Happy Belated Birthday (to me!)

In between jobs and sleep I somehow found time to plan my birthday.  This year I decided to keep it simple by just going out for a lovely dinner with my sweetie, then having some friends over for a few drinks and some cake.

Oh and no birthday is complete without a Sweet 16 from Cupcakes!

This year’s birthday dinner took place at Brasserie L’ecole.  We tried to go last year but the wait list was an hour and a half long.  We managed to sneak some seats at the bar right at the start of the dinner hour this time.

French onion soup, mussels with fancy frites, warm lemon pudding cake, and perfect white wine chosen by the bartender for me.  It was all exactly what I wanted, and exactly as delicious as I had envisioned.

On Saturday night we invited some folks out to the ‘burbs, where we enjoyed too many appetizers, a homemade cake built almost entirely of buttercream, and my own personal bottle of pink bubbly.

My birthday prezzie to myself?  A fresh new do!  A little Autumn ombre to mix things up in my 37th year. 

Oh hello bangs.  Happy birthday to me! :)

Seven Days Later

Well I’m definitely less grumpy, less melted down, and feeling less sorry for myself this week.  Not sure I’m more motivated, but the plan I laid out worked so that’s a step in the right direction.

Eating the same thing for lunch all week was no big deal at all.  In fact, it was good enough that I just made another batch for this week.

Quinoa with roasted veggies, steamed spinach and goat cheese.  Easy peasy.

The fun part of the week was trying out new smoothies every morning.  I got into the routine of deciding what kind I was making the night before (while laying in bed), whipping it up after walking my dog, taking it to work to stash in the freezer for half an hour, then sipping on it for an hour or so. 

A little weird to break out the frosty breakfast at the same time as I had to start scraping ice off my car windows, but tasty nonetheless.

(I posted all of my smoothie creations on Instagram, Facebook & Twitter).

The biggest helper was involving the girls I share office space with.  Letting them know that I was determined to avoid snacks that I didn’t pack or plan really made life easier.  I felt supported and at ease when presented with potential sabotage.

• On the very first day some generous jerk left Tim Horton’s muffins up for grabs in our coffee room.  There was a salted something chocolate or other in there and I just stared at it with disdain.  Then high-fived my office mate when we didn’t cave. 
• The next day a meeting got cancelled so they put the deli trays out for the whole office.  My favourite egg salad on squishy white bread tried to call my name, but I mentally punched it in the throat.  The delicious bakery cookies got themselves a dropkick in my brain too.  Another high-five.

Overall I’m really happy with how everything went down and I’m just going to head into this next week with a similar plan and thought process.  My birthday is on Thursday so Michael is going to take me out for dinner, and while I don’t want to deprive myself on a lovely date dinner I’ll try not to throw myself into a massive dish of creamy pasta or a steak & potato the size of my face.

A buttercream topped cupcake I would gladly faceplant into though. :)

A huge shout out to all of you that left me supportive comments, tweets, likes and messages.  I miss the old days of blogging where we all chit-chatted and shared our struggles.  Sometimes the whiney blog posts are the best ones!

Motivated Monday

I had a run of blog posts about Embracing Mondays a while back.  In which I would wake up with full enthusiasm for the week ahead...with a workout plan and a menu full of healthy meals.  I still have those thoughts on Mondays but the motivation wanes by Wednesday and my desire to think about cooking or making healthy choices is all but totally gone by Friday.  All I can think about is a fat glass of red wine, and curling up on the couch for 36 hours straight.

This weekend I had a little meltdown about this. 

I knew going in to my new job that I would probably struggle with maintaining balance, but my decision to keep my other job multiplied that situation exponentially.  I hadn’t taken into account the amount of time I was losing.  The time I would spend meal planning and preparing, recipe perusing, Tweeting, blogging, blog reading, and working out, is GONE.

Without spending a lot of time here whining about the situation, I decided that I just need to acknowledge that my days have changed and I need a new game plan.  Just giving up and going for convenience eating, giving in to cravings for unhealthy treats, and completely ignoring any form of working out is not me.  And after three months it hit me emotionally.

So I asked Michael to be my support buddy, I worked my brain around eating the same things for lunch all week to save time with batch prep, and I made a super simple at-home workout schedule.  That’s it.  Those three things are what will save me from myself.

Oh, and I told the girls at the office that I will be avoiding any and all snacks that I didn’t plan for.  That place is a sweet lover’s paradise (or hell!). 

What I ate today (and will eat tomorrow!):

• Green Smoothie inspired by #CLEANrestart – ice, banana, spinach, vanilla protein powder, flax meal, coconut oil, unsweetened vanilla coconut milk, unsweetened vanilla almond milk.
• Coffee with almond milk.
• Light Rye Wasa with TJ’s Sunflower Butter.
• Quinoa with roasted root veggies, wilted spinach, and goat cheese.
• Grapes.  Almonds.
• Scrambled eggs with yellow pepper, red onion, spinach, black beans, ground turkey sausage, cheddar, salsa and avocado.  With whole grain toast.
• Organic strawberries over plain yogurt with hemp hearts & grated dark chocolate.

All things healthy, quick to prepare, and easy to duplicate for another day or two.  And above all…delicious!

And now…the stretches my chiropractor gave me for core strengthening and a round of upper body weight training.  Thanks for listening…if anyone is still out there.  :)