I just, I can’t, I…

don’t have a title for you today. :)  Did I getchya? Teehehehe…

Anyhow, not much to report on today.  I was super tired after being up late last night and waking up way too early, but alas, I got some good eats in!

I was seriously low on fruit this morning and the only thing I have left is apples, so apples and greek yogurt it was again!  I added in some cinnamon, cranberries, and about a 1/4C of Kashi Go Lean Crunch.

But I guess I was hungrier than I thought.  I had made this with the intention of eating for my afternoon snack, but my tummy wasn’t satisfied after breakfast.   So I had the 1/2 PB sandwich on my new 100% Whole Wheat Nature’s Pride Bread.  I really liked the bread because it was chewy and had a bit of a sweet taste to it.  It was just enough…Two thumbs up for this bread!  Yay!

I worked counting out thousands of Broad Winged Hawks this morning and talking to visitors, and finally settled down for a lunch of sorts.  I had my typical 1/3 cucumber, 2 carrots and roasted pine nut hummus (sabra brand).  But I also had some very mangled Garden Herb Triscuits on the side.

I was seriously lacking mental ability by the early afternoon so I dove into another snack in hopes it would keep me awake and more alert (at this point there were really no birds, and my eyes were burning from staring at the clear, blue sky), but it didn’t.  At least I wasn’t hungry anymore.

I shot out of there at the end of the day because I needed to drive the hour it takes to get to town to get some much needed fresh groceries!  I was basically out of all my fruits and veggies except for a few carrots and some apples.  And some very ripe bananas.  I should have thought about dinner before I left, knowing I would be gone for so long…but I didn’t.  So when I got home, I made the fastest thing possible: Mess!  I had the rest of my chickpeas, the rest of my broccoli and some marinara all heated up and eaten with broken tortilla pieces. Awesome.

I probably should have waited a bit to let my tummy digest my dinner a bit but I was still hungry and ate one of my bananas, 1/2 plain and 1/2 with a little bit of pb.

Now I’m settled, cleaned (well, as best as I can be since we haven’t had hot water in 3 days?  Cold showers are not fun..), and ready to relax and hopefully talk to Brad.  I miss him!

G’night all!

Those Some Fight’n Words…

As many of you saw if you are friends with me on Facebook, I got an awesome (enter sarcasm) comment on my Clean Eating Post yesterday…in which I was deemed “fat”, a “b*tch” and “should got back to being anorexic.”  Um, really?  I don’t know who you are, and I even hate to have to bring this up on the blog and give you this kind of recognition, but I want to say a few things to you:

You don’t know me.  You may read about my life, but you don’t know half there is to know about me.  You must live in some sort of messed up world where you think it’s ok to rag on people who have done nothing what-so-ever to you in any way horrible.  You need to get a life and remember that no matter what you say, how many times you say it, or how you say it, I am going to laugh in the face of your comments.  I’m going to shake my fist at you, but then I’ll laugh, knowing how pathetic you are since you’re a bully and deserve to be slapped.  And believe me, I currently have quite a few friends who want to slap you, or worse.  So take that.

So lets move onto more wonderful and enjoyable things like my eating today, yes?

I left my bike at the tower yesterday because of the rain and never went back to get it, so while laying awake from 2-5am this morning I decided that I would run to work instead of driving and wasting gas, and ride my bike home.  I had it scheduled to do a nice 40 minute run today and couldn’t do the whole thing in the morning, so it didn’t seem like a bad idea to split it and do half in the morning and half after work before biking home!  So I took a longer way to work and did 21.30 minutes before work.

I did some strength training moves at the tower and after changing clothes (it was chilly out today!  Three stories up with a breeze and lots of clouds = Brr!) got to work, and breakfast!  Again, I had greek yogurt w/ cinnamon, but this time with an apple and a peach.  Just as good as yesterday with the grapes!

The morning went by well and I had a banana with natural WF pb for a snack.  That run made me hungry!

I cooked up some chickpeas last night and had some today with my lunch, which included the chickpeas mixed w/ chunky salsa, extra tomatoes, a carrot and spinach.  Such a filling lunch!

I was fading by the afternoon after being cold and not getting much sleep last night, so I had a Mocha-walla Odwalla bar.  Now I know in my guidelines I said I wasn’t going to have bars, but I realized after a comment from Laura, that really, it’s going to be ok for me to have them; I think I just want to not have them as often and eat more whole foods.

Anyhow, after work I finished up my run by running another 21 minutes, did some more strength training moves, then took a nice against-the-wind bike ride home…it was just what I needed for a cool down.

And I came home to a nice package!  Foodbuzz is working with Nature’s Pride and promoting their new breads!  I’m super excited to try these and since they’re made without partially hydronated oils or corn syrup, I think they work with my guidelines.  I was provided with a loaf of their 12 Grain variety:

And a loaf of their 100% Whole Wheat

Look forward to seeing these on the blog asap!

I cleaned up and began on dinner.  I have had two mangos lying around for a bit waiting to be eaten so I dug into one tonight.  It was ok, not as good as the ones from this summer…of how you will be missed.

And then dinner was fantastic!  I had some of my broccoli from last night and then cooked up an egg with two whites to wrap in a WF whole wheat tortilla w/ some more broccoli and a bit of salsa.  Dude…this was a great meal!  I really really liked the tortilla though…it had a bit of a sweet taste to it.  Yum!

For dessert I had about a 1/2 C of GORP to satisfy that little bit of hunger I had left, and proceeded to talk to the parents, miss a call from Brad (since he’s in a no reception zone at work…haven’t talked to him since Saturday; sadness!!!), talk to my colleagues from work, and then study hawks.

Now I’m off to try to catch up on Google Reader.  I wish my internet were faster so I could read your posts more often!  I swear I’m trying!!!

Good night my lovlies!

P.S. Please send your love to my dear friend Jenn as she just lost her grandmother this weekend.  Hugs babe.

Clean Eating Guidelines

So, this week I have decided to take up a Clean(er) Eating Regime since my pants/shorts are getting a littttttttttle snug as of lately…not something I’m very fond of…I don’t got money to buy new clothes!

Anyhow, these are my ideas for this week:

1.  Less processed foods, which means:

• no cereals (unless they’re for meals, no more for snacks)
• less soy products
• less bread products
• no treats or bars

2.  And instead try integrating more of these foods into my diet (since I’ve been avoiding them for some odd reason…too lazy to cook them):

• brown rice
• beans (in my case, black and chickpeas)
• homemade sauces (ie marinara)
• natural peanut butter
• homemade polenta
• oats/oatbran

3.  More flossing!  I know I need to eat the good things for my body, but I need to take more care of the mechanisms that help it digest!

4.  More vegetables!  I know I get enough fruit in my diet, as I’ve had some people point out, but I don’t think I get enough, or at least an adequate variety of vegetables in my diet throughout the day.  Therefore, more veggies!

5.  And last but not least, I’m hoping this plan will help me combat my anxiety and boredom eating that I’ve been succumbing too as of late, which as led to my bit of snugger clothes.  I’ve been thinking up tactics to combat this but so far they’re all failing.  Suggestions?  It’s hard to get outside for me here as the bugs are so ridiculous and there aren’t many places for me to go to to get away from the food that I might munch on.  I’ve tried reading, I’ve tried writing, I’ve tried calling friends, but they all haven’t done me any good…so any other suggestions would be great!!!

So eating today went pretty well and I’m hoping the rest of the week will go as well too.  I started off the morning with some greek yogurt, mixed with cinnamon, an apple, some grapes and some cashews.  Was a great combo!

I was running back and forth between the trailer this morning doing some much needed laundry (and successfully flipping my mattress.  Fingers crossed for better sleep tonight!) and returned around lunch to lots of birdies, and a sweet storm coming in.  I started off with a peach:

And then had two carrots and a 1/3 of a cucumber with pine nut hummus.  I seriously love this combo.

Some other birders were kind enough to share some of their fruit.  I ate this, times like, six.  The pineapple was super super yummy.

Later in the afternoon I was taking lots of photos of the sky, in color and b&w…which is why this one is in b&w since i forgot to change the settings back. Haha.  Banana:

And I also had a medium sized baggie of my homemade GORP (oh yeah, super easy to make; just mix together raisins, peanuts, cashews and m&ms/chocolate chips.  Voila!)

A storm rolled in and I had to leave my bike there, so I biked to, back and to the tower today…which ended up equaling 6.3 miles.  I did a lot of standing and walking around at the tower, so I’m hoping that was enough exercise for today.

I came home and tried to use my oven, but I couldn’t get it to start.  Arg.  So instead of roasting my vegs w/ seasoning, I had to steam them: broccoli with garlic and Italian seasoning.

I had that plus about 10 of these crackers topped with tomato slices.

And now I’m off to brush and FLOSS, read and work on my long term project…

Oh Yes, That Blog of Mine…

So, because I don’t have any food pictures…I’ll give you a synapses of my weekend:

• Hummingbird banding on Saturday morning: caught 8
• Also caught two CARDINALS. They BITE, and it HURTS.  My pour finger has a boo boo.
• I watched “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell”, by Tucker Something or other (I forgot).  It was an ok movie; raunchy, but had it’s funny parts. The blog is definitely better.
• Stayed at Brad’s brother’s house again Saturday night and drove back to work Sunday morning at the crack of dawn. Being up at sunset is nice, but on a Sunday?  5.45am?!?!?!?  I’m super tired now, as expected.
• I missed a huge count yesterday (Saturday), and included 5 peregrine falcons, an albino red-tailed hawk, and 2 bald eagles.  I missed it.  But…
• I got to count 12,000+ birds today!  Most of them were broad wings, which were my species for the day…so my eyes are a bit under the weather right now.  But it was FUN!
• This week starts a strict week of clean eating. I’m moving away from as many processed foods as I can to hopefully do my body some good…I haven’t been treating it too well as of lately, eating too much when anxiety strikes, which happens to be too often.  So hopefully that can go over well.
• And…I have a week of work and more work and don’t know when my next day off will be.  Joy!  Weather is supposed to get pretty crappy here within the week, which will hinder the count, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed it won’t.
• Oh yeah, and I took an age test that I saw on Krista’s Kravings the other day, and according to Dr. Oz, I’m 18.2 years old…or my body is.  Hah!  I don’t know about that one.

K…off to clean and SLEEP!  Which I’m much lacking.  And so are my english skills. Hah.

I Spoke Too Soon

Hah, remember how I asked a question about my fruit consumption?  Ironically, the next day I ate an insane amount of fruit. My intention was actually to not have any bread/cracker/rice carbs to see how my body would handle it…which meant taking in more fruits and veggies.  Oh the irony…

So yesterday, I started off with a nice refreshing breakfast of strawberries, 1/2 a huge peach, and a container of plain oikos greek yogurt…

Then at work I lunched on these containers throughout the later morning, mid day and afternoon:

2 carrots, 1/3 cucumber, 1/4c hummus

other 1/2 of peach, grapes, apple and 1T natural pb

2 packs of my homemade trail mix

Then I headed up to the library to finished downloading my video bday presents from Brad, and headed into town to a restaurant called Luna’s for dinner. Jen was in the mood for Mexican, so that was where we went!

We started off with some chips and two types of salsas.  The green one was much hotter, so I stuck to the red one.  I had about a dozen broken chips with the salsas…

Jen got a huggggge margarita…

And I got veggie fajitas.  I opted to eat just the veggies, pico, the guacamole and the rice for my meal.  I wasn’t feeling the tortillas, since I’d already had the tortilla chips.  The veggies were really good and I liked that there was a good variety and not drowning in oil.  Seriously, the later was the best part; every time I get fajitas somewhere they always use too much oil.  Does that ever happen to you?

Then we hit up Target and Kroger for some necessities and some groceries.  Home was an hour drive…gah.  We live far to far away from everything.  Bugs the hell out of me.  At least I know what to look for with my next job, right?!?!?!

This morning I was craving something different for breakfast. I have seen this on Bobbi’s blog for the past few days and couldn’t pass it up for my own meal!

I scrambled up an egg with two whites and topped it with some pepper, then toasted up a whole wheat waffle and topped it off with a banana and some cinnamon.

I also had a glass of chocolate unsweetened almond breeze on the side.

This meal held me over a good 4 hours, and somehow I didn’t bring enough food for a real lunch.  I ate a huge peach w/ some grapes, and had a whole boat load of GORP that i mixed together this morning.  I don’t know the amount, but it was pretty big.  But it held me over for a good 5 hours!

 

I had a long drive to Lake Jackson this evening to spend the night at a friends to do more hummingbird banding tomorrow morning.  On the way I snacked on an apple w/ some natural pb  and cinnamon h2h.

Then, I got in my long run for the week!  I absolutely HATE running where I live because the mosquitoes are horrendous and it makes me absolutely hate my runs.  So I decided to run in town as it was convenient that I’m here, and low and behold, MANY LESS MOSQUITOES!!!  So I had a good run, 55.30 minutes and I don’t know how many miles…I’m guessing it was a bit over six, which is what I was aiming for.  I’ll have a more accurate measurement for you tomorrow!

Alright, I’m off to find some food in whatever I brought, which isn’t very much for the next two days (oops) and get some shut eye!  Another bad night of sleep last night!!!

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!!!

P.S. GOOD LUCK ON YOUR RACES TOMORROW MEGHANN, CAITLIN AND JENN!!!!

Quick and Full of Pictures

What up party people.  This little blogger is double “t” tired, as I only got about 3 hrs of sleep last night…was just all over the place, tossing and turning.  So early  night for this one!

But, after my rainy post yesterday I wanted to share with you a few other things!

I had a snack in the afternoon, and check out my phone sitting in my pen holder.  That is how I connect to the internet on my computer so I can blog for all you pretty people.  See, I love you all that much.

I went out for a pretty good and speedy run last night, when there was finally a let up in the rain.  Unfortunately it started again while I was running, and since I ran to get my bike, it was even worse when I was biking home.  I was a soaking mess by the time I got home.  But it was fun.  Ran I don’t know how far but it was 41 minutes total.  And I ran certain parts faster than others as it was kind of a there and back…and I was timing myself all over the place. Now this, is when I wish I had a GARMIN.

And of course what is better on a rainy day: SOUP!  Portabello mushroom, bell peppers, onions, and a Quorn Cutlet.  OH yeah…

But, who cares about my food and run; Look what came in the mail today!!!! 

From one of my best blogger buddies: Miss Gliding Calm.  Such a pretty homemade card..

And this one comes from my Grandma Gwen!  It had her famous pb filled pb cookies, popcorn, more pb, some sort of sweet bread, granola bars, goldfish, a birthday card and a bit of $$$. :)  I LOVE YOU GRANDMA!!  MISS YOU!

 

anyhow, bad night of sleep, wake up to a good breakfast!  Bananas are going bad fast, so oats w/ banana, cranberries and pb. Yum!

Bought some veggie chips from the bulk bin at WF last weekend, so I dug into those.  They were ok.  I don’t like sweet vegetables and many of them were (sweet potato, acorn squash, etc.) but the other pieces like different potatoes and green beans were great!

And the rest of my lunch: giant peach and apple

 

And a flat out wrap with lots of spinach, tomato, mustard and chik’n slices.

 

QUESTION for all of my readers though: Do you think I eat too much fruit?  I’ve gotten a few comments asking me about if I was worried about the sugar in fruits and such, but had never given it a second thought.  Suggestions?  Comments?

I had a baggie of tail mix just before the end of work and going on my super short run (14 minutes, about 1.6 miles) and doing some ST while watching Pirates…Love the first movie!

And then I settled on dinner super quick: spinach salad w/ cucumber, tomato, corn, a carrot and a tomato basil veg burger.

Off to bed!  I’ve got some planning to do for this weekend and those to come; I’m hoping to get down to Corpus Christi while I’m here to visit the other Hawkwatch Station in Hazelbaymore. We shall see!

Rainy Day

Oh Tuesday…you made my week start off so nicely by giving me the day off!  I did have to work for two hours this morning, riding my bike out to the tower and standing around, but then you let the massive thunder and lightning clouds roll in and made me and Jen go back to the trailer (ultimately leaving my bike out there)…to watch Ironman on my computer. Hah!  I won’t complain…I kinda like indoor rainy days!  Means tea and more reading for me!

But lets start with yesterday.  Jen had the day off so she went off to Galveston and I manned the tower with one of the volunteers for the day.  We had quite a few volunteers and I had to give a speech to a group that came out about how we watch and count the hawks.  And then I got bombarded with questions about why I hadn’t gotten my master’s yet.  Meh.

But, I tried a new kind of GREEK YOGURT for breakfast that morning!!!  When I was in Houston I went to a big HEB for some groceries and found this new one by Brown Cow.  I’ve seen their regular yogurts around but never a greek yogurt. 

          

I look at the nutritionals and they are pretty much the same as the plain Oikos that I love to get, except it was WAY CHEAPER!

So I had it with a diced apple, cinnamon and kashi go lean crunch.  I tasted it plain before I mixed it all up with the other stuff, and it tasted pretty similar to the Oikos.  It was a tad bit less thick, but I still really liked it. 

Oikos might have competition from Brown Cow from me! I will keep my eye out for this kind from now on since it is so much cheaper and I enjoyed it!  And to top it all off, the lid is a coupon!  How much does that rock!

Work was work, and I had a few snacks throughout the day for food instead of meals.  I just wasn’t feelin it,ya know?  So, I started off with GRAPES:

And like Meghann and a few others, I can’t have these just sitting in front of me or they will all be gone instantly.

Then I went for one of my favorite Odwalla Bars:

And some trail mix that you can probably imagine. :)

Just before leaving work and heading off to the library to get my birthday present from Brad (totally made me the happiest girl on earth!) I had two carrots and some cucumber with hummus:

And what was supposed to be my wrap for lunch, but was more like way early dinner:

I spent lots of time at the library catching up on blogs and other things, then headed to dreaded Walmart to get a few things.  I got home at a decent hour and was pretty hungry, but didn’t fee like cooking, so I had a banana and pb.  And a few chocolate pretzels. :)  Watched part of movie and bed time!

This morning was about an hour worth of work before we headed back to the trailer, when I ate breakfast, because actually, I forgot before I left home!  Haha!  So I had a huge peach, an apple, and some grapes.  I was feel’n the fruit this mornin!

Jen and I watched Ironman and proceeded to listen to thunder and watch lots of lightning, which 4 hrs later has yet to stop.  So in the midst of movie watching and blog reading on my phone (OMG did I mention I just downloaded the Google mobile app for my phone and it is a LIFESAVER!!!!) I ate lunch: 1/4C hummus, 3 carrots, 1/3 bell pepper, kashi TLCs, and raspberry TJ’s tea.

Now I’m off to read another of my Jodi Picoult books called Songs of a Humpback Whale and probably take a nap…being in small quarters leaves you with limited things to do inside!