Wednesday February 16, 2011

I woke up today and finally felt rested!  Going to bed early last night helped SO much!  I was ready to get to the gym this morning.

The alarm went off at 5am and I was driving to the gym at 5:30am.  Before I left this morning I actually ate something different.  I had a small container of Breakstone’s fat free cottage cheese and a few almonds. 

This morning I did 'Sick Monkey' class from 6-7am.  It was so hard!  I was going to stay for yoga but felt like I just couldn’t do it today!  In 'Sick Monkey' we did lots of plyometric exercises and those type of exercises wear me out!!

I had a breakfast meeting this morning at 8:30am at Le Peep in Nashville.  I ordered an egg white omelet, multigrain toast, and a side of fruit.  I ate the omelet and the fruit and had coffee.  I wanted the toast but didn’t touch it.  YAY!

I started at the studio at 11am and ate a few almonds on the way there.  After I left the studio, I ate lunch at Blue Coast Burrito on the way to my writing session around 1pm.  At Blue Coast, I ordered a grilled chicken wheat burrito.  I also added black beans, lettuce, tomato, mild salsa, peppers & mushrooms to the burrito.  We got chips and salsa to eat with our burritos (I had a few) and I drank unsweetened tea.

Around 4:30pm, I had a protein bar (think thin peanut butter).

I got home tonight around 8pm and my sister Lorie had cooked a pork loin and green bean casserole.  I know casseroles aren’t the best for me, but she made it using all low calorie ingredients.  I drank more tea!! 

I’m going to bed at a decent time again.  It’s already after 10pm but that’s way better than midnight!  I still feel like I did pretty good today.  I’m beginning to feel better in my clothes…some days!  Some days I feel like I’m doing good and other days I’m like “what am I doing wrong here because my jeans are still tight!” I guess I’ll just keep doing the best that I can!!  

Tuesday February 15, 2011

I was SO tired when I woke up this morning!  I decided as soon as I got up at 5:15am that I am going to bed early tonight!!

I left the house at 5:30am and had a piece of my Morningstar sausage and a few almonds on my drive.  I’m sure you all can figure out by now, I am definitely a creature of habit. 

From 6-7am, I had my chains class.  Like always, it was a hard class.  I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE how challenging this class always is for me.  It’s never the same, so my body never gets used to the workouts.  I actually did unassisted chin-ups this morning…well, I maybe did one or two!  That’s an accomplishment for me because I always use a band around my foot to help me!  YAY! 

I had a breakfast meeting at 9am this morning at Noshville.  I ordered an egg white veggie omelet w/multigrain toast and coffee.  I didn’t eat the toast but I think I ate almost my entire omelet.  I was pretty hungry.

After my meeting, I came home to do some work on the computer and I had a few of the cocoa almonds that I love so much.  I wanted something sweet and that satisfied my sweet tooth for me!

At 12:15pm, I met my running group on the trails and we did a short 2.5 mile run.  It was a beautiful day in the park! 

After my run, I went straight to another appointment.  I had to be there at 1:30pm so I didn’t have time to change out of my running clothes. Thankfully, the person I was meeting understood.  On the way there, I was hungry and had a protein bar with me so I ate that for my lunch.  I ate the peanut butter Think Thin bar again.  I love this bar! 

After my meeting, I came back home and had a few more almonds and then walked Lucie.  I think she probably walked about ½ mile tonight.  After I walked her, I ate at home with Mama.  She made some kinda white beans and also sauerkraut.  I know, that doesn’t sound good, but Mama is watching what she eats too and she says, “you can eat this whole house full of sauerkraut and never gain any weight”.  So, I ate it with her!  It was ok…not my favorite thing, but I wasn’t worried about taste tonight.

It’s about 9pm now and I am going to bed soon.  I’m going to really try hard to get to bed at a decent time as often as I can now.  I think today was a pretty good day!  


Guess what? I have gone one full week without a soft drink!  Someone asked me the other day if I’ve had caffeine withdrawal headaches and the answer is yes!  I DO miss my diet mt dews but I know it’s better for me if I don’t drink them. 

Ok, I’m going to bed!  Nite nite!!

Monday February 14, 2011

Valentine's Day


Today has been a really awesome day for my plan. I woke up today excited and eager to do the best I could do with my eating/fitness plan!

My alarm went off at 5am and I reset my clock for 5:10am. Ten minutes is a lot of time to sleep when it's that early in the morning. After my alarm went off at 5:10am I woke up and got dressed.  I ate my Morningstar sausage and a few almonds and headed to the gym.

This morning I did the TASK class and then I did a yoga class. The yoga was really hard today. My arms were shaking to hold the plank pose.  I'm sure it made it more difficult doing it after TASK class.  I left the gym around 815am and headed home to eat breakfast.

At around 845am, I walked Lucie. I always walk her but today she wanted to go pretty far because it is so nice outside. We probably walked a little over a mile. After the walk, I went back home and had coffee and an egg white omelet with low-fat cheese in it. I know it’s such a boring breakfast but it's so easy to fix!

I didn't have to be downtown until the afternoon today so I actually ate lunch at home. I cooked again!!!

Around 1:30pm, I had a turkey burger (no bun) w/low fat cheese, 1/2 cup steamed broccoli and water to drink. 

Around 4pm, I ate a peanut butter Think Thin protein bar.

At 6pm, I took Anita's hour-long kickboxing class!  My arms pretty much gave out in this class! We did lots of pushups and by the end of the drill, my arms wouldn't move!!

I was starving by 7:15pm so I met Mama at Ted’s Montana Grill. We ate the pickles they bring to the table and I ordered a BBQ chicken salad w/unsweetened tea. This salad was awesome!!!!

Now I am home and heading to bed!  Today has been one of the best eating days I have had in a long time. I feel really good about everything. I'm sure the salad tonight had some bad parts to it but I think that's ok!  
It's Valentines Day..you're supposed to cheat a little right?!

Gnite!!

Wednesday February 9, 2011

Today I had a slow start.  I think that I may have had a little food poisoning last night.  Mama and I bought some tilapia a couple days day ago, so I think it may have been a little bit old or something. Maybe we waited to long to cook it? I'm not really sure!  I felt bad enough this morning that I skipped my workout.  You know if I skip my workout that something is wrong because I love my classes!

I finally started feeling better around lunchtime, which is great because I met a girlfriend of mine for lunch at Calypso Café.  I’ve mentioned Calypso to you all before because it’s one of my favorite restaurants. I eat there all the time!  I ordered what I usually eat which is a black bean, white meat chicken salad, and unsweet tea.

After lunch I had a couple meetings and then the SNOW came!!  It came down so fast! Like all of my fellow Nashvillians, I hurried to the grocery store to buy dog food and something for me to eat for dinner. I knew I needed to find something tonight that was pretty bland and plain, so I bought a pack of Shirataki noodles.  Shirataki noodles are very thin, low carb, low calorie, Japanese noodles.  They really do not taste like anything, so you have to add your own foods/spices to the noodles. I normally add a marinara sauce with grilled chicken and make a healthy, Italian meal.  That’s basically what I did tonight but I forgot the marinara at the grocery store so I just had the noodles with grilled chicken and I added cheese on the top. 

Shirataki noodles are a “go-to” food for me.  If I cant think of anything else to cook, they are easy to prepare, and pretty good for me. I had lemonade flavored vitamin water zero with my dinner....         I LOVE THIS DRINK!  

It has such a great taste to it and if I want something sweet, this is very satisfying. 

Also with my dinner, I cheated a little bit.  Mama had fried pickles on the table sitting right in front of me.  Those pickles would NOT stop calling my name so I had about 4 of them!!  THEY WERE RIDICULOUSLY GOOD!!! 

I’m heading to bed soon.  It’s about 10pm and I want to sleep good tonight.  I think today was actually a great day until those pickles starting calling me! Like I always say, you gotta live sometimes!! 

Oh yeah, I didn't have a diet drink today! That's an accomplishment in itself!! 


I hope to get to the gym in the morning but the roads may be covered with ice and snow.  Anita offered to pick me up so I’m going to text her about that and then go to bed!! Gnite!

Tuesday February 8, 2011

Hey y’all!  My days always start out the same way it seems, but I want to tell them to you anyway!

I woke up at 5:15am and left my house by 5:30 to head to chains class.  I ate my Morningstar sausage on the way to class, drank diet Mt. dew, and had a few almonds! 

Chains class was so hard today!  I’ve been training with Matt & Anita for a few years now and today was the first time I might have said something inappropriate because it was SO HARD!  You should have seen Matt laughing!  He was so shocked! He said, “You always smile through these workouts!  I can’t believe I finally got to ya!” 

We started off the class jumping rope, then we did frog jumps while holding a weighted ball over our heads for the length of the gym…back and forth, 5 or 6 times (that’s what got me)!!  We did several more cardio type exercises for the warm-up.  The warm-up felt like half of the class! I honestly thought it would never end!! Everyone was sweating before the workout ever even started!

Matt set up a strength training circuit for us.  Working both upper and lower body with ab exercises in between each set.  We probably did this circuit 4 times through and each circuit was totally different exercises.  For the last circuit, he included the shake weight as a station.  Have y’all seen that commercial on TV?  When I saw that station I could not stop laughing!  Matt wanted to have fun with us because it had been such a hard workout.  I’m telling you, every time I think about class this morning, I laugh!  What was so funny was watching one of the guys in class do it.  He was so embarrassed that he turned his back to everyone.  I did too! 

After class, I hurried home and showered.  I met my friend at 9am for breakfast at Bread & Co.  Bread & Co is one of my favorite breakfast spots in Nashville.  I always get the garden vegetable omelet.  This is an egg white omelet with asparagus, sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, and feta cheese in it.  I always tell them to go easy on the feta.  I drank coffee with my omelet!

After breakfast, I had an appointment to get my teeth cleaned.  The exam went great but my dentist asked me if I had been drinking soft drinks.  I admitted that I had been drinking diet coke and diet mountain dews.  He told me to try and not drink them as much anymore! He said even if they are diet, they aren’t good for your teeth.  I had no idea!  I knew soft drinks weren’t good for you but I thought that diet was ok.  He says they are ok every once in a while.

After my dentist appointment, I headed to the studio to do a little bit of recording.  On my way to the studio, I stopped at Publix and had a salad from the deli. It was something called the Chinese chopped chicken salad.  It had grilled chicken on it, cucumber, some little crunchy sticks (I loved those), snap pea pods, scallions, and lime-citrus dressing on the side.  I also bought some Stacey’s pita chips to eat with it.  I was craving salt today!  I probably ate about half of the salad with an unsweet tea and then headed to the studio.

I was in the studio til about 5:30pm and was STARVING when I left!  On the way home I had the rest of my Stacey’s pita chips! 

Around 7-730pm tonight, I walked in the house and Mama had made one of my favorite meals!  Baked crab stuffed tilapia!  I ate one piece of it and now I am about it go to bed!  It’s about 10pm, which is early for me to go to bed, but I think I need the sleep!!

I think today was a pretty good day! I’m going to take the no diet drink thing to heart though!  After I left the dentist today, I didn’t have any more of the diet mt. dew I had in my car!  Just water and unsweet tea for me!!!  Also, I probably shouldn’t have had the pita chips.  I didn’t need them, but I wanted them when I saw them in Publix!! 

Tomorrow's a new day!!  Gnite yall!!

Monday February 7, 2011

Day after the Super Bowl!


It sure was hard to wake up this morning!!

After only 5 hours of sleep last night, I woke up at 5:15am and left for the gym at 5:30am.

I grabbed water for my workout, Diet Mountain Dew, and I heated up a Morningstar sausage patty to eat on my drive to the gym.

My 6am class today was called T.A.S.K (Teamwork-Agility-Strength-Kinesis).

In TASK we had about a 10- minute warm-up and then a 15- station circuit that we completed two times.  Each station was 45 seconds long and we had a 15 second rest period between each station.There were so many stations that I’m not sure if I can remember all of them but here are a few:

• Squat press
• Stair running
• Forward lunge on both legs w/squat thrust
• A shoulder exercise (hold weights in both hands with your arms out to each side and make little circles)
• Push-ups
• Hamstring curl w/the ball
• Right & left side glute bridges
• Ladder drill
• Leg flutters (for lower abdominals)
• Squats holding and pushing out a weighted medicine ball
• Floor plank (rotated our body weight from right arm to left arm while holding plank)
• Ball plank (hold plank on a ball and with control, roll the ball forwards and backwards for abdominals).  

I know I am leaving out some of the exercises in this rotation but that’s the majority of the ones that we did.

After the rotation we took a few minutes for some leg exercises.  We did 24 regular squats, 24 lunges, 24 lunge jumps, and 24 squat jumps. 

After TASK class, I stayed for yoga class from 7-8am.

I went home after class and ate breakfast around 9am. I had egg whites and reduced fat cheddar cheese.

At around 1pm, I had the other ½ of my entrée from Cheesecake Factory on Sunday.  I had tomato slices, spinach, and a grilled chicken breast.  I also had a few almonds and water to drink.

Around 4:30pm, I had more almonds.  I love the sea salt almonds from Costco and Cocoa flavored almonds.  I switch back and forth between the two.

I did kickboxing class between 6-7pm.  Class tonight was really difficult!  Anita always mixes it up for us so it’s NEVER easy! I keep telling her she needs to make an exercise video because her classes are SO AWESOME! 

I got home at around 7:45pm and I wasn’t really hungry.  I decided to eat a few almonds and a little bit of Mama’s Mexican casserole that I had the other day. 

My Favorites!!!!!!

Overall, I think today was a pretty good day. There are two things that I should probably change in my diet.  I know I probably eat too many almonds.  They are just easy so I grab those on the go.  Also, I should have probably not eaten that Mexican casserole for dinner.  It was a little heavy for nighttime.  

Oh, and I probably should get more sleep at night!!  
I was really feeling how tired I am today! 

Sunday February 6, 2011

Super Bowl Sunday

I didn’t do much RIGHT on my bikini plan today. 

I did wake up and run a 4.5-mile trail with some friends and I ate a healthy breakfast but that’s about it!

After my run, around 10am, I had the usual egg whites with low fat cheddar cheese and coffee. 

AT 1pm, Mama and I went to one of my favorite restaurants in Nashville called Calypso Café.  I ordered what I always order there, which is the black bean, white meat chicken salad.  This salad is SO GREAT!  It’s what Mama always orders too. I drank unsweetened tea with my salad.

After lunch, Mama and I just hung out a little at home and I got dressed to go to my Super Bowl party.  I met one of my girlfriends before the party to chat and work on my hair!  She helped me curl my hair!  We had some little quiche appetizers and a ½ glass of wine.

Then, it was time for the Super Bowl Party and that’s when I forgot about my diet! I had pita chips with hummus, veggies with hummus, nuts, and some other snack type foods that were there.  And I had another glass of wine!

After the party (about 10pm), we were still a little bit hungry so we went to Cheesecake Factory and I ordered the Energy Breakfast entrée.  That entrée included scrambled egg whites, spinach, grilled chicken, and tomatoes.  I ate just about half of my entrée!

I made it back to my house around midnight and fell asleep around 12:30pm!! 

Super Bowl Sunday was a fun day and I cheated a little on the food but from looking back on it, it wasn’t too terrible!  I had so much fun and that’s what life is about sometimes… YOU JUST GOTTA LIVE!!!

Saturday February 5th 2011

It's Saturday so I didn't have to wake up as early…YAY!  I planned to meet my friends on the trail at 8:30am so I woke up between 8 - 8:15am. I got dressed and headed to the trails. I drank some water and ate a few almonds on my drive there.

From 8:30-9:45am we ran a 4.5 mile trail.  Although running the trail is never easy to me, I felt pretty good today!! I had lots to talk to my friends about and taking my mind off how hard those hills are really helps!

I got back home around 10am and needed to leave my house by 11:30am for Get Fit TN so I got ready to go and ate my breakfast around 11am. I had egg whites, low fat cheddar cheese, and a morning star sausage patty. Breakfast was good and I knew it was important because I would be busy today until around 4pm.

After the Get Fit TN program, we headed back to Nashville. There weren’t lots of healthy eating options on the way back but  we stopped at Sonic and I ordered a grilled chicken wrap with a diet coke. It was great!!


Around 7:30 - 8pm I ate a little bit of Mexican casserole that Mama made.  She made it with whole wheat tortillas, lean ground beef, salsa and low fat cheese.  IT WAS SO GOOD!!!!!!
I know I am bias but my Mama can cook!!!!!  SHE IS GREAT! She also made homemade banana pudding but I didn't have any of it!  That was hard to do!

I think I did pretty good today. Although we ate fast food, I think I picked one of the better options offered at Sonic.  It’s about 12:30am now and I’m heading to bed!! 

Friday February 4th 2011

Today it was hard for me to get out of the bed. I think I finally got up at 5:20am, got dressed, and headed out the door with a diet mountain dew and half of a 'think-thin' protein bar.

I left the house at 5:30am for the gym and arrived at 6am.

Today's class was from 6 -7am and was called 'Sick Monkey'!  And let me tell you, it's so hard it almost makes you sick.  

'Sick Monkey' is a class based on the “cross-fit” style of training.  We do lots of reps of each exercise and with each round the number of reps decreases. For example, our first round was 21 reps of squats, 21 forward/backward lunges, 21 pull-ups, 21 push-ups. The 2nd round was 16 of the same thing, and the 3rd round was 9 of the same thing. We also did a relay type race today. The class split up into two teams and each individual went one at a time down the gym floor doing frog leaps, duck walks, and plate pushes. 

After the relay, we did floor abdominal work!!

I stayed at the gym for 30-45 more minutes after class to do another circuit with one of my girlfriends. We did 45 seconds of rows, 45 seconds of lateral raises, 45 seconds of left/right side lunges, more push-ups, and 45 second cardio bursts in between the strength sets. Cardio bursts were jumping jacks, squat jumps, and we added the elliptical trainer in there too!  We repeated the entire rotation twice! Today was definitely a tough workout but I loved it! I drank water throughout class and workout!

After I got home from the workout (around 9am) I made myself some egg whites and had low fat cheddar cheese in them! I drank coffee with 2 splenda!!

Today, I wrote songs for most of the day so I didn't have much time to eat lunch. At 2:30pm I was pretty hungry so I had the other half of my think thin protein bar.

I got home around 4pm and by that time I was pretty hungry so I had a grilled chicken salad with citrus vinaigrette and had water to drink. It was SUCH an awesome salad!  

Tonight, Mama and I went out and ended up at Carrabba’s Italian Grill at 9pm!  We ate dinner late. I ordered the Sicilian chicken soup without pasta in it. It was so great but I kinda messed up because Mama ordered a spinach and cheese appetizer and I ate a little of that with bread! Fresh hot bread is a weakness of mine!  I drank unsweetened tea for dinner!

It’s about midnight now and I’m heading to bed. I feel great about the day except for the bread tonight! I'm hoping my willpower will give me at least one perfect eating day coming up!  I have to get it together and be very disciplined if I want to meet my goals!!!!