Weekend Struggles

When I'm in my routine, I am pretty good. Take me out of my routine, or throw me a curveball...ehh.

After returning from Orlando Wednesday night, I was pretty proud of staying on track (for the most part) while up at training. I avoided snacking, did get up and work out Monday and Tuesday mornings, and made healthy choices for meals - except for Tuesday night's dinner, but c'mon, they had both key lime pie and strawberry shortcake (in addition to other choices) out on the buffet for dessert, how could I possibly choose between the two?!? And they weren't huge pieces! But overall, I drank lots of water, only had a few diet cokes, and ate lots of fresh fruits and salads while I was there.

I continued my healthy eating Thursday and Friday, packing my lunch for work both days with low-fat yogurt, some of my vegetable soup from last weekend, and on Friday, some of the yummy salad I mixed up when I got home from work Thursday night (which I paired with a piece of grilled mahi-mahi for dinner). I'm a big believer in packing your salads with as much extras as possible to make it interesting (no one wants to eat a boring salad, except maybe my brother-in-law). So some of my fave throw-ins are tomatoes, carrots, cukes, garbanzo beans, craisins, and sunflower seeds. Edamame is very good too, maybe I'll pick some up for my next salad.

Things started unraveling Friday night, though. I decided to attend the office happy hour/birthday celebration, which included grabbing dinner at the same pub before the festivities began. I couldn't resist the call of the beef sliders topped with caramelized onions, cheese, and served with fries. And of course several diet cokes over the course of the evening as well. Then I had a burger with my salad for lunch Saturday afternoon (I literally have a freezer full of burgers, must get rid of them). I recovered last night with a jr. salad from salad creations - the heart lovers' salad, which has most of my fave veggies I listed above thrown in, and then had a mango yogurt shake for dessert from allegria froyo - it's one of those tart yogurt places, very lo-fat and lo-cal.

So there's my diet over the past few days; hopefully I will be able to continue on track for the upcoming week, although I do have a bit more travel coming up on Monday and Tuesday.

Thursday morning I did manage to pull myself out of bed and go for a 3-mile run, so I was pretty proud of myself for that. I did sleep in on Friday morning, but made up for that slightly Friday night by dancing to the live band at happy hour. Yesterday I was out working in the yard for a few hours - combatting the palm fronds, planting an avocado tree, and leveling out the very back of my yard in order to get the back gates open. I am definitely sore today, so yardwork definitely counts as exercise. And I washed my car too! Today I plan to get in a TG workout, and if I'm feeling particularly ambitious, might squeeze in a run this evening as well. I'd also like to get a workout in tomorrow morning, before heading to Gainesville in the afternoon for recruiting.

One last thing I'll leave you with on this post, which is some of my favorite snacks lately. My "sister" suggested the yumminess of cocoa roasted almonds quite a while back, but I just bought them for the first time last weekend. Almonds are the healthiest of the nuts to snack on, and although they do contain fat, they are almost void of saturated fats, and studies have shown that including them in a healthy diet (in moderation) is a good thing. So I've been packing a quarter cup of the almonds as a snack, and man are they good. And filling too! Another fave snack of mine is dried fruits, particularly mangoes and apricots. While they do contain a bit of sugar, they are filled with so much good vitamins and antioxidants...and getting more fruit into your diet is always a good thing. :) So dried fruit as my mid-morning snack, and cocoa roasted almonds as a mid-afternoon snack; they've definitely held me over and kept me from snacking on bad stuff lately.