Missy Maintains » Daisy

The Chocolate Banana Burger

MissyMaintains — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 14:39:59 +0000

Happy July! I wanted to let you guys in on a little deal before I get started! A few of you have emailed me expressing interest in attending my school, Institute for Integrative Nutrition. They are holding an Independence Day special where if you enroll by Tuesday, July 5, you will receive a $300 tuition scholarship plus a “Let Freedom Ring” gift bag .

Here’s what’s in the “Let Freedom Ring” gift bag:

7 Habits of Highly Effective People 50 Card Deck
Achieve Everyday Journal
EnviroSax MiniSax
Goji Cranberry Cacao superfood bars by graduate Moria Felber
How to Find the Work You Love book
Strengths Finder book
Write it Down Make it Happen book
IIN logo goodies

Just call (877) 730-5444 to speak with an Admissions Advisor about enrolling. You don’t have to live in New York to attend because they have a distance learning program. Feel free to e-mail me with any questions about the school! Also, if you mention my name when enrolling, I will personally send you an extra $50.00 check! Let me know if you are interested

Yesterday’s Eats

I’ve been having the same breakfast every single morning this week: a Chocolate Banana Burger!

It doesn’t get much better than that! I finally ran out of the Nature’s Pride wheat buns so looks like I’ll have to move on! Dark Chocolate Dreams peanut butter is dangerous in my apartment anyway. I will explain later. The tub is almost gone just after 1 week. Oy.

I brought a lovely lunch to work! I made a salad with a Morningstar Farms Mushroom Lovers burger, avocado, hard boiled egg, and grilled mushrooms.

Delicious lunch! I also brought a snack to munch on for the side. The folks over at Smile.ly sent me Snikiddy Cheddar Cheese baked fries to try out.

About the fries:

50% less fat than regular potato chips
Gluten and wheat free
No preservatives
No corn syrup
No trans fats
Low in saturated fats
No hydrogenated oils

I liked that there were a ton of fries in the bag for just 130 calories. I don’t think I would buy them because the ingredient list is just way too long and they don’t really have any nutritional value. They were fun to munch on though! I guess they are a better option than french fries!

After work I went to the gym and did 30 minutes on the elliptical and some hand weights. I also walked outside for another half hour to pick up a package at my sister’s. I made up for not going to the gym in the morning!

I made another fun salad for dinner!

It contained salmon cake bites, edamame, mushrooms, avocado, and hard boiled eggs. I used my cool egg slicer that I got at the Eggland’s Best event!

So fun! It made slicing my eggs much easier. Daisy spotted the hummus on my plate.

One more…

I had an intense chocolate craving after dinner, like always. I searched my fridge and freezer and found a Chocolate Heart Thrive bar. I heated it up in the microwave for 30 seconds and then went a little dessert crazy….

Apparently just the bar itself was not enough. I wanted more chocolate for dipping! Then I saw a banana and decided that it would be fun to dip in the chocolate peanut butter. Then I saw whipped cream and decided to make it like a sundae! It was delicious! That was all fine until I went in the fridge again. I made myself another banana chocolate burger earlier in the evening to bring for breakfast today and just could not let it sit there. I ate half of that too. Blah. I guess I can’t make such a good breakfast that involves chocolate the night before because it is too tempting! Maybe it is just a bad time of month. I don’t know. I didn’t let it get to me. Instead I just set my alarm for 5:45 am and hit up the gym this morning. I knocked out 45 minutes of cardio plus some arm weights. Good to go. I was just sad this morning when I only had half of a breakfast left! I ate it as my pre-gym snack. Perfect. I will try to be a better intuitive eater today. It was just one of those nights!

1) Do you struggle with intuitive eating? Can you stop when you are full even if you are craving something?

2) Are there any foods you crave after a meal? Chocolate and fruit for me!

The Fiesta Continues…

MissyMaintains — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 15:04:43 +0000

Hello! Hope everyone is having a nice day so far! I am going to share some photos from the weekend since the birthday celebrations continued!

Friday

I had plans to go to a bar called Maya with Dori, my friend Kaity, and a few others. After writing my end of the week reflections last Friday, I decided it would be a nice idea to walk to the bar. I looked it up and it said it was 3.2 miles and would take an hour and 15 minutes. I got out of work early and it was a beautiful day out so why not? For those of you who are familiar with New York, I walked from Chelsea to the Upper East Side. It took about an hour and definitely made me thirsty for a mango margarita!

Maya has great happy hour specials. The margaritas were half-priced and the appetizers were just $3.00. We ended up ordering some guacamole for the table. It was delicious!

I also split 2 appetizers with Kaity. They were tiny but delicious! No wonder they were just $3.00! We split the Huarache Vegetariano: huitlacoche, mushrooms, goat cheese, and salsa verde on crispy flatbread.

Yum! I love anything with mushrooms and goat cheese! We also split a chicken taco. I wasn’t as crazy about this.

I had about 4 margaritas by the time we were done!

Dori and I.

Kaity and I.

We went to one more bar afterwards. We were all starving by the end of the night since the appetizers were so small so we went to the diner. Dori and I split an omelet with mushrooms, avocado, and cheddar cheese.

My plate:

Very fun night! Love all that melted cheese. Yumm.

Saturday

I had my actual birthday party at a rooftop bar called Highbar. I stopped and grabbed something to eat before the party. I figured it was the smart thing to do before drinking all day! I got the West Coast Vegetarian wrap from Pax Foods.

It contained chick peas, sundried tomatoes, watercress, fresh alfalfa sprouts, avocado and goat cheese all inside a whole wheat wrap. Perfect!

I got to Highbar at 2:00pm since there was an open bar from 2:00 to 3:00! The bar was so nice! We had a view of the cruise ships!

I got the best margarita ever! It was a Watermelon Mint Margarita! I stuck with these most of the day. So refreshing!

The open bar was for Smirnoff Ice. I had one or two of them. I don’t think I’ve seen one of those since college!

We also got vodka infused watermelon!!

Best thing ever.

We drank for about 5 hours and eventually left so we could eat some dinner! We ended up at Vynl. We started with the Vegetable Dumplings.

Dori and I decided to get 2 entrees and split them because we could not decide!

We got the Grilled Vegetable Goat Cheese wrap.

We also got the Veggie Burger sandwich.

My plate! Sorry for the blur. Guess the alcohol was setting in! The fries were amazing of course! Aren’t they always after drinking?

Sunday

I had plans to go home to Philly for Father’s Day. Somehow I woke up earlier than necessary so I decided to attempt a run. My 5K is in 2 days so I wanted to see if I could run 3 miles. Did I make it? No. I blame it on drinking the day before for hours and the 90 degree weather. I also failed to bring water with me. I maybe ran 2 miles and had to stop and walk. I did the whole run/walk thing for 4 miles total. I think I’ll be fine on Thursday though. We’ll see! Eventually I took the train home and brought Daisy along to keep me company.

I layed out by our pool all day.

My dad kept handing me these! Maybe I should come home more often.

I’d say it was a fun filled weekend! Back to reality now. I have some fun events after work every night this week so stay tuned for some recaps! Have a good one!

One day left to enter my Culturelle T-Shirt Giveaway!

End of the Week Reflections and a Winner

MissyMaintains — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 15:10:13 +0000

Hello and happy Friday! It’s “Summer Friday” which means I get out 2 hours early! That just means I get to begin my happy hour 2 hours early! More on that later Let’s start things off with the winner of the Wanchai Ferry frozen entree coupon and 2 tea sets!

Random Integer Generator
Here are your random numbers:

5
Timestamp: 2010-06-18 13:50:54 UTC

5: Kelsey: “I would rather eat fresh food over frozen but in a pinch lean cuisine makes some good meals. I really like the Santa Fe-style Rice and beans with some fresh salsa! YUM!”

Congrats AGAIN Kelsey!! Kelsey is on a little winning streak because she won my Core Fusion Lean & Toned giveaway too! Enjoy

The Lite Choice Deals!

Before I get into some food highlights from the week, I wanted to share two exciting deals with you!

*Head over to Living Social Deals to get 8 cups or cones of soft serve for just $14.00! That is a $28.00 value. Of course I already bought mine

*On Father’s Day bring your dad to TLC and enjoy a free cup or cone!

Okay, now I am craving soft serve. Maybe later! So I realized most of my posts have been just dinner recaps so I thought I’d show some of my breakfast and lunches from the past week.

Egg whites with feta cheese and mushrooms on whole wheat bread

Pineapple cottage cheese with bananas and iced coffee

Westside Market salad with tuna, broccoli, feta cheese, avocado, black beans

Chelsea Market salad with carrots, peppers, chickpeas, cauliflower, tofu, guacamole

This wrap was a newbie for me! It contained organic tempeh bacon, avocado, lettuce, and organic vegan mayonaise. It was really good but I couldn’t find any avocado! It was mostly just tempeh bacon and lettuce. It wasn’t until halfway through the wrap that I found one slice of avocado!

Still very good though! I love vegan mayo!

Last but not least….

I had to throw that one in there!

End of the Week Reflections

I felt like I was not very healthy this week and exhausted every day. Overall it looks like I ate pretty well during the day but I also drank a million calories in alcohol every night! I only made it to the gym twice this week but can still go Saturday and Sunday hopefully! I also don’t like that I ate almost every meal out including breakfast! On a positive note, I had so much fun every single night socializing with friends. It’s been an awesome birthday and is still not over yet! Being social and having good relationships is definitely key in staying healthy. I have a few goals for next week:

Make it to the gym at least 4 times during the week.
Run a 5K. Yes, I have my first 5K next week! I did not really train for it but am pretty sure I can make it if I run really slow. I don’t care about my time but I just don’t want to stop and walk! Maybe I can squeeze one run in this weekend just to be sure.
Go to bed by 11:00 Monday through Thursday. I basically lived on coffee this week since I went to bed at 12 or 1 every night! Not okay.
Bring breakfast and lunch to work 4 out of 5 days of the week. I spent way too much money this week just because I never made it to the supermarket at the beginning of the week to stock up on food.
Make dinner instead of going out to eat at least 3 nights next week. This one is hard because I don’t like to turn down happy hours but I need to save money. Eating at home is always healthier too.

That looks good for now! Next Friday I will look back at my goals and see how I did! Hopefully I will feel a little better! I am not setting any weekend goals right now because I already know what this weekend entails..lots of drinking! Tonight is half-priced margaritas and tomorrow is an afternoon open bar party on a rooftop! Wooh wooh!

1) What is one goal you have for next week?

2) What are you looking forward to this weekend?

Is My Salad TOO Big?

MissyMaintains — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 03:44:23 +0000

Hey everyone! Random Friday night post here! I have school early tomorrow but don’t feel like sleeping yet. Probably because I just had this…..

1/2 Cheesecake and 1/2 Vanilla with crunchies. Dori texted me and told me she got some so I copied. Oh and if you didn’t take the TLC Survey yet…do it now and then come back to my blog when you are done! Thanks!!

Before my lovely soft serve, I had this crazy Whole Foods salad:

Apparently it was huge. The lady checking me out said, “You gonna eat all that??”

Um…I just got done 50 minutes on the elliptical right before so hell yes I am eating it all.

Anyway, half of the salad is lettuce. The other half is vegan chicken salad, detox salad, cabbage, quinoa, kale, chickpeas, seaweed salad, and cauliflower. The cashier still believed I was eating way too much. Whatever… hope she goes home and enjoys her McDonald’s.

Sorry, I just get really pissed off when employees comment on how much or what I am eating. They should be happy I am spending $11.00 dollars on a salad! Usually I keep it around $7.00 but I was pretty famished from my workout so yeah; I decided to sample one of everything from the salad bar.

Back to today:

I had a lovely lunch date with Marina at our usual, Sea Thai. I started off with my wonderful free appetizer, the roasted tofu salad with peanut dressing. Love it.

I went with the grilled chicken breast with green vegetables for my main dish. Now this was a big portion!

The sauce was a delicious mix of sweet and spicy. I loved it but could only finish half! Marina and I gossiped about men as usual. Nice little escape from the work day!

So what other exciting events have occurred since I came back from Puerto Rico?? Hmm… sushi with my roommate!

We started with some edamame.

I let her pick all of the sushi this time! I did choose a salmon avocado roll at least. Oh and the brown rice on the sushi was all me.

We also got an eel avocado roll, a shrimp tempura dynamite roll, and some other shrimp roll. Don’t remember names too well. Check out this ONE roll:

Amazing.

Last night I went to a happy hour with my friend Amanda. We went to MacDougal’s in the West Village.

We played pool and darts with her boyfriend and his friend. I definitely lost both games but that just meant I got to drink more!

I came home and made some crazy drunken dinner. Turkey bacon, omelet, laughing cow, and a burnt wrap. I set the fire alarm off too. I can’t even cook sober so I don’t know why I thought this would be a smart idea.

The only other exciting thing worth mentioning tonight is Wiggles and Daisy. They are slowly becoming friends.

They sleep on both sides of me Alright I am off! Gotta wake up for nutrition school all early! Have a good weekend!

1) Do you get pissed when employees comment on what or how much you are eating?

2) What is easy to cook when drunk?

Sicky Eats!

MissyMaintains — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:00:19 +0000

Happy Friday! I’ve been sick all week so I am looking forward to the weekend. Actually I won’t have much of a weekend since I have school both days from 9 to 4 but oh well! I don’t have a fever anymore today but just can’t breathe or talk! It’s killing me that I haven’t worked out all week but I know I needed the rest. I am hoping for some Core Fusion tonight and one day after school? We’ll see!

I will do a little recap of some of my eats over the past couple of days. I’ll just show you my favorites to prevent this from becoming a novel!

I got my favorite breakfast wrap from Energy Kitchen Tuesday morning after yoga!

5 egg whites on a whole wheat wrap with mushrooms and broccoli. The breakfast wraps are only $3.00 there! Love it! Every other day this week I had oatmeal since it is always the best breakfast when sick.

Lunch on Monday was a spicy salmon roll and salmon sashimi. Excuse my horrible picture taking skills.

Lunch on Tuesday was organic frozen vegetables with hummus and lettuce on an Eziekal wrap! Thanks Dori for the new lunch obsession.

I had some Pirate’s Booty on the side.

I was feeling my worst on Wednesday and just wanted to lay in bed with chicken noodle soup. I couldn’t lay in bed since I was at work but I was able to get my hands on some soup!

I got the Chicken Vegetable Couscous soup from Hale and Hearty. Just what I needed!

Lunch yesterday was a falafel wrap! I saw these at the grocery store the night before and had to get them!

I liked that 4 balls was just 180 calories with 6 grams of fiber and 5 grams of protein.

The balls were a nice size too! I had 4 on a wrap with hummus, sprouts, and lettuce.

I just heated the wrap up in the microwave for 40 seconds before I was about to eat it. It was delicious!

As for dinner, you already probably know that I had homeade pizza 2 nights of the week! Last night I made a delicious Mexican salad! I almost went to 5 Burro Cafe for Mexican and found out an hour later that I would have ran into Mari! I decided at the last minute to just make my own Mexican instead. Margaritas probably would not be smart when trying to get over being sick. I also made dinner every night this week so I wanted to be good and keep saving money! Maybe next time Mari!

My salad contained steamed broccoli, mushrooms, corn, red peppers, and Lightlife Smart Ground Crumbles. Yum! Maybe not quite as good as 5 Burro but probably much healthier!

One more picture….of Daisy of course!

She is such a cuddly stuffed animal. She really does not leave my side when I get home. One more week of her cone head!

I am off to go do some homework! Have a great weekend!

1) What are you looking forward to this weekend?

2) What is your favorite thing to eat when sick?

Don’t forget to enter my Safeway Gift Card Giveaway!

Got my baby back…baby back

MissyMaintains — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 02:14:47 +0000

Hope everyone survived their Monday! I had a long weekend because of the snow on Friday but am back in the swing of things now! I haven’t posted my eats in a while so I will do a little weekend recap with the highlights!

Let’s start with one of my favorite parts of the weekend….

An apricot margarita from 5 Burro! I also got the best salad ever!

I got the Vegetarian Mexican salad. They LOADED it with veggies! I could barely finish it! You can never go wrong at the 5 Burro!

I tried a new cereal for breakfast on Saturday morning..Kashi Strawberry Fields!

This only has 120 calories per serving and has a really simple ingredient list:

Ingredients:

Organic Long Grain Rice, Florida Crystals Organic Evaporated Cane Juice, Organic Whole Wheat, Organic Freeze Dried Strawberries, Sea Salt, Organic Brown Rice Syrup, Organic Freeze Dried Raspberries.

The cereal was really good. The flakes were very crunchy and they almost tasted like Frosted Flakes! There were tons of strawberries that got nice and soft once they melted in the milk. Definitely a new favorite cereal.

I had dinner at CheeburgerCheeburger Friday night and got another great salad.

I got the Portobella Mushroom salad with carrots, cucumbers and feta cheese. I also split the most amazing fries with the roommate.

Saturday night I took the train home to Philly to pick up Daisy! She got spayed last week. She is sad and confused but has been extra cuddly lately!

My mom and I drove to Atlantic City because my dad’s band played at Hard Rock Cafe! My dad is in a Grateful Dead cover band called Steal Your Face. The actual Grateful Dead were doing a concert in the same hotel as my dad’s band so basically Steal Your Face was the Grateful Dead’s after-party!

My dad is the one with the black shirt and guitar. See a resemblance?

Some random guy decided that he liked me and stood with my mom and I all night. He got annoying and I eventually had to ditch him but I got 4 free beers out of it at least! Haha I am mean but it saved me..or my mom at least $25.00

Once the Grateful Dead concert let out, everyone came in the Hard Rock to watch Steal Your Face. It got packed but was really exciting to see so many people watching my dad!

He played for everyone until 4:00 in the morning! Fun night!

On Sunday, my mom and I drove Daisy back to Philly (we brought Daisy to A.C). My mom practiced her Zumba routine with me since she just got Zumba certified. Pretty soon she will come to New York and teacha little class for my friends and any NY bloggers! Later that night I took the train back to New York.

I made a cottage cheese plate for dinner!

I steamed broccoli, mushrooms, and parsnips and topped them with soy sauce. I mixed everything in with some cottage cheese! Fun dinner. I am almost sick of cottage cheese again but I just need to mix it with some new ingredients I think!

I will save yesterday’s eats for tomorrow because I made some amazing pizza that deserves it’s own post!

As far as workouts go, today was the first day I’ve worked out since last Tuesday! Oops! Today I went to Core Fusion Yoga so I hopefully I am out of my little rut. Class was amazing and extra challenging since I hadn’t worked out in so long. I plan to go to Core Fusion for the rest of the week which will be nice!

I will leave you with one more of the baby (can you tell I really missed her?)

Did you try any new foods this weekend?

What is your favorite kind of cereal?

Have a good one!

V-Day Dinner!

MissyMaintains — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:37:59 +0000

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I celebrated last night with dinner at an Italian restaurant called Da Rosina.

It was in restaurant row and seemed very crowded so that is always a good sign! It did not have the nicest atmosphere but the food made up for it!We enjoyed a nice bottle of Merlot.

I decided to go with the Pre-Fix menu so I could get an appetizer, entree and dessert for $30.00. We started off with a delicious appetizer:

Antipasti Bella Vista

grilled vegetables with fresh tomato, home-made mozzarella, & extra virgin olive oil dressing

There was squash, mushrooms, eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, and artichokes with big chunks of mozzarella. Yum!

For my main course I got:

Dentice alla Griglia
grilled red snapper served with vegetables

I loved this! The fish and the vegetables were both very flavorful.

Check out this entree:

Gnocchi al Pomodoro o Pesto
homemade potato dumplings with basil & marinara or pesto sauce

Doesn’t get better than that…until dessert!

Spuma di Cioccolata
chocolate mousse topped with whipped cream

I don’t think I have much to say about this other than MMMMM. Thick rich chocolate with strawberries and whipped cream. Great way to end dinner!

After dinner we went to see an opera that my friend from work was in!

It was in a cute little theatre and there were only about 30 people in the audience since it is a non-profit opera. We saw Bluebeard’s Castle. My friend was amazing. Such a strong beautiful voice!

We all went out for one more drink after the show to some bar near Penn Station. I got a Hurricane

Great night! Not sure what I am doing tonight yet! I got a nice gym session in this morning. I don’t really care too much about Valentine’s Day since everyone should show their love all the time! It is always a fun day to drink and eat chocolate! My roommate and I are talking about making chocolate covered strawberries later! Yum! Hope you have a great day with your sweetheart, friends, family, and pets! <3

Tequila in the Snow!

MissyMaintains — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:44:40 +0000

Good Morning! Hope everyone had fun in the snow yesterday. If you are from somewhere warm, I am jealous. I had a nice half day!

I got to work and made baked apple yogurt oats.

Nice change from the usual banana! I got the lovely half day e-mail after breakfast and made my way home at 1:00. I stopped at the food store to stock up because I thought I was not going to leave my apartment again.

I made a nice turkey and cheese wrap for lunch. I had Food Should Taste Good chips on the side!

I sat around and watched the snow with Daisy. She has a new obsession with the windows.

My roommate had off from work too so we decided to go to the movies! We were a little early and 5 Burro Cafe was across the street so we ended up splitting a banana margarita! We had to warm up somehow in the cold

We saw Edge of Darkness which was pretty good. We decided to do a double feature so we saw Legion after. This was the worst movie ever. Do not waste your money.

We left and Forest Hills looked like a ghost town! Not one restaurant or store was open! We decided to see if 5 Burro was still open and it was! They said they never ever close! I had one more Apricot Margarita!

Sorry you guys are probably sick of seeing these drinks all the time. I am done with them for a while (maybe)! They are no good for my waistline haha. I also woke up feeling like I had a fever. Probably not smart to run around in the snow with tequila in my system! What else is there to do on a snow day though?

We came back and played with Daisy in the snow!

I had to…it was her first snow storm!

Fun night! I am now chugging coffee so I can wake up a little! I had the subway ride from hell…2 guys battling at 8:00 in the morning. They were rapping at the same time really loud for the entire hour. Good thing I had my music! 2 other guys also got arrested for punching eachother. The subway stopped for 10 minutes at every stop too so it took foreverrr to get to work. Blahh.

How was your commute? How do you get to work/school? Have a good day!

My Favs…Whole Foods, Uno, Daisy!

MissyMaintains — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 16:43:27 +0000

Good Morning! I decided to do a little weekend recap before I head to Equinox for my last inTensati class! On Friday I got my hair cut after work and then picked up some dinner at Whole Foods.

I got pretty much everything!

Baked tofu
Roasted cauliflower, broccoli, and brussels sprouts
Sprout salad
Beats
Cabbage
Edamame

I went home and went with my roommate to Five Burro for a quick margarita!

I got my favorite new flavor, apricot. I swear the tequila was filled to the very top. Crazy.

Saturday morning I woke up and made some Cheerios with bananas and raisins.

I then went to a double feature at the movies! We saw Avatar in 3D and Book of Eli. They were both really good. I thought I would not like Avatar but actually really loved it.

We hit up Uno for dinner since it was right across the street! I started with a house salad.

I got the usual….the Roasted Vegetable Feta Flax Wrap!

I got extra roasted veggies on the side instead of fries. So good! I took the night off from drinking since I feel a little cold coming on.

This morning I decided to try some stovetop oats since I never get to make them during the week.

I mixed oatbran, canned pumpkin, cinnamon, Stevia, and blackberries. Great combination! Nice change from the usual instant oats in the microwave. I also had some Tazo Awake tea since I am sleepy! My neighbors decided to start drilling at 9:00 am this morning. Gotta love that on a Sunday.

Random Daisy pictures…..

You know you all like my kitty pajamas. I thought the white one looked like Daisy

I better go get ready for the gym! I am so not in the mood to jump all around right now but can’t miss the inTensai finale! It is 2 hours long but some of that will be talking and stretching. It will be nice to get a good workout since drinks will probably be consumed later during Superbowl! I’m not even sure exactly what I am doing yet. It is between a little house party or sports bar. I’ll decide later!

1) Are you cooking anything for the game?

2) Do you prefer going to a house party or sports bar?

Have fun!

Haha!

MissyMaintains — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 04:10:03 +0000

You might be wondering about the title. I started this post last night and just wrote a random title so I could save it. I had to keep the ”Haha!” today because it made me laugh! I know I’m weird.

Workouts!

I was able to make it to Core Fusion last night after all! It was day 4 of the challenge! I decided to go to a new location so that I could take the class with Fred Devito, the founder of Core Fusion and guy from the videos!

The Soho location is much smaller than the other locations I’ve been to. I walked up a large flight of stairs and right into the studio. There was a small space for our coats and a little corner with a curtain for changing. I was glad I changed into my workout clothes beforehand!

Fred saw me and asked me how the challenge was going! I told him that it was going well and that I was nice and sore from my previous class. He told me that he was very impressed that Dori was able to get so many people to join along in her challenge. He also asked if I needed anything from him. So nice!

I won’t get into too much detail about the class again but it was HARD. My legs were burning even more than the day before! I wanted to cry during abs. There is something about the way Fred teaches that makes me want to work my hardest. Everything he says is extremely motivating.

At the end of class, Fred told everyone about Dori’s challenge! He said that there was a girl doing Core Fusion for 30 days and to check out her diary on the Core Fusion website. I texted Dori and told her she was famous! Before I left class, Fred told me I looked stronger in the positions since the last time I took a class with him. Very nice to hear!

Tonight I will not be able to go to Core Fusion so I went to the gym this morning! I was dead tired and sore so it was a struggle to stay on any one machine. I did the elliptical for 7 minutes and then walked on the treadmill for 15 minutes. I felt like passing out so I stretched on the mat for a while. The good thing about early morning workouts is that I pretty much have to stay at the gym since I have nothing else to do before work. If this morning happened to me after work, I definitely would have left after the 20 minutes! I still had 45 minutes left till I needed to shower so I walked for another 15 minutes on the treadmill. I did the stepper for 7 minutes. I did the other weird elliptical thing for 7 minutes. I pretty much covered every machine in the gym! It turned out to be a decent workout I spent my last 10 minutes in the steam room. Nice and relaxing!

Eats

I went back to oats yesterday!

My bowl contained 2 packets of 365 plain instant oats with cinnamon, skim milk, and Gerber freeze dried fruits! The apple and strawberries made a wonderful addition to the oatmeal.

I went to Hale and Hearty for lunch again. Yes, slightly addicted. I had a good reason though! I had one of those “buy 10 salads, get 1 free” cards! My salad below was free! (almost)

I added some extra toppings since I knew it would be free. I got carrots, cucumbers, broccoli, asparagus, goat cheese, and avocado. Apparently I got one too many toppings because they charged me $0.65 for the goat cheese. Still a great deal for my delicious salad!

I had a Glow Gluten Free Double Chocolate cookie for dessert. YUM!

Dinner was a repeat Mexican salad since I had lots of leftovers!

This time with a glass of red wine

I had some sugar-free chocolate fudge pudding for dessert. I had about half that bowl and saved the rest for…today!

I will leave you with a funny picture! I turned around and guess who was in the fridge!

Have a great day!