Staying busy

I've been meaning to come update you guys here but I seem to keep staying busy this week. I've continued to keep track of my eating habits and am still exercising but there were a couple days when I only exercised for about 5 minutes because my day was just so full of other things. I didn't actually start doing any workout dvds until yesterday. I was planning to pop in an easy Crunch series workout but ended up opting for something I hadn't tried in a long time. I did a TurboJam Ab routine. It was fun and nice to start working on other areas of my body again. Today so far all I have done is some exercise ball moves. I did about 15 minutes of random ab work and also used my 3lb hand weights to include my arms and shoulders, triceps and biceps. I do intend on getting some more workouts in later this evening.

 As far as the foods I'm eating go, I have been trying a few new ideas lately to try and keep my mouth and tummy as excited as my brain is about getting back to healthy again. lol. Here is some lemon pepper fish we had on Wednesday night.

I baked it in a glass pan covered with foil and soaking in lemon juice with some lemon pepper seasonings sprinkled on top. I also made some Uncle Ben's Long Grain and Wild ready rice to eat with it and some golden sweet corn. It was absolutely delicious and I for sure will be trying this again. If I knew ahead of time how little the amount of calories in it was then I would have had a second helping of fish. I ended up way below my calorie count for the day and had to go eat something else to get where I needed to be.

Last night I wasn't quite as fortunate with my dinner. I ended up making kabobs and roasted asparagus sprinkled with garlic and parmesan. They looked great when I was making them.

I used beef stew meat that I had soaking in a marinade of orange pineapple juice, soy sauce,  extra light olive oil, and a few random steak seasonings along with some medium sized shrimp that was already peeled and deveined and I removed the tails from. I added pineapples and a cherry tomato to each skewer. After these were all prepared I stuck them in the oven to broil while I started prepping the next batch. My father and I enjoy all of these ingredients, however my fiance does not like pineapple and my mother doesn't like shrimp so I did each of theirs without those respective foods. Well, as I was making theirs I didn't watch ours as closely near the end of the broiling time and so when I did pull them out of the oven they were a bit blackened to say the least.

I thought they might be okay, but as they sat out in the air for a little bit they dried up pretty fast. The shrimp was shriveled and almost nonexistent anymore. The beef was hard as a rock in most spots. The pineapple and tomato were both still very juicy and tasty though. I had never had grilled/roasted tomato before and it was an interesting taste. I think I enjoy them more fresh but I would eat them again this way. The beef and shrimp would have probably been better if I had dipped them in bbq or ranch or something to distract from the burnt, lol, but I wasn't about to add any more calories so I just ate them as is. My mother's and my fiance's batch turned out better but were still a little bit dry in the meat department. Maybe next time I should either use a different style of beef or marinate it longer or both. Possibly just do chicken instead. 

Oh well, I lived and I learned here. I'm still proud of myself for trying new things. I'm really looking forward to all the new recipes I get to try this year. Do any of you have any particular suggestions for me? Maybe something with chicken or pork?

One week down!

Alright here it is one week after jumping back on the wagon towards my healthier lifestyle. I'm feeling great and have remained eating well minus the mishap on Thursday. I stepped on the scale this morning to see where I'm at and am down 3.8 lbs already. I weighed in today at 244.4 lbs. Not too shabby considering there was a whole day in there where I completely sabotaged myself. I also have been trying to take things easy this time around and so I feel that is a very reasonable number for me. Today I'm going to start back on some dvds I know I can handle. Maybe in another week or so I will feel up to tryin the 30 Day Shred again or the Biggest Loser Last Chance Workout. Speaking of BL. I'm about to go watch Sunday night's premiere. I've never really watched the show before now but I'm excited to start. I'm hoping it'll get me super motivated today and I'll go workout right after its over. I'd workout while watching it if my exercise equipment was in the same room. I may do some random exercises in front of the tv though anyways. :) Hope everyone else is having a great day! I'm glad Jett is finally back in school now, too. It was great having him home but I love that he gets so much time at school to be around other children his own age. :)

Gaining stamina

It feels so great to finally be getting back in to the swing of things. I think the few times I tried the last couple months I was too overzealous from the get go. I knew I would be and even blogged about being worried I'd try too hard and burn out too fast. lol. Guess ya just gotta live and learn. Well this first week back I have just been sticking to the elliptical and the treadmill or walking around the neighborhood. I am very anxious to get back in to my serious workout dvds but I'm gonna try and hold off on those for a little while longer. Starting Tuesday after it's been one full week then I'm gonna pick out something easier to do and start with that and then build my way back up to doing the 30 day shred and the biggest loser last chance workouts. I know those helped me lose so much in the past but I also didn't start with them right off the bat so I have to control myself and take things one step at a time. I am sooo ready to get my old body back that it's hard to wait. I feel like a kid in a candy store. lol. I know it'll be worth it though if I can remain patient.

Yesterday I feel like I really gained some stamina while I was on the elliptical. I ended up doing 35 minutes straight and I think that's probably the longest time I've spent on one of those machines so far. The day before I had only gone 25 minutes and that was the longest up until then so I feel like jumping up 10 whole minutes in one day was pretty awesome. I just felt really good listening to some great music on my headphones and couldn't bring myself to stop moving so I didn't. Today I only spent 30 minutes on there but I'm still very impressed. I felt like I wanted to get off only a few minutes in to it. It seems like once I get past that 10-15 minute mark though, if I get myself lost in whatever music I'm listening to instead of staring at the time on the Nexercise app on my phone then i can go for much longer than I expect myself to do.

I also ended up doing some random exercises after that just because I still felt so pumped. I went outside and climbed the stairs of my front porch over and over again for a few minutes. I then did some jumping jacks and a few different ab crunch routines I had memorized from before.

I ate really well yesterday too and also finished out Friday night pretty well. I ended up on deciding to have this delicious dish. Avocado, tomato, corn, and black beans in tortillas. I had ran out of the carb balance wheat tortillas I like that have considerably less calories in them but I made do with these and this dish totaled at 400 calories even.

Thank god I chose to go ahead and make my own dinner because shortly after that my dad started to cut up and deep fry some chicken strips and french fries! The smell lingered through the entire house and was such a torture. Luckily everyone else scarfed it all down and there were no left overs to keep tempting me throughout the night. lol. I was a little upset the next morning though when I realized he used the chicken breasts I had just bought to make a bunch of new healthy recipes I had been looking up. Have I said how much I can't wait until we are finally back out on our own? :)