CleanandFitFamily

…to red grapes……aaaah!  Of course there are worse things in the world, but I’m ridiculous at this point.  I think I ate an entire bag of them over two days!  I’m thinking about not buying any more at the store this week.   I keep opening the fridge and reaching in for a couple! Craziness! Any foods that you just can’t stay away from?

It was a funfilled 4th of July weekend!  Today we’re off work and will hopefully be resting and preparing for a super-busy week ahead.  Last night we grilled burgers (yes we still eat them made from lean ground beef), corn on the cob and sweet potato fries.  Later I snacked on my new fav dessert – strawberries, cheerios and carob chips and a cup of green tea while we watched some fireworks.  Hubbie went out and bought some small ones to shoot off in the street (all that is legal to buy in GA), but there were a few other larger shows going on in neighborhoods around.  It made for a lovely evening hanging out with a couple of the neighbors and my in-laws.  At 10pm though the fun was over and we all crashed!  SweetPea went to bed right after dinner and slept through all of the fun!

I slept in a little bit this morning and decided to get up at 5:30 for my workout – Monday is Back and Biceps!  I must have some kind of allergies right now and didn’t quite catchup on my sleep-so it was a very tough workout and I wasn’t too into it.  With the p90x program they have these sheets to right down the reps and weights – so you can see your progress….well, last week when I did this dvd I filled in the weight I wanted to try this week (just to remind myself that I could push myself on certain moves) – ha!  not really happening today – just too out of it.  I skipped AbRipper too.  I still got a good 45minutes of exercise in, but it was not my best.  Oh well – other than a few errands and maybe a pedicure, I plan to rest today!

Thinking about sundried tomato/feta turkey burgers that I saw over on Nourished Fitness for tonight’s dinner – I’ll let you know how they turn out!

Tags: grapes, P90X, strawberries, sweet potato

Another marathon day of baseball behind us -this one was the longest yet!  I think I survived in a pretty “clean” manner……well eating-wise that is – everyone came home filthy from the ballpark! haha! (here is a marathon post to recap the marathon day)

The Fit:

Saturday started out with a 4:45am alarm to do Chest, Shoulders and Arms (P90X)!  It was a tough workout – lots of push-up variations.  Then I skipped the AbRipper partly because I had done it on Friday and they say not to do it everyday.  The real reason was I saw an opportunity to go for a short run through the neighborhood.  I don’t think I’ve mentioned this in an earlier post, but I’m on a bootcamp break until August 2nd.  My husband is going to be out of town here and there in July and we have a vacation planned, so it didn’t make sense to sign up and barely go.  So, I”m all P90X for awhile.  One big difference between the two exercise programs is at bootcamp we run about a mile around the track in the gym just about every session – lots of interval running too.  I was a little concerned that I was losing some of the endurance I had built up by not doing that now.  So, I headed out for a run at 6am in some unusually beautiful (not too hot – 71 degrees, not too humid) weather for July 3rd.  I ran about a 1.5miles without stopping and felt good the whole time- I was sooo excited!  Since it was outside I also had the added bonus of hills.  I was so happy after this run – I’m going to start doing this at least once a week and start working on my time.  I have a potential goal in mind of a 10k around my big 4-0 b-day coming up in the fall….I’d like to see how my 5k time is these days before I commit though.

On to the “Clean”:

After my wonderful run, I had a chocolate protein drink and then we were on to getting ready to leave for the hour drive down south of Atlanta for the baseball tournament.  I made my usual omelette for the ride down there – I was hungry, so it was gone fast!   After getting lost a bit (we were caravaning – my in-laws are in town – so boys in one car and girls in the other!), we managed to get there in time for the warm-up practice and then the first game at 10:30am.  Did I mention the beautiful weather? Oh my – July 3rd in the South and it didn’t break 90!  There was even so much of a breeze at one point that our pop-tent almost blew away!  The first game was a loss, but was quickly followed up by game #2 of the day at noon!  I scarfed down a chocolate peanut butter Pure protein bar and some grapes.  That held me over quite well since it was 1:30 when the games were done.

After loss#2, we found out we needed to be back at the field at 6:30 for another warm-up and 7:30 game that night.  So, an hour from home and a 5 hour break ahead of us – we decided to head back towards Atlanta and grab lunch.  Hubbie and I used to go to Casa Grande on Peachtree before moving to the ‘burbs- we’re huge fans of the “mexican place” (thats how we refer to it).  Its rare to find an excuse to hike down there anymore these days, but this seemed like a great excuse, so we jumped on it!  I had probably a few too many chips with salsa, but boy were they good (no queso for me!).  Then Hubbie and I split the chicken fajitas.  In the old days I seemed to gorge myself on these – tortillas, chicken, onion, cheese and sour cream……..in the new “clean” way – I had regular portion chicken, onion, pico de gallo and some gaucomole (it was fresh!). YUMMYY!!!!!

We realized we left a uniform shirt at home, so SweetPea and I trekked home to retrieve it.  We reloaded the cooler with snacks for the late afternoon/evening and headed back down south.  SweetPea was such a trooper – she has strep throat and bronchiolitis and rarely complained a bit about being the car for six hours throughout the day. 

Game #3 was exciting……..a big win for the team!  At 9pm, the game came to an end and coach offered to buy the team ice cream!  Oh my – we still had an hour drive ahead of us and hadn’t had dinner!  It was an exciting win for the boys and we love this team – so on to Baskin Robbins we went!  SweetPea had her first taste of ice cream – a bit of vanilla soft serve.    Little Man enjoyed some time goofing around having ice cream with his teammates and we visited with the other families.  You should have seen the look on the people working that night when 12 crazy 8yr old boys walked in with their families!  haha!  (PS -I had 2 bites of SweetPeas’ ice cream)

We finally got home about 10:30, put SweetPea down for the night and I headed straight to the kitchen for a salad – I was craving some greens!!  I had 2 cups of spring mix, a handful of ground turkey, some black beans, red onion, fat free cheese, salsa and fat free sour cream.  So wonderful!  Then I had a tiny dessert of strawberries, cheerios and vegan carob chips (this is my new fav dessert – a little strange w/ the cheerios, but they give a good crunch).  It was 11:30 when I finally got to crash in bed.  Oh what a day!

Our big win last night meant we had the 10:30am game this morning – so we started all over again today!  I got up at 5:15am and did the CardioX dvd – a quick 45 minute deal – perfect.  Hubbie slept in!  Today I had my omelette right after my workout and then got ready to go.  I took a green monster for the road- oh so good!  I munched on some blueberries and almonds later during the game.  The boys ended up losing, but it was a good game – they played hard.  We all decided a good lunch was in order, so off to Taco Mac we went .  I had the Chopped Cobb Salad – minus bacon, olives, blue cheese and the dressing on the side (never used it).  So, I basically had lettuce, egg, avocado and grilled chicken – it was quite tasty and super filling.  I might have stolen a fry or two from SweetPea too….oops!

We have some burgers to grill up tonight with sweet potato fries, corn, spinach and maybe some homegrown squash from my in-laws!  Very excited for a tasty July 4th dinner! 

Hope you all have a wonderful holiday weekend!

Tags: baseball, eating clean, Green Monster, July 4th, P90X, protein bar, sweet potato

Quick story from yesterday…….I was at work going through an empty desk that we use for storage and I came across some stuff that should have been thrown out a long time ago (like 18mos ago).  Well, I pull it out and low and behold buried underneath is an unopened box of Nabisco 100 calorie pack chocolate chip cookies!  To fill you in- monthly I buy snacks for the team when we have our crazy month-end week.  So, likely when they didn’t get eaten someone put them in the drawer for the next time and then they were promptly forgotten! So, I check the expiration date on the box……June 14, 2010……yummy!  So, being that it was July 1st, I promptly put them in the trash – yes, I should have recycled the box -call me lazy!

So, what is the point of this story other than to share a gross food story?  It got me thinking about these cookies that had to have been purchased sometime in 2009 (if not earlier) and that they had enough preservative in them to last until this past June……….I’m pretty grossed out thinking that I used to eat food like that all of the time!  Yeah, I’m giving it to my kids too………great….

I was driving home yesterday thinking about the cookie discovery and thinking about what I might have at home that fits in this “highly preserved” category that I just never thought about before.  It reminded me of a comment I heard about clean eating…….”if you are eating clean, then you are rarely in your pantry.  You would eat mostly from the refrigerator”.   These preservative heavy foods are usually the ones that live in our pantries.   Kind of like shopping the perimeter of the grocery store….its all refrigerated!

I think I need to take some inventory to see how we’re doing in our house with the pantry.   So, its only appropriate that I have full disclosure with you all……….my pantry:

I’m going to give myself a C+, maybe a B- on our pantry.  Yes – I know you saw the Easy Mac – my kids love mac ‘n cheese and quite frankly on the weekends, sometimes it makes for a quick easy lunch for them.  To further my defense of still serving this ”food” – it usually becomes a side and is served with some veggie too.  Okay….and the Cheerios…..I seem to have an evening addiction to those that I need to kick – I’ve been having a tiny bowl of them with cut up strawberries – hey at least I’m eating them with fruit!

The rest of the contents are lots ‘o spices (see the shelf on the left), protein bars, almonds, soy nuts, rice, couscous, quinoa, onions, sweet potatoes- all dry goods that would normally be in a pantry and not the refrigerator.  I did actually throw out a bunch of sugary type of things awhile back when I determined that I was really committed to this clean eating – like a tub of actual sugar, light and dark corn syrup (used for pecan pies), crisco and a few other mostly baking items.

I challenge you to review your pantry…….do you get most of your food from the pantry or from the refrigerator? 

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about the amount of water I drink – no idea why – maybe the heat? I think its such a key piece to weight loss/maintenance and probably doesn’t get quite the billing it should…so I thought why not a quick blog about it?

For people that like to approach improving their health one small change at a time, drinking more water is probably the easiest thing to do!

I tend to drink at least my weight in water each day- in other words if I weigh “X” lbs then I drink that in ounces.  I know what you are thinking – wow that is a LOT of water!  It is a lot of water, but I think its a big part of why I feel so much better now since I changed by habits.  Once I got in the habit of drinking water (I do drink a cup or 2 of coffee each morning and I have two cups of green tea at night too!), I started setting mini-goals to keep me on track.  For instance, I won’t let myself have coffee in the morning until I’ve had two bottles of water.   Then I tell myself that I need to be through 4 bottles of water for the day by the end of lunch.  Then I try to be on my 6th bottle by the time I get in the car to go home from work and I finish it on the commute home (1 hour including kid pick-up).  Before I know it, its 5 o’clock and I’ve had 100 oz. of water! Woohoo!

This is something you can work up to – for instance,switch out an afternoon tea or soda for a bottle of water.  You can add lemon or lime to add flavor too! 

Here is an article from the CDC on the basics of water and nutrition:  http://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/everyone/basics/water.html

Just my two cents for the day!  Have a wonderful day!

A quick recap of yesterday which was one of those somewhat challenging days when you are a clean eater…..a full day out at the baseball fields and really far from home!  So far this season I’ve been able to bring a snack to the games and pop home for lunch – not this time-  we are about an hour from the house for this tournament.

The day started at 4:45am to get a workout in.  We decided to do CardioX because its only a 45min DVD and we were pressed for time.    This DVD is growing on me – a little yoga, kenpo, plyo, core synergistics and your done!  

Our first game was at 8:30, so we were out the door before 7am.   I packed a cooler for snacks (this was for all 4 of us) - a bag of chicken to snack on, 4 protein bars, 4 kids clif “Z bars”, 3 boxes of mini raisins, a bag of multi-grain cheerios, a baggy of sunflower seeds, a baggy of grapes and a baggy of blueberries.  We ended up coming home with everything but 2 protein bars!  I think the heat kept us from needing too many snacks afterall.  Hubby and I each had a protein bar after the first game….which I’m sad to report was a loss!  

Lunch was my biggest concern, but I think I did pretty well.  We ended up at Williamson Bros. which is a fantastic  barbeque restaurant in North Atlanta.  I’m not a huge fan of b’bque though – so it wasn’t super tempting for me.  I ended up with the chargrilled chicken salad off the ‘Bros Lite Menu’.  I asked for oil/vinegar dressing on the side but ended up not using any of it because the meat had so much flavor.  I am pretty confident that the chicken wasn’t as lean as I would prefer (probably why it was so yummy!) and the salad had a decent smatter of shredded cheese on top.    Neither item breaks the bank especially since I didn’t have dressing and the rest of the salad was romaine, tomatoes and cucumber!

Water, water, water – that was definitely the name of the game yesterday!  I usually try to drink 6 of my water bottles everyday before dinner – well I think I was up to 8 by the time we left the park at 3pm!  Oh by the way – game # 2 was a win for our boys!  So very exciting!

Once we got home and unpacked the car, I thought it would be a good time for one of my new favorites – a green monster shake!  It was a cup or 2 of spinach, 1 scoop chocolate protein powder, 1 cup of water and 1/2 a frozen banana (and ice of course).  It was delicious…..I love the light banana flavor! Hubby drank half of it (I was secretly sad to share because I definitely could have downed the whole thing!)

Dinner last night was strip steaks (salt and peppered), sauteed mushrooms (in EVOO, worcestershire) and sauteed spinach (EVOO, garlic).  Sweet Pea as usual begged bits of mushroom and steak off my plate- did I mention she isn’t even two yet? My girl has good taste……..the kids were eating frozen pizza btw.

We’re back at baseball today – leaving around 9:30am this morning!  Today is a much needed “rest day” fitness-wise.  I slept in 30minutes which was wonderful, but then realized all that I have to do today and just had to get up!  Its going to be a productive morning though – already mopped some of the kitchen floor, getting a blog post in, and then I’m off to the grocery store for the week!  Wondering how our lunch will work out today – the game is at 11:30 and its usually 1.5hrs.  I’ll be packing the snack cooler again, but it should be about 90 degrees …..maybe we won’t need it!

Have a great day and stay cool!!

Hello blog -world! Its once again been forever…….somehow the summer has become ridiculously more busy than when school was in session! I’m officially committing here to regular posts! So, this is a quick one to start off!

So, I’ve decided to get focused on reducing my intake of sugar alcohols.  When I initially changed my diet, I will admit to beginning to chew a lot, I mean A LOT of sugarless gum.  I also have a protein bar just about every day.  As I learn more and more about whole foods and trying to eat as clean as possible, I’m realizing that this is an area that I need to work on.  So, I’ve quit the gum altogether.  Its definitely been a crutch to deal with the urge to do some ‘emotional eating’!! Anyone else eat when their not hungry like me……….like when I’m bored, stressed??  Ugh!  So, I’m working on that part and purposefully distracting myself when the urge comes up to eat when I’m not hungry.  

On to the protein bars………now, I don’t feel guilty eating these, but I want to move towards more whole food consumption and the ingredient list on these puppies is long and I don’t know what half the stuff is!  So, I’ve decided to experiment……….my first one……..Larabars!  YUM!  I tried peanut butter cookie first and was amazed at how just 3 ingredients (dates, peanuts,salt) could taste so much like a peanut butter cookie.  I’ve since tried pecan pie…eh, it was okay….and apple pie….pretty good.  (Just saw on their website – 4 new flavors – carrot cake, peanut butter chocolate chip, chocolate chip cookie dough and chocolate chip brownie….oh my!) Now these bars are much lower in protein than the Pure bars of course, but I just feel so much better knowing exactly what I’m putting into my body.  I think I might try some homemade protein bars to see if I can increase the protein in this particular daily snack….I’ll let you know how it goes!

Back to work…….I will post later about a new fruit love……..Happy Thursday afternoon!!

PS- I’m getting all kinds of spam comments all of a sudden – anyone know how to stop them…a plugin?  As a result, I’m monitoring comments now before they post to the site.

Tags: eating clean, Larabars, protein bar

Its been forever since I last blogged, but I could not put it off any longer because I had to share my new love….”Green Monsters“ which I first found on Oh She Glows!  I have been wanting to experiment and try these out, but I always said “another time” because I didn’t want to go through the effort and then not like them – especially if I was really hungry at the time.  Well, let me tell you – barely any effort involved to make these puppies and they are so worth anything I have to do to make them!  

My first one ever was made yesterday….I went with the Virgin Green Monster….made with spinach, milk, banana, flax, ice and I added chocolate protein powder.  Here is a pic of the deliciousness- me, Little Man and Sweet Pea all tried it out (notice the sippy).  SweetPea had rave reviews and couldn’t get enough….Little Man couldn’t get over the idea that there was spinach in it (and he likes spinach!)- oh well. 

Green monster #2 was made today after a grueling hot afternoon at baseball – just the refreshment I needed!  This time I went with spinach, 1/2 cup of skim milk (don’t quite know how much I used yesterday), a handful of cut up strawberries, 1 scoop of vanilla protein powder,  1/2 packet of chocolate Amazing Grass and of course ice.  Suprisingly, Little Man insisted on trying out this batch – once again not too impressed.  I’ll give it to him for trying though.    As I write this (I’m drinking #2 right now) I am realizing I meant to add some flax or chia seeds…oops! 

I’m so happy I tried these……looking forward to trying some other combos!  What are your favorite green smoothie combinations??

The other night we tried flax encrusted sweet potatoe balls (I found these on Yes, I Want Cake and she posted from Healthy Tipping Point- thanks to both ladies for posting this one!)  – very yummy along with our grilled burgers and steamed broccoli – sorry no pic!

Just a quick note on exercise – went to bootcamp twice this week and P90X the rest!  Friday bootcamp was closed for vacation – (hooray for them for taking a vacation!) so I did P90X but it was rest day in our cycle.  My rest day is usually Sunday (conveniently scheduled on plyo-day!)  So, I did the ‘stretch’ dvd with the hubby, but he ended up working half the time.  So I did about 45 minutes of stretch and then kicked him out because he was paying more attention to his blackberry than doing any stretching.  Then I started the Shoulders and Arms dvd.  I was planning to just do half of it, but it was organized into 4 circuits rather than going through a whole circuit and repeating.  So, I ended up doing the whole thing – oh well – it was a great workout!! 1.5hrs!   Today was Chest and Back and AbRipper.  Great workouts as usual!

Thats all I have today – busy weekend of trying to pull the house into some kind of order (from the week and in prep for next week) and lots ’0 baseball!  Enjoy Saturday!

Tags: baseball, Bootcamp, flax seed, Green Monster, P90X, spinach, strawberries, sweet potato

Hello!  The weekend is flying by – nothing is getting done around the house but laundry because we have so much going on.  A few quick things to share……I discovered a few of these guys on Friday ….

I could not be more excited that I actually have tomatoes growing!!!!  Wait until they are ripe and I can eat one!!!

Dinner last night was scrumptious!  Found a recipe for chicken meatballs on Yes, I Want Cake - go check it out.  I paired them with roasted sweet potatoes and sauteed spinach (evoo/garlic).  The whole family loved it and I’m sure we’ll be having this again!  The great thing was that although I was full (after I ate a ton) it still felt light!  (I’m not going to lie – this pic is of my second plate..aaah!)

We were out of peanut butter this week, so I decided to try out a new one (not the regular reduced fat name brand that I usually buy)……Naturally More…wow!  This stuff tastes like peanuts, less sugar, more protein….impressive.  I think the other stuff tastes like what I thought peanut butter was – now I believe that is just a fabricated taste.  I think I”m hooked!

So, we’re on a break here this afternoon between baseball games.  Little Man has scored TWO home-runs this weekend – so very proud of him!  He wasn’t feeling like his hitting was very good and he wanted to improve.  We told him to go out and work hard and keep at it.  He had a fantastic attitude, worked hard and it paid off…….what more can you ask? 

Have a lovely Sunday!

Tags: chicken, Naturally More, peanut butter, protein, sweet potato, tomatoes

Its been a few days since I’ve posted ….managed to survive the crazy week and so glad its Saturday!  Its been a good week food-wise.  Last night we decided to eat out but because of our schedules.  So, it was the “boys” and the “girls”.  Hubbie and Little Man had Qdoba and then an hour or so later, Sweetpea and I rolled through and picked up our naked burritos!  Bet you can’t guess…..we had more baseball last night!  The girls stayed home since the game started at 7:45pm.  We are all headed to this afternoon’s game though – first pitch- 5:45pm!  Right at dinner time – hooray!   I found a super fun idea for dinner though…….more on that to come…..

Here is my lovely naked burrito – I added my own fat free sour cream when I got home.  I had rice (my treat!), black beans, chicken, fajita veggies, salsa and lettuce.  It was delicious!!!

This morning started week 2 of P90X.  It was Chest and Back followed by AbRipperX!  I’ve picked up my weights in round 2 – focusing on 20lbs+….just like at Bootcamp.  Speaking of Bootcamp – Friday was legs (and glutes?)…..oh my!  Feeling it today, but its a wonderful sore!!   Back to this morning – I was struggling a bit on the abs -just sort out of energy and motivation.  Hubbie only did the first half of the Chest and Back because he is off to the golf course this morning.  He proceeded to make breakfast while I was still working it – probably why I struggled – I was hungry!

I’m enjoying some early morning coffee, time with SweetPea and catching up on blog reading….going to start up some eggs and get my day going!  Looks like its going to be a pretty, but HOT day here!  Hope you have a great one!

I’ll leave you with this…….SweetPea’s preschool teacher made this comment about her yesterday …….”her hugs soothe the soul”………awww!…how cool is that?  Another way to soothe the soul…..yoga…….which reminds me of the giveaway on loveveggiesandyoga……….Vega “Shake and Go”!!  Check it out!

Tags: Bootcamp, P90X, Qdoba, salsa, yoga

I don’t know about you but it sure did feel like Monday this morning, but it was already Tuesday!  I wouldn’t normally be in such a hurry for the week to be over, but this is such a crazy-busy week at my house that its a matter of surviving through to the weekend.  So, since its 9:15pm and I’m now back to work at my kitchen table and the boys are STILL at baseball – this is going to be brief today…..

Exercise – Yoga with the Hubbie at 4:30am!

Food – the usuals and I need to mention that at work we brought lunch in today – pizza and salad which consisted of iceberg lettuce (the point??), tomatoes and green peppers and lots of creamy dressings offered.  Nothing clean much less of great nutritional value – so I ate my lunch that I brought from home (my grilled chicken salad) – so proud of me for sticking with it!

Dinner was turkey tacos which the hubby made because the boys got home much earlier and had to eat before practice.  So it was a pure treat to just have to warm it up and serve!  Later I indulged on some cookies ‘n cream protein powder with nonfat greek yogurt.  Now a cup of green tea as I go through the rest of the work I brought home.

Tiffany at The Gracious Pantry is looking for signatures for a petition to go to Congress to have a National Clean Eating Day.  I thought it was such a great idea I wanted to help spread the word – if you agree go visit her site here:

 http://www.thegraciouspantry.com/vote-national-clean-eating-day/

Goodnight!!