Bring it on Chappell Hill!

August 15, 2010 by Nutritious Foodie

Bike Barn, Houston area bike stores, hosts a monthly ride.  The ride is free and fully supported, meaning there is a rest stop with food and SAG (Support And Gear).   We signed up for the ride!  If you recall the last time I rode Chappell Hill I tore my meniscus (ride description and the Doc said).

There were two route options, 36 and 54, I decided on the shorted route since I wasn’t sure how my knee would feel with all the ups and downs of the route.    It was the right decision given the HOT HOT temperatures outside.

Here is how I did;

My speed and Heart Rate vs Distance

I was getting really tired towards the end of the ride.

Pre-ride I had Vega Sport

Source

I had a GU 3 miles into the ride, at the rest stop and 3 miles before finish line

Source

At the rest stop, 1 banana and half an orange.

For dinner we made Balsamic Quinoa Pasta

- 1 Green pepper
- 1 red pepper
- 1 zucchini
- 1 carrot
- 2 celery sticks
- 1/2 onion
- 2 oz quinoa pasta
- 4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- 1 tbsp olive oil

* Chop all veggies to small cubes.
* sauté chopped onion in olive oil until translucent
* Add carrot and celery and let it cook for 1 min
* Add all other veggies and cook until soft
* Bring water to boil, add salt and  cook the pasta until al dente
* Add 1/2 cup of the pasta water to the veggie mixture, and add balsamic vinegar
* Add pasta to the veggie mixture, let it all cook together for 1 min

~ G

Tour de France

July 22, 2010 by Nutritious Foodie

Have you been watching the tour?   This is the first year that I have actually watched the tour and payed attention to who is who and who is fast.   I am enjoying it quit a bit.

I skipped my AM workout because I had a long to do list at work and wanted to get started on it… honestly I hate it when I have to miss a workout because of work.

Dinner tonight was tasty

Grilled Portabella Mushroom Cap topped with Quinoa pasta and side of green bean fries :)

I think I am going to have a piece of dark chocolate, pack my gym bag and go to bed… my goal is to be under the covers by 8:30..

~ G

3 phase

July 21, 2010 by Nutritious Foodie

The past two days I have been to the gym and have ate healthy, however I haven’t had a chance to take a picture or blog about it.

Why?   I have been working on designing a 3 phase separator……   1 vessel, 1 feed in and 3 coming out (Oil, Water, Gas)

Source: Chemical Engineering Progress, September 1994

Not only did I work on this at work, I brought it home to continue working… I even worked through all the numbers in my sleep… which means I got a lousy night of sleep last night and I am exhausted and sore.

Yesterday I did lower body workout  and this morning I went to the cycle class… really good workout.

Now my friends I am off to bed before I fall sleep typing.

Sweet Dreams!

~G

Busy Monday

July 19, 2010 by Nutritious Foodie

I had a very busy and productive day.   I made it to the 5:30 AM Cycle class this morning even though I really wanted to sleep another hour.

On my way to the gym I had Green Juice and had Vega sport the first portion of my cycle class.

Fruit for my morning snack

Corn salad (fresh corn, avocado and grape tomatoes) + Leftovers from Saturday (Mixed grains and deeply roasted veggies)

I had packed some stuff for my afternoon snack, but I got really busy at work and the next I knew it was 6 PM and way past my time to leave work.

Dinner was Quinoa tossed with sautéed celery, carrot, mushroom and zucchini, side greens and sautéed green beans

I was still sort of hungry after dinner so I had a slice of Ezekiel bread + 1 tbsp almond butter + dash of honey (not pictured)

Tomorrow is lower body day!

~ G

Eat with G

July 18, 2010 by Nutritious Foodie

We went for a short ride this morning.   My legs were tired from yesterday.

Todays ride;

Distance:  7.5 miles
Time:  30 min
Avg Speed: 14.5 mph
Max speed: 20.8 mph

I had a date and 1/2 oz of cashews before we head out the door for our ride.

After the ride I had a Smoothie

In the mix:
-  1 packet of Vega Vanilla Chai
-  1 C Almond Milk
-  1/3 C Fage Greek Yogurt
-  1/2 C Blackberries
-  1/2 Frozen Banana
-  1/2 C Frozen Pineapple

We had a crazy day running around getting stuff done, so for lunch we stopped at Freebirds and I had a hybrid burrito on Cayenne tortilia

I had a parfait for my afternoon snack

In the mix;
-  1/2 C Fage Greek Yogurt
-  2 tbsp Maple Pecan Granola
-  1/2 C Blueberries
-  Strawberries

Dinner, mixed greens topped with corn, avocado and grape tomatoes

Gym bag is packed, lunch and snacks for tomorrow are ready and I am relaxing a bit before going to bed.

Have a great week.

~G

Hot! Hot! Hot!

July 18, 2010 by Nutritious Foodie

We have had really warm days the past few days.   I am rarely say its hot out, I typically really enjoy the heat, however the last few days I haven’t been able to keep myself cool.  The AC is set low and all the fans in the house are on.

Yesterday morning I really wanted something cool for breakfast so I made a smoothie before my workout.

Workout:
-  12 min Elliptical Warm up
-  40 min upper body strength training
-  60 min cycle class

The smoothie was too thick so I poured it in a bowl and ate it with a spoon.

In the mix;

-  2 heaping tbsp Vega Shake & Go Smoothie – Tropical Tango
-  1/2 frozen banana
-  1/2 C frozen pineapple
-  1 1/2 C Unsweetened Almond Milk (Almond Breeze, from the fridge section)

Here is the tropical Tango mix; you can find vega products at whole foods

Source

source

We are on our way out the door for a quick ride this morning.

~ G

MFD

July 13, 2010 by Nutritious Foodie

I had received a couple questions both via email and through the comments section and I wanted to address them in today’s post.

At the end of June I did a June Re-cap and a few people asked how I generated the charts and where I log my food.

I use My Food Diary (www.myfooddiary.com)

If you are curious you can use their 7 day trial and check it out to see if it is something that you would find useful.   I like how its setup so here is a quick review of it.

Here is a snap shot of home page – On top you have all of your tabs where you would log your food, excercise, weight, get your reports like I did for June

Here is the second half of the home page – the weight chart shows my weight from the day I joined to date

Under the food tab you have option of searching for a food from MFD database, looking up your most used foods, Recently logged foods, your fridge that you create and can share with other users, items that you manual enter or built a recipe.  I love the copy date feature, so if you eat the same thing for breakfast or lunch you can just copy it from another day instead of logging it.

Here is the exercise log page… and some of what I have under my most used activities

Here is the report page – you can see all the things you can pull a report for and some more… for any range of time that you want to evaluate

Hope this answers some of your questions… of course as many of you have mentioned food logging is not for everyone… However I am an Engineer and strive on graphs and data and I think that’s one of the main reasons I LOVE this site :)

Happy Friday!

~ G

Hello 30’s!

July 8, 2010 by Nutritious Foodie

I always thought I would be sad the day I turn 30… but to be honest I am just as excited as I have been any other birthday.   Anyone that knows me well knows that out of all the other holidays or days that you recieve a gift, my birthday is WAY on TOP!  Let me put it this way… I wouldn’t care if I didn’t get another Christmas present but you better believe I will remember everyone that said Happy Birthday ON my Birthday ;)

Since tomorrow is my working Friday and it is a 9 hr day, I told Raymond that we should hold of festivities to Saturday… but being a sweet husband that he is, he wanted us to go out for an informal dinner and do a mini celebration :).   I don’t know what he has planned for Saturday, the only instructions I have are (1) be ready to leave at 6:30 PM (2) take an afternoon nap since we won’t come home till past midnight.

Tonight we went to Backstreet Cafe… our favorite place in town.. I can get a vegetarian dish and he can get something tasty..

We split a bruschetta for appetizer

Raymond had the Halibut

I had the Mushroom Spinach filled Shells

For dessert we shared Blackberry-Peach Cobbler… it was GREAT!

The waiter realized it’s my birthday so he brought their standard birthday dessert… Warm Almond Cake

Raymond gave me an extremly sweet card… and he knows how important the birthday present is to me… so he is holding it hostage until tomorrow… I don’t know if I can wait that long ;)

Sweet Dreams!

~ G

Back in the Saddle

July 6, 2010 by Nutritious Foodie

Hope everyone had a good July 4th Holiday!  We had a relaxing 4 day weekend.

I managed to workout 3 out of the 4 days off and the 1 day that I didn’t “workout” we walked around a lot.    On Saturday for the first time since my knee injury I tried lunges and squats with no weights and on Monday I got back on the saddle.. That’s right folks after 15 LONG weeks I got back on the bike :)  The plan was to do a short 7 mile loop around our house just to make sure I don’t have any problems with clipping in and out of the bike.  Since I was comfortable on the bike we eneded up doing 2 loops for a total of 14 miles. :)

We were planning on going for a ride tonight as well, except when I got home the thunderstorm started and we decided not to go for a ride.

We wanted something easy and delicious… Grilled Portabella Cap topped with Zucchini, Sun Dried Tomato and Raw Tahini Dressing.

Look what I got in the mail….

That’s right my very first Birthday card… from my cousin who is like a sister in Atlanta :)  Only 36 hrs left in the 20s…. :)

Have a great night!

~ G

I love JULY!

July 1, 2010 by Nutritious Foodie

July is my favorite month :)  Simply because my birthday is in July.  I have a big one coming up… the big 3 – 0 :)

I am all about birthdays, to be honest I like it more than any other holiday that you may get a gift for (except wedding anniversary, cause that’s very special too).

In case you didn’t know, I log my daily intake and keep a very close record of my daily intake, both food and water.  I am sort of disappointedwith my calcium intake in June and I plan on making some improvements in July.   Here are my charts for the month of June (NOTE: I didn’t log my food intake while in San Francisco);

 

I am pretty happy with my protein intake, with exception of couple days where my intake was less than 30 g. 

 

I know that my body makes too much cholesterol(was blessed with the genes) so I am very careful and select foods that are low in cholesterol.

OUCH!  I had way too much on the 13th.  I looked back at my log and I had Pad Thai that day.  Note to self, no more Thai food or foods high in Soy sauce

Again I looked back at my log and 11th was the Friday we were in North Carolinaand I had Cranberry Juice at the hotel.  I will never make that mistake again.

I really like to see an average of no less than 30 for the month of July.

I am really disappointed with this chart, I can’t believe I let my slip so many days.  Goal for July – daily intake of no less than 1000 mg

Looking back at my log, both on the 6th and 13th we ate 2 meals out of the house.  On the 13th, I only had breakfast and dinner (flying back home from NC), that explains HIGH sodium and LOW iron.

My workout were very spotty in June as well, that’s another thing that will have to change for July.

 

I have been logging my food intake for the past 16 month religiously.   Logging my intake has helped me lose 22 lbs, lower my cholestrol by 53 points and lower my blood pressure to a normal range.

How do you feel about logging your food intake?

~ G

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