My Favorite Salad

Lunch is hard. I'm not a morning person, so bringing lunch doesn't happen. There's so much fast food on base and healthier options are slimmer and often take longer to prepare.

I've been working on it though. I'm trying very hard to avoid the delicious french fries 10 steps from my office and take the extra steps to the gym for a salad! Our gym has a little shop that sells smoothies and salads and everything is delicious.

I've been addicted to this salad lately. It has spinach, cucumbers ,broccoli, chicken, chow mein noodles, and mandarin oranges. Delicious!

Fitness This Week

I put my iPod in the washing machine last week. It was very dead after the spin cycle. The BX did not have iPod nanos in stock. I bought a shuffle, but realized I was losing playlists and fitness, which tracks how far I'm running. Since I've been enjoying running, I didn't want to give that up. Amazon refused to ship an iPod nano to me, so I'm waiting patiently for it to ship to my mom who will very nicely ship it to me. Sometimes living overseas is fun...

The iPod mishap screwed up my fitness routine last week.
M - I went to the gym - I don't remember what I did though! (This was the morning I killed my iPod...)
T - Turbofire Fire 45
W - Jillian Michaels No More Trouble Zones
Th - Nothing. I bought the iPod shuffle Wednesday evening and thought it charged all night but it did not. I was so frustrated I sat on the couch and did nothing. Whoops!
F - 2.7 mile run with Jeff and 100 pushups!

I was very excited to tackle 100 push-ups. Jeff and I ran and took breaks along the way to do pushups, crunches, and planks. I lost energy for the ab work quickly. I became very stubborn about doing as many pushups as Jeff though. I was a little sore Saturday...

Today I did jog/sprint/incline intervals on the treadmill. I'm enjoying pushing myself through running, but I also need to start working on some incline/hill work so I can make it to Fuji this summer.


My food goals this week:
-No fried foods
-No soda

While I've been doing pretty good with working out, food continues to be a struggle. I get stressed or impatient or tired and I reach for fried foods. Jeff and I get lazy on weekends and binge. I grab a soda just because. I'm trying not to guilt myself over all of it, but just focus on the next week and doing better. I have salmon defrosting in the fridge for dinner and I just finished my morning juice, so I'm on the right track!

Breakfast

First, I have no explanation for my all-over-the-placeness with blogging. Back and forth, back and forth again. I'm sure there's a legitimate reason somewhere, but I don't have it at the moment. Bear with me please.


Ever since I started working at 6:30/7am, breakfast has been a quick and hurried shove food in my mouth as fast as possible while I run out the door type of event. Even when I didn't work and stayed home all day, I'd grab something quick and small for breakfast. Cereal, granola bar, what have you. Of course, I get hungy again in an hour. Not the best idea.

http://www.macheesmo.com/2010/03/breakfast-sandwiches/

Since I've been making baby steps in eating better, I decided this week was the week to work on my morning habits. I'll never be the girl who can get up an extra 30 minutes early to scramble an egg or fix something filling, no matter how hard I try or what time I work. Morning's just aren't my friend.

But this was easy! Using this blog post as inspiration, I went and cooked a dozen eggs this weekend. I stumbled on the post on Pinterest and had pinned it a while back, thinking about how good McDonald's breakfast can be sometimes.

www.macheesmo.com/2010/03/breakfast-sandwiches/

Basically, you bake the eggs in a muffin tin until fully cooked. Assemble the sandwiches and freeze. Easy.

For my first try, it wasn't too bad. The eggs were a little overdone, but mainly because I got distracted and didn't watch them closely enough while they were baking. Still good enough. I assembled with cheese slices because it's even less work, froze uncovered for maybe 30 minutes (it was getting to be my bedtime and I was impatient!) and then wrapped in tin foil and froze again.

This morning, I popped three in the oven at 5:35am and set the timer for 25 minutes while I went to finish blow drying my hair and getting ready for work. They came out just in time for me to wolf one down and chug as much coffee as I could without burning my tongue. I can manage popping something in the oven and walking away, I just can't carve out an extra couple of minutes of standing in the kitchen. I left them in a few minutes too long, so the english muffins were a little too crispy. But still good. Jeff and I both enjoyed them, and I stayed full much longer than normal.

I'm planning to make them again for breakfast tomorrow, with a few minutes less in the oven.

Now I just need to figure out a handful of other ways to get a good breakfast with no time in the morning. I'll get sick of these if I eat them every day, but right now they taste lovely and extra special replacing my normal toast or granola bar.

The recipe is pretty self-explanatory. The only new thing I discovered was the muffin tin. In the past, I've made a quick fried egg and assembled a sandwich. This was easier, and I was left with a dozen eggs rather than just one.

Here's another link in case you've missed it: www.macheesmo.com/2010/03/breakfast-sandwiches/

Life Lately

I haven’t been updating very frequently lately. But nothing has been happening that prompts pictures or detailed blog posts, so I’ve mostly just gone about my business and called it a day.
Then I got a birthday card from my wonderful aunt who reminded me that some people can’t regularly check my Facebook and look to my blog for life updates (If you’re reading this Aunt Alice – thanks! I meant to send a thank-you card, but you know how that goes.) And even I’m not going to go digging through my Facebook page to try to remember what happened a few weeks ago, much less any longer. I was trying to remember the exact date we landed in Japan, and looking on my blog was way easier and faster than trying to use my Facebook. Better.

So.

I’ve started a new job. I bumped up to a salary job and I’ve bumped down my age group – I’m still working with kids but now they’ll be toddler sized. I haven’t been given a specific age group yet, so it’s anywhere between 6 weeks and 5 years. I’m bouncing back and forth between school age and child development for a few more weeks, and the contrast is refreshing. It’s hard not to love your work when you spend your mornings playing dress up with toddlers (I was a cop, firefighter, and construction worker this morning) and spend your afternoons making Christmas cards with school age kids and talking about anything from where we’ve lived (some of these kids have been all over the place!)  to what we love to do on the weekends. Of course the getting puked on (babies) getting hit or bit (toddlers) or getting screamed at (school age) puts a damper in things, but not for long. Regardless, I’m very excited about my new job.

Jeff and I haven’t been exploring too much lately. Snow has hit Misawa already, so the roads are going to get tricky fast. Japanese don’t really plow, so snow piles on ice on top of snow on top of ice on narrow, winding roads. It’s fun. On base the roads are fine, at least. We’ve also just been really lazy lately and have been choosing to spend our weekends at home relaxing rather than adventuring. We’re hibernating?
We’ve ventured out a few times.

We visited some caves and an amber museum a few weeks ago (I just realized I never blogged about this, I should do that soon!)

Last week, we had Jeff’s command Christmas party. We had a lot of fun, I could probably do a quick blog post about that at some point too…
Next weekend we have my command Christmas party. The week after that is Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas, we’ve been shipping boxes all week. We had bought most of our gifts for family back home well before Thanksgiving with the intention of mailing them all out before the big turkey day. The best laid plans, right? We got them out this week, which happened to be before the priority mail deadline, which was today according to my radio. We splurged on some special gifts for our nephews, and then bit the bullet and paid the price for the hassle of shipping something that didn’t fit in a flat rate box. Ouch! Not happening again! I can’t wait until everyone gets to open their gifts and see what we’ve picked. I’ve loved shopping for unique gifts to give from our end of the world.
I even took pictures of mostly everything I bought before I wrapped and packaged.
Health wise I’m chugging along at pretty much the same place I was at weeks ago. I’ve cut back drastically on soda. I’m now down to very little each week. We usually eat out once a week, and I usually end up having one or two more sodas throughout the week. But that’s miles better than the one to four sodas I’d been drinking daily. Workouts are relatively nonexistant, but I’m working on it. Diet is still mediocre at best, but oh well. You can’t do everything perfectly, right?

Hmm, what else to update on? It’s hard to think of what people will actually be interested in reading. Life in Japan lately has mostly consisted of working and sleeping, which really isn’t very different from life in the states, except for which side of the car I drive in and what timezone I’m sleeping with.
It’s hitting me that we’ve been here for almost a year. It’s hard to believe on one hand. How have I lived overseas for a whole year?! On the other hand, it feels like home. Our apartment is good enough for now, we’re both working full-time, we’ve made friends and we’re involved in the community. We know enough of our town to maneuver the streets and enough Japanese words to at least decipher gestures and broken English. I’ve fallen in love with sushi and the scenery. If you asked me exactly a year ago if Japan would ever feel like home, I’d have looked at you with wild eyes and said “no!”. How things change, eh? (You can bet when one year hits, you’ll get a long blog post about how much change a year can bring!)

Fitness Lately

I've been working at making some changes to my fitness, and I thought actually writing them down to share would be beneficial. I'm hoping to push myself to a healthy lifestyle, so the support of blogland will be helpful :)


Since I started work, my goal was to tackle a regular schedule of working out. I took my time at it, since the first couple weeks of working with kids was exhausting. Not to mention adjusting to the early mornings, when I'm anything but a morning person. But now I'm feeling more adjusted and comfortable, although the days are rough since the kids are out of school and full of energy all.day.long.

Because I work early, I've been trying to fit my workouts in after work. Which is proving challenging, because I'm tired and just want to get home and put my feet up. But to work out in the morning, I'd have to wake up at 0430 or some ridiculous hour like it, which is too tough to stomach. I'm still working on the schedule, but I'm getting to the gym at least a couple times a week.



I've been slowly working my way through the Couch to 5k Running Program. I have long-standing foot injuries and problems, so running is problematic and I've tried and failed to start running a handful of times already. I'm taking this try slow, and trying to focus more on my feet and my strength than the weekly schedule and deadlines. I'm hoping to start Week 3 on Wednesday, even though I've been at it for 4 weeks. My feet were more sore than normal last week, so I took a break from running in favor of the bike and a couple days of rest. (Probably more than I needed, but it was nice!)

I've been getting up to about 1.3 miles each run, which is pretty amazing for me. I've never been a runner, so even just 1 mile is a looong way for me to jog. It's a little disheartening to do my measly mile next to all these military members who run miles daily, but I'm trying to focus on my own body and not compare.



I've also entered the world of lifting at the gym! I have some DVD's for weight training at home and using my own body for resistance, but I've always been intimidated by all the machines and weights at the gym. I went to the gym with some friends from work a handful of times, and they helped push me to try some new machines and learn how to use them correctly. It worked perfectly, because now that I'm going on my own I actually know how to use the machines and can get over my anxiety about looking like an idiot and just lift the weights.

I prefer it to cardio, hands down. I'm feeling a little discouraged by how weak my muscles are, but I'm hoping to see some progress soon. Even if I'm not lifting bulky weights, I have to admit it makes me feel pretty strong to be doing pull-ups, even if they are assisted. Luckily my legs are much, much stronger than my arms and back (I did Irish dance for 10 years), so putting some weights in the triple digits is a mood boost when I'm feeling wimpy.



I'm planning to get back to some of my workout DVD's, because the gym can be monotonous. It's also crowded and sticky after work, when everyone is trying to get their sweat on. It's harder to come into my own comfortable home and get sweaty instead of comfy, but I'm going to work on it.

My goal is to get into a routine of working out 4-5x a week. I'm not there yet, but I'm hoping to be.

I'm finding food much more challenging, since all my energy is currently being spent on playing with cute kids and then working my a$s off in the gym. Cooking is less than appealing at the end of the day, especially when it's been hot and humid and sticky. I'm hoping to work on that more soon to, since our quick fixes and picking up food are anything but healthy. I feel so much better when I take the time to cook a healthy meal, I just can't find the motivation to get there right now. Something to work on. Luckily my handsome husband has been grilling out all weekend long so I've gotten a free pass out of the kitchen!

So that's my fitness update. Not much, but a little progress. I've got a long way to go to get where I want to be, but that won't happen overnight. A little is better than nothing, right?

Cooking with Spinach

I've never been a big vegetable person. I'm a bread and potatoes kind of girl. Give me one of those covered in garlic? Even better.

The one vegetable I love and have at nearly every meal is tomatoes. Which technically aren't a real vegetable, so I really can't win. Since I've been trying to cook and eat healthier, I've been trying to incorporate more veggies into my diet. One of those good for you veggies I've been working with lately is spinach.







_{Found on Google}

One way I've always loved spinach is fresh, mixed into a big bowl of salad. When we have salad, we load it with all sorts of different veggies, including fresh spinach. But since it's winter (because it sure doesn't look like spring!), most of those delicious veggies are less than fresh at the grocery store so a salad isn't that appealing right now. In a month or two, we'll be having salads left and right. Especially if they're served next to some grilled food. I'm impatiently waiting for warmer weather so we can assemble and start cooking on our grill.




_{Found on Google}

I recently tried my first green monster. It's basically a fruit smoothie with some spinach blended in, hence the "green". Her recipes usually call for milk, but I've had some V8 Fusion juice sitting in my fridge, so I've been using that to get an added kick of fruit and veggie servings. It's cold and filling and fruity, and it gives a boost of energy in the morning. I've always been a fan of smoothies, and these are no different. Try one, you'll love it!




_{Found on Google}

I read this tip somewhere online, but tonight I made spaghetti. Usually I brown some ground beef or turkey and add the pasta sauce and some seasonings. Today, I chopped up some fresh spinach and added it with the sauce and seasonings. I used a cup, maybe a little more, because I didn't know how it'd turn out. It was great--you couldn't taste the spinach at all. It added some fresh green color to the sauce, and it blended so perfectly. I waited until Jeff finished a plateful, than asked if he liked the spinach. He looked at me and said "What spinach?" Perfect! Next time I'll try adding some more, and we'll get a good chunk of veggies in our dinner, since the jarred pasta sauce also has a veggie serving or two. And since I paired it with a salad, tonight was pretty healthy! Until I toasted some bread and topped it with a garlic and basil butter spread I mixed...and then ate too many pieces. At least it was "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Light"?

You can't change a bread and potatoes girl overnight!

Making Changes

I debated whether I wanted to post this for the whole world (or whoever actually stumbles upon my little blog) to read or whether I wanted to keep it to myself, but decided there's no reason to keep it a secret.



Over the last few months, my healthy habits have been steadily declining. I started my last semester of college in the same month that we found out we were moving to Japan...in 3 months. I finished a crazy condensed semester while preparing to move overseas. We moved out of our house and into hotel living for a month while my husband did training in San Diego, and lived on fast food. We drove the many miles home to Illinois to spend some time with family, and spent a good chunk of that family time eating out. We indulged in every Chicago food craving we had and then some. We flew to Seattle and were delayed days for our flight to Japan, then spent another week in a hotel waiting for our apartment, all while eating garbage the majority of the time. And exercise?? Forget about it. I went from being buried in books and boxes to being surrounded by family. I didn't have a moment to spare in California and I didn't want to lose a moment in Illinois when I knew we were moving so far away. Then we moved here. I was jetlagged and overwhelmed and holed up in the hotel until we moved in. Then I holed up some more, because it was still overwhelming to adjust to a new base in a foreign country where I had to figure out how to drive on the wrong side of the road and use currency and language I didn't understand. I'm still adjusting to that side of things.

The long story short -- my body was showing the months of neglect.

I've never done extreme diets, but I have yo-yo'd with eating healthy and exercise just like every other person. I've gone months with relatively healthy eating and regular exercise, and I've gone months without. I'll spend a week working hard and burning calories, then have a rough day and give up. Just like so many other people. Every time I would have to start over, I would feel all this pressure at doing it all over again.

I decided this time, I didn't want to do it alone. I wanted something that will last more than a few weeks or months. I wanted something I would feel committed to, not just throw away when things get tough. So I decided to join Weight Watchers.



I don't have dozens of pounds to lose, but I do have a lot of unhealthy habits to break and healthy habits to nurture. I've been at it a few weeks, and while things haven't been as productive as I imagined in the midst of earthquakes and illness, I'm making small changes and working towards bigger ones. I've lost a couple pounds, and I've gotten better at cooking homemade meals. I'm taking the stairs more often, even though those 8 flights up to our apartment are killer. I still need to work on my exercise habits, since being sick interrupted that. And I really need to work to give up soda, but I love it so much!

For now, I'm still learning and adjusting. I'm planning to update occasionally about my progress and struggles, and to share recipes I try and workouts I enjoy. It's a little intimidating to put it all out there and admit that I need some extra help getting and staying healthy, but I'd rather face that hurdle now, in my 20's, in good health, and only slightly over a healthy weight, before it gets out of control and serious health problems start popping up. All I need to adjust for right now is long-standing foot injuries, and I'd like to keep it that way.

So that's my story. I know it will be a challenging journey to commit to a new lifestyle and stick with it. But I think with the help and support of Weight Watchers, I'll be able to deal with whatever life throws at me. Although it still breaks my heart to think about giving up soda...