Weekend Foods, Cycling, and Challenges
It’s been an action packed weekend and life threw a few wrinkles into the mix but it’s all manageable in the end. Friday night I took my standard free meal and enjoyed a nice gourmet pizza and some ice cream with the family. I always enjoy the food when I’m eating it but a few hours later and the next morning I felt very run down and slug like. It’s hard to believe I used to take an entire free-day eating this food or heck I used to eat like this every day when I was 450 pounds.
First Ride Of The Year
I woke up early Saturday and tackled one of my Weekend Warrior goals of getting my bike out for at least 10 miles of riding. Rather than take the time to put the bike into the car and drive to the Argonne Labs bike path I decided to ride to a near by private community and ride on their nice paved path surrounding the community. It was much easier and I didn’t want any excuse to not ride.
According to Google Maps it’s 3 miles to the path, 3 miles around, and 4 miles to the coffee shop. I went around the path 3 times so I got a total of about 16 miles in and it felt really great. It’s hard to calculate the exact calories I burned due to wind and hills but all in all I was really happy about the ride and my legs (and butt) felt better than I thought they would. I guess I really am getting healthier.
Next weekend I think I’m going to take the bike to the trail around Argonne Labs and then shoot for a long ride in a few weeks. Perhaps I can do the 50 mile Illinois Prairie Path triangle I did a few years back. It was pretty rough then but was very rewarding and it’d be much better to tackle in the spring while it’s cool than the heat of the summer.
Cooking Fun
I finished all of the grocery shopping on Saturday afternoon and planned a few fun dishes this weekend. I’m tackling the Diary Free Chocolate Coconut Milk Ice Cream and the Zucchini and Spaghetti Squash “Lasagna”. Both the ice cream and the Squash / Zucchini dishes are firsts for me. It’s been one of my goals to get new and interesting food choices in each week. I’m also getting tired of buying ice cream for my free meal and thought it would be fun to make my own instead.
I’m not looking for huge changes, just something new each week to learn how to cook better and broaden my food pallet. While I really do think variety isn’t ideal when trying to lose weight I want my daughter to be exposed to new foods and I want to learn to cook better. It’s a balancing act but I think I can pull it off.
I’ll post some pictures of both dishes after they are cooked.
40 by 40
I have a random question today that I’m interested in getting peoples input on. I was over at Healthy Tipping Point and saw her recent posting entitles 26, 26, 26. She’s been working on doing 26 races by her 26th birthday on April 26th of this year and is only a few races away.
First, I wanted to say congratulations to her setting and being so close to this awesome goal. It’s gotta be an amazing feeling pushing your body to the level it takes for this type of challenge. It makes me wonder if I could set a similar type of goal to challenge myself and stay accountable in the coming years.
Do you think it’d be an attainable goal for me to shoot for 40 races by the time I’m 40? For a little perspective I turn 36 in August of this year and I’m registering for my first race in October at the Mackinac Island Great Turtle Run. Personally I’d make the definition of races inclusive of running, cycling, duathlon, and triathlons to have options in case I’m not a master runner.
What do you think? Doable or crazy talk?
What an awesome goal! It’s totally feasible to do 10 races a year. Maybe you could do #40 on your bday week!!!
Yea, I think it’d be cool to find a fun and challenging one to participate in each year near my birthday. Thanks for the great idea by the way, I hope you don’t mind if I steal it
I’ve felt much the same way lately after eating foods that are not-so-good for me. At the time I enjoy them, but I feel really run down and crappy afterwards. It’s amazing how much the food we eat effects how we feel!
40 races by 40 would certainly be a lofty goal, but I think it’s definitely doable!
Brandon´s last blog ..100 days of healthy living
Totally agreed which is why I want to try to start cooking my free meals in the future as well, I’m hoping I get the satisfaction from the free food without the horrible feeling from the bad food. We’ll see …
10 races a year is doable, but challenging. That’s almost one a month. I don’t like to do too many races because then they start to feel routine. I usually do 5 or so races a year, up to one a month in the summer and a few in spring/fall. I don’t really like winter racing.
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I’m thinking I could pick 4-5 significant races per year and then just pick 4-5 smaller 5k or whatever to fill the gaps. I relish the day they feel routine as then I’d take it to the next level like an Ironman
Isn’t that a great feeling to finish a workout that in your mind should be difficult, and realize, you actually came through it pretty easily! You’re doing great work. Keep it up! Did the ice cream turn out without the xanthum gum?
Chad´s last blog ..Weekly Weigh In – Buffet be Damned!!!
Yea, it feeks really good. I was executing something bad but came out wanting a longer ride next timely.
The ice cream turned out awesome, I’ll post pics tomorrow. I can see why the Xanthum Gum is there. Had it sat in the fridge for a few days I bet it’d get kinda icy. Since I served most of it after dinner it was perfect though. Thanks for answering my Twitter shout out!
I was thinking something even crazier when I read Caitlin’s post. I was thinking if I can finish this year out strong with my weight loss that next year I’d maybe try 40 races by the time I was 40. That would mean 40 races in one year as this Dec. I’ll be 39
Thinking it maybe my new blog for next year!
Thanks for stopping by.. I replied to your comment.
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I made a fantastic soup this weekend. Everything in it was healthy and a nice variety. I’m glad it turned out because making good soup is hard (for me).
4 cups chicken stock
4 cups water
1.5 cups lentils
1 28oz can tomatoes
1 oz pancetta
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 carrots
2 celery stalks
2 bay leaves
1 large onion
3 cloves of fresh garlic
nice pinch each of chopped basil and thyme
nice pinch of kosher salt
nice pinch of black pepper
1/2 cup quinoa
1.5 cups of greens (kale, chard, whatever makes you happy)
Because I struggle with making soup that tastes good, I went all in with the best ingredients I could think of. I use Lucina’s extra virgin first cold pressed olive oil. I used all organic produce with the exception of tomatoes: I never buy fresh tomatoes at the store. I’ll either use farmer’s market tomatoes, grow my own, or use canned. I’m very picky about canned tomatoes: I only use imported italian Carmelina San Marizano tomatoes. The basil and thyme were fresh. The pancetta is imported italian (I only used a couple slices of it to add extra fat for frying).
I didn’t make my own chicken stock: I didn’t have time this weekend, so I cheated and bought some organic chicken stock. Note that 4 cups is about the size of one of the rectangular boxes of chicken stock they have in the store.
Making it is easy, just some chopping work.
1. Chop the celery, carrots, onion, herbs. Finely chop the garlic. Chop the pancetta. Chop the tomatoes (this is a little messy but easy).
2. Fry the onion on about medium/medium high heat in the pancetta and olive oil. Maybe 5 minutes: stir it a lot and NO BURNING please.
3. Add carrots/celery/garlic. Fry for a couple more minutes.
4. Add herbs, tomatoes, water, stock, lentils. Bring to a boil.
5. Bring down to a simmer and cover it: simmer for about 1.5 hours.
6. Add the quinoa and greens to the simmer, and in about 15-20 minutes it should be ready.
This made a ton of soup and was really good with fresh italian bread and red table wine.
Buon appetito
** A note on ingredients: personally I think using “organic” is really optional, but I haven’t resolved my issues with organic food for the time being. Ideally, as the weather gets better, it won’t be an issue because I’ll buy it from local farms. The tomatoes are the only thing not to skimp on. If you were to simply open a can of Hunt’s tomatoes and pour it in a bowl, and open a can of the Carmelina tomatoes and pour it in a bowl, just the difference in how they look and smell is self explanatory.
seeing how I grew up in NE Michigan, I think that Macinaw Is run sounds sooo awesome!! I was just telling my daughter last week that I would like to walk the bridge on labor day (something I never thought of doing my whole life of living near there.
It sounds very do-able, and even if you don’t hit your 40 goal, you will be so much more fit and healthy just shooting for it. Each race will be a step closer
High five for the bike ride over the weekend! Hubby and I got ours out too but I don’t think we did more than 5 miles (and I ran for 2 miles before we started biking too)~~I forgot how much fun biking was!
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Totally NOT crazy talk! My first ever was in Nov. 2009 and I walked the entire thing, yet I still made a goal to enter 12 races this year which is one a month. Of course, I’ve improved my endurance and strength so I can run some and hope to keep improving until I can run the whole thing.
I say go for it! I love goals like that…and just think of the sense of accomplishment you’d have upon reaching it! I learned that Hal Higdon also set a similar goal calling it the 6/6/60 goal where he did 6 marathons in 6 weeks prior to his 60th birthday. Pretty cool huh?
Josie´s last blog ..Run for Music 10K – WOW!