Bring on the weekend!

Happy Friday everyone! My weekend looks like this:

• teach one lesson today from 2-3
• drive 2 hours north to play an acoustic indie folk show at a small music festival
• drive home pretty late, probably getting home around midnight
• teach Saturday morning 10-12 noon
• attend a recital that two of my students are playing at
• go to a local concert/show that my wonderful boyfriend is playing at
• church on Sunday morning
• teach one violin lesson after church
• play a rock violin show on Sunday afternoon/evening

Whew, it should be an AWESOME couple of days. Obviously I won't have too much time to post or comment, but I'll try to read your blogs. :)

I had a delicious bowl of oatmeal this morning. All the usual stuff (pumpkin, flax, noni juice) and I added a splash of FF milk, some frozen strawberries, 1/3 FF cottage cheese, and a spoon of Sunflower Seed butter. (I also had probably one serving of cashew pieces while making this).


For lunch yesterday I made a great omelet with a bunch of leftover sauteed veggies, broccoli, 1 egg, 1/4 C egg whites, and feta cheese. I topped it with avocado, hummus and more feta. :) It was seriously delicious and healthy.

I cooked the veggies first.


Stuffed the omelet:


And folded it over with the extra veggies on the side.


I had a bunch of grape tomatoes while making the omelet.


And I ended lunch with a Breyers yogurt. (Added a bit of cereal for some crunch).


And a peach.

Right before the gym I had a FiberPlus Antioxidants bar. At the gym I did 28 minutes on the Expresso bike and beat my Ghost rider (previous best ride time) by almost 2 minutes! Yay! Then I had to hurry to meet my boyfriend and his away-from-home family for dinner. We went to a local bar where we had fried cauliflower, pizza and beer. I had two slices with veggies, chicken and lots of cheese on them. They were pretty greasy but delicious. I think a sweat session at the gym will help though. So I'm off now. I also need to do a load of laundry at some point.

My trip to NYC is coming up in less than a week!! I am so excited about it! We're going to catch a show, hopefully, walk around Central Park, visit Ground Zero and a church near there, walk around Grenwich (sp?) Village, see Times Square, attend a concert at Julliard (!), and eat at lots of adorable NYC restaurants. I don't know if I have any readers in NYC yet, but if so, or if there's anyone familiar with the city, do you have any recommendations of restaurants to eat at? Even if you've just visited there, what were some of your favorites?

Have a FANTASTIC weekend!

I love Big Lots!

Good morning! I woke up wanting cereal so I had this bowl with TJ's high fiber cereal, half a banana, cashew pieces and FF milk.

I also snacked on more cashew pieces and the other half of my banana with PB.

I briefly mentioned my Tuesday night Big Lots shop but I figured I'd show you the rest of my fun purchases. I found a huge pack of Crest Whitening Products, including two packs of White Strips and two tubes of whitening toothpaste for $35! And the expiration date is pretty far, so they should still be effective! I'm excited because my teeth aren't that bad, but I really want a whiter smile.


Other finds include:

• two Clif Z bars for $.40 each
• a bunch of hair ties for $2
• pre-moistened make up removing cloths for $1 (I tried these and I LOVE them enough to go back and try to buy a couople more packs!! Their scent reminds me faintly of Bath and Bodyworks Cucumber Melon scent!)
• FiberPlus Antioxidants bars. These are THE most delicious chocolatey snack bars I've ever tried!! If you ever have the opportunity to try these you MUST buy them (specifically the Dark Chocolate Almond flavor. The other one is OK, but not quite as mind-numbingly delicious!) I am a serious chocoholic and I can't fully describe how amazing they are! I first had these at an international music festival in Memphis, TN and my regular grocery store doesn't carry them so I got super excited about finding these for $2 at Big Lots! In addition to being the best tasting snack bars I've ever eaten, they have pretty good nutritionals. Would you all be interested in me holding a giveaway of one box of them?! I'm considering it and I'd love to do so!
  

I had a little too much unhealthy food AGAIN yesterday. I'm not really too concerned, as I've talked about on this blog before. But I would like to start upping the veggies, drink more water, and cut back on the fried foods. I totally forgot to mention that I had a large serving of onion rings on Tuesday night (and now also Wednesday night! Umm, they were so freaking amazing!) and I've just generally been choosing foods without a ton of nutrition. Reason # 9,385,274 why having an ED sucks: long after recovery, when the periods FINALLY start even THINKING about coming back, you will be super hormonal ALL THE FREAKING TIME. I have a lot of patience with myself because I know my body is doing such a great job of healing itself 100% and it's SOOO close. But to be completely honest (and perhaps TMI) I still have highly irregular periods and many months they don't show up at all. (My periods were completely gone for about 5 years and are finally showing up about 6 years later!!) I am pleased that I haven't had to take birth control to regulate them (I don't have anything against birth control, I just wanted to get my periods back naturally). Anyway, the point is that I'm not one to blame my moods on hormones, but I've just noticed HUGE changes in how I feel from week to week and I've been crying a lot more than normal, over both happy and sad/upset emotions. I'm not a big crier on a regular basis. And the logical side of my brain is (nicely) laughing at the emotional side of me being a woman. The logical side also helps me get through the stupid hormonal weeks by reassuring me that I just have to wait it out, thanks to the damage I did to my body during my ED/DE years. Despite the occasional--ahem, or not so occasional as the case may be--crying, I find it's a beautiful thing to see my body continuing to heal and start functioning again as a woman who will be able to be a mommy someday!

And on that note, here's my mini chocolate snacking episode yesterday:



I also had a handful of carob chips and cashews with the above chocolate.

I went to teach and play from 4-8pm and after the church service that I play from 7-8pm they had delicious orange cake for us:


Sorry for the picture quality. I had to snap it quickly, and I had also already taken a few bites.

The Pens (hockey team!) won the game yesterday, thus advancing to the next round of the playoffs! Woohoo! I had two Labatt's Blue and those onion rings while watching with my friends.

AnAppleADay is having another amazing round of giveaways! I want to win ANY of these products! :)

I'm off to hop in the shower here before rehearsing for two hours with a friend. Then I'll hit the gym, and have a pretty free afternoon until meeting my boyfriend for dinner with the two people he lives with. They're an older couple and they're almost like his family away from home, so it'll be exciting! I haven't gotten a chance to really get to know them yet, so it'll be nice.

Giveaway winner!

Good afternoon! I used random.org to generate my PB Loco giveaway. I got #52 which in my comments is:

Tracy said...

i love the coconut cream pie larabar! actually ANY lara bar! =D i used to play clarinet- played for 9 years..but stopped once i got to college. i, too, healed from anorexia.but still fight the negativity a lot. lately fighting a relapse.

Please leave a comment with your e-mail because I don't know how to reach you. If I don't hear from you in 3 days, I'll have to choose another winner. Congratulations!

I always feel so behind on my blogging! I read Kath's and Jenna's and Meghann's and they're posting 3 or 4 times a day. Am I just a super slow blogger? Does anyone have any tips on how to speed up my blogging to get the posts up faster? Also, am I just really lame and is there a way to upload more than 5 pictures at a time? I'm not complaining at all--I LOVE blogging!--but I just feel like I spend too much time on it.

Anyway, here's my breakfast and lunch, dinner from yesterday plus various snacks as always.

My breakfast was a bowl of TJ's high fiber cereal with two diced up small fresh peaches and FF Kefir in place of milk. It was delicious. :)



I baby sat for a couple hours this morning and I snacked on a couple small pieces of dried bananas from TJ's as well as a few grapes.

On my way home I had an apple and I also tried these bars by Fiber One but they also have 7 grams of protein. They tasted good and have decent nutritionals, so I'm happy. Plus I found them at Big Lots, so they were cheap!


For lunch I heated up a Tasty Bit Indian dish and added one whole zucchini, an onion and about 1/2 C of chopped broccoli that I had sauteed in a little olive oil. It was delicious, healthy and filling!


Before mixing...
After mixing it all together.

I also had an appetizer of a cracker with hummus and lf feta cheese.

For a packed dinner yesterday, I made two sandwiches on small bread with hummus, avocado, feta and cucumber. One of the better sandwiches I've had in a while. :) I also brought a baggie of the rest of the cucumber, an apple and a Carrot Cake Clif bar. This is now one of my favorite flavors! On Tuesday nights, I teach from about 3-9, so I eat my dinner in increments kind of throughout the night.





I also found some Luna bars at Big Lots for $.70 so I bought two Smores ones and one LemonZest and ate one of the Smores flavors.

And in semi-important news, I ate my first Jamfrakas bar ever yesterday. Allow me to photo-document the experience. ;)



I did not yet end up buying an iPod since I ran out of time yesterday. I'm still considering it though, and thank you for all your comments! I'm running short on time again today since I have to go teach in about an hour and I'd like to get a workout in, so it might have to wait a while yet. After I teach, there's the 7th hockey game in the series and the Pittsburgh Penguins HAVE to win, or they're out of the playoffs! I'll be watching with my boyfriend and another friend! So much to do! I hope you ladies are having a fantastic middle of the week!

Being sore feels great!

I woke up nice and sore this morning but it feels great. In addition to the racquetball from yesterday, I also did a bunch of frog jumps (jumping squats) to warm up with and my legs definitely feel it today. Of course, I'm still going to the gym shortly here. :)

The sad news is that the Pens lost the hockey game in overtime, so the 7th game in the series will be played on Wednesday night. Talk about NERVE-WRACKING. Go Pens!

I ate a great bowl of blackberry cashew oats today:

-1/2 C oats
-1/3 C pumpkin
-noni juice (I'll put this in every day to use up the bottle, not because I think it's really as great at it claims to be!)
-ground flax
-cashews
-blackberries
-a tiny bit of granola to finish it

Yesterday I was hungry all afternoon. A couple pictures:


Tofu with sauteed cabbage, kale, fresh ginger, onion, tamari and hot sauce

Eaten with Ak-mak crackers and hummus

My dinner was this amazing bowl of veggies. Consisted of broccoli, the mixture above (the cabbage/kale/ginger stuff), tofu, and topped with low fat feta cheese! This was incredible and also a HUGE amount of food, which I love!


Fruit for dessert.

Unphotographed foods were 2 Clif Z bars, 2 Miller lite beers (at night with the boyfriend), some chocolate covered espresso beans, and 2 squares of Ghiradelli raspberry dark chocolate. :)

Sweet and Fit is having a giveaway for $10 off a purchase from MixMyGranola.

On my to do list today, before leaving the house to teach at 3:30 is:

-Bank
-Post office
-Look for housing options for next year!
-Gym
-Practice
-Shop, and try to convince myself to buy an iPod. I ONLY have EVER owned an iPod shuffle (*first generation* thank you very much!) It's ironic especially considering that I'm a full-time professional musician. Umm, yes, I might just need to shell out the money for the iPod. My cord on my shuffle pretty much dead and I'd have time today to run up to the Apple store and buy it/load it up with music! Woohoo! Yes, I need to do that. Full report later. :)