WIAW #20ish +the week in workouts!

Welcome to the 20th-ish edition of What I Ate Wednesday!

I say 20th-ish because I didn't label some of them, the last one I labeled was #17 so I think I am around #20! I have also remembered to take more pictures of what I've been eating since I've really upped my greens and other veggies and fruits!

First, let's address the workouts this week. Even though we are close to Christmas I have tried so hard to finish out this T25 strong and so far I have done great. I seriously haven't missed a single day in all 10 weeks! I am so proud!

My workouts this last week were as follows:
Wednesday: Speed 2.0 & Upper Focus
Thursday: Rest day
Friday: Core Cardio
Saturday: Dynamic Core
Sunday: Stretch day
Monday: Rip't Circuit
Tuesday: Core Cardio
Today: Rip't Circuit (again)

I will say now that I am in the 10th week of this programme I can definitely see and feel a major difference in my core. There is a lot more definition and I can do all of the exercises as instructed. I am feeling strong and awesome!

Now on to the food!!!!  

Almond Butter and banana slices and some chocolate Shakeology.

On this day I was clearly in dire need of that coffee. Instead of pouring the grounds into the press, I poured them straight into my cup. :-/

As part of our advent calendar we made gingerbread cookies.

Some hard boiled eggs I made for snacks for the week!

Yum! Paleo hot cocoa with some vegan friendly marshmallows as a treat!

Protein balls!!! These are so yummy! I made mine with vanilla protein powder.

This was part of our advent again...Red & Green themed dinner!! Spaghetti squash with homemade meat sauce & cucumbers!

This was after the kiddo's cheer competition, we had dinner at Red Robin. I healthied it up as much as possible with a Caesar salad and a lettuce wrapped turkey burger.

A spinach and butter lettuce vegan riblet salad. It was really tasty!

S'mores Pops! (Go check 'em out!)

Just a nice basic salad in a delcious apple cider vinegar italian dressing!

This was the small spread at the kiddo's sleepover. It was quite tasty, they all enjoyed it!

Finishing with some vanilla shakeology! Yum!

So, that is it for What I Ate Wednesday! What was your favorite meal of the week???

An Honest Account: Focus T25 Beta

Rip'T Circuit

So, this is my second round of T25. The first round I must admit I was not impressed with...at all, sadly! In fact I was ready to sell my DVD's. However,  a woman I greatly admire became a beachbody coach and was putting together a T25 group that she didn't require drink Shakeology which was awesome so I decided to join her. I also made a pact with myself to work as hard as possible during every single 25 minute workout. After all, you only get out of a workout what you put into it.

Here are my before T25 Alpha and after T25 Alpha...

It doesn't seem like there is a huge difference but there is definitely some thinning in my abdominal area & my legs are losing fat & gaining a ton of muscle. I will admit too this is with minimal diet changes too. I still have some sort of chocolate after lunch (usually a homemade paleo PB cup or some paleo hot chocolate lol) and often times a small dessert in the evening. Friday's during our new restaurant visits I get pretty much whatever I want...but I am naturally a veggie lover anyway so that helps ;)

Anyway, moving on to beta!

This is my second week in beta. First week was killer...incorporating weights/resistance into the programme really gives the workouts some dimension. Now I go a bit heavier than I normally would simply because you aren't using the weights for terribly long so I felt like I could up the weights a little.

Rip'T Circuit I feel is closely related to Total Body from Alpha Round. It gets the whole body but when you work on an area I feel like it works it a little deeper than the total body. Plus, it has less push-ups than total body! HA! Rip't has definitive arm, leg, ab movements. I also feel like the moves in this one are all new. During alpha round I could totally tell when something was just a variation from Hip Hop Abs, Rockin' Body, Insanity, etc. But, this time around things just seemed new & fresh for this workout..plus, it is only 25 minutes! ;)

So, that is my assessment of rip't. It's a great DVD and is slowly but surely becoming one of my favorites! What is your favorite workout?

What I Ate Wednesday +my week in workouts!

Well, welcome back to another edition! I have to be honest I have been horrible about recording what I eat...which is probably why my diet hasn't been 100% here lately! But, I resolve to take more pictures to share that will also help me eat a little healthier too! ;)

Lunch last Thursday: leftover pizza, apple, and spinach and mushrooms with hummus. I actually only ate half that pizza lol

This beauty was from our new restaurant Friday. So delicious and totally warmed me up!

I *had* to make some alfredo the other day because I needed a few pictures for Friday's blog post. I served it with whole wheat noodles. It was delicious.

This morning's breakfast with my girl. I only ate half and gave the other half to a homeless gentleman that fell asleep in a booth. It was worth it to #halfitup. 

Now for the week in workouts. I have to say I am working ten times harder in T25 this time around than last time. My muscles are feeling the work for sure. They are fatigued, but in a very good way. Heck sometimes I don't even know a patch of muscles is aching until I start my next workout! So I would 100% recommend you doing this IF you are dedicated to working hard and pushing yourself. So, anyway this is my week in workouts...you can see last week's here...

Wednesday: Rip'T Circuit

Thursday: Dynamic Core

Friday: Exhausted so I took a rest day. After a few late nights & the Xbox One launch the night before I too the day off!

Saturday: Upper Focus & Core Cardio

Sunday: Yoga at lulu lemon

Monday: Dynamic Core

Tuesday: Core Cardio

Wednesday: Back around to Rip'T Circuit

Starting tomorrow watch for a series I will do that will again give my unbiased (since I am NOT a beach body coach) opinion on T25 Beta. When I reviewed it in the summer I got busy and had forgotten to write about the beta round! Oops! So, watch for that!

I hope all of my United States friends have a very happy thanksgiving tomorrow...enjoy yourselves and take lots of pictures to share! Also, come visit me over on Facebook!!!

What I Ate Wednesday is BACK!!! +WOD's

Happy Wednesday, folks! What I ate Wednesday is finally back! I sort of got out of my blogging groove there for a bit, but I'm back in full force!

I will admit, I actually fell out of the habit of photographing some of what I was eating, so since I forgot last Wednesday to take pictures I figured I would feature what I ate this past weekend. It's a doozy of a weekend since it was my birthday! ;)

Friday, for my birthday the hubs and I went out and did a little shopping, we needed some nourishment so I got a beet smoothie from Jugo Juice. I love Jugo juice, it's basically Jamba Juice, but they have juice with beets! Yum!

This was a post workout lunch one day last week. It was a one egg omlette with 2 or 3 egg whites. It's filled with spinach, zucchini, onion, and a little ham. I had some toast with it. 

These next two beauties are from my birthday celebration. We went out with friends for my birthday, one of my friends actually has the same birthdate as me so it was fun to go celebrate together! 

These two above are from a place called the Bellagio here in Vancouver. It was ok. The lobster in it was amazing! I prefer a creamier mac & cheese though, but all-in-all not a bad treat on my birthday! 

Last is yesterday's lunch. It was from whole foods...some mac & cheese (super creamy and absolutely perfect) and a stuffed piece of tofurkey. It was really, really good! 

My workouts here lately have consisted of Focus T25. I joined a fitness challenge group that an amazing woman who runs this awesome page on Facebook (go like it!) started and this time around I am really seeing results! I think because I am in a group and am reporting my daily workout and how I did, plus I feel like I have workout buddies so it makes me more motivated to get going and workout hard! So, here is my schedule for the last week...I actually never took a rest day!

Wednesday: Total Body Circuit & Ab Intervals

Thursday: Cardio

Friday: Total Body Circuit & Lower Focus

Saturday: Speed 1.0

Sunday: Yoga at Lulu Lemon

***Start T25 Beta***

Monday: Core Cardio

Tuesday: Speed 2.0

Today: Rip'T Circuit

I am seeing some serious results this time around for T25, can't wait to see my results from Beta, especially since I am really trying hard to focus on nutrition this time around and not eat too much bad stuff (yeah, I'm laughing since this last weekend for my birthday I totally went all out & treated myself!).

What is your favorite workout you've done this past week?

What I Ate Wednesday's/WOD's #15

Whew! This has been one busy week in my world! Between having company in town, getting ready for back to school, and doing a blogging challenge I've really been hopping!

But, for the good stuff...I'm super proud of what I accomplished this week in fitness. We had family come into town, but I didn't let that get me off track...I kept on truckin'! It was my last week of Alpha Round of T25 so this is what it looked like....

Wednesday: Total Body Circuit
Thursday: Ab intervals
Friday: Total body circuit, lower focus; lots of walking in the evening with the hubby to find a new restaurant to try
Saturday: Active rest; walked, and walked, and walked with family that came into town. I'm pretty confident we walked at least 9 miles.
Sunday: Cardio; again lots of walking.
Monday: Active rest again, quite a bit of walking
Tuesday: Was supposed to be total body, but since I injured myself during that one once I don't really enjoy it so I did Speed 1.0
Wednesday: Start T25 Beta-Core Cardio

Goals for the upcoming week: Use my pear heart rate monitor when doing all workouts; participate each day in a fitness challenge, and remember to drink my protein shake and get in one salad a day!

Now for the other fun stuff....

I should mention...these are in no particular order lol....

Monday's Breakfast at the Elbow Room

Sunday's breakfast at Urban Fare..just egg whites and a delicious multi-grain bagel

Last Saturday's Dinner...Korean BBQ 

Tuesday's Lunch...Pho...I'd never had it before so stepped out of my comfort zone. I loved it with this delicious sweet almost teriyaki type sauce and a little siracha. This was at Lemongrass Cafe in Richmond, BC. 

Lunch at Cora's in Richomond, BC last Friday when taking the kiddo to a sleepover. It was potatoes, all kinds of veggies, two over easy eggs, and fresh fruit!

The Stanley Park salad, from this little bistro in Stanley Park. It was delicious. It had raw hazlenuts and dried blueberries along with goat cheese and a maple vinegarette!

So, that is the highlights of my week in food in fitness....how was your week?

What I Ate Wednesday/WOD's #14

Hello! Welcome back to another edition of....

Over the last week or so I have really wanted to start focusing on nutrition again. When I lived in Santa Monica it just sort of came easy for me. Not quite sure why, maybe it was because I was constantly surrounded by fitness, it was warm all the time, and we had a lot of "fast food" places that served good, whole foods. Plus I had an objective in mind to be super healthy. Once we moved to the land of the rain I just sort of fell off the healthy eating bandwagon and wanted to know how many dark chocolate hot cocoa's I could drink in a day ;) They sure were good, but my thighs don't agree! But, I've taken my time to plan and prep this week. I've also really slowed down when it comes to meals and have been enjoying cooking really healthy foods again. I forgot how much I love to prepare and gently cook all those yummy fruits and veggies! So, anyway...here is the deliciousness I've consumed this week....

Beet Lemonade: Two small beets, one lemon, one apple put through the juicer. Very tasty! Plus, who can resist this guy's hot pink fabulousness?!

Last Thursday hubby & I had an impromptu date night and this bad boy was Flambéd right at our table. Totally worth the splurge!

Shrimp I had right along with the cheese. So yummy!

So, this was dinner the other night. Vegan pate, homemade vegan spaghetti o's , watermelon, grapes, and zucchini. The kiddo loved the spaghtetti o's! She's had several more servings since! haha

This is from an all local food truck. It was basically a salad in a pita (I just at the middle lol). It was super tasty, had 3 different types of fish in there!

This was my entree from our New Restaurant Day. It's a salad with some sort of maple dressing, and a veggie burger with all the fixin's. Very, very tasty, especially with that fried pickle! ;) Almost felt like I was back home....

Appetizer from our new restaurant Friday (which was really Saturday lol). Pretzel with mustard dip, the other was a bacon peanut butter dip, it was ok....

And one of my favorite things from the last week....Skinny Strawberry Margarita!

Those were my food choices. Some great, some eh, but getting to the better choices as the week goes on. ;)

My workouts have been going much better! Thank goodness I didn't injure myself too badly a few weeks ago when I fell during a workout  so I've been able to resume my workouts 100% with no issues and I've been going at them well! Here's what it's looked like for me:

Wednesday: T25 Cardio, Nooner Yoga at Canada Place, plus morning and afternoon stretching

Thursday: T25 Total Body Circuit, a little foam rolling (just learning, played with it a bit)

Friday: T25 Ab intervals and Speed 1.0 (by far my favorite workout from the series!)

Saturday: Lower Focus, lots of walking with the hubby and the kiddo around town

Sunday: Total Body Circuit, lots of walking around town with the kiddo stretching in the am & pm

Monday: Was supposed to be a rest day but I did a squat challenge in one of my fitness groups, 20 deadlifts on each leg from this silly exercise "game" where you share an exercise on your page & have to do 5 of the exercise for every like, then I found a new app called 7 that gives you a 7 minute workout everyday, then I did my T25 Stretching. It wound up being quite the "rest" day....Tuesday was super sore!

Tuesday: Super sore, but knew I had to get moving. We did a 3 mile walk to the aquarium, then I did my 7 minute app, then did T25 stretching. 

 Starting today I am in Week 5 of the Alpha Cycle of T25. I have a write up coming of what I think of the program thus far...a part of my honest account that got side tracked while on vacation. I'll start the week off with total body. This is my least favorite & I have it 3 times this week...as Shaun T says I'll have to dig deep ;)
I am also sad because this is the last week for Nooner Yoga at Canada Place. I am not sure it will happen because the weather is supposed to be fairly icky. But, I am glad for the bit of time I did get to join in. There is still yoga in the evenings at the same place on Tuesday & Thursday until Sept 12th, but it was canceled yesterday due to weather, I am not sure if it will resume :-/ I guess we'll see what Mother Nature has in store for us!

Fitness Goals for the week: Stick to my T25 schedule, work on my splits each day, and only put good, whole foods in my body!!! What are your goals for the week?

What I Ate Wednesday/WOD's #12

Last week I was so discombobulated! We had just gotten back from a month long vacation in FL, dd had a good friend come in from FL, so we were just moovin’ and groovin’ all week so I did not get around to doing a WIAW and my WODs! I was disappointed, but I am back in full swing now!

Workouts! 

Since the 31^st of July I’ve been back at my T25. You can read about my first week of it here. Well, while on vacation I feel off the wagon because my brother and sister in law were with me and we wanted to do stuff together like run, make up our own boot camps, and kayak.  So, that being said, this is what my schedule has looked like over the last two weeks:

Alpha:

July 31^st-August 6^th

31^st-Cardio

1^st-Rest; took the teen & friend hiking up to a waterfall

2^nd-Speed 1.0

3^rd-Total Body Circuit

4^th-Ab Intervals

5^th-Cardio & Lower focus (I do cardio first so I can get a good sweat going, lower focus gives you a great sweat don’t get me wrong, but something about the cardio is just more intense and I like to get that over with)

6^th-Rest

• After this week I wasn't too terribly sore. I felt like I had good workouts, but I wasn't complaining every time I moved….

August 7^th-August 13^th

7^th-Cardio

8^th-Total Body Circuit

***After TBC I woke up on the 9^th and was sooooo sore all over!!!! I was exhausted! But, I still got on it….

9^th-Speed 1.0

10^th-Lover Focus and Ab Intervals (This was our date night and I didn’t want to do a doubles the day after a long night, so I switched them ;))

****So glad I switched doubles and cardio…I was so tired after our evening out I almost didn’t do cardio on the 11^th, but since I have an awesomely supportive hubby he encouraged me to get it done and I did! It did impress upon me how important it is for me to not stuff my body with crap because it was a hard workout after eating an apple fritter the size of my head for breakfast and lunch :-/

11^th-Cardio

12^th-Rest day; just stretching

13^th-Rest day; just stretching

Coming up this week is Week 3 of Alpha Phase of Focus T25. It starts with Total Body Circuit and ends with a double of Total Body Circuit and Ab intervals.

My goals for this week: Complete week 3 of T25, run a total of 4 miles; stretch every morning and every night focusing on the splits.

Now here is a sampling of what I've eaten the last couple of weeks!

This is what I had for lunch prior to getting on the plane:

Cracker Barrel Pecan Pancakes. They were scrumptious!

This is our dinner on the plane that my sweet Mom made us:

It was a GIANT sandwich for us to split, purple grapes and green onions (my daughter loves raw onions lol), freeze dried apple slices, and freeze dried peach and peach slices. We snacked on this all throughout the day. Hubby brought us snacks when we got home but we were so full we didn’t need them!

This was my lunch when we went to Seattle, WA to pick up the teen’s friend from the airport. 

We stopped at Panera and I had this awesome corn soup, apple, and some Mediterranean sandwich. I’d never had Feta before this sandwich and I’m a fan!

This series of pictures is from the day we drove up to Squamish. We took the kids to see a cove (great beach area for some hiking and walking, beautiful scenery) and then we hiked through the mountains a bit to see a waterfall. After all that we were hungry so we hunted down this amazing little BBQ place in Squamish. We just got a big meal for everyone to split:

BBQ Chicken

Ribs, Brisket, and Pulled Pork

Macaroni and Cheese (this was strange as I think the noodles were covered in Turmeric then it just had a bunch of fresh cheddar on top), Hash (shoes string fries, like hash browns almost), and creamed corn with what I think is Siracha on top (I’ve never had that but it was ketchup like but spicy), the salad our vegetarian got, and a few of the sauces.

Last is the BEST lemonade EVER! It’s a special for the summer from Boylan’s. All real ingredients and super delish!

This was my farmer’s market haul from the 3^rd. I got 3 different types of garlic…how many of you knew there were different types of garlic???? I certainly did not! I love going and learning new things about my food!

This isn’t something I ate but it’s hilarious:

$36 at Costco will get you  this GIANT tub of Nutella! I think I may go back upon the suggestion of a friend as a gag gift for the teen for Christmas or Birthday. This picture doesn’t do it justice but it was HUGE!!!!

These are some free latte’s we got when at Pike’s Place Market/The Waterfront when in Seattle last week. Can’t beat free coffee! ;)

This was breakfast one day. The egg was a bit over cooked, but I’ll get the timing right soon. It was tasty!

My farmer’s market haul from the 10^th. So much delicious cheese! The crème frais is amazing! It’s super fresh and doesn’t have all the fatty filler like regular cream cheese. Plus it has a touch of raspberry in it…can’t beat it!! I have an amazing recipe using that and the strawberries coming up Friday!

The next few pictures are of our New Restaurant Friday Saturday. We went to Eighteen Twenty Seven in Langley. We were out that way for a party and it had amazing Yelp reviews. You can read mine here.

This is the Belinitini I had. Love the colouring of it and it was totally delicious!

My meal was seared halibut, a risotto cake, and fresh veggies. I am working on recreating that risotto cake. Amazing!

This is the apple fritter that made my workout Sunday less than stellar! As you can see it was GIANT. I wasn’t kidding! It’s from this great new bakery we found by our house called La Breka. Local and fresh, can’t resist a pastry like that!

Well, that’s it for this week’s edition! What was your favourite food from this last week??????????