Curls

All this moisture in the air is making my hair curl!  It would be nice if frizz didn’t come along with the curliness though. Oh well.

Today’s eats included a last minute breakfast thanks to my complete absentmindedness and morning rush.

I made a smoothie at home and then walked right out of the apartment without it.  I realized this well on my way to class so I swung through a Starbucks and picked up a protein box.

I really needed to eat something because I had already taken all my vitamins for the day.  When I do that on an empty stomach I get real sick.  Now why would you have taken them this morning without eating you say?  I honestly thought I’d be having my smoothie in all of three minutes when I got to my car.  Then I forgot it, and my stomach turned.  It was all I could do to keep from hurling before I managed to shove an apple slice into my mouth.

I enjoyed the hard boiled egg with some provided salt and pepper and squeezed the peanut butter all over the biscuit thing.  Finished just in time for class.  I made it through 3/4 of our first class today then had to skip out and make my way to my clinic site to give my presentation to the medical residents.  All in all, it went well.  I was pleased.  Probably even more so pleased that it was done!  Lunch came after.

I made a huge loaded salad and had it with a honeyed greek yogurt dressing with lemon pepper seasoning.  This kept me full for a bit but after seeing my first patient I needed an afternoon pick me up.  Protein to the rescue.

After all I had lifted for close to forty minutes today and burned some calories while building muscle this morning.  My body was probably entirely too thankful for the protein kick in the four o’clock hour.

Even did way better on my body weight matrix this time around.  By like a minute or more!

By the time I got home around six I applied for great looking prenatal/reproductive job that was literally just posted.  I was so excited.  I couldn’t even take the time to eat dinner just yet. I held myself over with pickles as I finished up my cover letter.

Only after I had submitted my CV and such did I have dinner.  Leftover sweet potato cauliflower bisque with a sandwich on the side of edamame hummus and sundried tomato spread.  Really good food.

A perfect night I’d say.  Well, that is until I started writing my patient letter.  Or should I say bumbling through my patient letter.  I should probably go and focus on that huh?  Yea, off I go.  One more patient tomorrow!

Questions: Ever tried sundried tomato spread?
What is your favorite kind of pickle?

Healthy Living Survey

Found this survey a few days on Tina’s blog.  Looked interesting and I was searching for something to do tonight to relax before hanging up my fun shoes and slipping into my work ones for the week.  Darn Sunday nights…

1. What did you eat for breakfast?

I tried some new pancakes this morning.  I found the recipe somewhere but I didn’t write it down because it was the simplest thing ever.  Two ingredients: banana and two eggs.  My banana was kind of small so I did one whole egg and one egg white.  In retrospect I probably could have used only the one egg.  I also added some cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and ginger.

So the pancakes turned out thin.  Not really my style.  I like my pancakes thick and fluffy.  Also, because they only had egg and banana going on, they tasted kind of like awkwardly scrambled eggs.  And the didn’t cook fast enough to flip without the bottoms being a bit burned.  Oh well.  The almond butter and maple syrup kind of helped.

2. How much water do you drink a day?

I drink at least 60 ounces a day, if not 80.  Fairly sure I read somewhere that you should shoot for half your body weight in water.  Well, I’ve got that covered.  A few of these big guys and I’m done.

3. What is your current favorite workout?

I don’t know that I really have a favorite workout.  I have workouts that I do but nothing that super calls to me, you know?  At this point I’m in the middle of Stage 5 of New Rules of Lifting for Women (NROLFW) and I guess the body weight matrix at the end of each 5A workout is pretty cool.  You do a full set, then rest, then do another full set.  I think I like it because even though it makes my legs feel like jelly, I am shaving seconds off and that feels pretty awesome.

4. How many calories do you eat a day?

Right now I’m shooting for 1500 a day.  I’d like to lose some weight before graduation and this seems to be working right now.  A pound of week is the plan.  When I’m not eating to lose eight I suppose my intake is around 1900-2000 some.  (Admittedly that sounds pretty scary right now.  Makes me nervous that I’d just gain weight as fast as you know when eating all that.  Also, some days it takes a lot just to get me to eat close to 1500.  What would I do with another 400-500 calories?)

5. What are your favorite healthy snacks?

Sweet potatoes with sunbutter.  Carrots with peanut butter and/or barbeque sauce.  String cheese and apples.

6. What do you usually eat for lunch?

Gosh, that really depends.  I love leftovers, hot ones.  Mostly that’s because my clinic site right now is incredibly cold, like all the time.  I also have been known to do salads a bunch while at school.  Or sandwiches…like today’s sunbutter and banana one!

7. What is your favorite body part to strength train?

Hmmm.  That’s a good one.  If I want to feel real strong, I’ll do my legs.  If I want to feel challenged (and subsequently proud of progress), I’ll take my shoulders.  YTWLs are killer.

8. What is your least favorite body part to strength train?

Hm, off the top of my head, nothing.  But I’m also sure that I probably haven’t done enough lifting to find an exercise that I really don’t like.  Come to think of it though, I suppose I really don’t like step ups.

9. What are your “bad” food cravings?

All the “normal” stuff: cake, cookies, frosting (straight from the jar), marshmallow fluff, Ben & Jerry’s…

10. Do you take vitamins or supplements?

I do.  Actually quite a few.  I take a multi; vitamins C, D, and B complex; extra virgin fish oil; zinc; potassium citrate (for my kidneys!); iodine; and one to promote healthy estrogen metabolism by the liver.  The kicker: I down them all in one gulp.  That’s how I’ve always done it.

11. How often do you eat out?

That really depends.  Lately, I haven’t been going out too much because I’ve been doing a ton of stuff for clinic and school.  However, a little over a week ago Jack and I went for froyo and just yesterday Jess and I went for lunch.  So I guess it’s probably close to once a week if you average stuff out, maybe less frequently this semester.

12. Do you eat fast food?

Not unless froyo counts as fast food!

13. Who is your biggest supporter?

I’m happy to say I don’t just have one.  I have plenty.  To name a few: my parents, Jack, my best friend Joshua.  They are all incredible and I couldn’t do half the stuff I do without them!

14. Do you have a gym membership?

No gym membership, just a fitness center at my apartment complex.  I have been really happy with that decision.  I think I’ll definitely put a complex gym on my must-have list for my next place.

15. How many hours of sleep do you get a night?

I am an eight hours a night kind of lady.  I seriously don’t function on less than seven but eight really leaves me feeling satisfied and capable of doing my early morning workouts.  Thanks to my iHome, I even have the stats to prove that beautiful eight hour record.

16. Do you have a “cheat” day?

I don’t know that I would call them that.  It sounds so illicit. I know that I have days where I might eat more than my 1500 but I still try and stay within the amount of calories I’m allotted for the week (1500 x 7).  Part of that is out of fear of gaining weight, part of that is out of fear of losing control, and probably part is because I’m afraid of blowing all of my progress.  Its hard sometimes because I seriously love food (obviously if you’ve been around this blog for any length of time you get that) and being anxious about it on those days that I eat more than I typically do is really annoying and discouraging.  Some day I hope to be free of that anxiety, somehow.

17. Do you drink alcohol?

Sure.  I love wine and an occasional beer (like the bourbon one from a cool Tavern across town).  Amaretto is great and 43 is seriously some of the best stuff on the planet.  For as much as that sounds like, I have maybe a three drinks a month.  Except when I’m home, then it is a glass of wine every night with dinner.  =D

18. Do you have a workout buddy?

No workout buddy most days.  Not many people around this apartment complex brave the 5:45am cold gym.  I have been known to work out with Jack when we’re together, one of my classmates when we were at the national conference together, Joshua when he’s around, and even my momma (we do pilates together at her normal studio).

19. What is the best thing that has changed your life since coming to a healthy lifestyle?

Gosh, I don’t really know how to answer that question.  I suppose becoming the most fit I have ever been would be the best thing.  I played sports in high school and such but I have never had this much muscle on me or worked out this often, this consistently.  I like that sense of dedication, that commitment, that control.  I dare say that spreads throughout other parts of my life.

20. What was the last healthy thing you did?

In the grand scheme of things, I’d say that last healthy thing I did was decided to regain control of my eating habits after the past few months of craziness and holidays.  If we’re talking something a bit more acute, I’d say making myself a pretty balanced three bowl dinner was pretty healthy.  One bowl for salad: spinach, lemon pepper, and extra virgin olive oil.  One bowl for mashed sweet potato with cinnamon, vanilla, and a pinch of Stevia and salt.  One bowl for leftover chana masala. 

Can’t Shake The Cold

Today’s morning temperature did not inspire much confidence.

Seriously, I was not in the mood to trek, on foot, to the gym.  Blah.  My bed was much too warm and comfy to leave.  However, I did it anyways.  I started Stage 5 today of NROLFW.  Sadly, it is a repeat of a previous stage that I didn’t love.  Its lower reps though so I take that as a “you’re supposed to increase your weights” and I will, after these first two workouts (one of each A and B workouts) at my ending weight from the earlier stage.  Warming up to it group, warming up. And speaking of, I was so cold today that I lifted in my long sleeve shirt and only took it off to do the cardio body weight matrix assigned at the end of 5A: 24 squats, 12 lunges per leg, 12 lunge jumps per leg, and 24 squat jumps.  Basically, do it as fast as you can, rest, then do it again.

Lap one was round one of the matrix, lap two the rest stage, and lap three the second round of the matrix.  Obviously slower toward the end. My legs were jelly.  However, you average the times and that comes out to 3:23 per matrix.  That is my finishing time from the last stage.  So I’m starting out where I ended the last time.  I’d say that’s fine.

Back across the arctic tundra of a parking garage and into my apartment I trudged.  I warmed up with a hot, hot, hot shower and then tackled a refueling breakfast.  I made a chocolate protein cake and topped it with sun butter and honey.

Nomnom. Shortly after I hopped into my car and headed to the hospital to see some patients.  Both of mine showed up today so that was great.  I felt like I did better this time around.  I thought I remembered some of the big, key criticisms that I had been receiving the last few days.  In between patients I tried to shake the chill by cranking the personal heater in the office I was borrowing for the day.

How much would you like to bet that I will have a super-powered one of these in my future office someday?  (Hint: Take the bet and go big.  You will win.)  Lunch came in between my patients and was courtesy of Jack’s freezer.  I had driven to work on Monday after visiting him and I hadn’t brought lunch so I nabbed a Lean Cuisine from his stash.  Yesterday turned out to be so busy that I didn’t eat lunch so I just left it in the work fridge for today.

Sesame chicken was the flavor and while it was alright taste-wise, it was small.  I had to eat the tiniest bites possible to get the whole thing to last all of five or seven minutes.  I was a wee bit dissatisfied.  So I thoughtfully reached for a small snack of chocolate with hazelnuts.  I could have eaten the entire bar but I was proud that I only had my two little squares.

Yummy.  Fueled my fire for the afternoon of counseling, prep, and critique-receiving I had in store for me.  I’m not really sure listening to critique ever gets easier.  I pray it does but I have a sinking feeling it won’t.  I think it is even harder when you’re a student and you don’t have a whole lot of say in the process.  You just have to be willing to do whatever it takes, all the time.  It’s quite draining but a necessary thing to go through to become what I want to be: a full-fledged genetic counselor.

My afternoon snack was a caramel and pineapple Chobani bite.  The sweetness served to keep me level during my supervisor review.  All in all, in terms of the yogurt, it was really delish but I think it could have used more pineapple.

After I left the hospital, I ran a few errands and picked up some food.  Produce mostly for salads but also some pudding for a binge-proof, pre-packaged dessert (especially with nut butter!) and some pickles…because a girl cannot ever have enough pickles.  haha.  When I arrived home, it was already 6:30 so I had to get my chop on.  In the end I combined romaine, celery, carrots, mushrooms, orange pepper, tomatoes, green onion, beets (oh how I missed you), cranberries, and goat blue cheese.  Dressed it with some lite balsamic vinaigrette.

Is anyone else out there totally ADD when it comes to salad dressing?  I swear I have a ton open at any given time.  Right now I have sweet and spicy French, lite southwest ranch, champagne vinaigrette, fat free ranch, and lite Caesar.  Seriously that’s probably fairly representative of any given day in my fridge.  Variety, variety, variety.  =D

Anyways, I am off to bed so I leave you with three smiles from recent days: 1) I rocked a word on Words With Friends.  I typically never score more than 30 some per word and then the perfect storm happened.  I managed a 108 point word.  Woot, woot!

2) Cuteness from a calendar at the clinic site I’m rotating at right now.  I love me some candy corn.

3) Tune Tuesday greatness since it is that day of the week.  This gem came from a long list of awesome songs from my Vampire Diaries overdose.  (I’m in season four now, only three episodes back from being all caught up to the live ones!)

Questions: What is your fav salad dressing?
What is your go to non-traditional salad topping?

No Loans, Some Groans

Happy Friday!

We made it to the end of the week and we’re already halfway through January…

And in the carefree spirit of Friday, I wanted to share a triumph with you.  The absolutely wonderful feeling I got deleting this e-mail almost as soon as it hit my inbox.

No more federal student aid for me.  This chick is graduating in four months and never looking back!  Now, yes, that does mean I have to start paying back my loans, but I’d take that over continually accruing debt for any number of future semesters.  Nope, I’m outta there!

My day was spent working from home but that meant that I got to get up when I wanted (aka 7:45 in the morning) and laze about and workout on my time frame. I changed into workout clothes and realized that I had a bit of a bruise from last night’s aerial silks greatness.

It isn’t major, but I wore it like a badge of honor.  Here’s to many more.  At the gym, I finished up Stage Four of NROLFW so I can officially say I’m more than halfway done with the program.  Awesome!  After my HIIT snippet on the elliptical, I came home for breakfast.  On my way I picked up a package I had gotten: chocolate Stevia.

I figured I should try it out for breakfast and threw together some greek yogurt and cherry jam to make a chocolate cherry concoction.  I had that with a side of peanut butter and honey waffles.

The whole thing was pretty awesome.  I forgot how incredible peanut butter and honey is as a combination.  Why don’t I do this more often?  And the chocolate Stevia wasn’t half bad either.  Sweet with a mildly cocoa-y flavor.

After a late breakfast I showered and then got to work.  Even if I didn’t have patients today I needed to get a lot done.  I got saddled with a presentation on the teratogenic effects of antiepileptic drugs and epilepsy in pregnancy.  *groan*  I give it to the whole maternal-fetal-medicine office on Jan 30th but I was told it needed to be essentially constructed by midweek next week.  I figured that I had the whole day today so I was just going to bust that sucker out.  Sadly, it didn’t start off easily.  At one point I’m fairly sure I had something like 17 or 20 Chrome tabs open with al sorts of cohort studies and drug descriptions open.  Eventually, maybe two hours later, things sort of started to take shape.  A Zevia Cream Soda kept me company and kept my spirits up as I trudged through the huge articles.

Finally around 1:30 I decided to take a break and have some lunch.  At the same time I called my supervisor and had a conversation about what patients I wanted to see this coming week.  Ended up with some interesting indications I think but I may pay for it in terms of prep time.  Lunch was an edamame hummus and egg sandwich with the last two slices of cheddar cheese from my fridge.  I had a side of crunchmaster crackers too.

The egg salad was maybe one of the best I’ve made, at least in a long time.  I really liked the edamame flavor with the creaminess of the egg.  Must have been a filling lunch too because I went the entire rest of the afternoon and evening until 7p without so much as thinking about anything other than antiepileptic drugs and major malformations.  CyBot was unhappy too.  See, his red eye, that’s annoyance.

At 7 I figured I had made incredible progress, so much so that I might consider this presentation nearly done.  Or at least its enough “roughed out” for a once-over by my supervisors.  I’m sure they’ll have things to change, add, delete, whatever… Plus, I have the rest of the weekend and I’m sure I’ll make a few changes.  I’m never satisfied.  Dinner was eaten in front of the TV as a reward for working essentially 8+ hours at home.  I made myself a salad with all sorts of veggies, cranberries, goat blue cheese, and spicy French dressing.

I seriously cannot even describe how perfectly creamy, scrumptious, and damn delicious this cheese is.  It made the salad.  It probably would make EVERY salad.  Good buy, Jill, good buy.  The rest of the evening consisted of more Vampire Diaries, some cereal with mini chocolate chips, and crosswords on my tablet.  Not such a bad kickoff to the weekend, especially when tomorrow night is going to be filled with dancing!

Questions: What is your favorite salad cheese?
What is your favorite presentation you ever gave?

Groceries And A Pregnant Lady

Today was my first day counseling prenatal patients.  And boy, did I just in with both feet [and an anchor]…  More on that in a moment.

My day started off at 5:45 in the morning.  It was much too early, honestly, however I still got my booty to the gym and lifted in accordance with Stage 4 of NROLFW.  This stage, being a repeat of a previous stage, is kind of mindless which is nice though I admit that I haven’t increased much weight in the exercises.  Instead I went from two sets to three sets of everything.  Technically the whole stage is 2-3 sets of 8 reps per exercise.  Since it had been almost a month since my last lift before I started this stage, thanks to the holidays, I started with my finishing weight from the copycat earlier stage and only did two sets of all.  I then moved up to three this week, exactly halfway through the stage.  I think it’s working out well so far.  After doing my weights workout I rounded out the morning with a ten minute HIIT session on the elliptical.

Once I got home I showered quickly and then made myself a fast breakfast.  I wanted to get into school fairly quickly because I had some things to print off before class.  On my plate around 7:30 were two waffles topped with peanut butter, cottage cheese, and cherry jam.  Delicious as usual but not photographed given my bit of a rush.  Once at school I made myself pay attention through three and a half hours of classes.  Molecular Genetics was fairly boring, a lot of review, and Population Genetics was taught by a substitute professor who was not prepared to tech this class.  She was a last minute fill-in and obviously uncomfortable in front of the class.  All in all though we got the information we needed which was the whole point.  Best of all, we got out early!

After class I had a few moments to start an Excel spreadsheet to track my job inquiries, responses, interviews, etc.  Hopefully I’ll have a bit more to fill it in with soon.  I especially felt behind the ball when one of my classmates mentioned that she just got an in-person interview with a job in her prime location.  Am I jealous? Yes.  Am I proud of her?  For sure.  Am I surprised?  Heck no.  She was the one of us who got into every single graduate program she applied to.  Can you say superstar?  Post spreadsheet creation, I had my lunch in two parts.  Part one was my chipotle mayo egg salad sandwich at my desk since it was the messy part.

Then I had part two, my orange sides of carrots and whole grain Cheeze-Its, in the car on the way to my prenatal rotation location.  Yay for cup holders!

I arrived at the hospital 50 minutes before my first pregnant patient.  That gave me enough time to check out the records and see what I needed to prep.  Turns out that the referral I prepared for was, in fact, not the referral I was going to counsel on.  Nice little change of plans for my first time around, huh?  I still felt kind of comfortable with what the referral ended up being so I went through with it.  I handled the entire session alone.  For the most part, it went well though there were certainly things I could improve on.  For one, my flow really sucked.  I was talking about cell-free fetal DNA testing and realized there were four conditions I really should have talked about prior to actually getting to testing options.  I was really proud of my psychosocial skills though.  I think I handled the emotion in the session like a pro.  I held on to that as my strength while being critiqued after by my supervisor.  That part NEVER gets easier.

Once I wrapped up things with my only patient of the day, I headed to Walmart for some grocery shopping.  I had been building my list for a few days so I was ready to hit up the store.

I started with the buying of the iron.  I figured that would take the longest since I knew the least about them.

Sadly, I knew a little too much to justify spending over $10 on one.  In the midst of googling and such on my phone, I remembered that I had a Bed, Bath, & Beyond gift card that should probably be used.  So my solution turned into put off the purchase, go and learn more about brands of irons, and hit up BB&B in the future.  With that decision made I moved on to the food part of the list.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that Great Value has crossed over to the greek yogurt side of things. 

I know I can make my own greek yogurt by straining, but it was real hard to pass up this full container.  I looked at the stats and with only ten more calories than Great Value regular yogurt and double the protein, I couldn’t say no.  Also, after thinking about it, one tub of regular makes about half a tub of greek through straining, so if I multiplied the regular yogurt price by two, this was cheaper by about a dollar.  Score.  While I was in the yogurt section I noticed a glorious thing: Chobani bites!

These babies are fairly new and in some great flavor combinations: fig and orange zest, pineapple and caramel, coffee and dark chocolate, and raspberry and chocolate.  I nabbed a pineapple and caramel foursome with plans to grab the fig and orange zest variety the next time.  Can’t wait!  Next up was garam masala.  I have plans to make chana masala from scratch at home next week so I was in need of the Indian spice blend.

I had found some online for price X which I noted in my grocery list so I could compare.  Walmart beat it, just barely.  On my way to the register I walked through the pasta aisle to grab parmesan cheese and came across the exact sun-dried tomato spread I needed for the skinny cajun pasta I’m making this week. 

Figured I would just grab it when I saw it instead of banking on Trader Joe’s having it.  With the jar in the cart I checked out and drove across the street to the TJ’s.  When I walked in, I was taken by the cheese wall, like usual.  I picked out the smallest hunk of blue goat cheese I could find.  Oh my!  Can you say super?

I then went to look for what I actually came for: nut butters.  The sunbutter was easy to find but the almond butter was sadly gone from the shelves.  There was some unsalted crunchy but that’s not my style.  Not willing to give up I asked the employee who was actively performing restocking and, wonder of all wonders, he said they had just gotten a shipment of the salted kind.  He went into the back room and emerged with a jar all for me.  How sweet of him!

On my way out I grabbed some more curry powder, for the chana masala next week, and paid for my things.  I then headed home only to unpack my stuff and find a funny thing going on with my spices.  Check it out, two jars of curry powder, two very different colors.

How interesting?  I know that curry is just a spice blend, not an actual “elemental” spice if you will, but I never thought there would be such variation!  Today I learned… Shortly after I stored everything I sliced up some sweet potato to roast them as wedge leftovers for the next few days.

While the baked I made myself dinner: black bean soup with rice mixed in and blue goat cheese on top.

Fantastic dinner, which was only outdone by my delicious dessert.  I had a rice krispy treat topped with a hefty smear of sunbutter.

Gosh it was heavenly, sinful, perfect, you get the picture.  Great way to end the first day of prenatal.  Here’s to one patient down, a million more to go.  By the way, if you haven’t noticed, I added a countdown clock to the blog in the top right corner to help me keep track of just how much longer I have until I am a genetic counselor!  Excitement abounds.  G’night all!

Questions: What is your favorite kind of cheese?
What is your favorite nut butter?