Writing, Eating, Exercising

by Sal 

Weekend is here! This will be a lovely, relaxing weekend. I have absolutely no plans of doing anything except for:

Writing

I'm participating in this year's NaNoWriMo. I've been failing so far. I won't meet the goal of writing 50,000 words. Okay, I've probably written more than 50,000 words this month, but most of them don't count for my WriMo-project. Read more about me failing at NaNoWriMo in my writing blog.

I hope to get a little more writing done this weekend.

Eating Healthy

Eating healthy and keeping my calory intake below 1,400 is really hard. I usually manage to stay below the 1,600 calory mark. Small success!

Today, I made exactly two bad choices: 

The first one was picking that lovely garlic dressing for my salad at lunch. Unfortunately, I didn't read the label before I bought it. If I had, I would have picked a low-fat dressing. 

The sevond bad choice was eating that caramel yoghurt. I love caramel and the yoghurt was delicious, but it had lots of calories and left me craving for more.

What else did I have today? One slice of whole-wheat bread with curd cheese, four oat cookies (in other words: boring cookies), a mixed salad, lots of oatmeal gruel with cinnamon, two cups of tea, cappucino, water...

I plan on doing another soup day on Saturday or Sunday. My first soup day ion Monday wnt really well and made me lose 700 g (approx. 1 pound).

Exercising

I went jogging twice this week. Hopefully I'll be able to motivate myself to go running a third time on Saturday or Sunday. I'm also thinking about maybe going to the local health club... Undecided about that.

I will have to force myself to do some sets of push-ups this weekend. Remember: I only manage three in a row.

Reading

So many books and magazines I haven't found the time to read yet. What's better than sipping hot tea and reading a good book?

Knitting

I started knitting a scarf yesterday. I might be able to finish it this weekend.

What are your plans for the weekend?

P.S.: Add me on Facebook. I'd love to connect.

My First Run In Ages

by Sal ("A Quest For Health & Fitness") 

I did it! I put my new running gear on and went running! I jogged for exactly 13 minutes. My pace was slow at best, but still: I managed to get out into the cold and move.

I took the dog for company. She seemed to sense that something different was going on. She started running as soon as I said, "Let's go, Flo!".

Both of us took it slowly. No need to exhaust ourselves and feel miserable about it. 

Whenever Flo stopped to sniff or do her business, I tried to jog in place. After a while, my outer calves started hurting a little but the pain ceased as soon as I stretched my legs after running.

Not only did I run today, I also made better food choices than usual. I had noodle soup for lunch and mushroom soup for dinner. I drank lots of tea ( with a little sugar, I admit it). 

And then I made myself some kind of "wellness drink": put 1 cup of frozen strawberries, 1 cup of low-fat yoghurt, 1/2 cup skim milk, and 1 tbs sugar in a blender, then mix until you get something that looks like a shake & enjoy. There're probably similar recipes out there, just ask Uncle Google. ;)

Did you exercise today? Do you hate exercising in cold weather, too?