investor Jeff Lewis and his crazy staff and friends. I adore him. I love the houses he's done. He's so talented, and so insane. His housekeeper makes the show though. It's on Tuesday nights. Watch it. Now. 

4. Dooce

• Dooce is a blog written by Heather B. Armstrong. She's married with two children. She lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. She's hilarious. You should also read her book "It Sucked and Then I Cried." It's so funny, and real. Her two daughters are so cute. She has an amazing house. She has a tremendous sense of style. My favorite blog to read. 

5. Lululemon 

• Lululemon is my favorite athletic apparel company. I am in love with their crops. They're all I work out in. The crops at left are the ones I own. I have four pairs of Lululemon crops. They're expensive, but amazing. Wearing some now. Wore them to the gym. Life's too short for gross work out clothes. I find that if I have lots of work out clothes I like to wear, I work out more, for longer. Crazy. 

Athlete's Appetite

One thing I've noticed since being back to working out six days a week anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes a day is that I find myself hungry every three or four hours. I'm assure by Cale that this is normal, but it's kind of frustrating. I don't want to be hungry so often. I don't want to eat so often. I've been trying to combat this by eating 3 small snack-type meals all day and a "normal"-sized dinner at night, being conscious of keeping my calories under a reasonable level. If I were just trying to maintain my weight, I wouldn't stress too much about counting calories. As I'm trying to lose the few pounds that snuck up on me during the rest period of the surgeries and their subsequent recoveries.

I've also been attempting to eat verrry clean (minus the Chinese food episode of Sunday night). Lots of fruit and veggies and whole grains and lean proteins. I wish this weren't challenging to me at all. I wish I never craved chocolate, or sugar. Although, if I'm honest, it has gotten easier. I hardly ever crave fast food anymore... that used to be a huge weakness. I actually crave fruits and vegetables now. I feel my best when I'm eating healthfully. That's great. I never ever would have guessed this would be my reality at any point of my life. Don't get me wrong... this girl still has an obsession with cookies.

And speaking of cookies. I have been reading Jenna at Eat, Live, Run for about two years now, and lately she's been baking up a storm. I am not a baker. Something so scientific about it, but I've been trying to get more into it. Because I'm following Michael Pollan's advice -- if you want to eat "junk food," make it yourself, from scratch. Jenna has a similar philosophy saying she'd rather eat one cookie with real butter and sugar than several cookies with margarine and artificial sweeteners. Smart!!! Common Sense!! I love it.

Anyway, back to these cookies. Jenna posted her recipe for her favorite chocolate chip cookies, and I'm planning to bake some up. I have a current favorite cookie recipe -- Double Chocolate Cranberry Oatmeal cookies. Next time I bake them (I just baked two dozen -- some for Cale's parents, and some for Cale and me) I'll take photos and post the recipe. They're ridiculously good. Yum.

My next baking adventure, though, is these babies: Jenna's Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies.



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Don't these look so insanely good?!

I'll have to eat one or two and give the rest away immediately. I can't be trusted around these kinds of things.

That will have to wait until we get back from Omaha. Making the trek home for Labor Day weekend, and then Tuesday I start my new job! Exciting!

Today I did 65 minutes on the elliptical, and then a 10 minute strength routine on ExerciseTV. (By the way -- my favorite new fitness discovery, second only to the Kettlebells.)

Skinny vs. Healthy

My entire life I've wanted to be "skinny." I thought skinny girls who could eat anything they wanted were lucky. I have a hard time finding balance because I am cursed with this all or nothing attitude. I beat myself up mentally if I eat poorly. I internally obsess about it, which causes me eat poorly again because I'm bummed out about it. And if I can't work out for a full sixty minutes (at least), I tell myself, "well, it's hardly worth it then, is it?" I'm trying to live a happy life. One where I can enjoy a cookie or a cheeseburger sometimes, but mostly eat very healthy. One where I exercise (some way, some how) most of the days in a week. Because really? 10 minutes is better than nothing... so 30, 45 minutes, although not 60 minutes, is great.

In an attempt to help find some balance, and support the argument that "perfect eating" is impossible, but eating what you want (within reason) and maintaining weight is possible, I bought Bethenny Frankel's book Naturally Thin.

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I'm only about half-way through it, but so far it's great. I mean, it's mostly common sense, but the way she writes about it is funny, direct, and friendly. It's been good to read as a reminder that you don't need to eat nothing but spinach and salmon to be healthy and maintain weight. She also has a ton of delicious sounding (haven't tried any of them... yet) recipes.

I've been scrutinizing healthy recipes, and reading about healthy food, and good food swaps for a few months and I feel like I know how to properly feed my body. I feel like I'm finally giving it what it needs (forget about that Chinese food incident yesterday!) and I feel stronger and healthier.

Since I started surgery (Feb. 2) and now (I'm about 2 months post-op from my last surgery), I've gained a little weight. Nothing too significant,and I know it'll come off if I continue to put the effort in, but it's extremely frustrating. I keep reminding myself I wasn't allowed to work out for nearly five months. Of course I'd gain weight. So, this is my 5th week of being back to exercise, and for some reason, I'm not seeing a change in the number on the scale. But energy, stamina, endurance, and strength have all seen much improvement. So, I keep reminding myself -- the goal is healthy... not skinny. (But I'd never turn down skinny! Ha!)

On tap for today for me kettle bell work out (DVD) and a run (2 miles) with Cale tonight.

Horrible at Tennis, Part 1

In an attempt to live healthy, active lifestyles, Cale and I decided to play some tennis today. Inspiration hit this week when I was handcuffed to the elliptical at 24 Hour Fitness, some professional tennis match was on. U.S. Open? I don't know. Something.

We made our way down to Irvine, widely known for their amazing master-planned tennis courts, and found the courts at "the Castle Park" to be completely empty! Success!

I wish I could say the same for our "match." Cale, someone I would consider naturally athletic, and therefore the opposite of me, didn't seem too rusty after not having played in at least several months if not longer. I, on the other hand, (unnatural athlete... see? Clever title) struggled to return the ball more than half of the time. I was eventually hitting them back, but the aim and accuracy were weak.

I did a good job at not channeling my inner John McEnroe, but there were a handful of times I wanted to smash my racket on the ground.

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We played for about 45 minutes or an hour. In the end it didn't matter that we stunk pretty bad. It was sunny, and beautiful out, and we enjoyed the weather, had fun, and got a little sweaty. I worked out hard Monday through Friday this week, and decided to have some "active rest" this weekend and go on walks, be outside, play tennis, and give my very sore muscles some time to recover.

We're real healthy kids.

But we may or may not have had Chinese food for dinner tonight.