Meal Prep...I Mean It!

Sooooo, I just paid to renew my domain name for another year at the end of August and I am being so very horrible about posting here lately.  So very horrible indeed.  And I apologize.  I mean, I have no clue if anyone actually misses my posts or not, but I’d like to think that at least ONE person out there cares what I have to say (besides you, of course, mom…love you!), but it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.  This blog started many years ago as an online journal for me.  In fact, I do believe that if you go back to the very beginning, those journaly blog posts are still there.  I had a lot on my mind and a lot to get off my chest back then.  It was not a pretty time in my life.  But, anyway, I digress.  What’s going on the here and now?  Well let me fill you in!

 

First and foremost, I’ve started meal prepping again!  And this time it’s epic!  I bought these neon green meal prep trays with 3 compartments for 1 main dish and 2 side dishes.  And they are perfection!  I love them.  I bought them off Amazon (like a lot of people have).  I got the pack of 14, so that’s good for 2 weeks of main meals, including my days off from work.  Very important to be consistent!  Anyway…at the beginning of this week, I prepped up 14 meals!  I made a WIDE variety of things.  Let’s see if I can remember everything…

 

For main dishes, I prepped:

• Panko breaded fish sticks w/2 oz tarter sauce

• Baked swai fish w/2 oz peach mango salsa

• Backed lamb steak

• Brisket cooked in the crockpot

• PF Chang honey chicken

(I think that’s all the main dishes)

 

For side dishes, I prepped:

• roasted baby carrots in a garlic butter glaze

• spinach artichoke dip made with Greek yogurt w/baby rainbow carrots

• quinoa w/pinto beans seasoned with cumin

• baked acorn squash w/hatch chile apple pie filling

• orange spiced sweet potatoes

(I think that’s it for the sides)

 

Yesterday, I prepped MORE food!  I made paleo chicken cacciatore in the crockpot and vegan avocado man n “cheese.”  The cheese is in quotations because instead of cheese, the recipe calls for nutritional yeast.  The avocado makes it super creamy.  The nutritional yeast gives it a flavor similar to a sharp, aged cheese.  It’s pretty dang good and I’ll be making that recipe again for sure!  fast forward to tomorrow and it’ll find me making a creamy sundried tomato chicken dish and FIVE POUNDS of potato salad.  Haha.  That’s a lot, but it’s what the recipe says.  I’ll give some away because I won’t be able to eat it all before it turns.  I had only 2 empty meal prep trays, so I froze most of the chicken cacciatore I made and I’ll thaw it out later, probably next month sometime, when I want to use the rest of it up…when I don’t feel like cooking one week for instance.

 

I had to suspend my beloved Studio package class portion of my gym membership.  I just need that $90/mth to help me pay bills right now.  Plus I hadn’t been to a class in over 2 weeks.  So it was just going to waste.  That was unacceptable to me.  So I suspended it for 3 months.  If I haven’t regained my motivation to hit the gym at least 3 times a week by then, then I’ll just go ahead and cancel it altogether.  I really love the classes but yeah, they aren’t super convenient for me right now, so it just made sense to suspend them for a while.  I want to focus on making the gym (and running too!) a regular part of my life again.  I want to do the gym 3 days a week and mix in 2 days of running.  I do have a marathon the first weekend of December that I’d like to finish in enough time to get a finisher’s jacket that’s actually in my size, ya know? 

 

All in all, I think I’m on my way to making a habit of making healthy choices.  As always, it won’t be easy, but it will be worth it.  I’ve got what I want to cook each time I do meal prep all planned out thru November…that’s how excited I am about doing this.  If you have a plan, you’re more likely to succeed.

 

You Only Fail When....

In my last blog post, I told you guys I was going to DNS the South Padre Island Marathon.  I wanted to let you know that while I did think a lot about it before making the decision final, it still pains me that I won’t be running it this year.  But!  There is still hope!  I’ve emailed the admin at the marathon asking if I can defer this year’s registration to next year’s race.  We’ll see.  Fingers crossed…but breath not held.  Also, I do still fully intend to do the San Antonio RNR marathon.  I want just one more “marathon finisher” jacket from the Rock’n’Roll franchise before I call it quits to marathoning (at least temporarily…I’m undecided currently if this is to be just a hiatus or a full on withdrawal from running marathons).  Don’t get discouraged though, I am HOPING to continue with occasional distance running.  I’d like to run another 50K next year…maybe even a 50 miler.  I want to do more on trails.  I want to get away from the pavement.  I want to be in nature, you know?

 

But on the subject of quitting things…I’ve been seeing a lot of motivational stuff lately like this:

Pretty inspiring in my opinion.  It brings to mind my summer goal that I wrote on the wall of the Fit room at the gym: “Don’t give up.”  In fact, I’m doing the OPPOSITE of giving up.  I seem to maybe be getting my mojo back.  The other morning I had an appointment at the doctor’s office for the blood draw that comes prior to my annual physical for work.  I decided that I was going to go for a run afterward.  The entire drive from the doctor’s office to Ladybird Lake I kept saying “I don’t want to run, I don’t want to run, I could turn around and go take a nap before I go to work.”  But that would be giving in and giving up.  Thankfully the runner that’s still there, deep within me steered the car until I found myself parked under the Mopac bridge, so I therefore had no choice but to go for my run!  I decided I would do 4 miles.  They were not fast.  But I didn’t expect them to be.  And I’m so very okay with that.  The run went amazingly well and I only stopped to take pictures of the cute things my watch was telling me.

 

 

 

Then the following day, after work, I went for a night run.  Just 3 miles as I was sore and my legs were tired from the 4 miles the day before.  That one was even slower and yet again, totally okay with that.  The fact that I’m going for runs again makes me so happy!  I’m pretty sore but, like I said, I’m super happy.  Now if I can just keep up running 2-3 times per week, I’ll continue to be happy, plus I should have no problem dropping the 15 pounds I want to drop by mid-November! 

 

Meal prep is still chugging along.  Made pork chops with some pork dry rub that I bought when my friend Heather and I went to Terry Black’s BBQ not too long ago.  They are soooooo good.  I bought a giant package of bone in porkchops at Sam’s Club.  This weekend I’ll be making zucchini taco boats (I’ve made them a few times over the past couple years).  I’ll also bake the acorn squash I bought a while back and then stuff them with the hatch chile apple pie filling!  Oh yeah!  Can’t wait to eat those for sure!