Hiatus - Sweet Potato Chips

I'm on hiatus. From P90X that is. I'm going to do Week 4 next week. This way I'll make up the days that I missed. So my reasoning for taking some time off from P90X can be summed up in one word: Balance. Physically, I can balance pretty well. However when it comes to my schedule and commitments, I need some work to balance things. I'm rather all or nothing. I get involved to the extreme. If I join an organization, I don't just join it, I usually run for a leadership position (sometimes doing multiple leadership roles at the same time). If I decide to exercise, I have to do a workout EVERY day, and it's a huge deal if I miss a day. What I'm trying to work on right now is balance. I started a FE review course last week, which means that a lot of my time these days is going to be taken up by class and studying. I'm trying to balance class/studying with work and exercise, right when football season starts. And no, I'm not a big football fan, but I decided back in July that I was going to try to be more interested and engaged in football. So that's something else on my plate. I also have a lot of different interests and activities that I want to do, and I need to prioritize those. It's a work in progress.

So I mentioned last week that I didn't feel great after eating a salad with carrots and apples on it and I was curious as to whether the it was the apples or carrots that was making my stomach angry. Yesterday I ate the same salad, minus the carrots, apples, and sundried tomato dressing (Spring mix, Baby Spinach, Tomato, Cucumber, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Mushroom, Celery, Bell Pepper, Cabbage, Pumpkin Seeds, Walnuts, Almonds, Chopped Egg, Sundried Tomatoes, Grapes, Strawberries, Mandarin Orange, with Chipotle Chicken), and felt just fine. Today I ate the same salad again with carrots and Pesto Chicken instead of Chipotle Chicken. Again, I felt fine. Leaving apples as the culprit. Sadness.

Yeah, I haven't cooked meal stuff lately, so I've been hitting up the salad shop close to my office. And I also admit that my salads have no theme. I literally just take everything I like individually and mix it together. It sometimes ends up as odd flavor combinations, but I'm okay with it. If you're not, then I suggest not eating the same salad as me. Problem solved.

And now for recipe time...

Baked Sweet Potato Chips

1 sweet potato

1 Tbls olive oil

1 tsp black pepper

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

Preheat oven to 300F. Whip out your mandoline or a really sharp knife and slice your sweet potato into ~3 mm slices. (No I didn't measure it, though I bet you thought I did.) In a large bowl, coat/toss the sweet potato slices with olive oil and the seasonings (you can use whatever seasoning you want: basil, parsley, rosemary, etc.).

Spread in a single layer on a tinfoil-covered baking sheet.

Bake for 25-30 minutes or until edges are crispy and center is still soft, flipping halfway.

Tip: crumple the tinfoil before spreading it over the baking sheet; the chips won't stick to the baking sheet as much when you're done baking.

P90X - Days 20, 21, 22, & 23

I disappeared because it was Labor Day weekend and I needed a break. I took a break from blogging and from P90X. I know, I know! It's "bad" that I didn't work out. I'm supposed to be doing this intense daily workout program, right? Taking a day off isn't acceptable. Well, check back tomorrow for my reasoning behind my days off. In the meantime, I'm going to talk about the importance of sleep. I've mentioned it before a few times, but I feel like I need a reminder, so maybe you do, too.

Many of us claim that we don't have the time for sleep. We have work, exercise, cooking, friends, family, etc. all demanding our time and attention. It's difficult to say no to friends when they ask you to go out. If you have kids, you probably have a harder time taking care of yourself because you put your children first. However, there's one thing you need to remember... you need to take care of yourself before you can take care of others. Think about the safety presentation/video on airlines. Have you forgotten that they always say that if the oxygen masks are needed, you should put your own mask on before you assist someone else? If airlines have learned this, shouldn't we?

I bet most people you know have pulled an all-nighter at one time in their life. My first all-nighter was at a slumber party with my friend KM. We had tried to stay up all night at my birthday (maybe my 15th birthday), but ended up falling asleep for a couple hours. KM's birthday was a few months later and we decided we were definitely going to stay up all night. There were a bunch of girls over, but KM and I were the only ones crazy enough to attempt an all-nighter. We were especially crazy because we were both singing in church the following morning. And by singing in church, I mean that during service we had to sit front and center (literally... we were some of the shortest girls in the choir) in front of the entire congregation. So we stayed up watching movies and talking until her mom came down to the basement to wake us up for church. We got to church early for rehearsal and were still buzzing off of caffeine and sugary snack foods. However, during the middle of the service, we started to crash. My head kept bobbing and I couldn't keep my eyes open. Our solution? We pinched and poked each other to stay awake, and somehow managed it through the service. Why was it so important that we stay awake? One of the boys in our choir had fallen asleep during a service and the hymnal on his lap had slid off and smacked onto the floor; everyone jumped and stared at him. We didn't want to have the full attention of the church on us, too. We survived church without any embarrassing moments and headed home, where I immediately passed out. My entire day was wasted because I was so sleep deprived.

So what to take from that story...

Choice: It was KM and my choice to sacrifice our sleep; we had no reason to stay up all night.

Sleep substitute: TV/Movie and talking. Though talking and maintaining our friendship is important, it's not necessary to do all night, and watching TV is purely entertainment and is unnecessary in life.

After-effect: By staying up all night, it was difficult to perform the next day, not just in the singing sense, but also in basic day-to-day activities for a high-schooler like chores and studying, or even basic functions such as listening or staying awake.

Getting enough sleep is YOUR decision. YOU have to choose to give yourself enough time to sleep. YOU have to prioritize your sleep over the latest episode of Survivor, or whatever popular reality show you love. Think of it this way... what do you absolutely need to live? Sleep or one more TV series episode? This should be a simple choice. Would you give up food in order to watch TV? What about water? Sleep is just as vital to life as food and water. Okay, so you're a student studying for tomorrow's exam? Though I'm guilty of this myself, staying up late to study may not be the most beneficial activity. Stage 3 sleep aids in consolidating declarative memory (that you would be using for exam studying), whereas REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep helps with muscle memory. So by staying up and cutting into your Stage 3 slow-wave sleep, you may be harming your ability to remember what you studied. Such a dilemma!

Even a single night of sleep deprivation can be detrimental to your health. One night of partial sleep deprivation, which results in increased cortisol levels, can impair insulin sensitivity in addition to hampering the body's stress response. For those who don't know, insulin resistance is a component of Type II Diabetes. According to the US National Library of Medicine, metabolic syndrome is another term for insulin resistance and is defined as "group of risk factors that occur together and increase the risk for coronary artery disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes." Yikes.

I think my biggest issue with getting enough sleep is what I feel I ought to do. I've had lots of days like today where I got less than ~3.5 hours of sleep and then spent 10+ hours at work, followed by 2 hours of class and blogging. And when I'm in the midst of a workout routine like P90X (and blogging about it), I feel obligated to do the workout even when that means giving up my sleeping time. My other excuses for cutting into sleep time: there are chores that I ought to be doing, or studying I should do because I'm behind schedule, or socializing I want to do with friends. In short, I need to do some prioritizing. And the lesson you can take from this is: Go the F*** to Sleep, read to you by Samuel L. Jackson. If you are offended by Samuel L. Jackson or the f-bomb, don't click on the link or watch the video.

Click here if you like infographics.

Reference:

(1) Donga, Esther. "A Single Night of Partial Sleep Deprivation Induces Insulin Resistance in Multiple Metabolic Pathways in Healthy Subjects." The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. June 1, 2010, vol. 95, no. 6, pp. 2963-2968. <http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/95/6/2963.full?sid=b7ac906e-efdc-4dae-82f0-637cc6705ad9>
(2) Leproult, R. "Sleep loss results in an elevation of cortisol levels the next evening." Sleep. 1997 Oct; 20(10), pp.865-70. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9415946>

P90X - Day 19

Again, I didn't wake up early enough to workout. Cue the whomp, whomp failure soundtrack now. I did Legs and Back at 9:30 p.m., so at least I got it done.

I was talking to my ATL friend SK on the phone over the weekend and I told her that I somehow feel like food will solve my problems, in particular health problems. I mention this because yesterday my stomach didn't feel great after eating lunch. This is what I ate for lunch: Spring mix, Tomato, Cucumber, Carrots, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Mushroom, Celery, Bell Pepper, Cabbage, Pumpkin Seeds, Walnuts, Almonds, Chopped Egg, Sundried Tomatoes, Grapes, Strawberries, Apple, Mandarin Orange, with Chipotle Chicken and Sundried Tomato Dressing. So something in that list must have upset my stomach. And do you know what my immediate reaction to the not-great stomach feeling was? I should eat something to help it. Excuse me? What? How does that make any sense? If I'm full, and my stomach doesn't feel good, why should I want to eat more food? I'm weird. Or maybe this is more common than I think. Maybe other people are like this as well. Who knows? But I get this weird empty yet full feeling in my stomach, and it can last for hours. The empty-full/upset stomach feeling frequently occurs when I eat apples (pH 3.3-3.9) and sometimes carrots (pH 5.9-6.3). So possibly the apple or the carrots was the culprit from lunch. I've wondered about this a lot in the past. Raw apples and carrots tend to make me feel funny after eating them. I thought maybe it was a pH/acidity thing, and obviously the apple is acidic, but the carrot isn't too acidic, so I don't know if that's really the issue. I haven't tested my response to cooked apples or carrots, but now I feel like I should.  I'm hesitant to do so though because I like carrots and apples, and I'm not sure if I want to find out that my body doesn't tolerate them well. I'm also interested in seeing whether the pH balance of food affects me, but I have no desire to put that much effort into measuring the pH of my food. Thanks, but no. If you're interested in checking out some of the pH values of various foods:, you can check out this website: http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/food-ph-d_403.html.

I've also realized that I don't feel like a meal is complete until I finish it off with something sweet. I've noticed this more and more lately. And it's annoying me. Do I need a sweet? No. Am I even hungry? No. Do I want a sweet? You bet your ass I do. In my week of meetings we've had catered lunches. On Wednesday, there was cheesecake as a dessert. I spent ~3 hours having a stare-down with that cheesecake, thoroughly testing my resolve not to eat dairy. I've always loved cheesecakes, so it was a tough battle. I won out, and snacked on some carrots instead. But man. Wednesday afternoon was rough. There were multiple times that I thought I can have just one piece. One piece isn't bad. It's fine. Granted, then I counter with: If you cave in to the cheesecake, what else are you going to cave in to? You already didn't work out before work. Yay willpower!

P90X - Day 18

Hahaha. Day 18? Yeah. Yoga did not happen yesterday. I tried to wake up early. I really did. But I had my first FE Review Course on Tuesday night, and didn't get to bed until past by bedtime. I mean, class goes until after my intended lights-out time. Yes. It's ridiculous that I try to go to bed by 9. I haven't had a bedtime that early since elementary school. Anyways, I didn't get up until 5:35, so I skipped working out before work with the intention that I'd workout after work. That didn't happen either. I put in ~12.5 hours at work yesterday so by the time I got home I was exhausted and didn't feel like doing anything. Instead, I ate a poached egg, a sun-dried tomato and chicken sausage, and some sweet potato fries while watching season 2 of Grey's Anatomy on Netflix and cross-stitching. Did I mention I love cross-stitching? Well, if I didn't, now you know. I started working on a cross-stitch pattern that my mom bought for me in China a couple years ago. So the instructions are all in Chinese, which I definitely don't read. I think I can figure it out from the pictures though. Maybe. Hopefully.

I know you're all worried that I missed a workout, but don't. I'm going to make up the yoga workout this weekend.

In totally non-Paleo news, but maybe interesting facts for some of you... Yesterday I was talking with someone about the benefits of having a pet, and how cats are handy because they are more self-sufficient than dogs. She-who-shall-not-be-named then told me yesterday that you can get leukemia from cats. My initial response was, "What are you talking about? If cancer isn't contagious between people, how do you expect to catch it from a cat?" I referenced the plague and how rats can transmit the disease between humans, but that the plague was transmittable via human-to-human contact as well. So I decided to look it up once I got home and found this from the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine website:

Can people become infected with FeLV? 
Epidemiological and laboratory studies have failed to provide evidence that FeLV can be transmitted from infected cats to humans. Regardless, FeLV-infected cats may carry other diseases. At greatest risk of infection are elderly or immunosuppressed people (e.g., those with AIDS, or receiving immunosuppressive medications such as chemotherapy), infants, and unborn children. It is recommended that pregnant women, people with suppressed immune systems, the very young, and the very old avoid contact with FeLV-infected cats.

That says to me that you cannot catch leukemia from a cat. Cats can infect other cats via bodily fluids (saliva, nasal secretions, urine, feces, etc.), from bites, or during mutual cleaning. Research done! So there!

P90X - Day 13, 14, & 15

I got a nice bruise from Thursday night's archery lesson. It doesn't hurt, but it doesn't look terribly pretty. The string from the recurve bow did manage to perfectly aim for and hit a scar from baking muffins.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I didn't do X Stretch on Saturday (Day 14), but technically, X Stretch is optional, so it doesn't count. At least I'm saying that it doesn't. I'm going to try to make it up later this week. Sunday was Chest and Back again. But before I did P90X, I went for a 4.4-mile run on a jogging trail near me. It wasn't too bad, minus the repeated feelings of nausea, and the lingering chest pain after. By the time I got home, the temperature had cooled down to 91F. So, naturally, I was bright red and sweaty when I walked into my apartment. It's not a great look, but I felt good for running. I walked around a bit to cool down to a point where I could bend over without getting sick, and then I started doing P90X. That's dedication. I skipped the ab workout though. I figured I did enough working out, right?

On Friday night, I hosted a Girls Night In. It wasn't entirely Paleo, so don't judge me harshly. We made spinach pasta from scratch. I didn't use a recipe, just went based on feel. We wilted some spinach and added in flour, egg, and salt in my food processor. The first batch wasn't great, but the second one turned out really well. Here's some photos from it...

First you use a rolling pin to the dough.

Then get really excited about sending it through the pasta machine for the first time on the widest setting.

Once it's a suitable thickness, you switch to the attachment on the other side of the pasta maker,
which cuts the dough into your actual strands of pasta.

Show off your handiwork, 'cause you're awesome!

We made pesto sauce to go with the pasta and "pulled chicken" (from a store-bought rotisserie chicken). Serve with salad and roasted asparagus, and here's the result:

P90X - Day 12

I turned off my 5 o'clock alarm this morning and went back to sleep, but I did wake up before my 5:30 alarm sounded. Grumbling to myself, I changed into my workout clothes and grabbed my P90X Legs and Back worksheet before heading out the door to my complex's gym. Legs and Back as well as Chest and Back are workouts that I need to do in the gym because of my lack of pull up bar. Not that I can actually do a pull up. I could maybe hang from the bar for a while. Upper-body strength has never been my strong suit. I'm not disproportional though, with strong legs and weak arms; I do remember winning at arm wrestling against the other girls on my Varsity soccer team during an indoor-because-of-hail practice. I just feel that my arms should be stronger, to correlate with my leg strength. Does that make sense? So instead of doing the impossible (for now) pull-up, I use the lat pull-down machine to imitate the pull-up motion. The back portion of the workouts consist of reverse-grip chin-ups, close grip pull-ups, wide arm pull-ups, and switch-grip pull-ups.

Proper Pull-Up Form:

Anyways, I went to the gym early in the morning, which is probably one of my favorite times to go to the gym. Unless someone is doing the same workout as I am (which I do miss), I like having the gym to myself. The gym is my territory, at least for a little while. And if people do invade my temporary territory, they usually come after I get there and leave before I leave, so it doesn't really count. I saw a total of three people yesterday morning, with two of them only showing up five minutes before I completed my workout. I pushed myself hard enough that I was nauseous when I finished the workout. How wonderful. I survived and didn't actually get sick.

After work, I went to an archery lesson, before heading to the park for an outdoor viewing of Pretty in Pink with LMR and her boyfriend. You'd think that I'd feel like a third wheel, but any best friend's boyfriend who will watch WWE PPV with me because LMR is out of town for a conference allows me to not care about third-wheels. When I got back home, I pulled out my violin and practiced for an hour. Man I miss playing violin. Overall, it was a great day!

P90X - Day 11

Well, I technically did Day 11 Yoga on Day 10 so I used my extra time to run a few errands and go to the library. Yes, I'm one of the few crazy people that still likes to go to the library. Libraries are so peaceful. I like the quiet; it helps me focus. And there's something glorious about being surrounded by books. When I grow up and buy a house, I want a library with built-in bookcases, comfy leather chairs, and thick rugs that mute any sounds. Yeah. This means that I'll probably need to expand my collection of books. You're welcome, publishing companies. You should be glad that I still enjoy reading physical books instead of e-books.

For those who were wondering... My dream did not continue last night and I never got my purse back. It happened to be one of my favorites that I inherited from a cousin of mine up in Minnesota. Fortunately I still have the actual one.

I've been wanting to go running lately. This is a good thing. I need to start my half-marathon training. And there happens to be a running/walking trail really close to where I live. It runs past my library, and I can get to it by following a biking trail until it crosses the running trail. I find it amusing that my old apartments as well as this one are really close to running/biking trails. My old apartment was just south of a long stretch of park, where I used to go for 10-mile runs.

P90X - Day 10

Yesterday, I slept through my first two alarms, or at least don't remember turning them off. I woke up from a dream involving some of my Houston friends and some of my high school friends. We were all at the beach, but we weren't actually in the water. The beach itself was sloped as if on the side of a dune, and we were sitting on this slope just watching the water, as if there were some show going on. A storm rolled in and we all took off running toward the front of my high school (because only the front of it somehow got transported to the beach). I remembered to grab my umbrella (why did I bring an umbrella to the beach?) as I ran for cover. Once out of the rain, I went to grab my car keys, realizing that I had left my purse on the beach. All but one of my friends had piled into a car, clown car style, and had taken off. My one remaining friend had grabbed my purse and I was literally fighting my way through the crowd to get my purse... and then I woke up. I was pissed. I was so close to getting my purse back. And I really wanted my purse.. to the point that I was knocking people over the head with my umbrella. When my third alarm went off, finally pulling me out of the world of sleep, I immediately wanted to go back to sleep so that I could finish the dream and get my purse back.

Because I was behind schedule, I skipped working out in the morning and instead just got ready for and headed off to work. I did P90X after work, which is much harder for me. I get lazy in the evenings. But last night was non-lazy night. First I did P90X Shoulders and Arms, and then I did P90X Yoga. Yeah, that's right. I just did 2 hours and 45 minutes of exercising yesterday. Go me! And I did lots of laundry. Boy, was I busy.

My eating habits are terrible right now. I didn't spend the time that I needed this past weekend to prepare food for the week. Breakfast yesterday was some blueberries and almonds. Lunch was pulled pork that I had bought from Whole Foods the night before. And dinner last night was some plantain chips. I was full, but just didn't feel great, especially after the workouts.

So something that make me chuckle yesterday was an email that my boss sent me. He's in Glasgow for meetings right now, so I had emailed him about upcoming days off. Here's his response:

Again??  But you just took off!  How is all the work going to get done?  The project will shut down without you!  The world will come to an end!

Okay, now that I have done the obligatory whining.  Sure, you can take off.

I'm glad he has a sense of humor.

P90X - Day 9

Plyometrics. "The mother of all workouts."

I first heard the term "plyometrics" when I was a freshman in college. I was in a sorority my freshman year and we started training for Tug, a giant tug-of-war competition held every spring. We did hill sprints, stadium runs, toes-up wall sits, the erg (rowing machine), and plyometrics. Plyometrics consists of squats, lunges, and jumping, with combinations of these three exercises. Plyo helps to improve speed; it's vaguely similar to long-distance runners doing sprints. Sure, you're going to be running 26.2 miles, not sprinting it (though if you ask me, those Olympic marathoners are sprinting at 4:45-ish minute-miles). But you need to work on your short bursts of speed to build your way up to your goal time. When I was training for a half-marathon with Team in Training, my coaches provided a schedule that included cross-training (i.e. cycling), easy runs, short sprints, and form runs (to focus on your running technique), in addition to our long runs.

All this talk of running reminds me that I need to start training for a half-marathon again. I need to find a running buddy.

I bought a bag of Gala apples over the weekend and I needed something to do with them...

Cinnamon Apple Chips
1 apple, sliced (I used Gala, but you can go for a sweeter variety if you choose)
2 Tbls cinnamon
1 Tbls pumpkin pie spice (optional)

Preheat oven to 250 F. Slice your apple (perpendicular to its core). Lay pieces on a baking sheet. Sprinkle with cinnamon, as much or as little as you like/love. Bake for 45-60 minutes, flipping halfway. The apple slices should be thoroughly dried out, but not burnt. It'll look all crinkly and delicious.

P90X - Day 6, 7, and 8

Day 6 is Kenpo X, also known as kick-boxing to my non-P90X friends. It's an hour-long fast-paced workout that happens to be my favorite of the P90X routines. It's one of the few routines that I've done while not in the midst of a P90X sequence. And you want to know what's awesome?My mom did Kenpo X with me! Yeah, my mom's a bad-ass. She came to visit me this weekend as a late birthday celebration (I told you, I like to celebrate my birthday for weeks), and she joined in when I told her I had workouts to do. I somehow managed to sleep in every day that my mom was here. Usually I wake up by 8 a.m. at the latest during the weekends, but Friday morning I didn't get up till 8:30 a.m., so I skipped the morning workout and did it in the evening instead.

Despite the fact that we did a lot of things, I feel like we still found time to relax. We went to the museum on Friday morning to check out the new paleontology exhibit (yay Paleo!), and saw such things as Gator-Headed Frog-oids... no I'm not making it up...

We also went to the mall where we bought a puzzle before returning home and beginning the puzzle. We ended the day with a 10:30 p.m. session of Kenpo X.

Yes, I like to sort things...

Saturday morning, Day 7, I slept in until 10 a.m.!!! (I have no idea how I pulled this off. Yes, we stayed up later than my 9 p.m. bed time, but I still slept for 9ish hours.) After waking up, we walked a quarter-mile to a nearby restaurant that hosts a small farmers market every Saturday morning, which I intend to hit up again in the future. We did X Stretch that afternoon, before  making our way to a roller derby bout that evening.

Day 8 was Sunday. My mom and I woke up at 8:30, intending to go for a walk. We got our shoes and and walked out the door before we realized it was raining. Oops. Instead, we worked on our puzzle, which we finished today. Isn't it pretty?

After working on the puzzle for a couple hours, we booked it to a performance of Cirque du Soleil. It was amazing, as always. I'm continually astonished at how flexible some people are. Once we got back, I did P90X Chest and Back before whipping up a late dinner. We had picked up some pork chops from Whole Foods so I put together a meal of Plantain-Crusted Pork Chops and asparagus.

This recipe draws from my Slow-Cooker Jamaican Jerk Beef that I made back in March.

Plantain-Crusted Pork Chops

2 pork chops

1/2 tsp thyme

1/2 tsp allspice

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp clove

1/4 tsp black pepper

1/4 tsp sea salt

1 egg, whisked

1/2 cup dried plantains, crushed

Mix up the spices and cover the pork chops with the mixture. Place pork chops on a plate, cover with plastic wrap, and put in the fridge. Refrigerate for 2-3 hours for flavor incorporation.

Preheat oven to 350 F. Dump your crushed plantains onto a plate. Whisk that egg, and then spread onto pork chops (alternately, you can just dunk the pork chops into the egg. Transfer the egg-coated pork chop to your plantain plate, and flip the pork chop so that it is completely covered in plantain pieces.

P90X - Day 5

Day 5 is Legs and Back. This work out consists of 23 exercises, with the general format for area of focus being a leg-leg-back pattern. In other words, two leg exercises, like balanced lunges and calf raise squats followed by reverse grip chin ups. I like this workout. It makes my quads burn. Burn, baby, burn!

I think my body is getting used to waking up at 5:00 a.m. again. It's been a while since I've consistently woken up at 5, and I have to say that I like it. I always feel accomplished when I work out in the morning.  Of course, this is after a decent night of sleep; I'm sure I wouldn't be so happy if I hadn't gotten 7+ hours of sleep.

Here's what I ate yesterday: 

Breakfast (@8a.m.): 1 tbls almond butter, leftover sausage, brisket, and bbq chicken

Lunch (@11a.m.): Sliced turkey, lettuce, and 1 slice provolone cheese (yeah, yeah, it's dairy...). I was in a lecture during lunch about Piping and Relief Systems (thrilling, huh?) and the lunch that was provided was a boxed lunch of a sandwich, potato chips, and a cookie. So all I could eat was the inner parts of the sandwich.

Snack (@3p.m.): Apple, 2 more slices of leftover sausage and 1 slice of brisket

Dinner (@9p.m.): Rack of lamb with ginger beets, steamed vegetables, and a butternut squash salad.

		Goal	with Exercise	Actual
Calories	kcal	1,330	2,133	1,510
Carbs	g	183	293	70
Fat	g	44	70	81
Protein	g	50	80	113
Calcium	g	100	100	29
Fiber	g	15	25	13
Cholesterol	mg	-	-	181
Sodium	mg	-	-	1,510
Sugars	g	-	-	34

P90X - Day 4

Yoga. Oh my gosh. My least favorite of the P90X routines. I know that yoga is supposed to calm the mind or something similar to that, but it doesn't quite work that way. A full 90 minutes of yoga can be exhausting and exhaustingly boring. And when I'm already tired and wanting to go to bed, it really makes me want to crawl back under the covers. I do enjoy the end of the yoga when Tony tells me to do Corpse pose (a.k.a. lay flat on my back and breathe) and then tells me to roll onto my side into the position that I normally sleep in. I finish off yoga feeling calm and ready to go back to sleep, the former of which goes away shortly after getting to work, and the latter is not ideal for waking up in the morning.

It was a later start than I intended, because I fell asleep after my first alarm, despite being half-awake for 10 minutes before my 5:00a.m. alarm went off. So I didn't roll out of bed until 5:30a.m. when alarm #2 sounded. I debated just getting ready for work and skipping yoga, but I knew my schedule for the day and I knew that I would end up not doing yoga at all if I didn't do it yesterday morning.

Here's what I ate yesterday: 

Breakfast (@8a.m.): 1 tbls almond butter, dark chocolate (healthy breakfast? not so much.)

Lunch (@12:30p.m.): Rack of lamb with balsamic glaze, Brussels sprouts, and mixed greens

Snack (@2:30p.m.): Fruit Tray for my birthday celebration at work. Yeah, it's a week late, but I like to keep the celebrations going for as long as possible. I've already gotten a request from one of my friends to have a one-month anniversary celebration of my 25th birthday. I think I may have to oblige. (OMG. I'm 25, how did that happen?)

Dinner (@6p.m.): Chicken and Vegetable Soup
Happy Hour (@7:30p.m.): Gin and tonic

		Goal	with Exercise	Actual
Calories	kcal	1,330	1,612	1,345
Carbs	g	183	221	147
Fat	g	44	53	49
Protein	g	50	60	68
Calcium	g	100	100	22
Fiber	g	15	19	20
Cholesterol	mg	-	-	164
Sodium	mg	-	-	965
Sugars	g	-	-	87

So a random annoyance of mine is when people who are clearly not handicapped, nor have their hands full in any way, decide to use the automatic doors provided for physically disabled individuals. Is there a reason why they can't push or pull the door open by themselves? Are they too weak to open the door? Well, I can recommend some exercises and weight-lifting they can do to improve upon their upper-body strength. I know that the doors at the entrance of my office building are a bit on the heavy side, but they're not that difficult to open. Though I have had co-workers comment to me about how strong I must be to barely break stride in order to open the door. "You must workout a lot." True story. Still I feel that if you are an able-bodied individual, you should stop being so lazy and open your own door. Just saying.

And now for a random tidbit of knowledge: How to get a boy into your room according to Mad Men, Season 1: "The light fixture in my room is out... could you change it for me?" Smooth. I'm sure the poor fellow had no idea (yeah, right...) what was going to happen after that.

P90X - Day 3

Day 3 of P90X: Shoulders and Arms

4:45a.m.: Wake up 15 minutes before my alarm and begin internal debate regarding whether I actually want to get up.
5:00a.m.: Alarm goes off. Debate continues.

5:05a.m.: Willpower wins.

5:10a.m.: Start P90X. Let the pain begin.

6:30a.m.: Done!

Yesterday when I got into work, I had to walk down two flights of stairs (for some reason the elevator in the parking deck only goes up to the 5th floor, despite the deck being 8 levels - I work at an engineering company. You'd think that we'd have a better parking deck design, right?). While going down the stairs, I felt like my right quad was going to give out on me. It was shaky and weak, and I was concerned as to whether I could continue . Don't worry, I didn't crumble and fall, but I did walk pretty slowly and held onto the hand-rails with both hands.

Here's what I ate yesterday: 

Breakfast (@7:30a.m.): Rack of lamb with a balsamic glaze, served over mixed greens, and topped with a poached egg. Yeah, I like to eat fancy food, even in the morning.

Snack (@10a.m.): Orange, Dark chocolate with cacao nibs 1/2 serving.

Lunch (@12p.m.): Chicken and steak faijitas with guacamole thanks to a lunch meeting (though I should have just stuck with the food I brought from home - compared to breakfast and dinner, lunch alone had the same number of calories, three times more carbs, the same grams of fat, and 1/3 the protein - eating out is gross sometimes!)

Snack (@4p.m.): Apple

Dinner (@8:30p.m.): Rack of lamb with Brussels sprouts and artichokes

Nutritional data:

		Goal	with Exercise	Actual
Calories	kcal	1,330	1,932	1,625
Carbs	g	183	265	124
Fat	g	44	63	75
Protein	g	50	72	69
Calcium	g	100	100	11
Fiber	g	15	22	18
Cholesterol	mg	-	-	359
Sodium	mg	-	-	1,261
Sugars	g	-	-	39

Sometimes I get cravings. Usually I succumb to them. I'm a firm believer that my body will let me know what it needs. Obviously it does that already: when your body needs water or nutrients, you feel thirsty or hunger, respectively. There was a week of my freshman year at Georgia Tech during which I craved green beans (obviously prior to Paleo). I had green beans at every meal, including breakfasts, from Monday through Friday. My breakfast was half of a can of green beans; lunch was a side of green beans; and dinner was green bean casserole. And the week progressed in much of the same way. For some reason, every meal of my meal plan contained green beans that week.  It was more than just me wanting green beans. But most of the times that I claim I'm "craving" something, it's usually just me wanting to eat something like chocolate or sweets. So here are my levels of "craving," 5 being the level where I feel like my body is craving it, not my mind.

0 - No way

1 - I wouldn't mind it

2 - I'd like it

3 - I want it

4 - I really want it (usually stress-related)

5 - I crave it; I need it; I have hunger pangs for this particular food.

So see below for an explanation of what your body is trying to tell you: