A Life Of Gymspiration

I don't know about you guys but I loooove sloppy joes. I did as a child, and as funny as it is I never think to make them.... until they're served at work and then it takes all my willpower to not eat them. A while back I bought this cookbook ( The Biggest Loser Cookbook) which I absolutely LOVE and recommend it to everyone! It has a very healthy version in it. And it's quite delicious as well, so here we go! :) SEXY JOES 1 lb. extra-lean ground chicken (I actually use 99% fat free ground turkey. Ground chicken is very hard to find, though you can ask any butcher to grind chicken breasts for you. I'm just shy and anti social haha) 1 Tbsp. White Vinegar 2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce 1 1/2 tsp. honey 1/2 tsp. hot pepper sauce (I used regular Tabasco) 2/3 C. chopped yellow onion 1/3 C. chopped green bell pepper 3/4 C. low-sodium tomato sauce 3/4 C. Chili Sauce 1/4 tsp. chili powder 4 whole-grain or whole-wheat hamburger buns (I actually use sandwich things- fewer ...

I have 20 minutes before I need to be in bed (and have not had a free minute since I woke up at 5 this morning. geez!) so hopefully this goes fast. :) We'll start with food. Breakfast Muscle Milk Light Cake Batter  Now I'd been doing 2 scoops but I noticed that I would get so busy once I got to work that I would forget to drink it and then I'd end up throwing half of it out anyway. So today I only did one scoop with 3/4 C. milk. Cut the calories in half, but of course i was hungry (as I always am lol)  1 piece of cinnamon sugar toast that my dear friend Kelly made (she makes it the best!) Lunch 1 serving Linguine Alfredo. Yum! 1 Yoplait light strawberry (only 90 calories AND King Soopers is having a sale 20/$10.00 hooray!) 1 Sargento light string cheese (I think around 100 calories) Snack 1 Strawberry Nutrigrain bar and some plain granola :)  Dinner 1 serving homemade chicken noodle soup (I'll post the recipe later this week if I ever get some free time!)...

First and foremost I will post this recipe I made tonight. It will be my lunch at work this week. I haven't made it in a long time and I am quite excited to eat it!  LINGUINE ALFREDO 1 Tbsp Butter 2 Garlic Cloves, Minced 1 Tbsp All-Purpose Flour 1 C. Fat-Free Milk 1/4 C. Fat-Free Cream Cheese 1/4 C. Grated Asiago or Parmesan Cheese 1 C. Broccoli Florets 1 Medium Red Bell Pepper, seeded and cut into 1-inch pieces 1 Carrot, thinly sliced 4 C. Hot cooked Linguine 1. In a medium nonstick saucepan over medium-low heat, melt the butter. Saute the garlic until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Whisk in the flour, then gradually whisk in the milk; cook, stirring constantly until slightly thickened, about 2 minutes. Whisk in the cream cheese and Asiago; cook, stirring until smooth, 1-2 minutes. Remove from the heat and cover to keep warm.  2. Meanwhile, place the broccoli, bell pepper and carrot in a steamer basket; set in a saucepan over 1 inch of boiling water. Co...

Alright everyone! I need your input! I want to know what you all are looking for from this blog. Basically what it boils down to is if no one wants to read the daily thing then I'm not going to do it, but if it's helping people I will. Let me know what you want. Love y'all! Jessica

Today was a better day. I didn't set my alarm with the intention of sleeping in. I had plans with a friend at 1 and really hoped I'd wake up in time to get a workout in before that. Flash to me waking up on my own at 8:45. So almost 9 hours- I guess that's decent. :) I hung out around the house for about an hour and then started getting ready to hit the gym. When I woke up I noticed that my arms were pretty sore from yesterday's workout and that made me so happy! :)  CARDIO Treadmill. 35 minutes. I started to do the interval, but a bunch of times I'd either up the speed or just keep running longer than the original minute. It also depended on the song playing at the time. :)  STRENGTH Leg Curl Pretty self explanatory based on the picture. I did 15 reps with the weight set at 79 pounds (#4).  Leg Extension Same as above- 15 reps but 66 pounds (still #4).  Do 3 sets of those. :)  Hip Adductor 15 reps at 100 pounds ...

Yet again I'm writing another "I know I said I'd blog every day and I haven't" entry. This idea seemed a lot easier before I actually started it. I didn't plan on getting sick. And I didn't plan on life happening and being so crazy busy. Or two weeks of Hip Hop being cancelled. :( I miss that class- we'll be back on Tuesday thank goodness. So here's the update.  5K Back in June, I signed up for a 5k 3 days before it happened. My plan was to run part of it, and walk the rest because I just didn't think I could run the whole thing. The night before, I was talking to my friend Nick (a marathon runner) who said he thought I was underestimating myself and really could do it. Well apparently he was right because I ran that whole thing! And even sprinted across the finish line. I was so happy and proud of myself. More 5ks! Back in May, we had an engagement party for my brother and his now wife. (Hooray- sister in law!) Some family friends were th...

Everyone loves shoulders! I actually think I need to rearrange my order of workouts. Starting out with legs is good, but then it means that the next 3 days it's all upper body (chest/back, shoulders, bis/tris) and it's kinda rough. :) At any rate here was the workout CARDIO Yet again I wasn't feeling the cardio. Kinda light headed (I need to get that under control) but knew I had to get it in if I'm going to be ready for this 5k on Saturday. So I jumped on the treadmill. I did an interval training sort of thing.  1:00 incline at 2.0 Speed at 3.5 walking. 5:00 Increase speed to 5.0. Run 6:00 Decrease back to 3.5 walking 10:00 Increase to 5.0. Run.  11:00 Decrease back to 3.5. Walking 14:00 Increase to 5.0 Run.  15:00 Decrease to 3.5. Walk. 17:00 Increase to 5.0. Run.  18:00 Decrease to 3.5. Walk 19:00 Increase to 5.0 Run.  20:00 Decrease to 3.5. Walk 25:00 Increase to 5.7. Run 26:00 Decrease to 3.5 Walk.  30:00 Cool down. Incline goes back t...

It's been so long since I've done an actual post that I didn't even remember what day I was on. We'll call it day 6 and just pretend like there was never a gap! :) Today was kind of a weird day in the sense that I felt like all I did for most of it was run around. I was running late to work this morning (which in Jessica time means I was on time) and that's never a great way to start the day. Today I'll start with food. Breakfast 294 calories Shake like usual. The problem was that I was almost completely out of powder. This didn't come as a surprise to me. I knew that I was low and had intended on getting more at the gym on Monday, but I didn't end up going to the gym on Monday because I went to Estes Park. Oh well. I put what was left in the cup and used the same amount of milk. I don't know how much powder actually made it in there, but it tasted like I was just drinking milk. So I'm pretty sure the calories were under the usual but I don...

Hey Everyone! So I know I said I'd be back yesterday. Things the last couple of days have been kinda weird. I did make it to the gym yesterday for a leg workout and I'll post that in this entry but my eating was kinda weird (cereal for breakfast, didn't have lunch until after 1 and dinner was pretty non existent... followed by the headache of death and feeling nauseous and getting the chills). Luckily today I am feeling better both from that and the sickness I had all last week so I should be back FULL TIME tomorrow! At any rate, here is the leg work out! Started out with cardio on the treadmill. I walked quite a bit of it. With being out of commission for the last week and a half I didn't want to push it and make myself worse. In addition, I had outside sources messing with me and rather than just focusing on myself I found myself trying to go faster than I usually do because I felt like I needed to prove something. So that was dumb. I'm hoping I don't fall ...