lunch Archives - Page 33 of 35 - My Healthy, Happier Life

ashleyd / May 4, 2010

Monday Recharge

In case you missed it, this weekend was an absolute blast filled with great friends, a Derby themed housewarming party, plenty of homemade Southern comfort food, and lots of moving stress! You can read more about it and one of my favorite recipes right here!
After such an indulgent weekend I knew this week needed to include lots of exercise, sleep, and whole foods. Bo and decided that one way we’d achieve this goal would be to wake up and go to bed 30 minutes early each morning in May. This would ensure we’d be able to workout from 5:30-7am each morning. Extending a morning workout by 30 minutes allows me to pump some iron after sweating through a cardio session.
Luckily after curling up in bed at 10 last night, I woke up this morning craving a sweat fest and lots of whole foods! This morning’s workout included a few of my favorites:
4 mile run in 38:10
10 mins on the stairclimber
Chest press, bicep curls, tricep dips, lat pull down
20 pushups
Lunges/Squats/Leg Press
Today I tried to focus on only putting whole foods in my body versus processed foods. It was definitely a challenge and opened my eyes up to how much I’ve started relying on bars as go to snacks. Today’s eats were as follows:
1/2 c oats, banana, cinnamon, and flax seeds (sorry for the Blackberry pic)

Late morning snack was 1/2 a grapefruit
Lunch was a delicious salad from Pax including romaine, egg whites, chicken, tomatoes, celery, red onion, and sprouts. I stuck with lemon juice, salt, and pepper instead of dressing.

Dinner was delicious grilled chicken with veggies Bo and I steamed/sauteed this morning in between showers and dashing out the door. We knew that if we had a dinner all ready to go when we got home we’d be more likely to eat our own food versus ordering. It worked perfectly!

When I got home from work and the Junior League meeting I was craving some yoga and stretching. I popped in the Core Fusion dvd and did thighs, arms, and stretching. It was a perfect 30 minute session that left me feeling stronger and relaxed! I forgot how much I love this great DVD. Any dvd that breaks the workouts up into convenient 10 minute segments wins me over!

The rest of the evening includes nothing except lounging on the couch with Gossip Girl!
xoxo

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ashleyd / April 25, 2010

Piles of Cardboard+Paper+Ten Hours of Work= Exhaustion

This morning Bo and I woke up bright and early ready to take on the day of unpacking and moving in. We wanted to get as much done today as possible since tomorrow will include a few hours of celebration in the morning. We’re going to Forefront Church with Lauren and Casey before a birthday brunch to celebrate Lauren’s 26th birthday. We headed over to Starbucks for coffee and breakfast since our fridge was basically empty.

After this short but gorgeous walk our day consisted of 10 hours straight of unpacking boxes, breaking them down, recycling the paper filling each box, figuring out our apartment layout, and random trips to Bed, Bath and Beyond and the Container Store.

These are the only pictures I have thus far since I can’t find my camera cord in the mess. I’ll leave you with this exciting note though. My two favorite things about the apartment are at either end of our 710 square foot home; a 80 sq foot walk in closet with California Closet design and shelving and a HUGE walk in pantry also equipped with California Closet shelving! I’m in heaven after not having a pantry for the last year!

Our new bedroom 1/2 done!

I’m so excited for this walk in closet! I even have a shelf for my yoga mat, weights, band, and DVDs!

Hope everyone had a lovely Saturday and good luck to all the ladies running the MORE Half Marathon tomorrow in Central Park. Melissa and I ran this together last year and sweated through the 13.1 miles since it was humid and over 85 degrees! At least this year promises to be cooler. 🙂

Bo and I are curling up on the sofa with an easy dinner and the first episode of Treme. Has anyone watched it?

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ashleyd / April 19, 2010

Succesful fire sale and organized chaos

Last night Bo and I posted three items on Craigslist in hopes of selling them before our big move on Friday. We were aprehensive since they were all big ticket items. But, our fire sale was very succesful and we were able to end the day with all the items sold! I was sad to part with a few of them but due to the new layout they just didn’t make sense. In addition, we were able to order a few great Pottery Barn pieces for our new apartment and take full advantage of our wedding registry discount! It’s almost hilarious to say, but one of the pieces is the SAME exact desk we sold today except in espresso versus white. I guess you know a piece of furniture is great when you sell it one day and buy it again the same day in order to make it work in your apartment. I bought the Pottery Barn Bedford desk upon college graduation with some of my gifts and it served as my first desk and the platform for many a conference call, strategy meeting, and hard work during my first two years with P&G.

These sales and the furious packing that took place today left our apartment looking like this:

Yes, it looks like a tornado blew through our apartment. Bo insists that this is organized chaos not just chaos. Today he spent most of the afternoon dismouning speakers, cables, pictures, moving our sold furniture (hence the tv on the window sill), and purged all our cabinets and closets of old clothes, trash, junk, etc. I have quite the donation bag to drop off tomorrow, that’s for sure!

During the day we kept things pretty simple and healthy as we had two main goals: eat as much of our food on hand as possible and spend most of our time focused on moving versus cooking. In addition, after a week of travel and stress we both were craving some healthy, clean food! Breakfast was on the skimpy side since we only had 1/4 cup of Egg Beaters and 4 eggs which had to be split between the two of us.

We headed downstairs around 1pm for a quick break. I’d written 25 thank you notes at this point and Bo had finally removed all the pictures and speakers. I can’t believe we have to basically do this all over again next weekend when we move in our new place. *sigh* I was craving a hearty salad and luckily they had a California Salad downstairs that was delicious. It featured some strawberries, mango, blueberries, mixed greens, tomatoes, and raspberry viniagrette. I added a boca burger for some extra protein and staying power. It was HUGE and therefore I left at least 1/4 of it in the bowl.

I headed downstairs for a quick workout later and was inspired by Naomi of One Fit Foodie. She featured a great HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) workout on Missy’s blog today during her guest post. I jotted it down and hit the treadmill for a 30 min session. Today’s workout went like this:

Minute Speed

0-2 4.0, 4 % incline (warm up)
2-3 6
3-4 6
4-5 6.5
5-6 7.0
6-7 7.5
7-8 8.0
8-9 6
9-10 6
10-11 6.5
11-12 7.0
12-13 7.5
13-14 8.0
14-15 6.0
15-16 6.0
16-17 6.5
17-18 7.0
18-19 7.5
19-20 8.0
20-21 8.5
21-30 6.0

Phew! This left me breathless but refreshed! I loved the speed intervals and my lungs are improving each day! I stayed on the treadmill for another 20 minutes at 4.0 speed and 6.0 incline while catching up on this month’s Self magazine. I spent the final 20 minutes doing some bosu ball ab exercises, squats, and arms. All in all this was a great, convenient, and quick workout. Immediately upon return, I made a chocolate covered strawberry shake! It was a new one for me but hit the spot and satiated my hunger.

5 strawberries chopped

6-7 cubes ice

1/2 c Almond Breeze

1/2 c water

1/2 packet Amazing Grass Chocolate

1/2 spoonful of protein powder

Dinner tonight was also quick and simple as we were both engrossed in the movie Singles. I’ve never seen it before but love the soundtrack and am enjoying the 90’s flashbacks. Our dinner really felt like our first summer meal. We enjoyed grilled pork chops which brined all afternoon, corn, roasted broccoli, and small salads. It had been ages since we’d grilled pork and I forgot how much I love the flavor especially when paired with barbecue spices! Bo did a great job tonight manning the grill pan.