Stop, Start

I kicked off this beautiful Tuesday with a five mile run with Sadie.

5 Mile Run + Walking at the End

Our run was more of a stop-start-stop-start run than a steady paced run due to my running buddy who likes to potty all the time.

Now that I’m not training for a half marathon I care a lot less about running continuously and I try to embrace Sadie’s potty breaks and use the time to stretch and catch my breath.

We finished five miles in under 50 minutes and cooled down with a short walk back to our apartment. I always have to take some time to cool down after a run before hopping in the shower, otherwise I’ll keep sweating and that makes getting ready a truly miserable experience.

Breakfast

Post-run, I was in the mood for a cold and filling breakfast.

I also wanted to use the brand new Cuisinart immersion blender I got from my aunt as a bridal shower gift (my shower isn’t until next weekend, but she cannot come and sent her gift ahead of time).

I decided to make myself a pumpkin pie cheesecake breakfast bowl by blending the following:

• 3/4 c. cottage cheese
• 1/2 c. canned pumpkin
• Sweetener, to taste
• Pumpkin pie spice or cinnamon, to taste

Pre-Blended

After blending away, I had a thick, pumpkiny breakfast bowl, perfectly appropriate for fall. (The immersion blender worked perfectly and was really powerful, just in case you were wondering.)

I topped the bowl with a sprinkle of nutmeg for some added flavor.

Sprinkle O' Nutmeg

Chomp!

I like to use no salt added cottage cheese when creating breakfast bowls because regular cottage cheese actually has quite a bit of salt!

Friendship Cottage Cheese

I use Friendship All Natural 1% No Salt Added cottage cheese, which works really well.

However, I must warn you: This stuff tastes absolutely terrible on its own, but when mixed with yogurt, pumpkin or a more dominant ingredient, it’s delicious!

Date Night

For those of you who asked me to report on the movie last night, both Ryan and I really enjoyed Date Night. I think Tina Fey and Steve Carell are absolutely hysterical and they definitely made the movie. Though I wouldn’t care to own it, the movie is definitely worth a watch!

What was the last movie you saw in the theaters? Would you recommend it?

The last movie I saw in the theaters was Eclipse. If you’re curious, you may see my thoughts on the movie (and the Twilight books in general) here.

I hope you all have a wonderful day! 😀

French Toast Strips

Have you ever tried French toast sticks? The fried French toast-like sticks they offer at Burger King and often serve at breakfast buffets? Well, they’re pretty darn delicious, but also pretty terrible for you from a nutritional standpoint.  

Today I created my own French toast sticks… but they were more like French toast strips. 😉  

They tasted nothing like French toast sticks, but were still tasty in their own right and were made with nutritious ingredients. That’s gotta count for something, right?  

I made my French toast strips by pulling apart lavash bread (you could also do this with a whole wheat tortilla) and dunking it in a mixture of egg beaters and cinnamon before cooking the strips on the griddle.  

Egg Beaters + Cinnamon

 

While the French toast strips were cooking, I combined 1/4 cup of cottage cheese with 1/4 cup of frozen raspberries and a dash of Almond Breeze almond milk. I used my immersion blender to blend everything together to create a creamy, fruity filling.  

Raspberries + Cottage Cheese

 

Pink!

 

Once the French toast strips were done, I spread the filling in between the strips, sprinkled them with nutmeg and smothered the strips in syrup.  

French Toast Strips

 

French Toast Strips with Raspberry Filling

 

The Finishing Touches: Nutmeg + Syrup

 

I love weekday breakfasts that remind me of weekend breakfasts! They make me happy.  

This particular breakfast actually reminded me a lot of my raspberry ricotta stuffed French toast. Deeelish! 

Workout 

Before breakfast, I headed outside with Sadie for a 5.25 mile run.  

On our run we saw lots of baby ducklings and goslings. It’s definitely spring!  

The weather in Central Florida is still great for running and I hope it doesn’t get too hot too fast.  

What is your ideal temperature?  

I think mine is somewhere between 78 and 80 degrees. I like it nice and warm, but not sweltering.

Kiss Me, I’m NOT Irish

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Hooray for a fun holiday! I love the collage of green I’m seeing everywhere today.

Are you wearing green today?

You bet your booty I am! 😀

Sportin' the Green

Kiss Me! I'm Not Irish!

When I saw this t-shirt a couple years ago, I scooped it up immediately.

Are you Irish?

I’ve always felt a little left out on St. Patrick’s Day since I’m not even the tiniest bit Irish, so this t-shirt makes me feel better about my German and Swedish heritage (at least I think that’s what I am).

Breakfast

I thought about trying to make something green for breakfast, but that idea went out the window pretty quickly when I remembered the recipe I saw in Oxygen magazine yesterday for chocolate protein pancakes.

Chocolate for breakfast? Yes, please.

I only needed three ingredients to make the ‘cakes.

Cottage Cheese + Egg Whites + Chocolate Protein Powder

I blended 1/8 c. cottage cheese, 2 egg whites and a scoop and a half of All the Whey chocolate peanut butter cup protein powder with my immersion blender until I had a smooth batter.

After cooking the pancakes on the griddle (two minutes per side), I was ready to diiiig in.

Cookin' 'Cakes

Aaaalmost Done

Ready!

I topped my pancakes with sliced strawberries and syrup and enjoyed them with a hot mug of tea.

Chocolate Protein Pancakes with Strawberries and Syrup

St. Patty's Day Breakfast

The pancakes were absolutely delicious!

I think they would also be yummy dipped in Greek yogurt. Somethin’ to think about for the future…

Workout

Today’s workout was a goodie! I took a BodyPump class and followed it up with 25 minutes of light cardio on the elliptical.

Great way to start St. Patty’s Day!

Hope the luck of the Irish is with you today!😀

Extra Credit

As Ryan and I were walking to the gym this morning at 5:40 a.m. (which was really like 4:40 a.m.), I said that I think that anyone who goes to the gym the morning after the time changes deserves extra credit.

Ryan said he’d give me a gold star. 🙂 So, for those of you who got your booties out of bed and to the gym this morning, here you go:

For You!

See, wasn’t it totally worth it? 😉

Workout

When I got to the gym, I was really in the mood for BodyPump since it was early and I didn’t feel like putting myself through a quality workout. Unfortunately the instructor overslept, so the class never happened. 😦

Luckily, after joking around with other gym-goers, I felt much more awake and managed to get a decent workout.

Today I did 25 minutes of light cardio on the elliptical before completing a total-body weights routine that looked like this:

(3 sets of 15 reps of each)

• Leg extensions
• Leg press
• Deadlifts
• Hamstring curls on exercise ball
• Shoulder raises
• Bicep curls
• Tricep dips
• Abs

I hauled my booty home to take Sadie on a 20 minute walk before showering and heading off to my orthodontist’s office for an early morning Invisalign appointment.

Reppin' College Park Orthodontics Promo Mug!

I technically only have three aligners remaining. I wear each Invisalign aligner for two weeks, but we’re extending my time with my current aligner to make sure my teeth aren’t pushed too quickly. Slow and steady wins the race (Just ask the tortoise)!

Breakfast

Breakfast today was a blended success!

I used my immersion blender to blend 1/4 cup of cottage cheese and 1/2 cup of canned pumpkin with a little bit of  sweetener, pumpkin pie spice and cinnamon to make a pumpkiny dip for a toasted waffle.

Cottage Cheese, Pumpkin, Spices

Blllllended

Toasted Waffle for Dippin'

The combination was yum-may!

Action Shot

Even though I look like death in the following pictures, I wanted to share some action photos with you from Saturday’s 10k race that a friend took!

Intense, Huh?

Sadie can’t be the only one with action photos on this blog!

Annnnd if you’re like me and severely neglect blogs over the weekend, here are some weekend highlights for ya:

• 10k Race
• Bowl-a-Thon + Date Night
• Pumpkin Protein Oats
• Shopping!
• Dog Park

Hot Mess

After my morning workout I was a hot mess!

Phew!

I guess interval training will do that to ya.

I initially planned to go to spinning, but a new teacher took over the 6 a.m. time slot and he’s not my cup of tea. You can tell he’s the kinda guy who thinks he’s pretty nifty and he doesn’t ride the bike at all. He opts to do weird dance moves beside the bike (you know, the kind where you don’t move your feet?). It’s like Club YMCA and is not something I care to partake in as my first activity of the day.

In your opinion, what makes a good fitness instructor?

To me, good fitness instructors are positive, encouraging and play upbeat music. (For you Biggest Loser fans out there, I am much more of a Bob lover than a Jillian fan.)

Since spinning was out, I opted to take myself through an interval workout that I saw on Jessica’s blog a couple of months ago. I keep print outs of about five different cardio workouts in my gym bag as a fall back plan for when I’m not feeling creative. The 20-minute interval workout called to me today.

Workout

• 5 min. incline walking warm up (7.5 incline, 4.2 pace)
• 20 min. intervals (2.0 incline, 20 seconds at 9.0 pace, followed by 40 sec. at 4.5 pace… repeat for 20 min.)
• 5 min. incline walking cool down (7.5 incline, 4.2 pace)
• 20 min. elliptical

By the time the 20 minutes of intervals were over I was sweaty! I still wanted to read the latest US Weekly since I couldn’t read it while running, and opted to finish my workout with 20 minutes of light cardio on the elliptical while taking in my celebrity gossip.

Breakfast

Along with the tasty BBQ chicken pizza from last night’s dinner that I took from my parents’ house, I also nabbed a box of Eggo NutriGrain waffles and toasted one up this morning.

Leggo My Eggo

Toasty

I dipped it into a mixture of 1/2 c. cottage cheese, 1/2 c. organic pumpkin, sweetener and pumpkin pie spice.

Organic Pumpkin

Cottage Cheese Pumpkin Dip

It was quite the yummy breakfast.

Save the Date Help

Thank you to all of you who weighed in on my save the date question. It sounds like sending them out 6-9 months in advance is a good amount of time. We’ll probably send them out sooner rather than later. Time is flyin’!