Week 1 - Day 3

Rest Day - Best Day (just kidding)

Today was a rest day according to my AI Life Coach. It actually said “Rest or Light Activity” so of course I did the light activity portion. My options were a gentle 30-minute walk or yoga/stretching. I decided to do both.

The walk itself wasn’t abnormal from my regular routine. I would often turn on the TV, hop on the treadmill, and walk for 30-60 minutes sometime throughout the day. I just did it in the morning this time. The soreness from the past few days was finally letting up so this was just a casual stroll through the park.

What I was really excited about was yoga. I’ve never done actual yoga before. Most of my yoga activities were part of a stretching routine and it was only after someone said “I learned this at yoga class” I knew it was an actual yoga pose. Unfortunately, my AI Life Coach didn’t provide me with any yoga moves to do, so I had to hop back on the chat and ask.

AI Prompt -> For this week, can you give the yoga moves you want me to do on the light days

As per usual, AI provides way more information than one really needs with some of these prompts. Not only did it give me 10 different moves to do, it gave their original names, how they benefit you, and how you were to do them. Very interesting information. I added all of it to the Fitness portion of the website if anyone is interested.

Yoga, as someone who has never done yoga before, is just fancy stretches. Downward facing dog made me sick because it stretched the tendons in my legs, but that’s my own weirdness coming out. Overall, the stretches were good. Stretched the back and legs out nice and I would definitely do it again.

However, I do have one question. What’s the point of Corpse Pose?

This is the one yoga move that confused me. It was literally just laying on your back, staring at the ceiling, contemplating life. And it told me to do this for 3-5 minutes.

Like why? What’s the point? I could just go to bed and do the same thing. Of course, I guess it’s different for your back to lay on a hard floor versus a nice comfortable bed, but I can’t imagine it being that different. Are you supposed to enjoy this? Is this a stretch stretching some unknown muscle? Are you supposed to meditate? What are you supposed to do?

Anyways, that’s my rant on Corpse Pose. I refuse to look it up or ask AI because it probably already thinks I’m stupid for asking for some of the most obvious recipes. I’ll just keep doing the moves it wants me to do like a good oblivious nerd.

Mealtime

Breakfast

For breakfast, I once again tried to branch out and once again, I was disappointed. Today I made oatmeal with almond butter, bananas, and some “cinnamon for taste”. That’s literally what the recipe said. Unfortunately for it, I probably could’ve dumped the whole container of cinnamon in that bowl, and it still wouldn’t have had any taste.

This was my first time even hearing about almond butter, let alone using it in a recipe. An experimental taste told me it was bland, maybe slightly nutty, but nothing to write home about. I was really hoping that putting it into oats would make something magical happen. But no. Bland + Bland = Blander. The banana was the saving grace in that entire meal, but it was working overtime.

I would still eat that concoction 1000 times over than suffer through a Greek yogurt bowl again.

Morning Snack

As the creature of habit that I am, I had another rice cake for my morning snack. An rice cake a day keeps the hunger away is what I’m thinking. I’m just hoping they last me another week because they are too good to lose out on. But, if they do, then we can try another flavor. There are some chocolate ones that looked good too.

Lunch

For lunch, I tried to remake that turkey wrap from Monday. I cut the sauce in half this time, but there was still no rolling of the tortilla into a wrap. I keep misunderstanding how much spinach is “too much”. I also left the tomato off, mainly because the first one I cut into was rotten and I didn’t want to try a second time. Anyways, the turkey wrap/taco is still delicious, especially with that hot honey mustard I’ve got.

Evening Snack

Evening snack was a handful of mixed nuts because I was busy with work. I’m foreseeing that this snack is going to cause issues for me. 2-5 pm is usually my busiest time with meetings and other work-related activities, so I’m going to have to try hard to remember to eat at this time. It also doesn’t help that I’m not really that hungry around 3pm, so I don’t know.

Dinner

Dinner was exciting to make, boring to eat. I decided to make the stir-fry recipe that my AI Life Coach gave me.

Before I begin, I’ll just say this, this family loves stir-fry. I, once again, want to stop and tell you that I’m an expert at nothing. I have no idea if what we make is traditional or Westernized stir-fry, but whatever we do, we love it. We make it at least every other week. We’ve done all kinds of different combinations in toppings, sauces, and meats. The recipe I got had a different sauce combination which was what made me so excited to try it.

Which is why I was so disappointed in how it tasted.

For this recipe, we got to have our favorite combination, chicken breasts and vegetables. While the recipe called for me to cut up some fresh vegetables, I just used a frozen blend that we liked instead. It was basically the same thing as far as I could see, and I didn’t have to worry about any rotten vegetables.

Because we eat so much stir-fry and other Asian dishes, we have a lot of white rice in the house. We used that instead of the brown rice that the recipe called for. I actually did look this up because I was curious and apparently brown rice is better for you than white. Not calorie wise, but it does have a lot more minerals and nutrients in it. Once we have depleted our stock, I’m probably going to switch to brown rice from now on.

For sauces, we usually use a pre-made blend. We’ve done stir-fry, kung-pao, teriyaki, and more. This recipe called for a custom blend of sesame oil, rice vinegar, and soy sauce. As I was making the dish, everything smelled and tasted amazing. The problem arose when the sauce wasn’t enough to cover everything. It either got soaked up too fast or evaporated when it hit the pan. I’m not sure what happened, but I ended up trying to add more and more of the sauce before I realized I was probably adding too much for it to be a “healthy” dish.

So, I stopped. And the dish was boring because it was under-seasoned.

We did have some leftovers as well, so I’ll have to find some time to finish it off. Maybe I’ll add some of our stir-fry sauce to it…