What I ate today

Meal 1:  Ezekial cinnamon raisin toast with pb, plain greek yogurt with 1tsp truvia and berries, coffee with 1 packet of stevia and almond milk. @ 7:30am

Meal 2:  Two 4oz containers of cottage cheese and a bag of raw veggies.  @10:30am

Meal 2:  6oz (female portion size) Crockpot chicken salsa (made over the weekend) with couscous and a bag of raw veggies. @ 1:30pm

Meal 3: Chocolate protein bars (http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/video-jamie-eason-chocolate-protein-bars.htm) and a bag of raw veggies. @ 3:30pm

Post workout chocolate whey protein shake blended with raw spinach leaves and a banana.  @ 5:00pm

Meal 5:  It's already 3/4 of the way eaten, sorry.  6oz baked chicken breast, salad, mandarin oranges, one avocado. @ 6:15pm

Okay, I know this isn't 'clean,' but it helps me so much.  I usually have one after dinner.  I never said I was perfect. 

Today I found myself working out in my ACU's.  Took me back to being in Iraq. 

All morning I sat in a conference room with cupcakes.  It was SO tempting, but I didn't eat one!!! :)

I'll start by apologizing.  I always tell myself to take a picture of my food BEFORE I eat.  Usually I don't remember until 1/2 half through.  I'm sure you love seeing my half eaten food. 

I stick to a few simple rules when I eat, none of which I invented on my own nor can I take credit for.

• Eat within an hour of waking.  After that eat every 2-3 hours.  Depending on how long you are up, that should be about 6-7 meals.  
• Plan ahead.  Pick one meal prep day a week, Sunday works well.  Every night I do a mini meal prep for the next day.  Everything is always pre-packaged so I can do a grab and go.
• Limit sugars.
• Protein every meal (I aim for 20g each time).
• Limit fruit to in the morning or following a workout.
• No carbs after 7pm, usually (I'm not perfect!).
• The only dairy I typically consume is plain greek yogurt and cottage cheese.  For milk I use almond milk. 
• Protein before bed so my muscles that I worked early in the day have nutrients to repair while I'm sleeping [for hopefully 8 hours].  I find if I forget this meal, then I wake up in the middle of the night starving.  

* Not pictured for today is my Meal 6, which will be a protein shake before bed.  

I don't count calories.  I attempted to once or twice and both times it was about 2000 calories.  I don't have time in my life to obsess over counting everything. 

Breakfast is my favorite meal.  I'll write a future blog on how I go about food prep.  It used to take me a long time when I first started this way of eating.  Now it doesn't take me nearly as long as I have a better handle on it. 

I didn't actually intend to workout today.  I'm pretty sore from yesterday's Crossfit workout.  I'm planning on a bike ride tomorrow with someone I've never been out with before.  Her idea of a 'short' ride is 1.5 hours...um, that's like a marathon bike ride for me.  Because of the scheduled ride and being sore I thought I would take today off.  However, I found myself driving to the gym [without my gym bag b/c this wasn't planned] before picking up the kids.  Monday was a heavy lift day for me, so this was challenging, but not all out.

Here is what I did today:



LiveFit Trainer Day 34 Legs
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/jamie-eason-livefit-trainer-phase-2-day-34.html
Superset:

• Seated leg curl 3x10 @ 50-65lbs
• Leg extension 3x10 @ 80lbs
• Superset:
• Long stride lunge 3x20 @ 60lbs
• Abduction 3x20 @ 110lbs
• Superset:
• Lying leg curl 3x15 @ 65
• Adduction 3x15 @ 80
• Normal sets:
• Stiff leg deadlift 3x10 @ 70lbs
• Single leg barbell squat 3x10 @ 50lbs (I have a love hate relationship with these.  I hate doing them, but I love what they do for me!)
• Seat calf raise 3x20 @ 100lbs
• Standing calf raise 3x20 @ 100lbs

First time blogging!

Let me start this by saying 1) I'm not a blogger and 2) I'm not a writer (therefore I will probably have spelling errors and type-o's, this will be the only time I apologize).  Okay, now that I got that off my chest.  I'm trying something new here.  It was really not something I've been thinking about over time.  Matt mentioned something quick about me starting a blog and as I drove in to work today, I thought why not?  So here I am at work, but obviously not really doing work.  Next confession, I'm definitely short timing it at work as I am finishing up my time in the Army in 5 weeks to start the next chapter...more school. 

So what is this all about?  It's not about my personal life (well maybe sort).  It's about my life for fitness, which kind of makes it personal because fitness is really kind of my life.  Here and there you will probably read, if anyone actually reads this, things about my kids and our crazy life.  However, this is really about my love for fitness.  I have always considered myself a fit person, so this isn't about my new fitness journey to lose weight, blah blah blah.  I have though recently changed my approach to fitness.  Up until about 5 months ago, my focus was always cardio, running in particular.  Not the professional kind of running to win some huge race, just the running to stay in shape, running to max the Army PT test, running to participate in fun road races.  I would weight lift here and there, but really when I said I 'worked out' today, that meant I went for a run.  I would also eat whatever I wanted.  Genetically blessed with a decent metabolism, that was fine in my adolescent years and early twenties.  So while running and eating whatever I wanted, I never was able to achieve the type of tone and definition I had always wanted.  I would see fitness models with nice looking muscles.  I always thought if they could look like that, why not I?  I am not different than they are.  So that is what I set out to do, tone and define my muscles.  For no particular reason, other than for myself.   I didn't do this to compete, to model, to body build, etc.  This was and is simply for me.  I like what I see.  Everyone's preference is different, however, mine is pretty muscles, but not too muscular to look manly. 

I set out to define my muscles through http://www.bodybuilding.com/ Jamie Eason's LiveFit 12-week trainer (http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/jamie-eason-livefit-trainer.html).  AMAZE!  I loved it, still love it, and you will love it too.  The whole basis is clean eating and building muscle tone, definition, and strength while decreasing body fat.  I know that I started the program around 20% body fat.  I have not measured myself since; although I'm sure I am lower.  I will do so in the near future and report back.  I don't weigh myself.  I don't count calories.  I don't measure my macronutrients.  The program does call for both of those tasks in phase 2 and phase 3.  I simply stuck to the suggested foods and meal plan.  I cut out sugars.  I changed my eating habits.  That being said, the Chase household ALWAYS cheats.  We try to keep it to once a week and it's usually pizza night on Friday nights.  We also very rarely drink alcohol.  For a few reasons, one - we just don't have a HUGE interest any more (thank gosh), two - we just don't have a lot of time to think about it, and three - it has a lot of sugar and alcohol inhibits fat loss. 

Where am I today?  I finished the 12-week program in early April.  Now I'm doing less structured of weight lifting, but still a little structured.  It makes sense in my head, let's put it that way.  :) I'm starting to dabble in Crossfit with Matt.  He is encouraging me to lift heavier and really challenging myself.  If it weren't for him, I probably wouldn't 'do' Crossfit.  We don't belong to a Crossfit gym.  We either use the gym on post or we use the equipment we have in our garage.  For now, it works just fine.  While my focus has not been cardio for the past handful of months, the crazy Chases are competing in a duathalon this weekend - run 2 miles, bike 14 miles, run two miles.  Biking has always been my weakest sport.  We are running a half marathon in two weeks [on the side of a mountain none the less].  Basically we just want to survive. 

Benchmarks (to keep myself accountable):
1 rep max:
Squat 185 lbs
Shoulder Press 85 lbs
Dead Lift 185 lbs
Clean 105 lbs

What do I plan to do today?  Crossfit workout "Angie"
For time:
100 pull ups (I can't do these on my own yet, so I use a resistance band on the pull up bar to offset weight)
100 push ups
100 sit ups
100 squats