Another quiet night in – I’m so boring lately!  Sorry guys!  I will be so happy when this recovery is OVER!  This afternoon I had a snack of nonfat vanilla yogurt with strawberries:

Snack was 133 calories, 28g carbs, 0g fat, and 6g protein.  I love this combo!! It tastes just like strawberry shortcake.  I especially like the cool yogurt mixed with the hot berries – yum!

For dinner we ordered in Chinese.  I had to get my favorite: an egg roll!!

Sometimes I’ll get summer rolls instead of spring or egg rolls, because it’s the same stuff steamed instead of deep fried.  But tonight, I wanted the real thing. :)   I also had some steamed chicken and veggies:

It felt nice to get some veggies!!  Dinner was 521 calories, 80g carbs, 8g fat, and 37g protein.

I think the agenda reads: bed.  P is EXAUSTED and passed out at 9:30, and I’m not long behind.  Tomorrow I think pancackes are on the menu, P was talking about them all night for some reason.  Crazy boy. :P Night!

That’s been me all morning on the couch with Horseshoe: cuddly and snuggly!  I had to wake up at 4 AM last night to take my meds, but beside that, I slept pretty well, with Horseshoe in my lap the entire time.  Usually she’s not allowed to sleep with us, so having me all to herself all night was a huge treat for her!

I woke up around 9 AM to see Peter off and then dozed for another hour – only to be woken up by the door buzzer.  Special delivery from Mommy and Daddy:

You can see the flowers they sent yesterday in the background as well.  How sweet of them!  So pretty and cute.

Since I was up already, I decided to have breakfast.  I originally wanted to make oatmeal, but it seemed a little daunting.  So I decided on an Amy’s breakfast burrito instead.  After seeing the Amy’s burrito I had the other day, P stacked up on these babies for my sickness. ) So thoughtful.  I also had a large banana on the side:

I had to wait til the burrito cooled obviously, I’m only allowed room temperature or cool/cold items that are soft.  Breakfast was 375 calories, 70g carbs, 8g fat, and 10g protein.

Since then I’ve been in and out of sleep, reading Women’s Health, and listening to the Dave Matthews channel on Pandora.com, with Horseshoe on my lap the whole time.  Very soothing.  I’ve also been chugging water/tea hybrids like it’s my job.

A little while ago I had a 1/2c of light mint chip fro yo:

Snack was 230 calories , 35g carbs, 8g fat, and 6g protein.

Not sure if you noticed, but in my free time, I’ve upgraded to my own domain: winningfriendswithsalad.com.  The old address will still forward, as will the old RSS feed, but go ahead and update if you have the chance.  Thanks!

Surgery went excellent!  Thank you all for your kind words.  Seriously, the best possible outcome I could have asked for: medium-mild pain, and huge results already.  Let me backtrack:

I did not sleep well at all last night!  I kept waking up on the hour, completely restless.  Worked to my advantage in the end because I was really afraid I would sleep through my call time – but of course, waking up at 7:30 was no problem.  A quick shower and final apt inventory later, we hopped in a cab to the hospital.

P and I got to the hospital at 8:30 on the dot, where I did some paperwork and they told me my surgery was scheduled for 10:30.  At 9 AM, they took me back to pre-op, with a kiss from a worried Peter.  There I changed into the most unflattering sack ever.  Luckily I got a bathrobe, which gave it some shape, and I folded up the sleeves as well – hey, I’m 23!  Let’s not add insult to injury.  :)

By 10:15, I started to get antsy.  I had finished every halfway decent magazine in the pre-op waiting room, and I could feel the adrenalin coursing through my body.  I started to pace, which led to jumping jacks, wall push-ups, grapevines, jogging in place, knee kicks, and finally stretching, breathing and meditation.  If you had told me 6 months ago that my biggest source of comfort in a stressful event was EXERCISE, I wouldn’t have believed you.  But it really made me feel better – just to get some energy out.  Despite the looks it got me. :)

They finally called me at 10:50 to talk to the surgeon and the anesthesiologist.  I was on the table by 11:10.  Tears ensued.

The next thing I knew I was waking up in the recovery room.  I rated my pain on a scale of 1-10 as a 6 – so not too bad! (And I am not one to downplay pain or suffer in silence, as my mother would say.)  I felt like I had been punched in the nose, and my mouth was painfully dry.  After 2 hours of dozing in out of Percoset and Demerol induced sleep, I was discharged.  A quick cab ride and four painful flights of stairs later, I arrived at my new home: the couch.

P was kind enough to been in touch with my parents all day through texts and calls, as well as preparing and tracking all my foods and meds.  He is, as my mom said today, ‘a mother’s dream’.  At the hospital, I had 1c cranberry juice (unpictured).  After settling on the couch, I had 125g oolong tea (unpictured).  About an hour later I had a green tea and a coconut popsicle:

About an hour and a half later I had about 3/4ths of this peach smoothie, ordered in from Bully’s:

And an hour after that, I had 1/3c of light mint chip frozen yogurt (unpictured).

P left to go to the gym, and made a skillful dinner of Annie’s organic mac and cheese when he came
home:

I ate about 1/3rd of this.

As far as results, my nose is definitely swollen, but no black eyes or packing needed!  But it’s visibly straighter and I have more breathing ability in my right side than I’ve had in years – and it’s only going to get better!  Despite being exausted and definitely unanimated – I’m doing alot better than anyone thought I would be at this point.  I’m taking Tylenol with Codeine and and antibiotic, as well as two different nose sprays.  Plus, I heard from the doctor that I can’t excercise for 10 days.  Boo.

Plan for tomorrow is more rest/recovery.  Hopefully the bleeding will stop soon.  Night!

Yikes.  This afternoon was definitely a lesson in the need to plan ahead! Before I left work, I had a Luna Bar:

Snack was 180 calories, 24g carbs, 5g fat, and 10g protein.

I got out of work early and managed to get the laundry and do my chores on time.  I was in my gym clothes about to walk out the door when I decided that, yes, I definitely did want to bake something tonight.  I looked around the kitchen and noticed we only had about 1/4c of sugar left.  So it had to be something that didn’t need a bunch of sugar.  I grabbed Veganomicon and flipped through it, finding a recipe for Vanilla-Yogurt Pound Cake that used firm tofu.  Well, I knew I had a block of tofu that was on it’s way out  – so even though I can take or leave pound cake, I decided on that.  I was reading through the recipe and saw that you needed to whip the tofu before using it.  And before I knew what I was doing, I was elbow deep in whipped tofu, when I was supposed to be at the gym!  Grr!  So fine, I’m making the recipe, cruising along, and I go to add the next ingredient, I find to my surprise that it’s 1 1/4c sugar!  Grr again!  So in the middle of the recipe (Martha Stewart would be appalled), I had to run next door to the expensive grocery store (Balducci’s) for an extremely overpriced bag of sugar (Grr three times!).  When I finally got it in the oven, it took over an hour to bake, keeping me trapped in the apt all that time.  During the baking, I calculated the recipe and was shocked to find that a thin slice was 207 calories, 30g carbs, 8g fat, 4g protein, and 18g sugar!! Grr, grr, GRR!  After it finally got out of the oven, it occurred to me that most pound cakes are light blond, and mine was dark – because I had used whole wheat flour!!  Oyy.  And although the cake is pretty good (Peter loved it),  there were just too many mistakes involved for me to be happy with it.  (Plus I don’t even love pound cake that much.)  Here’s the cake cooling:

And here’s Peter’s piece, smothered in warm raspberries:

I saved three pieces and am bringing the rest to the office tomorrow.  Between bowl liking and crumble snacking, I’m assuming I ate about 3/4 of a piece.  Snack was 155 calories, 23g carbs, 6g fat, and 3g protein.

While the cake was cooling, I grabbed a Pre Workout Snack of Cinnamon Raisin Ezekiel Bread with a tbsp peanut butter:

Pre Workout Snack was 175 calories, 21g carbs, 9g fat, and 7g protein.

I had a great workout at the gym!  I did a Cardio Smorgas: treadmill with weights, Cardio Wave, Step mill, and Elliptical.  The real star of the workout was the Cardio Wave.  I had such a great burn on that guy!  Towards the end, I was really in a great groove on the Elliptical – total workout high!  I was on my last song – one of my favorite cardio jams – when I got a bad case of Elliptical foot.  You know, that painful, twitchy feeling in your feet after too many machines?  Ow!  I worked through it though.  Cardio Smorgas – 506 calories burned.

When I got home, I had minimal appetite, as per usual after a hard workout.  But I needed something, so I grabbed a yogurt and threw in some berries:

I ate about 3/4 of this.  Snack was 90 calories, 17g carbs, 0g fat, 5g protein.

I’m exhausted!  Night guys!

That’s me! After an annoyingly, stupidly stressful afternoon of errands I got home and did a whole bunch of goofing around at home. The gym was definitely on the agenda, but it took me a good couple hours to work up the motivation/strength to go – especially once Peter and I got home and were having some great catch-up time. During my crazy afternoon I had a Luna Bar on the street:

New flavor! Definitely a good one, although it might have been a little sickly sweet almost. Snack was 180 calories, 28g carbs, 4g fat, and 10g protein.

Back at the house, it was nearly 10 PM before I got it together to go to the gym. Before I left I had a Pre Workout Snack of 1/2c nonfat vanilla yogurt and 1/4 cup Ezekiel Cinnamon Raisin Cereal:

Pre Workout Snack was 175 calories, 36g carbs, 1g fat, and 9g protein.

Since I only had 30 min at they gym before it closed at 11, I had to make it count! I did a really intense workout on the stepmill. I was POURING sweat the ENTIRE time. Even though I burned a normal amount of calories, I did it in a much shorter period of time. It really made me feel great! Stepmill= 473 calories burned.

I have to admit, I am kind of on the fence these days about CP vs. NYSC. Even though CP is amazing, and I really like all they have to offer: great classes, SWIMMING (which I’ve really enjoyed), great pilates instruction, rock climbing, boxing, the list goes on…NYSC has one thing going for it: LOCATION. It is right across the street. This allows me to procrastinate all night, but still get in a great workout…or sleep late and still make it to the gym and work on time – both things I’ve been known to do. I don’t know. I’m going to take some time to think about it. NYSC is so easy for my schedule that I can’t NOT workout. But CP is such an experience – really taking my fitness to a new level. Sigh. I guess it’s quality vs. quantity. What would you do?

I wasn’t really hungry for dinner, so I let P determine the menu. His creation was turkey and cheese on rye with mustard – typical boy sandwich. :)

Dinner was approximately 400 calories.

Night everyone – I’m exhausted from that workout!

I really couldn’t decide on anything for dinner.  I think I was in the sun too much today because I’m feeling totally wiped out tonight.  The past two nights I haven’t felt in the mood for dinner, but I knew I had to eat because I was feeling weak and because I count calories, I knew my count for the day was low.  That’s the nice thing about calorie counting – it’s easy to make sure you’re getting what you need.

Anyway, because I knew I needed food, I just snacked on whatever.  I had 1/4c Country Pumpkin Spice Granola and 1/4c Ezekiel Cinnamon Raisin Cereal and 1/2c Nonfat Vanilla Yogurt.

Sorry, it’s a little blurry for some reason.  A little bit later I had a slice of Ezekiel 4:9 Bread with a tbsp almond butter and a tbsp blueberry jam:

Dinner was 494 calories, 80g carbs, 15g fat, and 20g protein. I’m headed to bed soon.  Night guys.

Hey all!  After tooling around the apt for the afternoon, I went out and ran some errands around the city.  By the time I realized what happened, it was 10 PM and I hadn’t had dinner.  I picked up some frozen fruit at Whole Foods, and a smoothie was the only thing that sounded appealing for dinner.  So even though it wasn’t the most balanced of dinners, I went with my craving.

My smoothie contained 1/2c nonfat vanilla yogurt, a tbsp flax, 70g raspberries, 59g blueberries, 119g strawberries, 83g pineapple, and 1/3c hemp milk:

It might not be pretty, but it was delicious!  And almost the exact color of my toes right now!  Dinner was 300 calories, 60g carbs, 3g fat, and 10g protein.

Have a great night!

Okay, I may have gotten a little carried away with the coffee – boy was my stomach angry with me this morning! I don’t drink coffee very often, and certainly not a whole jug like that.  Should have taken baby steps.  Next time… I had lunch around 12:45 in hopes of settling my stomach.  I started off with an almond butter and blueberry jam sandwich on Ezekiel 4:9 Bread with some carrots on the side.

Sandwich was great, but carrots were subpar – really bitter for some reason.  I ate all but three pieces.

As soon as I opened my lunch bag, there was this beautiful, delicious smell floating around the office.  I was like, “where is that coming from??” and then I realized it was my amazing strawberry shortcake yogurt:

Look at the huge strawberry right in front!  She’s the star.  This is nonfat vanilla yogurt with strawberries, but I’m pretty sure it’s actually ambrosia.  As soon as I started eating this, my stomach felt 3 million times better.

All together this lunch was 478 calories, 82g carbs, 10g fat, and 27g protein.

On to an afternoon of meetings.  Have a great afternoon!

Sorry for the late breakfast post – I had some meetings early this morning that kept me off the computer.  I started out the day with some old fashioned elliptical training!  My body and my head weren’t in agreement about this workout though.  My body felt strong, but my head was screaming, ‘I want to be done now!’  Argh.  I finished up my workout though, because I have dinner plans tonight and knew I would regret stopping.  I’m so glad I did!  I feel refreshed and accomplished for the new day.

Before I left, I had a piece of my favorite Ezekiel 4:9 Cinnamon Raisin Bread with a tablespoon of peanut butter:


Pre Workout Snack was 175 calories, 21g carbs, 9g fat, 7g protein.

I subscribe to www.podfitness.com, which gives you customable workouts synced with your Ipod.  It’s one of my favorite fitness tools.  I did 35 minutes on the elliptical trainer to the beats of some old school JT.

Elliptical and Walk was 475 calories burned.

This breakfast was a concoction of a bunch of different ideas floating around.  I knew I wanted to try muesli, and I’ve been searching for a way to get more delicious shredded coconut into my meals, hence…carrot cake muesli!

I added 1/2 cup oatmeal, 1/2 cup nonfat vanilla yogurt, 1/2 cup nonfat milk, 35g raisins, 124g carrots, 1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut, vanilla, cinnamon, and flax.  Tucked in the fridge overnight.  Oh my goodness this was amazing – it honestly tasted just like carrot cake.  I don’t think I would have liked this as much if it was hot – I really think the being slightly chilled made all the difference.  CarrotsnCake Tina, you’ve got to try this!

Not only was it delicious, but I really loved getting in some veggies as breakfast. Unexpected, but very cool.
Breakfast was a little more caloric than usual, but definitely worth it: 540 calories, 95g carbs, 12g fat, 19g protein.

This lunch was so colorful and delicious – the best kind of lunch! To start, this salad was just kind of thrown together because I had a lot of vegetables on their way out, and I needed to get them eaten up quick. I started with the leftover chickpeas from the chickpea cutlets I made the other night and went from there. Tons of fresh veggies made this salad a crunchy rainbow of colors! The salad contains:

  • Chickpeas
  • Carrots
  • Celery
  • Tomatoes
  • Yellow Peppers
  • Dollop of Fage
  • 10g of Spicy Mustard
  • Tons of Paprika! I heart paprika!

I always need some bread-y something to feel full, so I threw in 2 mini-pitas to scoop up the salad.

I’m not the most graceful person in the world, so this got a bit messy. :P

I also had some strawberries and nonfat vanilla yogurt with a half cup Fiber 1 on the side.

 

Oh my goodness – this combo rocked my world!! It tasted exactly like strawberry shortcake! Sooo amazingly delicious! I will definitely be having this again. Maybe a strawberry shortcake oatmeal will be in the mix?

All together, lunch was 526 calories, 115g carbs, 1g fat, and 21g protein.

I think P is hanging out with a friend tonight, so I’m on my own for dinner. I’m thinking a new recipe may be in order…

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