Tips and Pics

Yesterday consisted of a lot of phone time.  With some things going on with the family, I found myself trying to do all that I could, everywhere.  In the end, all appears to be well.  After things settled down, I did Max Insanity Cardio for some "me" time.

My eating wasn't the greatest today.  Tip... don't leave your juicer unattended for 24 hours... YUCK!  The Breville is hard enough to clean as it is, let alone if you leave it sitting with tomato and other remnants in the top of it. Normally I clean it right after or as I am consuming my first 16 ounces of the juice that I just made.  This does two things, one... gets food (a juice) in me.  And two, it makes it so that cleaning is done fast, which makes it so the juicer is ready to go when my wife wants to make her an apple and spinach juice or something else on the sweeter side.  Besides, my little guy likes to make "apple juice for mommy" all the time.  Keeping it clean just makes sense.

With that said, life sometimes gets in the way, as it did today.  By the time I finally got to it, I almost didn't want to clean it.  Of course though, I did.

Today's eating... no juice. Not intentional, just how it worked out.  I got so busy early on before I knew it I was consuming my daughter's favorite Oatmeal Organic Clif ZBar that we buy for the kids.

They call them "cookie bars." My boy loves the Chocolate Chip ones and will tolerate the Chocolate Brownie ones if no other chocolate chip are remaining. We normally buy the variety pack from Sam's Club and the brownie ones always get left til' last.

Then after the cookie bar I felt "okay" but still had other things to take care of.  I kept the kids happy, fed, bathed them, etc... all was well there.  I just didn't get to "me" very much today.  One of the trades of being a stay-at-home-dad, at times, you come in last... but the house and kids are well, happy, fed, and healthy.  All a victory in themselves.

After another few hours had passed, I had another one. This time the brownie one.  Combined, I was only sitting at about 260 calories for the day.  This wasn't my plan.  But at least the little bars are packed full of nutrients.

After things calmed down I ran (drove) to the store to get the final touches for dinner.  Yeah... that was a joke.  Stater Brother's (Grocery store) didn't have what I wanted.  Quickly I went up to Albertson's and they did... but there also was construction on the return trip back to the house.  My "quick trip" turned into a 40+ minute shopping trip and with a hungry family at home, I wasn't winning any best shopping time awards. Upon returning home I decided to make mashed 'purple' potatoes.  After boiling them, I was contemplating on what to do with them.  I am avoiding milk, and didn't have any alternative milks in the house.  I ended up trying to make a concoction with the Nutritional Yeast and some Hawaiian salt / seasoning that a friend gave us.  Short story... to much salt came out.  It killed it.  Nutritional Yeast heated in a cup of boiling water, stinks up the entire kitchen and sends wife running the other direction. Luckily, I did all of this after the family had eaten.  End result, I only consumed a portion of the "mashed" potatoes and then settled in for an almond butter honey and strawberry jelly sandwich.  I just couldn't take any more.  That salt mess up was the straw that broke the camel's back, if you will.

Oddly, I didn't feel hungry.  However, I will not be "heating up" nutritional yeast on its own anytime soon.  The container says you can add it to soups or sprinkle it on things.  I'm guessing it works on "soups" and other things because they already have flavoring.  In the end, I couldn't stomach the salt... as when I went to give it a dash on the potatoes, it accidentally dumped about 20 times more than I wanted... I tried to just consume it.  Yeah... NO.  I'm not a big salt person as it is.  Let alone, just trying to eat it to not waste the spuds.  They found themselves in the round file.  I ate about half... before turning to the above mentioned sandwich.

By the time I hit play on my workout... around 2:20 this morning I had only consumed roughly 400 to 500 calories.  Once again, this wasn't my plan. Today will be more for sure.  This is probably the first time I've ever allowed such a thing to happen.  Once again... if you are juicing your meals... don't leave it dirty.  It is hard to juice if it is full of remnants and when (or if) your day gets hectic, cleaning it becomes one more "task" weighing on the day that has to be done.

Oh... and THANK YOU to ALL who voted on our link I added in my previous post!  It looks like we won that mini challenge by the "hair on our chinny chin chin!" For winning what do we get.  We get a second mini challenge under our belts.  They will use these mini-challenges as tie breakers if two teams win the overall weight loss competition.  $10,000 is at stake.  Our team has lost over 126 pounds and has a little over a month to go!  Once again, if you voted, thank you, I appreciate it!

So now here I sit... at 4:44 a.m. blogging.  I haven't been on the scale yet. The phone rang a few minutes ago.  I'm glad I was up, as it was an important call. Funny thing is, had I been in bed, the ringing might have woken my wife. And after yesterday, I'd just assume that everyone get as much sleep as possible... well, that should be me too.

I'll leave you with some workout pictures.  I just set up our Canon power shot camera on custom mode and then let it snap some photos while I worked out.  None of these are edited, besides some cropping.  I'll try to get some progress photos taken soon.