12wbt - Week Three

Week three of Michelle Bridge's body transformation has been a tough one for me. Really struggling with exercise motivation and I've been rather hungry. So compared to week two, definitely not a good week for me.

On the upside, continuing on from yesterday's 'I'm lucky' post, I actually won a copy of Women's Health (the one with Michelle Bridges on the cover) through one of the 12wbt challenges. Came with a lovely photo copied note from Michelle herself. Don't I feel special ;-)

I had porridge for breakfast every day last week, I won't bore you by listing it in my Meals. I've also included some from week two in the following picture...

MONDAY
Meals -  Chicken and avocado wrap, lentil loaf with yoghurt and baby spinach. The lentif loaf wasn't as bad as it looked (it's the worst looking thing in the picture, 2nd from top left) but it still wasn't great. I can see a vegetarian loving it, but I'm really not into lentils enough.
Exercise - As mentioned in week two's post, I skipped the exercise on Monday. Intended to make up for it, but I never did...

TUESDAY
Meals - Leftover lentil loaf for lunch (ditto above), chicken and grape salad with goats fetta and walnuts for dinner.  The combination of fetta and grapes in this salad was amazing, tasted very fresh and had a salty/sweet thing going on. We'll be adding this to future menus, or just through some grapes and fetta in with our everyday salads!
Exercise - PT session again, I ate well before it (had a snack just before I left) and felt full of energy. Was one of the best sessions I have had and my PT was rather impressed. Attemped to do a little running after the session and had to stop after about 300m before I collapsed...also, my arm is doing really well of late. Getting much straighter and I've started doing some assisted chin-ups. Had my monthly visit with the physio on theWednesday and he was much impressed. (For those of you who don't know, I dislocated my elbow in September, due to tendon and ligament damage I still cannot fully straighten my arm).

WEDNESDAY
Meals - Leftover chicken and grape salad (meant to be another wrap though) and tuna and vegetable lasagne for dinner. The lasagne was great, not too different to how my mother makes her spinach/vegetarian lasagne with a fine layer of tuna thrown in. We'll use/adapt this one in future so it's more tomato-y I think.
Exercise - I managed to run 2.5km at my goal pace (took 14 minutes) before I stopped to turn around and couldn't resist walking. I know what landmark I reached though and should be able to force myself to go further next time. Running 2km in 11 minutes was one of my one month goals so I'm pretty happy with that...especially when it includes hills...

WEDNESDAY WEIGH-IN - Again, wasn't expecting to lose too much, but down another 200g to 55.5kg. If I can keep up that rate of loss I'll be happy :-)

THURSDAY
Meals -  Leftover lasagne for lunch and cajun pork with coleslaw for dinner. The lasagne was great the next day (as most are) and the cajun pork was nice too. A little spicy for my vanilla tastebuds though.
Exercise - I didn't do any. At all. I was pretty tired after work and was back a little late, told myself I'd make it up...I didn't.

FRIDAY
Meals -  Leftover lasagne for lunch and a Vietnamese beef noodle soup for dinner. The soup was good (tried out our new chopsticks too, they are shaped like drumsticks!) but not something I'd want to eat regularly. Just not my taste I guess.
Exercise - Again, zilch. I didn't have a huge amount of time what with spending zillions at the PeepToe sale and then working until after dark. I didn't feel guilty about skipping the stretch session but I really should have done something on the back of skipping Thursday...

SATURDAY
Meals - Turkey wraps for lunch (late after doing groceries), salmon stuffed baked potatoes with tomato salsa and yoghurt for dinner. Yum! One of my favourites yet, SJ and I picked it from the Recipe Index on the site rather than making one of our own treat meals...he wanted/needed potato, it'd been a while. Was so good I'm going to tell you how to make it...

• Medium potato, wrapped in alfoil, baked for an hour + depending on how long it needs.
• Cut a cross in the top, pull out some of the insides, mix with salmon and shove back in.
• Make salsa from tomato, chives and spring onions (speaking off, SJ only likes to use the white bits and I think you're supposed to eat them right to the tiny green tip...makes using them interesting).
• Put dollop of plain low fat yoghurt and salsa all over potato.
• Serve with salad (as featured in bottom right corner of pic)

It was incredible. I liked it so much more than any baked potato I have ever bought with cheese/bacon/sour cream etc. no way you'll feel sick after this one! Plus it was a great way to make salmon lose it's fishy taste and texture.
I want another one now.
Exercise - Another day I skipped. I was supposed to work from 2pm-9pm, slept in until 9am, went shopping, found out at 1pm I didn't have to work, but I couldn't motivate myself to do a 2 hour Super Saturday Session. So I did nothing. Again.

SUNDAY
Meals - Chicken waldorf salad for lunch, was great while I was super busy at work, gave me something to look forward to and was easy to eat at my desk over a longer period. Dinner was pan-fried fish with cherry tomatoes and wilted spinach (centre left in the pic) was also good, I enjoyed the fish and the cherry tomatoes were a nice pop of flavour (I'll eat anything with tomatoes though!).
Exercise - Rest day so nothing was expected, I was going to try and do something but again, no motivation. I worked from 6am until 2pm, then when SJ picked me up he took me straight to a movie. Was a better way to spend my afternoon I must admit.

HOW BAD WAS I?
I'm guessing Wednesday's weigh-in (tomorrow) will tell. I ate pretty well, it was very hard to exercise when work was so stressful (operational flood desk duty does that to me) so I don't feel too guilty about the sessions I skipped, I know I didn't have the energy. Food wise I snacked a little more than usual, but in general I was pretty good at sticking to the calories. I shared a small popcorn with SJ at the cinema, had a home made pastry treat on the flood desk and 3-4 natural confectionery company lollies over the few days. Not as great as I have been, but still better than what I could have 'relaxed' into. I think I have made changes to my grazing habits, I would have eaten things like that continuously in a stressful situation in the past.

Oh and as for exercise, I started this week rather well and am on the path to redemption, but you will have to wait until the week four update to hear about that ;-)