Sushi and Racquetball

I think two of my favorite healthy things in life are sushi and racquetball. Playing with Cindy this weekend reminded me of how much I love the sport, so I'm actually gearing up to go to bed early so that I can get court time early in the morning before work. I would never be so motivated to get up early just to use the treadmill. I know I am asking for trouble by working out so hard before work, but it'll be worth it. The only thing I hate about racquetball is the glass wall where people can stand and stare. I try to use the gawkers as motivators to force me to play better. If I don't think of them that way, I get self conscious and start to think I don't deserve time on the court because I'm not a good player. That's no way to think, though. After all, no one starts out playing great; we all have to start somewhere.

Today I ate pretty decently. I had an Egg Beater omelette with salsa, an ounce of feta and some avocado slices. For lunch I was at a work event where they served a fattening buffet, but I chose a salad, about 2 oz of grilled chicken, and fruit salad. I did eat one bite of a fudge brownie though. Boy was it delicious, and a bite was enough. Since my lunch was pretty small, I ate the bean soup I'd brought. For dinner I had 4 oz. of broiled salmon, a baked sweet potato, and some more avocado. I am actually within all the calorie, carb, protein and fat recommendations for SparkPeople, miracle of miracles.

Oh, the Pain....

I am really suffering from Saturday's racquetball session with my friend Cindy. My serving arm is killing me, my neck hurts, my legs hurt... but it's a good hurt! The hurt of doing well in the gym. After eating indulgently on Friday and Saturday, I am back to health today. Cindy made the healthy breakfast pictured here: a spinach and mushroom omelet with a little cheddar cheese on top (in honor of my love of cheese!), some tomato slices and strawberries.

Rather than driving straight to the house when I left Cindy's this morning I stopped at the gym and put my time in on the treadmill. As usual I didn't put much thought into my warm-up, but I noticed that it took longer for the front of my ankles to start hurting, and they didn't hurt as intensely or for as long as they have in the past. I started the workout at about 2.7 mph and quickly went up to 3.0. It seems my heart rate has improved so that working out at 3.0 is well within the 117 to 144 heart rate range I'm supposed to stay at for "fat burning." I did push it to 3.1 and 3.2 mph a couple of times because I am trying to work myself up to 3.5 mph.

Cindy is trying to get me out of my self-consciousness about my appearance, so she's been giving me her clothes as she loses weight. So far she's given me a swimsuit, a pair of swim trunks and a sleeveless gym shirt. I avoided the pool this weekend but I did wear the sleeveless shirt. I hated the look but she said I looked fine. I guess that's what friends are for, huh?

As I sit here I am really sore in my upper right arm and my neck, but yesterday's racquetball session was totally worth it. I am always up for a game of racquetball. I could be in a full leg cast and I would be happy to lean against the wall in the court and hit a few balls! Between racquetball and the treadmill I should be getting fit and losing weight pretty steadily. I hope to get back to my former racquetball form so that my friend won't kick my butt so badly again!

Cindy sent me home not only with clothes but with food- she's such a caretaker. So I've got frozen turkey burgers (I totally threw out the vegetarian thing this weekend!), some swordfish, haddock and cod to try this week. She's been very helpful to me despite the fact that we are competing for who loses the most weight this month. :-) I weighed myself at her place after breakfast and found I was up several pounds. I'll have to weigh tomorrow morning for a more accurate picture, but I do expect to have gained. I'm not upset! I had too much fun and too good a workout today to worry about a few pounds this week.

Fun at the Gym

I spent the weekend with my friend Cindy so I've backdated this blog to Saturday's date. Although I had a cheat day on Friday, Saturday was also a cheat day. We went to a buffet and thoroughly enjoyed a variety of seafood, including lobster, oysters, muscles and shrimp. I had about three rolls (on which I put a little butter), a piece of fried chicken, and a spoonful of each of a variety of foods such as pasta salad, cranberry sauce, turkey stuffing and scalloped potatoes. You know how a buffet is- a little bit of this, a little bit of that! For dessert(s) I had a bite of German chocolate cake, some frozen yogurt, bread pudding and tapioca pudding. WHEW what a time!! I tried to put everything in to SparkPeople but I'm sure I've forgotten or mis-estimated some items, and I had to make some substitutions to make up for what they lacked. SparkPeople tallies my day's total as less than 2,700 calories, including the lunch I ate at home that morning. I probably had a few hundred calories more than that, but I'm not going to drive myself crazy trying to figure it out.

Earlier that day we played racquetball for about 40 minutes, so we got our heart rates up and burned a good amount of calories. I was really worn out after that workout. Even though I chose the "casual racquetball" choice on SparkPeople it says I burned over 400 calories. That's good because it makes up for the skipped workout on Thursday.