Week 4 - Day 2

Cardio and Core. The Perfect Combo

This may be the opposite of other people, but I love doing cardio workouts. I actually enjoy a good run. There’s something about feeling all of your muscles move that makes it exciting. Not to mention feeling the ground beneath your feet and watching everything pass by…it’s great.

Now, unfortunately, as a person with asthma, I’ve got to be careful about when and where I run. For instance, if I run at the pretty park that takes a path through the woods anytime in spring or fall, I’m going to have a bad time. Same for the park that goes around a hay field in summer.

And people wonder why I stay inside on the treadmill most days.

Anyways, this cardio asked for a “brisk walk” for 30 minutes. I did walk, but it was an incline walk to make it a bit harder. This just works more muscles and makes your heart beat a bit faster. I’m sure there are other benefits to it, but I’m not an expert. Just a nerd listening to AI.

Core exercises are also fun, until we get to the mountain climbers. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I hate this exercise with a burning passion. I don’t feel anything in my core when I do it so I don’t know what it’s being classified as a “core” exercise. I feel it more in my legs and it makes me out of breath. If someone told me “do 30 seconds of mountain climbers for a warm-up” I would totally believe them.

In either case, we did the core exercises and some light stretches for a post-workout routine. It was weird that a cooldown wasn’t listed on today’s schedule, especially since it is on the others. Maybe my AI Life Coach decided that the core exercises were a good enough cooldown? Hard to say really.

Mealtime

Breakfast

I decided to use up the last of my frozen veggies and remade the egg and turkey sausage vegetable bowl. It was better than Day 1 because I decided to use a different hot sauce than before. This one didn’t have as much flavor to it, but it did bring the heat which is nice.

In a lot of my prior readings of workouts and diets, the one thing I saw was that people got tired of eating the food suggested, mainly because it was so repetitive. A lot of current diets call for meal prepping dinners where you have the same meals every day for about a week or so. This, apparently, gets to people who need variety in their life and is almost immediately dismissed.

I must be an outlier to this case because it never bothered me. Since I got out of college and started working in the real world, I had the same thing for breakfast and lunch. That’s about 5 years worth of eating the exact same thing, with very little variance. In fact, the only times I switched up my meals was if I ran out of ingredients and hadn’t made it to the store. I honestly find it more stressful to constantly think of new things to eat and figure out what I want to eat every single day.

I like simplicity I guess.

Morning Snack

This desire for simplicity is also why my morning snack has been a rice cake for the past several weeks. It’s easy and efficient. I have the package right here at my desk. I don’t have to do any cooking or prepping. Simply open package, grab cake, eat.

Simple.

Lunch

For lunch, I had a simple salad. I’ve been on a salad kick since I got back from vacation. Must be from lack of eating good last week so need to make up for it now? Hard to say, but these salads are hitting right for me.

I’m usually pretty simple with my salads. Iceberg lettuce, some chopped up lunch meat or leftover meat if I have any, some fat free Italian dressing, and some kind of bread. If I have them, I’ll add croutons for the bread component, not too much of course. If I don’t, I’ll toast a bagel and chop up half of it. Still gives that crunch and different texture that is needed.

Evening Snack

This is still about 50/50 whether I remember to eat something during this time or not. Unfortunately, today was not the day to remember. So…skip!

Dinner

For dinner, I was craving chicken of some kind, but wasn’t really sure what. The meal plan provided had a “Chicken breast with roasted carrots and mashed cauliflower” dish, but I didn’t like either of those sides. Therefore, I simply gave the following prompt:

AI Prompt -> Can you give me a recipe for a good chicken dish? I have a 10 oz boneless, skinless chicken breast

And it came up with a “Garlic Herb Chicken Breast with Roasted Vegetables”. I ignored the “roasted vegetables” part since I didn’t have any, but made the grilled chicken. It was pretty good, not going to lie. My family liked it, except for the one who has a dislike of oregano. I think that was the only spice that was turned down.

For the sides, I simply made some green beans. We had several cans of them in the pantry and they were something quick to add as a side. I also made the others some scalloped potatoes since we also had a box of that. I, personally, am not a fan (and they are quite high in calories), but the family enjoyed them.

Late Night Snack

I don’t usually post this section because it usually never occurs. However, I want to keep this blog honest and open, so we’ll talk about it today.

While cooking supper, I noticed that the apples I bought before vacation were starting to go bad. This, honestly, is my fault. Every time I go on a health kick, I buy apples thinking that this is the time I will start liking them. Every time, I am sorely mistaken and I simply do not like raw apples. I’ve never been the kind of person to pick up an apple and take a bite. It’s disgusting to me.

You honestly would think I would learn my lesson by now.

Anyways, these apples were just starting to go bad and I figured I needed to do something with them. Looking through the pantry, I noticed a box of Cinnamon Swirl cake mix. So, figured “why not bake a cake?”.

Instructions for this cake are super easy. Peel and cut up the apples. Follow the instructions on the cake box. As you pour the cake in, add the cut up apples. Easy, done.

The cake itself was really good. The apples mixed with the cinnamon and got a really good flavor to it. I was kind of worried about adding raw apples to a raw cake (figured we needed to cook them first), but it turned out ok.

I did only have a really tiny slice. I think the serving size on the box listed 1/16 of the baked cake. My slice was probably about that. Anyways, now we have a cake in the house that everyone enjoys and my apples didn’t go to waste.