Hello December

December has arrived! How amazing is that?! I LOVE that it’s December already, although I hope the season doesn’t fly away from us as quickly as it arrived.

I started out the day with a very festive bowl of oats – probably my most festive yet: cranberry-granola oats. For this flavorful bowl, I used:

-1/2 cup old fashioned oats
-1 tbsp cinnamon
-1 tbsp vanilla extract
-water (eyeballed it)

Cooked for 2 minutes in the microwave and gave it a good stir. Then, I topped it with:

-1 tbsp of ground flax
-2 tbsp homemade maple pecan granola
-2 tbsp almonds
-2 heaping spoonfuls of homemade cranberry sauce

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I really enjoyed this bowl – the tartness from the cranberries combined well with the sweetness from the granola. Not only was it delicious, but it filled me up for FOUR hours (from 5:45am until 9:45am!). Amazing staying power, I must say!

Mid-morning (around 10am), I snacked on a peach yogurt w/ half a cup of fiber one.

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Delish as usual, but didn’t really fill me up, so I wound up digging into lunch at 12pm.

My lunch consisted of the usual suspect: whole wheat english muffin topped with chunky peanut butter and pumpkin alongside some new sides: a ginormous apple and crunchy pretzels.

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I guess my lack of hunger yesterday explains why I’ve been starving today. I was planning on just having half a Clif bar prior to my workout tonight, but my co-worker brought in some leftover collard greens for me to try, so I dug right into them around 2:30pm. He is from the “south” and told me that the kind they serve here in BBQ places are NOTHING like the ones he makes – he was RIGHT ON.  They were delish!

After work, I headed to the gym and finally snacked on half of this bar.

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I did lower body strength training, some quick abs, and then headed off to 5:30 spin class. I got a great workout in (burning over 400 calories), probably because I felt like I ate well today and didn’t load myself down with junk (like I had the last few days!).

Dinner was MORE pizza. It is the never ending pizza, at least it is delicious and not too heavy :) I had two slices of tomato pie with an amazing side salad, that included celery, carrots, cucumbers, and lettuce, that Bill made for us. Yummo! It was even more enjoyable because I didn’t have to cook tonight :)

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Up-close pics:

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Now I’m getting all settled in to relax and watch Heroes, but currently we’re watching Little People Big World – one of my favorite TLC shows. Bill still isn’t feeling well so I just made us some decaf tea and I am eating half of a Kashi TLC Pumpkin Spice Flax bar – totally love this flavor.

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Have a great night blogland!

Goodbye Monday :)

The rest of today flew by… I got home and had a speedy dinner w/ my family… we had leftovers from last night as you can see from my similar (but smaller portions!) pic for tonight… I ate pretty much everything except for about 1/4 of the potato…

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Then I headed to the gym which was INSANELY packed… I think it was worse tonight than it was after January 1st! I was so aggravated, so instead of waiting for cardio machines, I did weights than 15 minutes on the stepper until a tredmill opened up and I hopped on that for another 15… I didn’t even get to do chest weights today because the bench wasn’t open ~ so aggravating… even though my HRM said I burned 420 calories, I didn’t feel like I did… I know they say that lifting first is better then to do cardio, I don’t feel I get as good a workout when I do it in that order… I prefer running first than weights!

Anyway, when I got home I had an impulse craving for pb& chocolate… I was going to make some funky combo w/ protein powder but realized that I did have a good amount of protein today due to dinner, so I’d skip the protein powder and have a pb egg instead, logical, right ;)

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Now I am finishing up some homework, checking out some Corelle plate patterns online (lol), and watching Little People Big World on TLC… Finally, some calmness to this busy Monday… at least tomorrow is Tuesday! Night ya’ll!