Thursday, March 12, 2009

Fiberlicious !

Yesterday could be best summed up as a fiberlicious day- one of substantial, filling foods and activities. I was pretty successful in upping the level of fiber intake with my meals and most snacks, upped the amount of substantial things done during the day in a non food sort of way and came across a substantial thought with exercise, and it is something I think will serve me well.

Wednesdays are the day I plan the menu for the week ahead and our grocery shopping lists. It happens for several very practical reasons, and it can either be done in a really fast lip service kind of way or done with consideration for all the factors in the coming week, nutritional needs, financial factors , sales and more. To do the former is a 10 minute job. To do the later takes a pretty good chunk of time. If there is nothing else on the plate for the day, no big deal, but if you are trying to fit in time for things like exercise, stressful.If the homeschool day gets filled with sruggles on the part of my son, I can become impatient and his struggles are compounded because of my stress backed response.If you know you have 7 hrs of work ahead of you and 1 hour to accomplish it, repeatedly hearing things like "5x5 is 55,right Mom ?" does not make for a nurturing enviorment. It becomes, for me, one of those times when I wish I could either clone myself or figure out exactly how to work smarter. Cloning is at best controversial, so I chose to let my brain cells do the job. So I may not get in a 30 minute session of exercise today. It is for a good reason, and not that I am being lazy or not committed to my goal. However, my metabolisim and fat cells do not understand things like time, money and certainly not algebra or the historic impact inventors have made on our society.So how do I do this ? Think, Poobear, think !

Suddenly my thoughts went to ,of all people, The Flylady. Her theory ( a correct one) is that you can do anything in 5 minutes. You can tackle even the most monumuntal housecleaning task by breaking it down into 5 minute sessions. You get a lot done and still have a lot of time to devote to it all. Would this logic apply to exercise ? Newer studies have shown that several short sessions of exercise are more affective than lond sustained ones. So how could I make this work for me ? I simply kept getting up and walking while I had son do different independant work things, or during commercials for shows we use as part of our schoolwork ( The last 10 pounds and You are what you eat make great additions to health education). I kept a running total of the minutes. I wound up having a very successful school day, getting the menu and shopping list done, and getting in a lot more exercise than I bargained for !
exercise- 1 hr 45 min !!!!
Rowing 10 min
Walking 95 min
water-160 oz

Breakfast-
Oats, barley, rye flakes cooked with pumpkin
ground flax,crasins,seed nut mix,wheat bran,coconut,goji berries
olive oil and peanut butter
Yo plus digestive yogert, blood orange(not pictured)
coffee,water

Lunch-
Turkey pastrami and provalone cheese on sunflower seed bread with hummus and lettuce
celery sticks, baby carrots,cherry tomatoes
apple, you plus digestive yogert
Diet Sierra Myst

Dinner
Grilled Citrus Ginger marinate chicken breast
Barley, spinach,
Diet Sierra Mist
( planned on having spaghetti squash as well , but I burned it . I am having the worst luck with cooking spaghetti squash lately !)

4 comments:

Marisa @Loser for Life said...

Wow, what a great idea! I think breaking things down into those 5 min. sessions does make anything sound do-able!

Shhhhh said...

I'm so bad at time management, but I do tend to get more done if I break things down and not overwhelm myself.

I also try to plan out at least every lunch and dinner for the week and it does take a lot of time. I'll have my online ads open on the laptop and my paper ads scattered about and my notebook and coupons out. It's serious business! :)

Psalmist said...

How do you cook your spaghetti squash? I normally braise mine in the oven until it is tender. I've never burned it, but I haven't found a way to really impart much flavor just yet either. (I like big flavors)

Di said...

I put it in the microwave. Up till three months ago, this worked perfect. Take a good sized squash, poke it with a fork, place in the micro on high and set for 6 minutes. Let it cool slightly, cut in half and scoop out the seeds, then pull out the good stuff to eat. I have a suspicion that my microwave is about to die- it is 10 years old and it seems to be experiencing power surges or something. Our oven is dead at the moment- I have to call managment to have them take a look at it, but it means moving a ton of stuff from our kitchen so they can pull the stove out if it needs to be replaced.Normally, when cooked in the micro like this spaghetti squash comes out perfect taste and consistency, but last night it looked fine till I cu it open, and the whole inside was burnt to a crisp. Bummer !