Choose Your Hard

I loved reading all the comments yesterday about how you were going to make yesterday great.  My new mind set is that I have to take each day as it comes – not worry about what I could or should have done the day before and not wondering what I should be doing tomorrow or next week even.  Just make conscious daily efforts to make each day the best it can be.  My friend Veronica posted this on Facebook yesterday and I told her I was totally going to steal it.

This made me think of all the times I watched Biggest Loser while eating chips and salsa!  Life is all about choice and nothing is going to happen until you make it happen.  This last week has been an eye opener for me, because I’ve been numbing myself with wine every night because I really can’t bear the thought of Tony not being here anymore.  Even though I was working out, it was basically a wash with the wine.  Last Wednesday I told myself that no amount of wine was going to bring Tony back, and like that, I ditched the wine to the curb.  That’s not to say I won’t enjoy a glass now and again, but I won’t have any at home.  That’s my new rule.  I can’t remember a weekend when I didn’t have wine, but I enjoyed hot tea, lemon water and coffee and I was fine.   And since I am training for my Spartan race in May, um, I’ve never seen anyone doing an obstacle with a glass of pinot grigio!

Yesterday I used some leftover steak to make a microwave egg omelet – egg beaters, baby spinach, about 1.5 ounces of steak and some Swiss cheese, with grapes and tangerine on the side.  You know I put Frank’s RedHot on that!

We had a dual baby shower yesterday that I was in charge of, and it went very smoothly.  I brought Caesar salad and white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies.  I used this recipe for the base of the cookie, but used bagged chips and added chopped macadamia nut cookies – they were a big hit!  I didn’t get a picture, but you’ll have to check this recipe out.  My plate:  salad with a slice of spinach mix deep dish Chicago pizza.

Since I missed my lunch time workout, I spent about 90 minutes at the gym after work.  It was nice to see a sunset again when I got there!

Strength took me 25 minutes – I am up to a 50 pound barbell for dead lifts – woop!  Then finished it off with a 5k on the treadmill at a 5% incline.

Then I did about 5 minutes of continuous abs with a medicine ball and stretched.  It felt so good!

I may have been watching Travel Channel while I was working out and they were in Portland, Maine, a place that’s been on my bucket list for a while – and let me just say, they were showing lobster rolls and whole lobster dipped in drawn butter – but this picture looked amazing!  Have any of you guys been there or live near there?

I came home and had a bunch of mail since there was no mail delivery on Monday.  I got the sweetest card from Abbe – check out her latest blog post for some amazeball Mardi Gras recipes!   The card and message inside was so wonderful Abbe – thank you so much!

And my long time blog friend Lisa from Jersey Girl Cooks sent me this apron – is this me or what??  I can’t wait to grill some pork shoulder outside while wearing this.  Thank you so much Lisa! She has a meatball recipe that is high on my list of things to make.

So when I got home from the gym, I was pretty hungry.  The kids ate a late lunch so it was each man for themselves.  I decided to make another recipe of lasagna soup, some to have last night for dinner and then lunches this week.  So while it’s a pretty quick soup to come together, the longer it cooked the hungrier I got.  So 25 minutes later, I pour myself a bowl of soup, and realize the sausage had gone bad.  It was a package I defrosted, didn’t use all of it, but it’s been in the fridge for a few days and the original sell by date was January 29.  Fuck.  So on to Plan B.  I saw we had brats, so I cooked one of those up, and heated up this package of veggies I bought on discount.

I ended up slicing the brat and adding some Dijon mustard and then added the microwaved veggies to the bowl.  This kind of looks like dog food, but at this point, it was nearly 8:00 p.m. and I was going to chew someone’s arm off if I didn’t eat!

So this weeks WI:

I’ll take it.  Any number going down is a win in my book!   The way I look at it though, is that if I keep up this pace, in a year I could be down 41 pounds, which would put me in the right weight range for my height.  If only I were 6.1, I’d be perfect – ha!

So I am leaving you with this – the choice is yours.  What you eat, how you exercise, if you choose to watch t.v. for four hours every night.  Choice is a powerful word, isn’t it?

p.s.  I found out that you can only vote for my Pizza every 24 hours, so if you voted late Monday night when I posted it on Facebook, you couldn’t vote the next morning.  Here is the link to vote today – thank you!!