The long and winding road to fitness, day 136

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A pretty good day today.  I guess getting a decent night’s sleep helps.  I managed to get in about 7 hours last night and am hoping to do the same tonight.  It was crazy busy with people stocking up on all of the discounted Halloween and fall merchandise.  And yes, people have already started their Christmas shopping.  Back in my pre-retail days, I always set the goal of finishing all of my shopping by Thanksgiving.  Now I’m lucky to finish it at all.  Gotta love those gift cards.  And really, I like getting gift cards myself.  Then I can just go out and buy whatever the heck I want…oh wait, I pretty much do that anyhow…well, within reason…no trips to Paris or fancy shmancy cars…but you know what I’m saying, right?  There really are advantages to living by yourself.

I stopped at Kroger this morning before work to stock up on healthy dinners for the freezer at work.  I didn’t even realize they were having one of their mega sale things where you get $5 off your purchase if you buy ten items.  So, yes, I bought 10 Healthy Choice meals for work.  The one I ate for lunch today was really quite tasty…lemon pepper fish with rice and broccoli…only 350 calories and decent as far as sodium goes.  And, you know, that’s something I would be unlikely to prepare for myself so it’s a real treat to be able to throw it in the microwave and have a hot meal ready in 5 minutes or so.

I ended the day under on calories again.  Wow!  Two days in a row.  What’s going on? I also did some walking and strength training this morning.  And lots of walking at work, lots of walking, lots of talking…it’ll be nice to have tomorrow off and be able to enjoy a little peace and quiet.  I can be quite the talker, but I also like some time to myself.  I NEED time to myself in order to function.  I’ve been that way my entire life…never minded alone time.  I know there are a lot of people who want to be surrounded by people every minute of every day, but not me.  Being able to get away from people gives me time to recharge and go out and do it all again.

I’ve got to run some errands in the morning.  Then I’ll come home and clean house and do some cooking.  And maybe, just maybe, I’ll find a few minutes to do a little extra writing.  How about you?  What’s in store for your weekend?

 

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The long and winding road to fitness, day 134

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Have you ever had one of those days where you know you’ve been busy all day and have nothing to show for it?  That was my day today.  Go, go, go…and get absolutely nothing done.  But, such is life in the retail industry at times.  Maybe tomorrow will be a bit more productive…

I did upper body strength training and walked for 20 minutes this morning.  One of these days I’ll get back to working out for an hour or so a day, but that day probably won’t be here until after the holiday season.  We start our six-day work weeks in another week, so this is my last weekend off…boo!!  I do well to keep the house clean during that time of the year.

I did a good job with my eating today.  Twice avoided fast food and stuck with my plan.  I ate six fruits and veggies over the course of the day.  I feel pretty darn good about that.  Aiming to repeat tomorrow.  Had a V8 at lunch (low sodium) along with this chicken broccoli thing and half of a roasted squash.  That’s the most veggies I’ve had at lunch in quite some time. 

I need to do some cooking this weekend, haven’t sat down and planned anything yet, but I want something that is healthy, has loads of veggies and is easy to take to work.  I’ve been thinking about a pot of veggie soup and salad for lunch next week (I’ve noticed I tend to try to make healthier versions of some of my favorite restaurant meals…you know, Olive Garden soup and salad).

Definitely early to bed for me tonight.  3:30 will be here much too soon…sweet dreams to all!!

 

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The long and winding road to fitness, day 129

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Funny start to my day today.  I got to work  a few minutes before 5 this morning.  Waiting in the parking lot for my boss to show up (we can’t go in the building by ourselves), about 5:08 my phone rings.  He said he just woke up and would be there as soon as he could.  I told him I’d go across the street to Kroger to pick up some things for lunch and breakfast for myself for the next few days (I was planning to do that tomorrow morning anyhow, so it wasn’t that big a deal).  I talked with the lady working there for a few minutes (hmm…maybe about our bosses…I’m not saying that’s what the conversation was about, but could be) and still made it back about ten minutes before he showed up.  But it all turned out okay, now I don’t have to stop at the store on my way in to work in the morning and can sleep for a few minutes longer.

You know, I made a mistake when I went to Kroger this morning, I didn’t buy any produce.  How crazy is that?  I only bought frozen things to keep in the freezer at work.  Okay, I know, those things aren’t absolutely the healthiest choices (really, I did not intentionally write that as a play on words), but they are convenient and they keep me from going out to a fast food place on the days I don’t bring my lunch.

I ended the day with four fruits and veggies.  Not that great.  I did have a good idea though for the next time I go to the store.  I’m going to buy some cottage cheese and fruit and have that for dinner for a few days.  It’s light and generally healthy…maybe a little more sodium than I need (who knew cottage cheese had so much sodium?), but it’s quick and easy and good for me.

I did core exercises and stretching before I left the house this morning.  Then I walked for 20 minutes, plus up and down a ladder with heavy boxes quite a few times before we opened.  So an okay amount of exercise. 

Now to tackle the sleep issue.  I need sleep, desperately.  When do we change time anyhow?  Next weekend?

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The long and winding road to fitness, day 128

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Wow!!  What a wild day.  Nasty weather, temps dropping, rain and mist all day, windy…brr…definitely not a good hair day…ha!!  And believe me, I sprayed on extra hair spray this morning before I left the house…all to no avail…when you’re outside in this stuff unloading a truck (really, there has to be a better way to do these trucks, if only I could get those bigwigs to listen to me)  there’s no point in worrying about how your hair looks.  And now there’s a frost advisory for tonight…there go my little volunteer grape tomatoes…

Oh my gosh, I just read a blog about one of the healthiest sounding chili recipes…Nikkianne posted this blog and I’m determined to make this recipe for chili…just the way she made it.  I’ve been wanting to make a pot of chili for a while and keep putting it off.  No more…this will be the one.

http://nikkianne.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/cocoa-corn-chili/

My eating was pretty good today.  I was tempted to go out to eat lunch even tho I’d brought my healthy lunch from home.  I think, more than anything, I just wanted to get out of the building and away from people for a while.  But I went back to the break room and nuked my lunch and was satisfied.  Ended the day with five fruits and veggies, so that’s decent.

Other than working the truck and doing some range of motion exercises for my shoulder, I didn’t do any exercise.  Of course, working that truck is constant motion for over eight hours.  And I’ll be right back at it at five tomorrow morning…trying to get some extra work done…ho ho ho, I love Christmas so much!

Have you started your Christmas shopping yet? I don’t have to buy a lot, but I have already purchased a few things.  Should probably get with that so I’m not doing it any closer to Christmas, you know, going into stores and stuff…I shudder at the thought!

 

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The long and winding road to fitness, day 123

Oops…I skipped blogging about my journey for a few days…the truth is I haven’t been doing all I could over the past few days (weeks) to maintain a healthy lifestyle.  I’ve been eating too much, exercising too little, not getting enough sleep, not dealing well with stress.  But I’m not giving up…no siree, not me.

On that note, I did do quite a bit of walking today and I pulled out my crock pot and cooked an inexpensive cut of beef with sweet potatoes, carrots, red potatoes and onion.  Oh my, the house still smells wonderful and the meal was delish!  I think that’ll be my lunch at work for the first part of the work week.  I also bought some kale to bake up a batch of kale chips.  I think those things just might be addictive.

I guess the title is quite descriptive of this journey…the road is long, winding, lots of hills, sometimes there’s rain or snow to battle.  But through it all, I’m going to just keep putting one foot in front of the other, moving forward, slow as the pace may be.

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The long and winding road to fitness, day 115

Sometimes I’m such a dork.  I woke up this morning at 3:35, looked at the clock and thought oh good, I still have another hour to sleep.  I don’t know what I was thinking when I set the alarm last night.  I had to be at work at 5 am.  I don’t know about most of you girls (most guys can just skip this), but I can’t get ready and be out the door in 15 minutes.  By the time all of those thoughts swirled through my mind a few times, I realized I needed to jump out of bed and start getting ready.  I made it to work on time, but imagine what could have happened had I not woke up at 3:35.  Well, you don’t have to imagine much, I just would have been late, that’s all.  And I really hate to be late.  I’m one of those folks who manage to be early for just about everything, not obsessively early, just a few minutes early.

I didn’t eat breakfast before I left for work, but I did do some strength training and stretching.  How about that?  Then I did around 25 minutes of walking later, plus all of the walking and lifting I did all day at work.  I have to admit, I am exhausted tonight.  This is going to be one of those nights when I really do make it to bed early.  I’m struggling to keep my eyes open right now, not especially good when you’re trying to write.

I ate my lunch in my car just to get away from everyone for a few minutes.  I had a couple of slices of that cute little loaf of multigrain bread I bought yesterday with some peanut butter and honey on it.  I also had a few PopChips and a V8.  At least I didn’t go out for a fast food meal (or fat food meal,as I originally wrote…I told you I was sleepy, although that’s a pretty apt description, isn’t it?).

Dinner tonight was a couple of bread sticks and a glass of oj (since I skipped my oj this morning). I know, I know, this is not healthy eating.  I could have, should have heated up a bowl of minestrone, but I just didn’t feel like it.  Tomorrow though, for sure.

So have you ever been late for work (or showed up on a day you weren’t scheduled) because you totally spaced what time you needed to get up to make it on time?

How do you like Jean Ann’s rooster in a pumpkin?  Nothing says fall like roosters sitting inside pumpkins, huh?

The long and winding road to fitness, day 111

Another day without a lot of good fitness news to report…darn it!  I didn’t get anywhere close to enough sleep last night.  Holy moly, these crazy kids (sounded drunk, or something, to me) pulled up in front of the building next to mine.  Loud, obnoxious arguments going on, shoving and screaming by the girls (what’s with that?  is it like, supposed to be attractive to the drunk guys?), a lot of cussing by all of them (my mom would have beat me half to death if I ever talked that way, she wouldn’t have cared if I was an adult or not).  This went on for probably 20 minutes, then they went inside for a while, then came out and picked up where they left off.  I couldn’t believe the cops didn’t show up.  Like everyone else, I expected someone else to call, and apparently no one bothered.  They finally cleared out around 5 am after an hour of this nonsense.

I got up and went in to work to do payroll.  I was shocked.  This week’s was one of the easiest I’ve done in quite some time, not a lot of missed punches.  And it didn’t hurt that I’d kept up on it all week.  So I made it out of there before we opened!  I stopped at Kroger and bought the Sunday newspaper…and a Digiorno pizza…what?  How did that thing get in my cart?  I think it must have jumped in while I was looking at the oj.  Anyhow, what I’m getting at is that I had pizza for lunch…bad Patti, very bad Patti…but pretty good pizza for a frozen pizza.

I did make the minestrone soup (http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=246310).  I am going to steal a line I read on another blog today (from Cassie at BackToHerRoots)…”I bastardized the hell” out of that recipe.  She had me laughing while I was reading her blog about making peanut butter Nutella cookies.  Then, while I was trying to find all of the ingredients for the minestrone and not having much luck, I realized I was getting ready to do the same thing to that minestrone recipe.  I was shocked to discover that I didn’t have any canned red or white beans (used black beans instead), thought I had an onion only to find out it wasn’t good any longer so I used canned tomatoes with onion in them, had no vegetable broth so subbed beef broth (kind of changes the entire taste of the recipe, but still…), had no celery so used celery salt and then didn’t add the salt that the recipe called for, then I quadrupled the amount of a lot of the veggies (zucchini, green beans, carrots), used kale instead of spinach and used a lot of it.  Used whole wheat penne pasta (I really like the taste and texture of whole wheat pasta).  I used one can of black beans and one can of corn instead of the two cans of beans that the recipe called for.  So…not sure if Olive Garden would recognize this minestrone, but it still tastes terrific~

Not very good lighting for the picture…but you can see what I’ve done…now that’s my dinner for the week.  Ought to be good for at least a couple of servings of veggies.

I still didn’t feel like getting outside and doing anything and that’s a shame because it was another gorgeous day.  So…still no pictures of the lovely fall leaves, no pictures of the geese on the pond, but I do have a cute picture that is kind of fitting for the Halloween season…

Poor little Spook with her Halloween costume on…she was so funny…she didn’t much like it but she had me laughing as she fought it.  Just so you don’t think I was abusing her, I didn’t leave it on her long and she attacked it as soon as I got it off of her.

Have you ever dressed your pets up for Halloween?  Did they like it?

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The long and winding road to fitness, day 110

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How pleasant to have a day off work and have the weather be amazingly gorgeous.  I went out to the farmers market this morning, bought a butternut squash and some other cute little squash (I can’t remember the name of it, but take my word for it, it’s cute!). I also bought a bunch of kale to use in my minestrone tomorrow.  Whatever’s left over, I’ll bake as kale chips.  Think I’ll flavor them with some garlic this time.  There were really a lot of people at the farmers market for an October Saturday.  Of course, the weather might have had a little to do with that. 

I wanted to go out for a drive and take some pictures, but I just didn’t feel up to it.  I’m still feeling kind of sick to my stomach and tired.  So I decided to just kind of take it easy today.  I went through my coupon files and got rid of all of the expired coupons and cut out the coupons from the flyers that were kind of piling up.  I gathered a bunch to take to work to share with my co-workers.  There are so many coupons that I have no use for, but I hate to just throw them away.  So sharing them with the people I work with is my answer to that.

I hate to admit this, but I did no exercising today other than the walking around at the farmers market, and that was more of a stroll.  Well, I say no exercise, but I guess I can count the range of motion exercises and stretching as something.

My eating was, once again, just okay.  Not enough veggies and only two fruits for the day.  I’ve got to make that minestrone tomorrow to up my intake of veggies.  If I can find the link to the recipe (I’m pretty sure I found it on SparkPeople.com),  I’ll try to post  it tomorrow.  If you like the minestrone at Olive Garden, you’d like this recipe.

I’m going to have to go in to work for a little while tomorrow morning to do payroll (yeah, I guess that’s somewhat important) and exercise my creative abilities (ahem) in putting together an ad board and then send a picture of it to the district manager.  I also need to make sure they do a good job with the ad set.  All in all, I’m hoping to finish in 3 hours or so and then get out of there and enjoy the rest of my weekend off.  Who knows, maybe tomorrow I’ll feel like taking some pictures.

I wanted to share this picture of a pumpkin that our floral designer created as a way to honor breast cancer survivors (and those, like my mom, who lost the battle).  My mom is never far from my thoughts. 

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The long and winding road to fitness, day 109

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Ahh…the work day is done, the weekend has begun!!  As you probably guessed, I have the weekend off and I’m pretty excited about it!  Don’t really have a lot of plans, but I don’t intend to go in to work and that’s good enough for me!

I worked all day today, but didn’t feel all that good.  At one point during the day, I thought about just going home, but I stuck it out and managed to get quite a bit of necessary work done.  I had a lot of really nice customers in the store today, cute  happy babies, people trying on little Halloween accessories and taking their pictures (who would have thought, 20 years ago, that you’d be able to take pictures with a phone?  Technology is an awesome thing), people just generally feeling good and being cheerful…that’s what I like, makes my day much better~~

I had Cheerios and a banana for breakfast again today.  (Have you noticed that I kind of get stuck eating the same thing for several days in a row?) Lunch was a Lean Cuisine that I won’t be buying again…some kind of chicken, veggies and noodles in peanut sauce…not very good…ended up throwing most of it away.  I drank my V8 fusion with my lunch, so got a serving of veggies and one of fruit there.   I did eat this cute Little Debbie pumpkin snack thing…not bad.  I also had yogurt with cherries and granola for a snack this afternoon, that was pretty darn good!!  Dinner was some bread sticks (that I made) and some lite Ranch dressing…not bad, probably should have had some soup with the breadsticks…think that’s what I’ll be cooking this weekend…maybe minestrone, with kale?!  Hmm…farmers market, here I come.

Exercise was strength training and range of motion exercises and some stretching.  Walked for only 20 minutes, I still was feeling the effects from yesterday’s truck.  I think I’ll do some walking tomorrow and maybe get some good pictures.  I noticed how pretty the leaves were tonight when I was coming home from work.  I just love fall.  And right now we don’t have to have the heat or air conditioning on…pleasant…and frugal!!

I saw an old school friend in the store today…that’s one of the things that’s pretty cool about my job…I manage to see people who I may not have seen for a long time, get to chat a bit and catch up on what’s happening in their lives.  I really should go to my next class reunion.  Can you believe I’ve never gone to one?  What’s up with that?  I just never really had the desire to go, but now I’m thinking I wouldn’t mind it…we’ll see…

What about you?  Have you attended a class reunion?  How was it?

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The long and winding road to fitness, day 106

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Ahh…a day off work.  I actually slept in until around 7 am!!  That felt good.  I ran a few errands this morning and still made it home before noon.  I had to go to my insurance agent’s office so she could do an inspection on my car.  That didn’t take long, I was in and out in less than 15 minutes.  I was going to stop at Goodwill, but when I saw how full their parking lot was, I just kept on driving.  I wasn’t in the mood to deal with a lot of people in a small space.  However, I did go to WalMart…yikes!  Not my favorite place to go, but I knew I needed to get a scraper for my windshield since it’s the time of the year when we’ll start having frost.  I also bought this handy-dandy faux shearling seat belt cover to keep the darn thing from irritating my neck.  I knew they made them, but I’d never bought one.  Never had a seat belt hit me right where this one does.  It certainly does the trick…instant relief.

I’m still not feeling all that good…I thought I was feeling better, but today I had issues again.  I even took a nap this afternoon and that helped a bit.  Not sure what it is, but I just don’t feel right…not totally sick to my stomach, but I feel like it could happen…blah!

I did some strength training and range of motion exercises this morning before heading out.  Then I walked for about 25 minutes this afternoon.  I also did a little dancing while I was cleaning the kitchen…not all that much exercise in that, but it sure was fun!

I didn’t eat all that much today, my stomach just didn’t feel up to a lot of food.  I did buy some V8 fusion to take to work, a serving of veggies and a serving of fruit in each can.  I bought the pomegranate blueberry…very tasty.  So tomorrow’s meals and snacks are planned, I’m going to try to get a decent amount of sleep tonight.

Oh, I just finished reading Bad Blood by John Sandford…great series…I’m always disappointed when I finish one of his books because then I have to wait for the next one.  What’s the deal with these writers, can’t they write any faster?  What are we supposed to do between books?!

Have you read any good books lately?  Anything by your favorite author?

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