Days 20 & 21: Coming together

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It seems I forgot to blog last night. I didn't realize it until this morning. Maybe subliminally I didn't want to write it. I'll have to try and remember yesterday's food...

Breakfast: Oatmeal with brown sugar, bacon

Lunch: A bunch of snack food at a kid birthday party - pb&j, crackers, chips, cheese sticks, a cupcake, a few bites of cheesecake

We took the kids to see The Nut Job and I was hungry so I had a few bites of tomorrow's dinner.

Snack: a few bites of chicken breast and zucchini in a Indian masala sauce.

Snack: Movie popcorn, peanut m&ms

Dinner: Greek salad, pot roast with potatoes

Well...there you have it. And after the kids were tucked in it was time to do a little dancing. My mom was over and stayed with the kids. And I can't imagine dancing without just a wee bit of alcohol. I probably should have tried but I'll admit, a drink sounded lovely. So I had vodka martini. The challenge said if we "must" have alcohol to drink a high-end vodka, so that's what I did. I guess I can be pleased to have made it to day 20 without drinking.

The alcohol definitely help me feel groovy. The music was Beso Negro, a band that plays what they call gypsy swing with music described as "darker, faster, more danceable, more blues, more Gypsy"...it was definitely danceable. I had a fun time. Of course morning came early and I had a slight headache, which I attributed to the alcohol. I don't plan to drink again until after the challenge is over.

In fact, this whole not drinking thing has made me realize how little I get out of drinking. It's sort of like the caffeine. Go without it for a while and you realize you really don't need it. Add to that, I like not spending money on things my body is probably better off without.

So that brings me to today.

Breakfast #1: Oatmeal with brown sugar and syrup, banana, english muffin with butter and jam

And then later my mom made pancakes for the kids so I had some of those.

Breakfast #2: Pancakes with butter and syrup

It's almost impossible to get them in a pic together, so on the move.

Around lunchtime I took the kids for a round of miniature golf. We're still in the middle of a drought over here with lovely spring-like weather (it's supposed to start raining mid-week finally) so I wanted to get them outside. We had lunch at the snack bar.

Lunch: hot dog (mine plus a couple/few bites of Myra's) and, later, a round of ice cream sandwiches (again mine plus some of Myra's).

I wish I could believe I burned those calories off walking "the course" but I know that's not true. We came home after golf and were all wiped out. So we had a little quiet time during which I laid down and dozed off and on for an hour or so. Then it was time for my run.

I knew I wanted to run for about an hour and decided to do a loop that I thought would take around that much time. I hit the road and felt slooooww. My legs felt heavy and, heck, my whole body felt heavy. I decided not to look at my Garmin and just run a comfortable pace. I told myself, "every run is a gift" and gave myself plenty of praise for getting out there when I felt so tired and for not judging myself on pace/distance/difficulty, etc.

I looked down after mile two and was surprised to see I'd run it in 9:41. Guess I was able to pick things up after all. To go what I thought would be a slightly shorter route I had to run up a big ass hill. This is the other side of the big hill I ran up the other day.

Elevation profile. Full Garmin stats here.

Holy hill that was tough. Though I am getting stronger at this running up hills thing. I think. If not physically stronger than I know I'm getting mentally stronger. I'm learning to sort of tune out and just do it, ignoring or even not having/hearing any negative thoughts about how difficult the experience is.

Check out that last quarter mile - 8:33 pace baby! And the mile before that was at 9:28. I was so glad I'd gone out for that run. Oh, and the weather! Though we really need rain. One last thing I'm really enjoying - running for the fun of it. I'm not training for anything, just going out and doing what feels right. That's fun. So, 5.25 miles in 51:54 - that's close enough to an hour for me. After the run it was time for dinner.

Dinner: Chicken thighs and zucchini in an Indian Masala sauce with light coconut milk, over rice.

That dinner is SO easy. I put a bag of frozen boneless/skinless thighs from Trader Joes in the slow cooker. Dump a bottle of Indian Masala sauce (also from TJ's), a can of light coconut milk and salt on top. Cut and toss in whatever veggies I have on hand (zucchini, onion, mushroom, bell pepper, carrots, potatoes - they all work well) and put them in. Four to six hours in the slow cooker and yum! I serve it over rice. So easy peasy (as Marek is obsessed with saying these days). I was just looking up the sauce and saw someone adds yogurt at the end to make like a Tikka Masala - guess I could do that instead of the coconut milk. I'll have to try it.

Snack: m&m's

The kids had a handful of m&ms leftover from the movies last night and I had a few of those just now. But I'm not going to have any more. It's funny, I made a fair amount of "unhealthy" choices this weekend but I'm feeling better about my eating than I have in a while. Even though the food has not been stellar, I feel less compulsive about the way I'm eating, which is positive.