Punting

You guys, I have some great news – it’s officially spring!

Baltimore weather cleaned itself up a bit yesterday and today, we pushed 60 degrees and are supposedly doing the same today. I enjoyed a solid 7 miles around the park after work, soaking up all the sun I could get.

I don’t talk about my boyfriend/best friend/better half too much on here, as he is boring prefers to stay out of the spotlight like the coy fox that he is. But I realized a fascinating trend this week, and just had to share.

I like to eat, a lot. We know this. I snack pretty consistently throughout the day at work – probably eating about every 90ish mins or so. I’m not talking like meal sizes, but snacks such as this –

dried cranberries, plantain chips, almonds

I feel pretty confident that I eat more than Andrew – he’s told me his ‘feeding schedule’ before, and he basically eats 3 simple meals, nothing in between.  He’s even told me before that when he’s busy he sometimes forgets to eat lunch, which will forever be a confusing statement to me…

After returning from Chicago last week, I vowed to clean it up a bit. Eating habits in regards to sugar/pizza/alcohol had basically been lax since the holidays, and my work pants were beginning to get angry with me. If we’re being honest, I can’t afford to buy bigger sizes in all colors of my pants, so I opted for the ‘stop eating like a truck driver’ option.

I was serious. I even pulled Andrew aside one night and told him not to tempt me with crap during the week. I EVEN TURNED DOWN HALF PRICE WINE ON DATE NIGHT LAST WEEK.

Food prep is and always will be key for me. The boy is slowly getting on board with that as well.

red pepper with egg/spinach baked into it, paleo pumpkin muffins. breakfast yesterday.

We often call each other Pete. He hates it but can't stop.
 He is also going to hate that I showed this to the world.

Anyways, rewind a few days to this past Tuesday. Weather was cold and crappy, work had been a handful, and the only rower at the gym was broken. On top of it all, traffic was a real gem driving home, and so in the midst of my fury I basically snapped and text Andrew –

‘Pizza tonight?’

He called shortly after, suggesting pizza on Wednesday instead, as Wednesday is typically our date night.

‘No, I want it today, today is officially a cheat day, I just decided.’

Needless to say, he caved without much further argument.

 

buffalo chicken pizza from Saute. so. good. so. bad.
the sauce honestly may or may not be butter?
ignorance is bliss.

I’ve read a few different articles basically stating that being in a relationship can cause weight gain. I mean, it's nothing earth shattering. You form new habits, you feed off of what the other wants to do, you get comfortable, easily cave in, etc. Yet the concept definitely became clearer than ever to me on Tuesday night.

“I hate you for making me eat that, I’m pretty sure I just gained 5 lbs.”

“Andrew, you can’t gain 5 lbs from one meal. It’s fine, it was a cheat day, just eat healthy the week.”

Angry glare.

I rarely drag him down with me. It’s normally the opposite to be honest (love you babe). Yet for one of the first times in a long time, I had shoved mid-week pizza down our throats, and actually felt kind of bad about it.

There is no moral of the story, just me thinking/confessing out loud I suppose. Does anyone else notice the correlation between their eating habits and their relationships – I suppose it could even go as far as friendships as well? It’s interesting stuff; I feel it’s hard for one to stay on track if the other decides to completely punt.

In other news, this weekend we are doing a day trip up to the Big Apple on Saturday to do some sightseeing (I’ve never been to NYC, I know, I know) and to see my friend Les who is up there for work.  It’s a three hour bus trip both ways; I see a lot of reading and Pinterest in my future. The next three weekends I have a lot of travel - New York, Dallas, then Indiana for a wedding.

Speaking of Pinterest, I shall leave you with these two gems -

yes.

Not a fan of pants.

.

Aaaand some #Backthatazzup Friday - a new fav of mine - 

Hope your weekend goes swimmingly, and Spring pops in to hello. Or even better, permanently moves in -

Cheers!

Kait

Preparation is Key

This weekend was solid. There really isn’t a particular reason why, just a lot of small fun/funny moments that made it fab.

Patapsco State Park is a big huge park near Baltimore that has an endless amount of trails to explore. I sometimes run there when it’s warmer, but on Saturday Andrew and I decided to bundle up and find some new trails.

We got a solid 75 minutes of hiking under our belts, and discovered some pretty stellar views in the process. Following the hike we hit up Subway’s JanuANY special and scarfed down footlongs. One each.

I probably wouldn’t have felt bad if we wouldn’t have followed up later that evening with a hot fudge sundae on top of a waffle. Oops.

'DONT EAT IT YET I NEED A PICTURE'

In comparison to my almost 100% paleo diet during the week, weekends can get a little sketchy. Granted, we were both freezing on our walk home, and literally nothing sounded better than hot fudge on top of a Belgium waffle...

Have I mentioned Vaccaros before in Little Italy? Its got some seriously decadent desserts. If you're ever in town, go.

Anyways,  even with a sweaty run bike run bike (15 mins each) workout yesterday pre-Broncos kicking the Pat’s butts didn’t make me feel much better. Pair that with some artichoke dip, and a celebratory shot or two when Peyton sealed the deal, and we’re talking about a pretty negligent weekend nutrition-wise.

I’m not too strict when it comes to weekends in general, but when hot fudge sundaes do call my name, I try to make extra certain that I set myself up for success for that coming week. Preparation is key.

Now, I  believe I’ve mentioned my snack drawer at work on here before, and I wanted to give you all a quick update on its current status, because it’s looking pretty damn impressive. Keep in mind, I'm a strong believer in keeping a stocked, healthy snack drawer...

Yes, there are at least six different kinds of tea in there. I continue to fall in love with tea, especially now that I have an awesome tea pot at home.

I went to town for a solid 90 minutes this evening in the kitchen, cooking up some broccoli slaw for my lunches (not pictured), a badass veggie fritata (picture bottom), and some delicious paleo Cranberry Pecan Pumpkin Banana muffins. The original recipe can be found here - but keep in mind that I threw about a half cup of pumpkin in there, omitted the coconut (didn't have it), used coconut oil instead of butter, and used pecans instead of walnuts just because that's what I had on hand. 

They are great. If you're a muffin person, try these bad boys out.

Hopefully my food preparation this evening has me on track for success this week. Word on the street is that Balty is going to get a couple inches of snow tomorrow, something I'm actually looking forward to.

Snow > dirty dead grass.

Cheers!

K

official

Well after consecutive days of several forms of pizza, Chinese food, pasta, wine and champagne galore, Tuesday left me ready to clean up my eating habits a bit.

I've decided I'm going to try my best shot at tracking a What I Ate Wednesday for you guys today, and report back tomorrow. Wish me luck.

In other news, it’s December!! I’m officially listening to Christmas music, our house is decorated beautifully (no thanks to me), and my favorite boy is back.

Life is good.

I also pretty psyched that I snagged my last holiday flight yesterday for super cheap via Southwest – was able to use points on my Baltimore to Chicago flight as well as my New Years Chicago to Denver flight.

3 flights < $400 = success.

Let’s see what else… I found these, I love them.

Trader Joes

These too - these dude are at Walmart, and great on-the-go snacks.

I’m also trying to be more conscious of drinking water. When Andrew left in July I couldn’t get him to willingly drink a full water bottle if I begged – he was a Gatorade believer to the bones. Now upon his return he sucks down water like it’s his job – it makes me so happy, and simultaneously has been a good reminder of how good it is for the body. Trying to be more conscious of that.

shameless giraffe photo bomb

Last announcement: I officially committed to a gym!

It's just a small guy down the road from where I work, but the location and low monthly fees made it impossible to beat. I look forward to trying out a few of the classes that they offer, and possibly being able to throw in a few quick workouts over my lunch break.

Time to run off to work. Happy Hump Day, Happy December, make today great!

Cheers-

K

The 21 Day Wrap Up

Well, I said I was going to write this post last night, but the truth is, I was in bed by 8 PM watching The Breakfast Club for my first time ever. Sorry I’m not sorry.

My 21-Day Sugar Detox is over. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but somehow it flew by. The first week felt like a month, and the second two weeks felt like two days. No joke.

source

Let me start by prefacing with this: I learned a lot. A lot about my body, food and the way my body responds to certain foods. I learned a lot about the Paleo Diet in general and the thought process behind it.

Let me clarify a few things. The 21-Day Sugar Detox (Level 1) is not 100% Paleo, as I was ‘allowed’ to eat full-fat dairy, and not allowed to eat most fruits. However, for the final week I tried to phase out most dairy, and slowly phase in a bit more fruit towards the end.

 This could get incredibly lengthy if I let it, so I won’t. But just know I'm passionate about this. I do want to share some final takeaways from these past three weeks, and reasons why I’m glad that I tried it out.

1. The #1 reason why I enjoyed it is, I knew exactly what I was putting into my body, on a daily basis. I literally knew just about every single ingredient that I was consuming, as it’s all about eating whole, real foods. None of that chemical processed crap.

2. Because of this, I didn’t really have to worry about ‘watching what I ate’ the past 3 weeks. I mean sure I was working out and running a lot, but it wasn’t about worrying over the calories in my meals/snacks, it was more about the content of what I was fueling with. And guess what? Without even trying, or wanting to, I lost weight following the detox rules.

My plantain paleo pancakes on the deck yesterday morning.
 Chocolate sauce & coconut as toppings.
SO.GOOD.

3. I wasn’t 100% perfect, and I’m not upset about it. The first week I caved and ate a mini cheesecake with my roommate at WholeFoods. Week 2 I had ice cream, and Week 3 I had a handful of m&m’s. See the pattern here? While these 3 weeks have definitely changed the way I see my diet, chocolate will never die out of my life. Ever. HOWEVER, discovering the fact that I can mix unsweetened cocoa with coconut oil for ‘clean chocolate sauce’ may have changed my life.

4. I missed my fruits. I LOVE fruit, and am excited to have that option again. I already ate a carton of raspberries today alone. However speaking of fruit, plantains have reached the top of my list of favorites. I’m so glad I discovered them as an option during the cleanse, and see them sticking around as a staple.

5. If you are an athlete/runner/competitor looking to try out the 21 Day Sugar Detox, make sure that you check out the ‘Athlete Modifications’ section. This was a life saver – once I discovered I could be eating more of the dense carbs listed in there, my training was able to return to its normal intensity levels.

 Moral of the story? I really, really like the paleo style of eating. I don’t love referring to it as the Paleo Diet because the word diet can have such a bad connotation. It’s far from a ‘diet’ because it’s really just a simplified way of eating. These diagrams helped me to see the differences between Paleo and clean eating:

                                

 I’m not looking to become some die-hard paleo phene. Technically paleo = no alcohol, no dairy, no grains. I would say on my average day to day, I would love to stay leaning more towards the paleo side of things, as it seemed to make my body happy doing so the past three weeks. Am I going to stop eating nachos and drinking beers on game day? No. Am I going to forever avoid cheese and ice cream and pizza? Absolutely not. I’m not going to be uptight at restaurants and ask what kind of oil my meat was cooked in, as this just isn’t a life or death matter for me.

But if it’s up to me, on a normal week day when I’m cooking for myself, I’ll stick to the paleo plan.

The paleo jalapeno poppers I made on Saturday...

I realize I’m a little out of the ordinary, and thinking that food experiments like this are ‘fun’ isn’t necessarily the norm… but if you’re looking to clean up your diet, trying to change the way you see food, and even make some positive changes to your body, I would honestly considering giving the 21 Day Sugar Detox a try. It definitely positively impacted me.

Would love to answer any questions or address any comments out there, feel free to ask away!

This girl's off to celebratory sushi with friends.

Cheers to good health!

Kait

8 Mile

Disclaimer: this post's title is in no way related to that movie with Eminem in it.

I came to a couple realizations today. After going to bed at 10:30 last night, and waking up unwillingly at 9:30 AM... I realized that 11 hours of sleep was necessary after a hectic week of adjusting back from 1. vacation 2. mountain time.

Yet as good as sleeping in felt, I woke up and I immediately knew a solid sweaty run was in the books for today. So I pulled on my new running shirt that my wolf Leslie gave to me last weekend, and set out with every intention to sweat completely through it.

Mission accomplished

I did. About a half a mile in I was like 'Why not set a goal for this run Kait?' While I knew I wanted to run 8 miles, it felt appropriate to shoot to hold an 8 minute pace. Here's what I came up with:

Of course I started off way to fast because that's just how I roll. Some day I'll get better at that. The last two miles were a slight uphill, and I tired with a capital T. Like possibly wheezing. I tried to give myself the benefit of the doubt by telling myself that I haven't run this far in about 3 months, but I think what it really comes down to is the crap I've periodically been putting into my body for the past ten days.

Time to reign that in a little bit better.

Exhibit A:

Grapefruit Crushes will be the end of me this summer

Yesterday I had a grapefruit crush or two at the beach. I've been begging and whining and pleading with Andrew that we make a trip to the beach before he leaves. Apparently he's a softy because he gave in on Saturday morning, because we found ourselves here right around 10 AM:

Rehoboth Beach

Neither of us were mad about it. It was 80 something degrees, with a beautiful breeze. We laid there.

I wanted to take up this offer, but then realized I can barely take care of myself and probably shouldn't take a precious hermit crab's life into my own hands...

However, I can manage throw together wicked nasty pizza with some help from Trader Joe's pizza dough...

Dinner tonight, plus some wine and a movie. Rainy Sundays don't end much better.

Back to the trenches tomorrow, we've got a full week ahead of us. Whose ready? I'm not.

Regardless, cheers!

Memory Foam

Two things I want to talk about; two of my favorite things actually.

Running, and food.

Yes, I have a delicious recipe to share. I know, I've been slacking in that department.

I've been slacking at life in general, but hey May will do that to ya.

I did this on Sunday, and it was super encouraging:

My Garmin was pumped to be used again. Speaking of, I tied my ribbons on it from that Boston run that I did in Baltimore, to remind myself every time that I run never to take it for granted...

I like it.

I didn't think that I had sub-8's in me yet. I haven't been running many miles at all, and this past Sunday was the first time that I decided to push the pace a little bit. I'm happy to report that the run actually was actually semi-easy... and I definitely wanted to keep going.

It got me to thinking about out bodies, and how crazy they are. Once I found my stride everything kind of fell into place.. and my legs arms and lungs were all like, Oh Yeah I remember this, we used to do this all the time. Kind of like a memory-foam type effect.

On to the food? Thought so...

Trader Joe's did it again on Sunday. I grabbed a bag of red quinoa off the shelf and happened to glance at the back of the package.

Quinoa salad? Sounded simple enough. So I found the ingredients, mixed it all up, and literally fed myself for four days. Some days I added shrimp on top for a bit more substance.

Because I'm too lazy to type this all up:

It truly was delicious and I have enjoyed it for lunch every day this week. Quinoa is high in protein so it helped me to stay full.

One last thing. My coworker made me aware of this organization last week, and it seems like a pretty great cause. Athletes Serving Athletes is based in the Baltimore area, and all about serving athletes of all shapes and sizes... and helping them reach their goals no matter what they may be. Check out their link here if you're interested....

http://www.athletesservingathletes.org/

That's all folks. Cheers to some good eats!

Awhile

It's been awhile. Far too long if you ask me. Don't be mad though, it was a very busy four days that I left you all for.

As mentioned, Andrew's brothers & ladies came into town for the Easter Weekend, and we gave them just about everything Maryland has to offer. At least I like to think so.

Burgers, brews and basketball in Baltimore:

this santa fe burger was so amazing it almost brought me to tears.

Lori & Katie!

Cherry Blossoms and site seeing in DC:

Yes I really took this picture. Isn't it perfect looking!?

I have to add, it was a beautiful day in DC Saturday, so warm in fact that I even took of my zip-up and rocked a tank for awhile. The sun felt amazing.

Easter Sunday was church, and then down to Annapolis for some tapas and seafood of course. Last but not least, we hit up my favorite breakfast place in the area, Eggspectation, on Monday morning before they headed out.

It was then that I tried crepes for the first time. I'm mad at all of your for not telling me how awesome they are. I ate them so fast there wasn't even time to take a picture. However, I now have a constant mind battle going on with myself as to why I cannot eat crepes multiple times per week.

I may have dreamed about them last night.

Solid, fun, action packed weekend with awesome people. It was kind of nice to get back to a bit of routine this morning at the gym. To throw in an extra burn for the thousands of extra cals I gobbled down this weekend, I hit up my favorite iPhone app to give my abs a hurtin' after work.

I recommend this.

I just happened to see this posted by the Marine Corps Marathon on Facebook, and I thought it was pretty swell of them:

I was a lucky one.

Have I ever mentioned how lists keep me sane? I may actually be a little obsessive compulsive about making lists, but I can think of a lot worse things to obsess over, so I'm not going to sweat it. Here's my workout list I came up for this week...

That's right, I'm heading back to Chicago Saturday night for a ten, count 'em, 10 day trip, comprised of three legs. However, let's chat when that get's a little closer. I think we should talk more about running then too, don't you?

For now, this girl has dinner calling her name.

Cheers!

The burrito that stalked me

Has it really been over a month since I’ve written a Weird Wednesday post? Why didn’t someone slap me?

To make it up, I have a very special story for you all.

But before I forget, a quick kudos to myself… I did yoga last night! A full hour class! The instructor was a couple minutes late, and as I sat there waiting I slowly started convincing myself a variety of reasons as to why I should walk out and get on the treadmill instead. Luckily, I talked myself off the ledge and the instructor walked in shortly after.

And surprise surprise, I felt great afterwards! Progress.

SO, this past Friday through Monday I ran a cumulative total of about 24 miles. To some, that may not seem like much… and once upon a time that wasn’t a big deal to me either. But as an ex-injured runner slowly rebuilding her mileage base… that’s an accomplishment for me. That’s not the point of this story though.

this is the point.

 The point is, I forgot how RAVISHED running higher mileages make me. Like, crazed mountain lion type of hungry. Shortly after getting back from 7 miles on Monday evening, the hunger hit me like bricks and I sprinted down to my freezer and threw the first thing into the microwave that i could find. It just so happened to be this:

source

I trotted back upstairs, steaming burrito in hand, ate half of it and left the rest on the bathroom counter to continue post-shower.  I was in a hurry to get over to Andrew’s apartment, and didn’t feel greasy hair was sufficient to cheer on watch the Irish get the crap kicked out of them. Sad face.

Where I went wrong: not eating the entire burrito. Halfway through my shower, shampoo running down my face, I realized I could no longer avoid the screaming burrito on the bathroom counter. Shamefully, I got out of the shower and shoved the rest of the burrito into my mouth.

post-shower shame

WHAT?

Why am I publicly admitting this? I don’t know. Because it’s weird, and I’ve been a neglectful blogger when it comes to Weird Wednesdays. 

I’ll leave you with this. I saw it last night and I nodded to myself and wondered if I would make it the background of my computer at work. I decided against it, but I still love it:

excuse the vulgarity, but it's true.

 I've got some recipes coming up for Friday!

Cheers!