So as the title suggests these past two days were quite…”challenging” to say the least.  My first celebration since getting serious about getting this body in shape was this Sunday, my Dad’s 70th Birthday.

The day started out great with a workout at a new gym!  Well, not new….as a matter of fact it’s 15 years old.  But it was new to me.  I decided to try it out because I’m trying to get out of my contract with a gym that’s about 35 minutes away from me.  I joined when I worked closer to it and paid for a year in full.   In any case, I found a bare bones no-frills gym about 10 minutes from my house.  Jackpot!  I promptly signed up for a free 7 day pass.

As I entered, I realized No Frills should be their slogan.  No shower, one little bathroom in the locker room…a few lockers.  But hey, I don’t need much.  Just give me some weights and cables and pulleys and I’m happy.  I was the only female there on Sunday morning but didn’t matter.  Sometimes I get a little creeped out if I’m the only chick in a gym…like at some point some random dude is going to come up to me and tell me what I’m doing wrong or ask me why the hell I’m lifting weights and not on the elliptical.  I got some looks that told me I’m one of the few women that actually ATTENDS this little gym.  But no worries, I held my own.

I came back from the gym and went to the store to spend money I don’t have on food I really need.   I went to a bigger grocery store with better selections…I actually researched how to find http://www.navitasnaturals.com/ snacks and saw that they sell them at this grocery store not far from my house.  I even went so far as to ask someone where to find them but when I went to the aisle, they were not there! BOOOOO.   No worries, I got plenty of stuff.  $148 worth of food to be exact.  Yikes.  But I am determined to make it last as long as possible.

Enter Birthday Celebration:  Okay I can handle this I thought.  Here’s what was offered: Pizza, KFC chicken, biscuits, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, birthday cake and ice cream.

Here’s what I ate: 1 piece of pizza (plain), 1 piece of chicken, 1 piece of cake, 1 slice of pumpkin pie.

I refuse to put in pictures of this food because I think you all know what these things look like right? Great…Read on.

Not terrible right?  I survived!  It wasn’t the best but one bad meal will not undo all the hard work I’ve done this month.

Enter Hurricane Sandy:   So I’m not going to pretend this storm devastated us here in Cleveland compared to all the lives lost and damages done in NYC and NJ.  But it did have a small contribution to my food failure today:  Power outage.

So when you just purchased a ton of healthy food, and the power goes out, you tend to panic and want to EAT all the food you bought before it goes bad.  No I didn’t eat everything in sight, but I definitely got off track a little bit.

The biggest downfall which seems silly to even mention? I couldn’t use my Vitamix.   Anyone who knows me knows I’m in love with my Vitamix.

I use it at least 2 times a day.  I almost considered bringing it to my work so I could make my smoothie there.  I work at a small personal training and fitness studio so it actually wouldn’t have been TOO odd.  But I made do with my new favorite drink http://www.sambazon.com/ and a banana and a little Fage yogurt with blueberry before my cardio workout at work.  I mainly went to get warm but figured, I’m due for a workout anyways.

Lunch was fine, tuna sandwich with Olive Oil based Mayo and another Fage yogurt. (see what I mean about eating all this stuff before it goes bad?).

I snacked on some of my mini sweet peppers and came home to have baked chicken and sauteed veggies.

But guess what was sitting in the fridge just asking to be eaten??? One last piece of birthday cake and one last piece of pumpkin pie.  UGH! Had to have it!! HAD TO!!! (I’m sure none of the other 3 people in my house was going to eat it…)

The Aftermath:  Feeling a little crappy.  A little upset I let myself fail not once but twice.  But again, when you think about the bigger picture, it’s really not anything to lose sleep over.  I’m almost glad it happened because this was almost like a little test-drive before the real holidays hit.  I have no idea how that’s going to go with me and this whole plan because it’s impossible to assume I will skip all sweets altogether.  We’ll have to wait and see.

The Plan: In addition to the bootcamp class I was going to take tomorrow morning, I will be hitting the weights as planned but also going to try to fit in a second boxing class at night.  Just going for a big calorie burn without overdoing it.  And I’ll probably take Thursday off or just do abs.  Back to weights Friday.

Move on people, nothing more to see (or eat) here for the night.

On the press for Thursday/Fridays blog post:  Fitness professionals promoting questionable products.  Already got alot of ideas on what I want to write about for this…gonna be a good one.

-Michelle

 

Random iTunes song:  Your Fractured Life by Air Traffic

Random Tweet of the day: My Dad’s car this morning (no it’s not destroyed although we haven’t taken the tree off of it yet..)