Sunday 25 April 2010

Holy Mother of all Blog Updates, Batman!

Hullo there!

If you thought things were busy for me before now, they're about to get a whooooole lot more busy as we're now in a position to exchange contracts on our new dream house (well, currently it's a nightmare but it'll become dreamy after some TLC ;-) ) and hopefully we'll be all moved in by the second week in May!

*scream!*

So, before that happens I'm going to attempt to pull together events of the month and a bit, starting, in this post, with March. Though must first add the caveat that it's not the most interesting of updates as I've been becoming rapidly more focused on my training of late and everything else, including my social life, has sort of taken a backseat...

This is me in my second home, doing what I love best :-)



As I don't remember what I had for breakfast most days (actually that's a lie as I tend to eat the same thing! But seriously I am rather forgetful)... I'm going to have to rely on things like timestamps on photos, entries in my workout wallet etc... No doubt there'll be a few days I can't account for as, well, I'm not really *that* interesting all in all, but please bear with me :-D

Oh and I'm going to enter the workouts that I remembered to log on another post (see clicky links) to try and keep a clear distinction between workout and waffle... and yes, I realise the lines are blurred most of the time ;-)

Here's what I remember/have been able to piece together:

1 March 2010

Exercise: See workout diary for w/c 01/03/2010

Other stuff: not terribly exciting, went to the dentist...

Food: no food pics for today.


2 March 2010

Exercise: See workout diary for w/c 01/03/2010

Other stuff: not that I can remember

Food:

I made up some houmous with chickpeas, tahini, olive oil, lemon juice and Maximuscle Promax powder - in natural flavour.

It wasn't exactly delightful but that was mainly down to not getting quantities right, definitely need a recipe rejig!

anyway, I measure out equal blobs and took them, as well as my raw veg snackpots, to work for my meals :-)




3 March 2010

Food: Dinner at L Restaurant & Bar

See pics and review on other post (coming soon!)


6 March 2010

Exercise: See workout diary for w/c 01/03/2010

Other stuff:

Food:




7 March 2010

Exercise: See workout diary for w/c 01/03/2010

Other stuff:

Food:

Had fun playing around with my new blender:



Dinner was turkey meatballs, very tasty, high in protein and low in fat - perfecto! :-)




8 March 2010

Exercise: Went climbing at The Castle, had a fab time though was relying heavily on upper body strength... which is cheating a little ;-)

Other stuff: I had a brace (train tracks) when I was about 21/22 years old. Unfortunately, as an adult, my jaw had already formed the shape it wanted to remain for the rest of my life so although I was able to move the teeth around into a nicer shape - ultimately they just wanted to go back to how they were!!

Because of this I've been wearing a retainer every night since the tracks came off which, as you can imagine, is *incredibly* attractive and quite a turn-on in the bedroom department ;-) Seriously though, although nobody has ever recoiled in horror, quips of "you putting your teeth in dear" get a bit wearing after a while!!

So I decided to get a very thin wire glued to the back of my teeth, out of sight, to keep my pearly whites nice and straight and today I had a mould of my mouth taken for this very reason.

Exciting stuff!!

Food:

My lunch that day was tuna, wholegrain basmati rice, beans and veg



Dinner was turkey stir-fry, a staple of my diet, served sans noodles (it just means I get an extra large serving ;-) )




9 March 2010

Exercise: See workout diary for w/c 08/03/2010

Other stuff:

I gave a few gym inductions this day.

Food:

Dinner was a seafood stir-fry, very easy to make and very delicious too :-)




10 March 2010

Food:

Lunch was chicken breast and quinoa salad. For this I boil the quinoa in water with a chicken stock cube. Once it's read I remove the quinoa but keep the chickeny water and then broil slices of chicken breast.

I guess I could probably do both at once if I wasn't convinced it would end up as a mess!! :-D



Joe was out this night so it was just me and my son. We had lamb chops, veg and sweet potato mash. Very tasty but not convinced lamb chops are the best value for money... there's so little meat!



11 March 2010

Exercise: None for today but I took a few more gym inductions.

Other stuff: Today was our bonus announcement - 15%! We were all so chuffed, what an awesome company I work for that every single employee gets the SAME percentage bonus :-)

Food:

I took Joe out to celebrate our fab bonus and we went to a Georgian Restaurant called Mimino which I will post about separately (when I get a chance!) in a restaurant review entry.

For now though, here's me admiring one of the 'features' of the picture behind me ;-)



Yes, I am a child.

And here is my boyfriend demonstrating why he is the most gorgeous man on the planet... look at that... hubba hubba!




12 March 2010

Exercise: See workout diary for w/c 08/03/2010

Other stuff: So... I was eating some beef jerky which was particularly tough and

I BROKE MY TOOTH!!

This is my new super duper titanium implant tooth... was not best pleased :-S

Food: ... was soft and chewed on one side of my mouth only!!!


16th March 2010

Exercise: See workout diary for w/c 15/03/2010

Other stuff: Went to the dentist to have my wire retainer fitted and a mould taken for a new tooth to replace the one broken during Jerkygate

Food:

Lunch was chicken and quinoa like above but I added fresh mango and 0% fat greek yogurt... OMG lush!!




17th March 2010

Exercise: See workout diary for w/c 15/03/2010

Here's me sitting by the new multi-gym which I only really use for internal and external shoulder rotations - it's got a handy bench though ;-)



Oh and yes, I workout in jeans! The gym is two floors down from my desk so I just change my top if I'm doing upper body weights as don't really get sweaty. If I had my way the gym would be one floor down from my *bedroom*!!

Other stuff: I carried out yet more inductions... loving it though! :-)

Food:

Do you remember my healthy and very tasty Moussaka dish? Well, my son has decided that although he'll eat practically every vegetable going, he doesn't really like aubergine - which is an integral part of this dish!!

So, I decided to alter the recipe a bit and replace the aubergine with butternut squash which I absolutely adore so not exactly much of a trade-off ;-)



18 March 2010

Other stuff: More gym inductions! Plus I went to see Graham at my wonderful physiotherapy practice, Balance


19 March 2010

Exercise: See workout diary for w/c 15/03/2010

Following on from the other pic I decided to take a post-workout picture of my pumped arms and delts ;-)



Food:

Ahh, takeout from Nandos... half a chicken (skin donated to my two hungry men) with macho peas (herbed and minted, very nice!) and mixed veg (my own addition, I love the mixed bags you get for about a pound, you just pierce them and bung em in the microwave for a couple of minutes et voila!)




20 March 2010

Exercise: See workout diary for w/c 15/03/2010

I'm ashamed to say I did something really stupid during this workout :-(

Food:

One of the things I love most about weekends is that I get to make my smoothies as I have so much more time on my hands (for now!!)

This particular beauty as apples, raspberries, blueberries, greek yogurt, Maximuscle Promax Diet and some hazelnut butter for good effect :-)



Dinner was amazing, steak, spinach and salad... although I did suffer from eyes-bigger-than-belly syndrome and wasn't able to finish it all!!




21 March 2010

Exercise: See workout diary for w/c 15/03/2010

Other stuff: Vitality Show!

See my post about it here


22 March 2010

Food:

I rarely eat the hot meals cooked by the lovely people in our staff canteen. That's not because the food isn't delicious, it's more that I like to know exactly what goes into the meals and I *know* there's a lot of butter and salt employed!

However, I was tempted beyond belief by the pork chops on offer so *had* to have one ;-)

You can see all the oil on the veg though huh? I do wish they'd just cook the vegetables naked... I mean with nothing on... no, you know what I mean!!



Dinner was grilled salmon and mixed veg. We eat a lot of salmon in our house :-)



After this meal I went to the gym and did some light cardio while reading the essential reading that is Muscle & Fitness Magazine, God I love this magazine!




23 March 2010

Exercise: See workout diary for w/c 22/03/2010

Other stuff: I got my new tooth today! I do hope it's stronger than the other... might steer clear from the Jerky for a bit, perhaps invest in some Biltong/Droewors...

Food:

Lunch was chicken breast and salad:



Dinner was rather lovely. I bought some skinless free range chicken thighs and coated them in jerk seasoning, wrapped them in foil and stuck them in the oven. Results were rather delicious if I do say so myself! I also stir-fried some peppers and other mixed veg to have with it.



24 March 2010

Other stuff: I was off work all day doing an OU assignment

Food:

As I was at home I was able to make a smoothie :-) This one had loads of my favourite fruit - raspberries - and some blueberries, and apple, 0% fat greek yogurt and Maxitone Definity in banana flavour.




26 March 2010

Exercise: See workout diary for w/c 22/03/2010

Other stuff: More gym inductions today - more people being encouraged to get fit and healthy!!

Food:

Tonight was rather special.

I'd been whinging to Joe that he'd not taken me out for aaaaaages so he decided to his usual thing of making up for it by taking me to a restaurant with the WOW factor!

The restaurant we went to was called Le Trois Garcons and the minute I walked through the doors I fell in love it it!

I'm not going to say much about the food (other than we had my absolute favourite thing ever - Chateaubriand - drooooollllll!!), or the decor (which is more than worthy of talking about) as I want to save that for my forthcoming (honest!) restaurant review post... but it's safe to say that the whole experience, including the food, surroundings, atmosphere etc made it probably the best meal I've ever had - seriously!

Here's me enjoying some rather nice red wine from an obscenely large glass :-)



And here's Joe in front of a pretty epic painting of some biblical scene... I did prefer the view in front of it, though I am still trying to work out if it's just his positioning in front of a dark bit on the painting of if he really truly does have hair that high!! ;-)



27 March 2010

Exercise:

Other stuff:

Food:

For my lunch I took 1/2 tin of tuna in spring water, cheese (40g half fat mature cheddar) and some chopped up tomatoes:



Served with some salad and balsamic glaze... yummm




28 March 2010

Exercise: See workout diary for w/c 22/03/2010

Food:

Lunch was the same as yesterday :-D



Dinner was a slow cooker casserole consisting of steak, butternut squash, onions, leeks, carrots, mixed pulses, lentils and pearl barley with a little beef stock, mixed herbs and a tin of chopped tomatoes - simples!



Very tasty, slow cooking rocks, so much flavour released!




29 March 2010

Not much recorded for today other than some more gym inductions

30 March 2010

No Boxercise because of sore back :-(


31 March 2010

Exercise: See workout diary for w/c 29/03/2010

Other stuff: Last day of inductions before the 'gym window' closed! Don't see why we can't just keep it open all year as there are a group of us more than happy to carry out inductions in our spare time but it's all a bit political right now... my company is a great place to work but at times what makes it different from other places isn't always all that great... there's a lot of inflexibility and reluctance to move with the times...

Anyway, enough of that...

Food:

Lunch was salmon with spiced apple and pickled red cabbage and some salad on the side.



---------------------------------

And that's me done for the month of March! Sorry if it read more like a newspaper account than a diary but it was quite a while ago... I just hope I can catch up with April before May but it looks unlikely as hopefully we'll exchange tomorrow and move the week after - yee haaaaw!

Hope everyone of you is well and had a groovy weekend, many congratulations to all the London Marathon runners out there, you all rock and I'm full of admiration!

TJx

2 comments:

  1. Yay, great news about the house mate, really happy for you!

    Great mammoth update, some of your foods looks divine :)

    xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the update, all the best with the house and the lead up to your comp x

    ReplyDelete