Menu Plan Monday +Workouts: Moving Edition

Wow, wow, wow! Easter Monday here folks.

We had a wonderful weekend full of games with friends, dinners with friends, and egg hunts! There was a poor decision of a donut and one of those Lindt Cream eggs for breakfast on Easter Morning but it was totally worth it ;)

Org Junkie Link Up

As you know from my last post that we are undergoing a huge move to Amsterdam, Netherlands. This means very busy days of selling and tossing stuff. So, the menu is full of easy, quick stuff that doesn't require any more than a pan, a pot, and/or a baking sheet.

Breakfast Choices:

Oatmeal cups, cereal cups, eggs & veggies, shakeology, paleo pancakes with pb, 

Lunch:

Monday: Leftover's from Easter Dinner Out

Tuesday: me: eatout, teenager: spaghetti leftovers & salad 

Wednesday: me: tuna salad, teenager: lunch out with her friends

Thursday: Driving to Washington to take care of US needs, eat out

Friday: munchies plate: any fruit and veggies that need to use up, cheese, nuts OR Chicken Salad

Saturday: Grilled cheese with salad

Sunday: Omelettes or Cream of Wheat

Dinner:

Monday: Baked potatoes/baked sweet potatoes with zucchini and sugar snap peas

Tuesday: Tacos with salad

Wednesday: Chicken breasts topped with cheese & veggies/salad

Thursday: Spending the day in Washington taking care of US stuff, eat out

Friday: Hamburgers with veggies & potato skins

Saturday: Homemade Hamburger Helper with salad

Sunday:  BBQ pulled pork sandwiches with cheese, corn, and zucchini

Snack Choices: Shakeology bites, apples with peanut butter, paleo pancakes with pb

**Update** Paleo Pancakes
This recipe is adapted from the Big Ass Pancake...

2 tablespoon coconut flour
2 eggs
2 tablespoons milk (I use almond but you could use full fat coconut, coconut almond, or-gasp, even regular milk haha although then it is not quite so paleo anymore, I think that is "primal" then)

Put the coconut flour in a mug & break up any big lumps, add milk & eggs. Mix together with a fork until not lumpy. Cook in a small skillet, mine is about a 6-8" skillet and it takes up the whole bottom of the skillet. I top it with sunbutter, peanut butter, or almond butter. Many times I will mix my nut or seed butter with some coconut oil to make it a little runnier & more like a "syrup"-ish thing.

Workout Schedule

Not only are we moving, but I am having a crazy week with starting a new work project that will need a good amount of my attention. This means workouts will need to be quick, yet effective. 

Monday: 100 Burpee Burnout +insanity cardio abs

Tuesday: 1 mile run and X3 Yoga

Wednesday: Insanity Cardio Power & Resistance

Thursday: Doing some traveling and stuff so will try and do some foam rolling

Friday: P90X Cardio X

Saturday: 3 mile run, foam rolling

Sunday: Yoga at Lulu Lemon

Flex Friday! P90X3 Results!

So I am doing something a little different today. As I said in Monday's post I finished P90X3 last Sunday. That was my final rest day. I wanted to work up a nice post for y'all so I could give you an honest opinion. I will be forward...I am a Beachbody Coach. I am not very good at it as I don't want to pressure people and I don't want people to think I am out to "love" every programme because I'm not. All programmes are for different people and one I may really dislike you may love. I could get into that but I want to focus on X3 for now.

Here are my results:

Yes, I completely forgot to take the 60 day ones! Oops. But you get a good idea. The ones in the pink shorts were actually my final results from T25. I actually felt like I didn't gain a lot of muscle, but I do feel like I lost a lot of fat. In fact I think my results of that were a 2% body fat decrease. Day 30 you can see where I gained a bit of weight and muscle. But, by day 90 it was all trimming out and you can really see the muscle come out.

My biggest areas of improvement were fat loss on my upper thighs and my booty area. I can see where my stretch marks are closer together and aren't as "stretched" as they were prior. Also, my shins are much more muscular, even when not flexed. My calves gained at least an inch of muscle. My jeans are tight there, but loose in my thighs and butt! Ha! 

I noticed a huge increase in my back muscles, as you can see in the final picture.

Also, I will note I didn't really watch too much what I ate. I kept it reasonable but definitely not strict. Also, the last two weeks I was in Hawaii on vacation with my best friend and we spared no calories! So, my results probably could have been even better.

I don't actually take measurements as I begin to get a little obsessed, but I will give you a better look at my photos:

These are my T25 After Pictures/P90X3 Before pictures, I did them back to back.

Now I am skipping straight to the after's because my 30 day pictures are a bit embarrassing. My daughter didn't warn me that I looked like I just escaped from the insane asylum lol So...here are the 90 day P90X3 pictures.

So, all in all, I feel like X3 was a great program. They have the classic, lean, mass, and doubles route for you go. I started with classic but had to switch to lean due to an injury. I will say I don't feel like my results were as awesome because 1) I didn't eat as well as I should have-oops and 2) there wasn't any straight core work that came with the base programme. There are three "elite" dvd's available for separate purchase-I feel this is where Beachbody is getting greedy and it makes me angry. I think these DVD's should have been included especially since one of them is an ab ripper. I feel with as much as we are paying they could have at least thrown in the ab ripper. I feel like that is the only place X3 lacks is in just one straight ab dvd, but you do get decent ab work in some of the other DVD's such as pilates.

Now, just to promote myself lol I will be starting a 30 day group May 1st. It is completely free. Contact me if you would like more info!

WIAW/WOD's #17

Man, oh man! Back at another WEDNESDAY!!!

Last week I got super busy and totally failed at posting! So, this week I shall make up for it...here goes two weeks of....

Butternut squash with chopped up spinach and onions with bbq mushrooms on top, with a side of broccoli & a sprinkle of Parmesan. 

Oh she glows Elvis bars!

A blueberry muffin, figs, and coffee!

Veggie burger scramble with figs and nut thins

Apple strudle and coffee/hot cocoa (for the little one)

"Pumpkin" Protein Shake: 1/2 cup butternut squash or pumpkin, 8oz almond milk, 1tsp cinnamon, 1/4tsp pumpkin pie spice, 1 scoop Sun Warrior protein powder,  a few ice cubes. Blend in blender until nice and smooth! Drink up!

I'm not quite sure the name of this squash. The farmer at the market said it was something like a Big Blue or Baby Blue, I'm not sure I couldn't find any info on it at all so if someone knows, please let me know in the comments! It was a very juicy squash though, I wish I had known because I would have juiced it instead! But, here i have it paired with cinnamon, nutmeg, and a pear, and I topped it with parm.

These are the seeds from the above squash! They were very tasty!

This was Tuesday night's dinner. A nice green salad, what will probably be our last bit of corn for the season, and some homemade hamburger helper (I was out of elbows so spaghetti it was! LOL ...and some lemon water of course!

My last two weeks in workouts have been interesting. I gave up on Focus T25. In theory it is good, but I wasn't getting the calorie burn I want (I obviously love to eat so I need to burn some serious calories in a day lol) and just felt like I wasn't making any progress in my fitness journey. So, I have gone back to my beloved P90X and this is how it went...

On the 14th these were the shenanigans I got into with my kiddo...

Oh yea, we got color bombed! We didn't quite get as colourful as we'd hoped, but we still had a total blast!

17th: Focus T25, and P90X shoulders and arms

18th: Plyometrics

19th: Pear Sports Fig Yoga 1, and a 3 mile walk/run

I was exhausted after that yoga, it was a tough one!

20th: Shoulders and arms, 4 mile walk

21st: P90X Legs and back

22nd: Kenpo X and foam rolling

23rd: Rest day; lots of stretching and a hot bath with epsom salt, I was soooooooo sore! I also exercised my mind a bit...

Really enjoying this book and putting together my own happiness project!

24th: P90X shoulders and arms (after each set of three I would run 5 minutes on the treadmill, then at the end I ran a total of 15 min on the tread mill to round out a 90 minute workout)

Today: Core synergistics; blogilates Drive by inner thighs challenge and slimmer inner thighs and calves

What have you been doing to get moving this week???

What I Ate Wednesday/WODs #4

Happy Wednesday!!!

Over here we've been battling a cold. So a good majority of our meals consist of having a cup of lemon water with honey, cinnamon, and cayenne to try and get rid of this horrible cold. It wouldn't be so bad, but I go to bed thinking I'll feel better the next morning and usually I feel absolutely horrible! I'm hoping with the sun that is supposed to come in tomorrow it will bring some good feeling vibe with it or something. 

Anyway, enough whining! On to the workout's first today. Last week I was bound & determined to do every workout, in the order I am supposed to without whining. I DID IT! Personal goal of mine so that was pretty exciting. Here's what the workouts consisted of:

Wednesday: Max Cardio Conditioning and Cardio Abs. I also took a nice long walk around the neighborhood my daughter's gym is in. Saw a train on the tracks that I thought were just abandoned, it lost it's cargo & had to back up! I had no idea trains could back up?! Anyway, the workout was killer I woke up Thursday with sore ribs from the hard work during the abs. 

Thursday: Max Recovery. I was so glad too, I was very sore. But, this was a great workout. My hip even cooperated so I was able to do all the hip openers all the way through.

Friday: Max Interval Circuit. Legs. Were. Dying. I also did a ton of walking this day between getting the kid to school, then home, then taking her belongings for her weekend trip to her friends house, then home. It was a lot of walking.

Saturday: Core Cardio & Balance. This is a nice easy 35 minute workout. I got up early before the husband & knocked it out. It was fab!

Sunday: Rest Day. I woke up & was starting to get sick. :( So, I took it easy, took a hot detox bath, did a little stretching & walking and that was about it.

Monday: Max Interval Plyo. Even though I was sick I worked  as hard as I could without stressing my body too much so it could still heal. 

Tuesday: I decided to take today as my rest day. I am still feeling pretty awful and by 11 am had taken two naps so I decided just to work on the blog, drink my lemon water, and let myself heal. I also took a hot detox bath. 

Today: I'm moving everything down a day so today I'll do Max Cardio Conditioning & Cardio Abs. This is my last week of Insanity so I am super excited to finish up strong & move on to another round of P90X.

So, as you can see I am super excited to get back to lifting weights. I have a couple of goals for this summer round of P90X which I will address when I show off my June workout calendar. Anyway, on to the FOOD!  You can read here about our experience at Eat! Vancouver this past weekend, but that's obviously not all I ate....

French Toast!! I don't make this often but my daughter was leaving for a long weekend so I made her nutella/banana/cinnamon french toast & decided to have a piece with her. I didn't want anything so decadent & I have issues with eating chocolate in the morning lol so I opted for this! It was amazing!

Saturday morning breakfast for the Mr. & I. Homemade dough, ricotta, mozzarella, eggs, bacon, and a bit more mozzarella just for good measure. ;)

I don't want soda often but lately I've been craving all things ginger so I decided to grab a gingerale after Eat! Vancouver to enjoy the evening.

This was dinner last night since I wasn't feeling well. I'd been wanting to try a Thai place up the street called Pink Elephant. The kiddo & I split the leftovers for lunch & there's still a little in there for breakfast or lunch tomorrow!

Lunch one day. Egg salad sandwich with baby greens, cashews, oranges, and pickle.

Mmmmm cereal with raisins & bananas!

Post-workout snack one day. Almond butter sandwich with greek yogurt with a drizzle of maple syrup, blueberries, and flaxmeal. 

After the kiddo's band concert last Thursday we went to a local pizza place she loves. They got pizza & I got a massive Caesar Salad. It was amazing.

So, that sums up my week in food & fitness! Making better food choices all the time!!! 

What was your favorite food this last week? Mine was probably the lobster & raclette my hubby made after Eat Vancouver last Saturday!