Monday, November 5, 2007

After a Weekend Away

I decided to start a blog as an example of one person living the SWEET Life and to keep me honest about practicing what I preach. I'll cover each aspect of the SWEET Life and any conclusions I come to about living the SWEET Life each day.

Sleep
I went to bed at 10:30 but didn't go to sleep until 11:30. My alarm went off at 6:00 but I didn't get up until 6:15. So that makes 7 1/2 hr. attempted sleep, but only 6 3/4 hr. actual sleep. Bummer, I didn't quite make my sleep goal of 7-8 hr.

Water
I had been filling a pitcher with 2 quarts water and drinking from it all day, but I haven't been consistent. So this month, I decided tdo try drinking a tall glass of water with each meal, plus a couple others throughout the day. So far, so good. I reached my goal of 8-10 cups today.

Eating
After a wonderful weekend away, filled with restaurant and party foods and drinks, it was nice to be home and eat basic foods from my fridge and pantry. Unfortunately, because we were away, the fridge is looking pretty bare. For breaky I mustered up a whole wheat English muffin with peanut butter and Nutella (I know, not so healthy, but boy is it good!), grapes and coffee.

By lunch I was really hungry. I ate a whole wheat tortilla wrap with turkey and corned beef, cheese and hummus; some fiesta bean salad; baby carrots & broccoli florets dipped in hummus; and yogurt. My daughters and I had Halloween candy for dessert as a reward for eating a good lunch. Again, not healthy but I'd rather my girls eat 3 baby carrots and one piece of Halloween andy than 0 carrots and 0 candy. As for my candy-eating, read about my Exercise below.

Before work, I ate a handful or two of peanuts. I work 5-9:00 p.m. as a Personal Trainer at a health club, so I always snack beforehand and bring an energy bar. I always make sure to eat it so that I'm not ravenously hungry when I get home. When I got home at 9:15, I could smell a delicious dinner, so I was really disappointed to find out it had all been eaten! Bummer! I was hungry and just wanted to eat and do the fifteen things I needed to do before bed. I already mentioned that our fridge was empty, so what to do? . . . Unfortunately, in this situation I succumbed to the temptation of the 5-minute, frozen mac & cheese. Mmm, it's good, but a lot of calories, fat and sodium! I sort of made up for that by eating some more baby carrots and broccoli florets. Overall, I actually ate pretty well today, although it would have been better to have traded in the candy for vegetables. Gotta go to the store first; that's the key to eating well!

Exercise
I typically run down Alameda beach and back on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Today was a bit different because I felt "polluted" after my vacation/party weekend. I also happened to read this great article on post-party exercising, so I took the article's advice: I did interval training. I ran about 10 min. as a warm up; then I ran as hard as possible for one min., then jogged slowly to recover for one min., repeating that 8 times. I'd never done interval training before, and it was hard! After a few intervals, I could feel that my legs were moving much slower (during the fast intervals) but my heart was racing! What a way to burn extra calories and challenge my cardio. system! The last 10 min. I ran my regular pace home, where I did a little stretching and some new ab exercises. I've come to realize that I always need to do abs, and I like to change exercises every month for interest and a challenge.

Tranquility
This basically always depends on whether my toddlers nap. They did, so I got some alone time. It's not that I did anything very interesting: email, web surfing, organizing my day, but I really need some time to relax and think.

How do I feel?
I felt back on track after my intense run to burn off the weekend's "pollutants" and getting back to my usual eating/drinking/kid-rearing schedule. However, the late night mac & cheese is sitting in a mass in my stomach.

Overall, this was a pretty SWEET day. I was a bit shy on sleep, and probably consumed more fat than I should have, but it's a pretty good example of how the SWEET Life can work in real life.

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