Starting a new path!

WHOA, how long has it been since I have written?!? A long, long time.  My three followers were probably going into shock waiting. I apologize.  We have moved and settled into our new house and I have enjoyed every second of it.  I have been extremely busy regardless of not working anymore and it seems like we have had company almost every weekend.  This really threw me off my good-eatin' train big time.  I completely derailed once we got here. *slaps self*  It was all fine and dandy until mid-summer.  I was walking until it was too hot for the dog to go with me, and we were in the hotel most of the summer so I didn't want to leave her in the room.  The swimming in the pool helped a lot, but still I stopped working out altogether. I am ashamed. *hangs head*

Right now, I am just shocked at how I let things go and frankly embarrassed that I threw all my health by the wayside post-move.  I got so busy planning, packing, unpacking, organizing, enjoying shopping, trying new restaurants, and all the other stuff that wasn't real food/work out related that the next thing I knew, I wasn't happy with myself.  So many excuses, and there's no apology to myself big enough for it.

In late October, I met with my new Chiropractor and let me tell you, I was chomping at the bit for the holidays to be over so I could go back to him and start his Wellness Program.  When I say that, I mean I literally went home and ordered the "Eat Right for Your Blood Type" book that he follows with his program.  I am 99.6% sure my blood type so I studied that list inside and out!  I am planning to document weekly how I am doing with this program, so cross your fingers I remember to do it!  I am curious how things change and I feel documenting them in the blog will just help me see where I was vs. where I am in the end.  I probably won't post all my measurements and personal stuff because NOT YER BIDNASS!  Maybe I will after I feel better.

Enough of the back story.  Today, I went in for my first meeting with the chiro.  I learned what I will be doing as far as HIS wellness program goes.  When I go back, I will go in detail over that.  But for now, the most important parts are 1. sleep 2. hydrate with purified water 3. exercise 4. get your Vitamin D levels up 5.eat REAL FOOD.  Luckily I am slightly ahead of that and it won't be as taxing on me as some other people.  I already know what food/exercise is required of me. I know I should be hydrating more than I am and have been working on it.  For the most part I get enough sleep, but I need to turn it around as in "go to sleep sooner/wake earlier"  Sleeping at 1230am to 8am isn't really ideal for me because I still have to force myself to get up at 735am at my alarm and still lay there til 8am.  For shame. I know some of you are thinking, "what a lush, sleeping in til 735! That jerk!" Hey, it's better than sleeping til 11am...just sayin' is all.  I need to slap myself around and tell myself "workouts at 830am!".  Unless its walking outside,  then I want it to be mid day and hot! I'm back into my workout videos, so that's also a step ahead.

I also got the basic panel done so that the chiro can contour the wellness program for me.  Funny thing, most nurses can't find my blood veins and end up murdering my arm before they get any blood.  I warned the nurse of this, so she spent more time investigating my teeny tiny deep in the tissue veins before saying "I'm not going to try to poke you 100 times, let me get the vein whisperer."  She went to get another nurse who also spent a few minutes looking for the best place and got my blood on the first stick.  NICE!  Three vials of blood and some stolen urine later, I was finished with my end.   However, tonight I have this great blood blister from where the BANDAGE came off.  Huh?  The needle hole is red, but then there's this giant blood blister next  to it.  STRANGE.  Anyway, they tested for a variety of things that will be discussed next appointment.

With that, you are caught up on my current health crap.  :D I hope to get back into the blogging along with the other things I just gave up on.  I think it helps that we got the PC working again, 6 months later!

Wanna know more?

I was perusing through my FB news feed, like I do all the time :D and I came across this link from PaleoHacks.com.   This little short e-read is a great book to check out if you're just curious about what the Paleo/Primal diet is.  It's pretty short and sweet, great for beginners to read.  I don't think I could explain it any better than this!  So, if you're wondering what foods you can or can't eat, you'll find out here.  It's amazing how I don't feel limited with foods, like other diets.  "Oh, I'm cutting back carbs and calories, I need to count them to make sure I don't go over!"  No more.  I don't even count calories or fats anymore!  I know everything I going into my body is REAL food and those fats and calories are good for me.  I am eating the way my body was intended to eat and I like how I feel because of it, plain and simple.

http://blog.paleohacks.com/sq/

You will have to enter an email to get access to the book, but you can opt out of future emails at anytime.

Back in the saddle. Again.

Man, things have been CRAY around here.  I have been so incredibly busy but now I am back and ready to blog!  It's been a very busy summer and my workouts and super clean eating all but halted.  Basically I failed my workout challenge I gave myself.  We were living back and forth between the old house and the hotel.  I did pretty well the first couple weeks at the hotel with the workouts, doing some swimming and taking advantage of the gym but then things got so hectic (and the chromebook broke down again, had to get it replaced) that I just had to stop.  Even though we had a kitchenette in the little hotel room, and we went to the farmers market on the regular, we still went out to eat a lot.  And we craved ice cream.  To say that I was knocked off my routine is an understatement.  Now that we are into our new house, and things have settled into a normal routine, I am jumping right back into our lifestyle.

Computers are trying to kill my workout plans.

PFFFFTT.  Oh, that wasn't me! That was the dog over there!

Last time I posted I was week three into my workout challenge.  So much has changed.  I managed to get to five weeks, but couldn't post about it and then all the things tried to die all at once.

My chromebook had issues.  I couldn't really do much from my phone.  Week four, I felt stronger.  I chose to change my light resistance band to the medium and I totally felt it in my CLX.  Then week five came around and it was HEAVY SETS (I guess I was on the right track) and less reps.  So hard and challenging, and I loved it.   Then, the server I was using for my workouts went kaput.  Like in a big way...I was so bummed.  BUT! Instead of giving up all together, I decided to do something else that didn't require a video player.

I started cross fit.  And because I'm a big weenus about cross fit in general (I've seen some of the hardcore videos) I chose to do a ten day kiddie cross fit...like, a 10 year old kid wrote it up.  I have no shame, I will start out on a kiddie level! :) It didn't require weights or equipment I didn't have or couldn't afford.  It required your shoes and your body.  Easy enough, I thought.  This kiddie cross fit is NO JOKE....I breezed (and when I say breezed, I mean panted and heaved and ho hummed right on past my physical limits--pushups I still hate you.) through that 10 days and then I was hooked.  Cross fit is now my BFF.  It just doesn't know it.

I immediately picked up after day 10, I was so excited I didn't take a rest day, and started the 30 day level 1 Cross Fit Challenge and for the fun of it, decided I also needed to do a 30 day squat challenge.  I am currently on day 26, with no giving up! Sure I have just really walked instead of run the miles but if I couldn't run a whole mile before hand, what makes you think I'm ready to do that yet!?!  The couch to 5k will be my May challenge, on top of these last few days.  I've also decided I need to do these squats with resistance bands when this month is over, and I will either re-do this 30 day or try out the Level Two...I haven't decided.  Either way, I am going ALL OUT.

P.S. It really helped to have my fren doing it alongside with me, even though she's a whole six hours away from each other and not really beside me...*shifty eyes* Whatever man, we get on the chatterbox and say "I DID THIS! DO YOU?"  "Oh not yet, wait let me bust out the workout now!"   "YEAH! YOU CAN DO IT!" and so on and so forth, but with a ton more humor because we are both hilarious and know it.

Almond butter cups

Okay, I know I've seen several "peanut butter cups" online.  All of which look great, but I never got them to turn out right.  Or they weren't paleo friendly.  Mostly because I am probably lazy and don't take the time to make them correctly?  Or I never have those cupcake liners.  I think it's just that my chocolate was always the wrong consistency.  Whatever.  Either way, the two times I tried to make them cute, I'd end up with a huge dollup of chocolate on the bottom and the sticky almond butter too thick, and then no tops so to speak for them.  I tried something different this time.

2/3 C cocoa powder
1/3 C coconut oil, melted
4 TBSP honey (or maple syrup)
This is my base recipe for any chocolate I make.  Depending on the sweetener/more or less oil you use, you can make it really runny or really thick.  I needed it more on the thin side this time so I used a bit more oil.

Mix til smooth and tasty, adjust your sweet the way you like it.

I poured my chocolate (which was really runny!) into a greasy pie pan just enough to cover the whole pan.

Then I dolluped about 1/4 - 1/2 C of almond butter (this kind was crunchy!) into several spoonfuls to try to cover as much of the chocolate as I could.  I flattened it out a little where I could and then poured the remainder of my chocolate liquid on top to cover the almond butter.

This worked out so much easier than trying to stuff individual cupcake cups.  I'm sure it's not as cute of a presentation, but still.  Stick it in the freezer for 10-15 minutes to harden and then cut into squares.

My end result ended up looking like this:

It tasted like YUM.

Maybe I will call them Breeze's Almond Butter Squares: the "reeses" for lazy ladies everywhere!

Here  is a pretty easy recipe too.   I tend to buy the chocolate in pure powder form, so I can make a variety of things and not have to melt it.  I've also become a  stickler for whats in my chocolate so I have avoided any with sweeteners.  Yes, my semi sweet dark chocolate chips are on standby til I can find some without cane sugar or yucky oil.  You not paleo, or semi-paleo will like this recipe too, but when its as easy as 3 ingredients to make your own sweet chocolate, why bother?

Week 3.

I will not bore you with the details of this weeks workout, it was the same as last weeks.  What I will say is I CANNOT get into the Fire45 for the life of me.  I don't know what it is about that workout, but OMG I just glaze over and would rather run in place for 45 minutes.  Which I actually did Monday.  HEY! At least I still worked out.  And I of course did the fire drills.  Okay, I did some of the workout, but for the most part I just ran in place for 45 minutes.  I'm changing it up this week.

I did get a fun different workout in on Saturday, actually I only call it a workout because I got sweaty.  We went sledding.  Well, "icing" is the better term.  Thursday WinterStormQ mauled us with ice pellets, I kid you not there was three minutes of snow...the rest was sleet and ice.  It looked like a sno-cone machine exploded.  So, the yards were solid ice sheets.  We would step out of our door and get down to the sidewalk (which was clear, thanks Goose!) and step over to the ice, and we basically skateboarded down the yard to the curb.  Our yard is fun and slope-y like that.  So we  took off to the park with our sleds and dog in tow and had a blasty blast of a workout.  I don't know how many flights of stairs I climbed, but by today my arms are sore from the sledding.  We really had a great time because it was so icy, we just went on and on forever!

TurboFire
Week 1:
Fire 45
HIIT 25
Fire 60
HIIT 30
Fire 30, Core & Stretch 40

Chalean Extreme
Burn Phase (month 1):  Burn Circuits 1, 2, & 3
Burn intervals
Ab Burner
Burn it off
Recharge

Week two

Done! Well, minus the 40 min yoga stretch.

Monday:
Fire 45 --can't say this is really my favorite at all.  I struggled getting through it.  There's others I like better.
Burn Circuit 1 --no big thang! I pumped iron right along with them!

Tuesday:
HIIT 20 + stretch -- I NEEDED the stretch after this one! I was huffing and puffing all over! Love these HIITs!
Ab Burn -- all I have to say is ow.

Wednesday:
I exchanged Fire 45 for Fire 60, much better! I love that one the most I think.  Nothing was really dry at all afterward.
Burn Circuit 2 --not long after I finished this workout my arms turned to jello and my legs were on fire.  I call that a success.

Thursday:
HIIT 15 -- short, super intense.  I feel like I'm cheating on those but I know how effective they are
Burn it off -- this is real similar to a HIIT but a little longer and less crazy...good day for it and I really felt everything from the day before

Friday:
Fire 30 -- easy little workout to get my blood going
Burn Circuit 3 -- I only thought I was jello-y on Wednesday....

Saturday:
Okay, this isn't done yet but if I don't do it I'll not be able to walk.  Can't go wrong with 40 min of yoga and stretching.


TurboFire
Week 1:
Fire 45
HIIT 20
Fire 60
HIIT 15
Fire 30, Core & Stretch 40

Chalean Extreme
Burn Phase (month 1):  Burn Circuits 1, 2, & 3
Burn intervals
Ab Burner
Burn it off
Recharge