Long day to practice!

Good morning! I'm going to put up a quick post and then get to practicing. I need to learn three pieces for a concert coming up very soon. I'm the only violinist in the group and they are quite difficult! Later today I'm teaching and rehearsing an opera.

I have a few more random meals to catch up on so here you go.

This is a Boca patty (mushroom mozzarella, I think?) "burger" with a bunch of sauteed zucchini and onions on the side.

Eaten while studying this:

And since I was still hungry:

Breakfast yesterday morning was a bowl of oatmeal with strawberries, pumpkin and carob chips. I'm all out of strawberries and they are another "MUST" purchase today. Fresh strawberries are one of my favorite foods ever!


I stopped by Starbucks before teaching for 6 hours yesterday to get a venti skinny caramel latte. It's nice to have something with milk (calories + protein) to sip, especially since sometimes I don't have any dinner break at all. On those days I'll bring a Naked Protein drink which has about 400 calories in the bottle, but yesterday I had 20 minutes for dinner so I grabbed a 6 inch Subway ham on wheat with Pepperjack cheese. Sorry, no picture though.

And a quick snack.

Yesterday night I went out with my boyfriend (3+ months and he's still wonderful, sweet, and amazing!) and I gt a Hoegaarden beer plus 5 chicken bites (sort of like chicken nuggets, but way better) and some pitas to dip in hummus and guacamole. It was a lot of food for how late it was, but it was delicious! No pictures, because I haven't told him about the blog.

Anyway, the point is that I am reminded again at how good our bodies are at taking care of us. This morning I made 2 Boca sausage links and a bowl of (completely plain-gasp!) oatmeal. I only used about 1/3 cup of oats and I couldn't finish it. So I didn't, because my body told me I was full. To be honest, satiety is still a relatively new concept for me. In my ED/DE years I just never got full which led to binging and then either feeling guilty or trying to purge (and feeling guilty again). Only recently (after I gained enough body fat and was eating enough ALL THE TIME) did I ever start to experience the feeling of fullness.

I only have these two pictures for you because my roommate came out to the kitchen and I couldn't get any more.


And lastly, during some of my travels, I got the chance to stop at this memorial of Flight 93. It crashed in Western Pennsylvania and they have a beautiful and seemingly sacred memorial on that ground. There is something incredibly chilling to know that the passengers on the plane KNEW they weren't going to survive, so they worked together to force the plane to crash into the ground there, instead of letting it make it to its destination of Washington D. C., which is where the terrorists were aiming for it to go.


In memory of each person who died.

They had a large wall to leave stuff in memory. None of it ever gets thrown away, and is instead removed when it reaches capacity and starts to get too old.

GOD BLESS THE FAMILIES OF ALL THE SELFLESS PEOPLE ON THAT PLANE THAT REFUSED TO LET THE TERRORISTS TAKE EVEN MORE LIVES.

Happy hump day! I'm off to practice!

In a good rut!

It's a good and delicious "problem" but I've have the exact same bowl of oatmeal for the past three days! Sorry, it's now officially "boring". But here are the pictures anyway.



I was running out of Greek yogurt (several of you asked what the white stuff is--in this case TJ's 2% Greek yogurt, but I usually buy 0% because I don't notice a difference in the fat levels of my dairy products and I definitely get enough other fats in my diet) so I also microwaved two small soysage patties for some extra protein. I really love the Morningstar patties! They are flavorful, filling and a wonderful texture! I highly recommend them! Their nutritional information can be found here. I'd also be OK with them sending me more products to review! Subtle Lisa, real subtle, I know! Haha! Please forgive the Googled picture.


Yesterday I snacked on small amounts of a bunch of different things basically instead of lunch. I'm trying to do this less, because I think I should sit down and prepare an actual meal, but I think the small snacking is just how my body works and I'm OK with that. It definitely wasn't a binge. But I had several bites of Greek yogurt w. some granola, about 1/2 a PURE cherry cashew bar (the same kind that you can win in my giveaway!), a slice of ww bread with PB Loco (again, enter my giveaway for your chance to taste this amazing PB!), and a handful of carob chips. It was delicious. I had actually planned to get to the gym, but I started feeling sick/hungry VERY suddenly (which is why I started snacking!) so I ate, figuring I'd do work for an hour to digest and then go to the gym.

Well.......

That didn't happen. I changed my violin strings (needed to! I'm trying an entirely new brand for me that I've never used! I know they'll take a long time to settle in, but I hope they do so quickly because I'm not a huge fan of them yet!)

But anyway, back to the subject at hand which is that I got an incredibly sweet e-mail from a great guy that I've been hanging out with a lot. We're good friends and we don't want to rush things, but he really is amazing. So considerate, so kind, so much fun to be around. I had to respond to his e-mail which took me a while because I didn't want to say anything "wrong" and I'm glad I took the time to do so, because it turns out we have similar feelings about each other. We ended up hanging out for about 3 hours yesterday after my rehearsal and talking about a lot of very important things. I am blessed to have a friend like him!

So anyway, the point is that when I had my ED/DE, I would NOT have been OK with skipping a workout to send an e-mail! But really, life is so much more important than working out. Working out simply creates and sustains the healthy body that can then be that much more actively engaged IN LIFE!! And that's a beautiful thing! It makes me see working out in a totally different light then I have in the past!

On a related note, I hopped on the scale today just for the heck of it. I honestly thought I'd probably gained weight because of several days recently with lots of alcohol and no working out. I'm exactly where I was before. I was surprised once again at my body's ability to maintain. But I'm going to be grateful for it.

OK, back to my food yesterday. I packed my dinner because I was teaching from 4-6 and then driving to rehearsal at 7:30pm. (It's an hour drive!) I made a ham sandwich with romaine and cucumber and hummus:

And I packed a bag of carrot stick, an apple and a Light and Fit yogurt with puffed Kamut and granola mixture.


Yesterday evening I had some popcorn and a butterscotch Rice Krispie bar (this was amazingly good!) that didn't get photographed.

I want to go to the gym AND later to gymnastics!! I hope I'll be able to go tonight, and I'm planning on it. Yay! Other than than, today is low key with me just teaching a lesson. I have some work to do at home and I will practice, but honestly it's a pretty lazy day! I guess the break is nice, but sometimes I'm the kind of person that feels like I have to have a HUGE list of things I must do. But I'm going to check out some community college classes (just exploring my options!), clean my room (what a novel idea!), and read most likely. :) So I'll keep myself busy.

What about you? What work-related things do you do on your days off?

P.S. Mom on the Run is giving away granola here.

And AnAppleADay is giving away Holey Donuts! I've wanted to try these forever!

Smiley face oatmeal!

The alternative title for this post that I was considering was "Sleep Wins!" because I went to bed late (4am) and set my alarm for 9am. I somehow managed to turn it off and fell asleep until 12:30pm!! Wowza! Luckily I had just wanted to get gym and random work done and I didn't have to do anything until 2:45pm! But I felt so much better today after sleeping for 8.5 hours! But after waking up/blogging/showering/etc. I taught from 2:45-6pm and then drove one hour to a rehearsal from 7:30-10:30pm, plus the hour drive home. It's now 1:30am and I'll wake up at 6:45am to baby-sit 8-4pm, then dash to an evening ROCK VIOLIN (love it!) show that I'm playing, 4:30-10pm or so. Tomorrow's a fairly long day, but it should be fun!

I'll just do a quick day's re-cap for you all (plus a video, plus some giveaways!) and get to bed.

I made smiley face oatmeal this morning!!



-1/2 C oats
-1 tsp ground flax
-1/3 C cottage cheese
-2 tsp raisins
-1/2 (?) canned, no sugar added peaches

Plus a banana, PB and a SoyBoy sausage link for extra protein. And coffee, of course!



I ended up microwaving another sausage link that didn't get photographed. And a short while later I had a carrot with PB. Because of the mistake I made in waking up so late (OOPS!) I ate this around 1pm.



Then I packed this dinner:

-Another ham sandwich (I promise the ham's almost gone! I really like it and yes I know it has a lot of sodium. I just eat one slice on each sandwich I make and add spicy mustard and ff cheese).
-Broccoli
-Snacks were leftover popcorn, a Fiber Plus Antioxidants bar (delicious!!) and an apple.
-And I had some leftover brussel sprouts that didn't get their picture taken.





I ate dinner while driving to orchestra, so it was around 6:30pm.

On the way home I had a very few extra pretzels that were in my car and when I got home I ate a Fiber and Omega-3 bar. They're good, but I should warn you guys that you can really only eat one every couple days without having...uhmm...adverse side effects. Sorry, TMI!




made a pack of sugar free hot chocolate.




Many blogland giveaways:

Lora at Honey Nut Lo is giving away a pack of her favorite things, including some Twilight stuff.

One Frugal Foodie is giving away $25 in Natural Foods Groceries.

Julie at Julie Go Lean is giving away a basket of popcorn and seasonings.

Meghann at Graduate Meghann is giving away Honest Foods Granola Planks!

AnAppleADay at Blue Sky World is giving away Fiji Bottled Water.

Juli at Peanut Butter and Juli is giving away Perfect Foods Bars.

Run To The Finish is also giving away Honest Foods Granola Bars and Planks!

The Fitnessista is giving away a gigantic Stoneyfield Farm goodie bag.

Sweet and Fit is giving away a batch of homemade blondies.

Gymnastics video of the day is Amanda Borden's beam routine in the team finals of the 1996 Olympics. She was the team captain even though she was definitely a lesser know name on the team. She is SO solid in this routine! She has no balance checks and demonstrates beautiful and confident gymnastics! Enjoy!




Good night. I hope you all have an awesome day tomorrow!

Congratulations Emily!!

I have fantastic news to share--Emily at the health nut rocked out her Wind Symphony audition (she's a clarinetist!) and got seated among the clarinet grad students (even though she's a nutrition major). I am so proud of her because I know how hard she was practicing! And as a musician myself, who's been through two performance degrees, I realize the stress of an audition, especially when you really want to play well and feel like you have something to prove to the faculty members. Auditions are just NOT fun. Performing, rehearsing, musical camaraderie, the physicality of playing and holding the instrument; these things are all fun. But auditions--not so much. I've never met anyone who actually liked auditioning. So congratulations Emily! Enjoy it, appreciate it! You're awesome! :)

Yay, I'm seriously still so happy for her! But I guess I should move onto food quickly, because I'm exhausted (it's past 1am!) and I want to get up early for a morning workout before my band and I leave for two shows in Maryland and New Jersey (Friday and Saturday nights). By the way, this also means that I won't be able to blog until Sunday night, but I will try to take interesting food pictures (although I can't make any promises because this blog is still pretty anonymous and I don't take foodie pictures in front of people). Also, the small task of packing, which I haven't even started on yet. Oops; thankfully I'm pretty good at it so it should be quick.

So I was craving protein all day. Like mad protein, and carbs just didn't sound good. I have know idea why, but I went with it. I'm actually quite puzzled, so please don't judge my (pretty ridiculously--but unintentional--) low carb day!

Breakfast:

-2 Morningstar soysage patties

-bowl of green beans (yeah I know, I'm weird! One of my best friends calls me an anomaly and this is a great example--seriously, who wakes up craving green beans?)


-1/2 Pure protein bar (had the other half about 2 hours later)



Then I went to a doctor's appt (just a check up) but had to drive around forever looking for parking!, went to the gym and did a 15 minute run, followed by arm/upper body weights for about 20 minutes, and then a 25 minutes fairly challenging Expresso bike ride (the Quicksilver route). Then I stopped at a store to get something for an upcoming blog giveaway!! I'm not announcing it yet, but I'm super excited for it! After all of that I went to Whole Foods and got a salad from their bar. It was heavenly!!



This salad had:

-spinach as the base
-a few tomatoes
-edamame
-2 pieces of grilled chicken (lower middle)
-3 marinated mushrooms (upper far right)
-broccoli slaw (lower left)
-two pieces of fake chicken (tempeh I think-upper left of the picture)
-eggplant salad (upper middle)
-southwestern tofu (lower right--this was good!)
-curried chicken salad (this was the star of the meal and one of the better things I've eaten! :)

The whole meal was only $6.57, which is too much for every day, but really not THAT bad. :)

On my way home from Whole Foods I had some cashews I bought: (there were more of these eaten at home!)


I didn't buy too much, but the highlights were:

-tofu
-wild rice tempeh (Ms. Gliding Calm eats this all the time and I really like it after I tried it!)
-celery (another thing I really wanted! Go figure)
-small carton of greek yogurt with a coupon
-Indian simmer sauce with a coupon--I can't wait till I'm home next week to cook up some chicken in it!)
-3 ThinkThin bars to travel with

(this one got eaten in small bites throughout the afternoon!)
-2 Luna bars (ditto)
-frozen Soy Boy (?) soysages because I finished the morningstar ones and they're delicious!

I came home, put away groceries and cooked up the tempeh. I drizzle it with tamari in cooking it and it gives it a wonderful flavor! I ended up eating about half a block (some then, some after I taught a 1 hour violin lesson, and some after gymnastics--but I'm getting to that). I also had two unphotographed stalks of celery with probably 2 TBs of PB on them.

The exciting thing about my day: I went to an adult gymnastics class! I love the sport so much and I want to be able to do all the stuff I could when I was younger, although admittedly I was never a crazy high level gymnast. I just loved it! And I still do! In fact, here is a video of Carly's floor routine in the all around competition at the 2004 Olympics. At the end when her winning score is announced and she starts crying on Evgeny Marchenko--I always lose it there. I never cry, but that moment is so beautiful! She has worked so much harder than I could ever imagine and it paid off and she accomplished her ultimate goal. And that is beautiful!



I might start doing a gymnastics video with many posts, because then I'd have a good excuse to watch them on YouTube. :)

I got home after gymanstics tonight and went to watch a rehearsal of my friends' band. It was great and I enjoyed it immensely. But I got home and was a little hungry so had probably two servings of these:



And I'll leave you with a cute picture I took this week at one of my student's lessons. I teach a young girl who has a 1/16th size violin!! It's so small that it looks like a toy. I put it next to mine for comparison. :)



OK, I'm off to pack quickly (good thing I did laundry today!) and hopefully be asleep by 2:30am. We'll see. Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend. ANY FUN PLANS?