Me vs. the elliptical - guess who was the winner?

Today was productive, but yesterday just seemed über productive, so perhaps today was just bound to pale in comparison. Nevertheless, I woke up early without an alarm (8:30 is still early to me, folks), and then did some studying before deciding to hit up yoga and swim after cuz my low back was hurting me like whoa. So, after less than an hour of studying, I took a break. 

Yoga was a bust. This instructor is just okay. There are times when she takes you through flows that just don't flow. I feel like your body should just be able to go with it and the few times I've been to her classes, there are a couple times when you just don't flow. She also shows you how to do a flow once or twice and then instructs you to go at your own pace for the next three flows. Now, if I were brand new to yoga, I'd be completely intimidated by this. It doesn't bother me so much, but because I'm so busy remembering the damn flow, I forget to breathe. And breathing well is like the most important part of yoga. And I thought that going to yoga would help with my low back. Nope. There were poses I couldn't even get into because my low back just wouldn't have it. So, yoga was a major bust.

After yoga, I suited up to go for a swim, but I left my goggles and nose plug thingy in my bag. I did a few little baby laps (without sticking my head underwater) for 10 minutes or so and then hopped out and into the hot tub. I gave myself a water massage...ish. Basically, I planted my ass in front of a jet and just let it pulsate on my low back for 10 minutes. It was awesome. Then I showered at the gym, which was horrifying (WHY WOULD YOU HAVE SEE-THROUGH PARTS OF THE SHOWER CURTAIN AT CHEST LEVEL?) and then promptly dropped my clean underwear in the wet shower as I was getting dressed. But I hurried home and put on a new pair. I think the pool and hot tub will be reserved for weekends as a post-workout treat so that if I do drop my underwear again, I can just go home after ;-)

The rest of the day, my back felt pretty great and I studied a lot. I got really antsy around 4:30 having sat around for the last 5 hours studying, so I opted to go back to the gym. It was that or go stir crazy. I did about 50 minutes on the elliptical. It was awesome. I don't know how or why I had so much energy, but for the first time in forever, I beat the elliptical's calorie counter. Usually when I do the elliptical, the machine's calorie counter is anywhere from 10-50 calories ahead of my heart rate monitor's calorie counter. Now, I was told once that all machine calorie counters are calibrated to a muscley, fit man. So, I usually try to come close with my personal calorie counter on my heart rate monitor. But, today, I was able to keep my heart rate up for most my elliptical experience and I beat the calorie counter by a good 30 calories. Beat that, muscley fit man!

I got home, studied some more, slacked off and watched some Jimmy Fallon and James Corden clips and then got back to studying. I imagine tomorrow will be lots of studying as well. What fun. I am thinking about waking up at 6 to get a tiny bit of studying in before work tomorrow, but sleep is a very important part of my life, so we'll see what time I get to bed before I make such a rash decision.

In other news, I'm going to do a weigh-in tomorrow. Boo. It's going to be bad. But, I've gotta own it so I can make some progress. Here's today's food photos.

Lunch (same as yesterday because it's a damn good sandwich)

Grapes in the afternoon

I was craving pickles today

Made a smoothie to go with dinner

Yum!

Dinner: TJ's mini pepperoni pizza

Evening snack

Not pictured: Luna bar + apple for breakfast, the handful of chocolate chips I munched before the gym, the second snack pickle I ate because yummm, the cheese stick I had post-popcorn because cheese is legit.

I also think I'm going to do a photo a day everyday for a while because I think it'll help motivate me to lose more weight. And because everybody loves selfies. Or at least Kim Kardashian does.

Songs I'm currently obsessed with:

Every time I hear "Shut up and Dance," or "Better When I'm Dancin'" I stop studying and have a little dance party. Any good dance party songs you're listening to lately? Also, Adele! YOU'RE BACK AND YOU'RE STILL AMAZING. 

Life without Zumba is sad

You guys. Ankles are dumb. Especially my right ankle. Dumbest ankle ever. 

Today I really needed to do laundry because I was out of workout gear. So, I started the day with some laundrizzle. This was not fun as the laundry is located in the basement and I'm on the second floor. This meant lots of stairs. You know what doesn't like stairs? My ankle. It's the thing that aggravates it most. So, that was awesome. Thankfully, I only had two loads because I'm going home next weekend and my mom loves it when I bring home lots of laundry lets me launder for free. Anywho, it wasn't an excellent start to the day.

And then midday, I started getting a bit restless. I was attributing this to my lack of gym time and abundance of sitonmybuttstudying time. So, I decided, "Fuck it. I need a break and I need to go to the gym." I didn't go yesterday, so I really wanted to do some weights since cardio didn't seem appealing. It didn't really bother my ankle, but there was baseline ankle botheredness today. I don't know if I'm pushing myself too much, but it seems so stupid to not exercise just because of a tiny ankle injury. Plus, I like working out and I miss Zumba. A lot. Like probably more than I should. But I know jumping on it would be stupid. So, I shall live a sad, Zumba-less life.

The rest of the day was spent studying and photographing my ankle for you guys. And taking food photos. I had a lot of calories for dinner, so I heated up a Trader Joe's Chicken Lasagna. It was pretty calorie and fat heavy, but I went for it. It was a teeny tiny tray that had "four servings." Right. I had one serving (which is pictured below) and went back for a second since I could/had the calories for it. It was okay. The reason I got it was because it was way healthier than standard lasagna, but you definitely sacrifice some flavor. I wouldn't get it again, but I'm not a huge lasagna fan to begin with. I just liked the idea of throwing it in the oven and being done with it.

That's it. The exam is on Thursday, which makes me panic a bit when I think about it. I mean, I've been studying for a while now and am getting pretty sick of study days, but I also would rather not take the exam...

Anywho, here are your photos.

Breakfast (there was more watermelon, but I ate it pre-photo)

Morning snack

Lunch (chicken sandwich with lettuce, tomato, and avocado), and my favorite beverage treat (they were on sale)

Afternoon snack/pre-gym fuel

Protein smoothie post-gym

Serving #1 

Dessert

It's hard to photograph the extent of the bruising

The top of my foot has a slight blue tinge to it (you can kinda see it in the below photo)

Still swollen - I can't even set it on the ground properly...yikes

Something else I wanted to blog real quick: my smoothies for post-workout. My friend Lisa asked how I make them.  

• 1 cup of skim milk - you can use water to save on calories, but it gets kinda weirdly frothy
• Half a scoop of vanilla protein (the powder I have is like 28g of protein per scoop and you really only need 12ish grams after a strength training workout)
• Half a cup (70ish grams) of some kind of frozen fruit - I tend to go with blueberries or pineapple lately. I've done strawberries, raspberries, bananas, etc. You can use fresh fruit too if you add a tad bit more ice
• 1 packet crystal light to kill the protein flavor - I've been using the mango energy one lately
• 4 ice cubes if you're using frozen fruit; 6 or more if you're using fresh fruit

Throw it all in a blender and blend to the consistency you like. If you want it thinner, use less ice or more milk.

Today's positive: Um, not chopping off my foot out of frustration? Does that count?

GML: Gym, Mow, Laundry

This morning I headed to the community center for a cardio morning. I was huffing and puffing by the end so I know I got in a good workout. But, I've stopped wearing my heart rate monitor because I think I'm judging my workouts too much on how many calories I've burned, rather than how I feel. That being said, I think I may begin wearing it again because it's good to know what my heart rate is so I can gauge whether I'm working hard enough.


After my workout, I headed to my mom's to mow the lawn and do my laundry. On my way there, I stopped at Grounds for a Better World, a little local coffee shop that has excellent, real fruit smoothies without any added sugar or yogurt - a.k.a. they're awesome and not terrible for you, like a lot of smoothies can be. I ordered a small strawberry banana smoothie and the girl working made a bit too much, so she gave me a medium and charged me for a small. Is it sad that I wanted to do a happy dance? If you answered yes, ignore this next sentence. I did a little happy dance in the car after I paid.

When I got home, I made myself some lunch. Well, kinda. I just reheated some dumplings my mom had in the fridge. I had four, but forgot to take the pic until I was halfway through:

After lunch and my first load of laundry was in the dryer, I headed out to mow the lawn. Gah. That is a beast of a chore. My mom's lawn isn't exactly the easy-to-mow lawn that most people have. There are steep drop-offs (that are like 2 feet...) and lots of trees and well, it's not square. But the good news is that it was only like 68°F, so it wasn't terrible mowing weather. I still managed to work up a sweat though so the shower afterwards was nice.


I spent the rest of the afternoon reading The Help on my kindle. It's going to be turned into a movie, so I had to read the book first. For those of you who didn't know, that is the proper order  in which to do things: book first, movie second. I don't care what argument you have reversing the order. It is wrong.


My mom made me a lovely steak dinner with potatoes like the ones I usually make and corn on the cob. I forgot to take a picture, probably because it looked so delicious that I got distracted. Anywho, summer time is the only time of the year that I enjoy eating corn. Packaged frozen corn doesn't taste anything like the corn you can eat straight off the cob. So, I don't eat it. Well, not usually. If I'm at someone's house and that's the vegetable they've served, I eat it. But I don't enjoy it. Unless they saved it from the summer when they got it straight off the cob. Yeah...


Once dinner was over, I tried to show my mom how to put music on her iPhone. That was super frustrating because her computer is slow. No, it's slower than slow. Like, imagine it were running a race with a sloth. The sloth would probably lapse it. A billion times. It probably took at least 15 minutes to download and open iTunes. Then I showed her how to import a CD and put the tracks on her phone. I doubt she remembers any of it, so I'm pretty sure I'll have to show her again.


I came home and put away all of my clean laundry and then realized that I didn't have my kindle. I found my phone to call to see if I'd left it at my mom's only to see that she had called four times to tell me that I'd left it there. Annoyed, I begrudgingly put away all my clothes and decided since I had to drive back to that side of town that I would also go grocery shopping. I made a list quickly, hit up meijer, and retrieved my kindle. I am way to dependent on that thing. But, I really like reading while I'm working out and the kindle's perfect for that because you can increase the font size so that you can still focus despite all the bobbing around you're doing.


And speaking of working out, here is my next weekly challenge for my June challenge: I will go to the gym three times in the morning this week (MWF) and I am going to ride my bike to work everyday the weather allows. This will allow me to get a little bit more exercise in. Woot!


What do you do while you work out? Read? Listen to music?