P90X and Me

8:40 AM AirplaneFoodCritic 3 Comments


We have pulled in nearly 90% of our expected grape tonnage at this point. I am exhausted. I have not had time to blog, obviously. Not that there are people hanging on my every blog but I like to keep consistent. All my plans for being healthy for harvest flew right out the window. I have actually gained 5 pounds.

The bf has started P90X. It has been just over a week. I have been doing the diet and exercise with him and have gained three of the five pounds in the last week that I have been working out. If you know me then you know that I am not a good worker outer. I believe that losing weight can be done by changing your diet. I do try to get little bits of exercise into my daily routine but I rarely spend an hour doing cardio.

P90X!!!!!!

The P90X diet is extreme, as the name eludes. It is based on a very high protein regimen and bolstered with some fruits and veggies. I have done the push ups, the pull ups, the curls, the squats, the lunges, the yoga and the cardio and all I have felt from it is sore muscles. Some say sore muscles is a "good" kind of pain. I say, what the??? There is no GOOD pain!! But I am going to keep with the workouts because it has to be good for me somehow. What blows about working out to a video is that there is no instructor there to tell you that you are doing it wrong. I must have been doing something wrong because last weekend my back went out.

There I was in the bra department of Macy's bending down to examine the bottom rack and 'whoops' my back gave out. My wonderful mother had to carry me, my bags and my purse to the car where she rushed me to her house. My dad gave me some muscle relaxers and I tried to wait it out. Of course, I had a late night concert to go to which became a comedy as I tried to rock out while leaning on the stage and flopping my relaxed muscled arms around. It was a fantastic show by the way.
Kele of Bloc Party


This week I need to really be careful not to further injure my back while doing the exercises so now I have to tone it down. But hey, working out is working out, right? As far as me gaining three pounds in a week, I chalk that up to the crazy protein diet. I am not working out like Mr. P90X man on the tv screen so I don't think that protein is going to my extreme muscles. More likely, it is turning to carbs and sugar as I try to fit all that food into my body then fall asleep because I am so tired from working 14 hours a day, 6 days a week.
PROTEIN!!!!

So now I am going to go back to my own diet. I am not on P90X to make muscles anyways. I know that the more muscle you have, the higher you metabolism is but if you calculate the ratio of time spent working out to just eating less I think you will find it evens out.
Simple, healthy diet

My diet is the usual: Whole grains, lean protein, tons of fruits and vegetables. My protein will be the real stuff too. What the heck is that powdered stuff anyways? Looks unnatural to me. I will be eating every three or four hours which adds up to about 5 times a day. I can not avoid the burritos I get for free from work on the weekends. So be it. I will still work out but I am going to have to tone it way down to save my back and my sanity.

Let's hope I can undo what the P90X has done to me in the last week.

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First Week of Harvest 2010

7:52 AM AirplaneFoodCritic 0 Comments



As the title says, today marks the first completed week of Harvest for me. This year has been pretty crazy. This year in California has been what they call a La Nina year. A summer in a La Nina year is really mild or even cold. This kind of year always follows a year that is called El Nino. An El Nino year has extremely wet and rainy winter. The combination of these two years caused this harvest to act a little funny. Not to get all scientific on you, what has happened is the grapes developed late and now, all of the sudden, they are all ready to be picked at the same time.

The most grapes we have pulled in in a day is 225 tons. This week we have pulled in over 200 tons EVERY DAY! What does that mean? It means long, hard hours at work. It means I am not blogging as much and I am certainly not eating healthy. I am trying. It is on my mind - sometimes. But I don't know when I am going to have time to eat. I don't have time to cook. I don't have time to sleep. I don't even have time to drink my 2 liters of water, let alone go pee as often as I would have to if I did. (I also don't have time to write this blog, but shhhh).

I may not have mentioned this, but I was very recently promoted to Manager. This has had an impact on the amount I am working as well. I have much more responsibility which keeps me at work much longer than I normally would. It also means more meetings. All this is fantastic. I am thrilled. But there is absolutely no room for a weight loss plan. That is, none that I have fabricated before.

My company is the best company to work for. They know we are all working hard and they know we need fuel so they provide us with food. That food is in the form of all you can eat pizzas on one day, all you can eat Mexican food on another day and super burritos on yet another. They also provide us with cheese, chocolate and tons of cakes. I think half the company must have birthdays in August and September or something. To make matters worse (if you even consider all this a bad thing) is that on my one day off a week, we are still hosting pizza and bad movie parties at our house. There are days when I am eating pizza for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
This must stop! What do I do??? I need to pause and regroup. That is the purpose of today's blog: to take a minute to try to organize a plan. It is 21 days to the beginning of Fall, 36 days to my birthday, 59 days to Halloween and 78 days until I go to Hawaii. I need rules and I need to stick to them. The rules must be reasonable or I will not follow them so here is my attempt.

Rule 1: Drink as close to two liters of water a day as possible
This is free and the easiest thing I can do if I am committed. I am going to keep a 500 mL cup on my desk and drink four of them in a day.

Rule 2: Eat a large breakfast
Even though I don't have time to cook in the morning I bought a giant box of instant oatmeal packets that come in five different flavors to keep me from getting bored. The highest calorie packet is the chocolate chip one that is 170 calories but it also has 3g of protein and 5g of fiber. I also will try to eat left over dinners for breakfast.

Rule 3: Eat as much fruits and veggies as possible.
I already use the Vita Mix to make smoothies at night to enjoy at breakfast. I use great fruits like Acai berries, Goji berries, Blueberries, Strawberries, Raspberries and whatever else I have laying around the house. I buy large, frozen, unsweetened bags of these fruits so they never go bad and are always on hand to make a cold smoothie. I buy unsweetened cherries in a can to save me the time of taking the pits out. (you can buy Acai juice and Goji berries in the freezer section of Whole Foods). Additionally, I find it very easy to grab random fruits and veggies I have from my delivery box to bring for lunch. I keep some olive oil at work to add flavor.

Rule 4: Eat less pizza.
I am going to eat the pizza. It is free and it is delicious. What I need to do is decrease the amount I eat. How to do this? I am not sure yet. Perhaps by making sure I am not hungry before I get my pizza. Or by only grabbing two slices, not eating the crust and deffo not loading ranch onto it. I think a combination of the above will help.

Rule 5: Eat a light dinner.
This will the the most difficult of all. Normally I would also say to eat early but I do not have that option because I get home at 8pm, a half hour before I need to go to bed, anyways. So the next best solution would be to eat light. This will be hard for me because the bf wants a big meal and he is the chef at the moment. To help with this I will treat it similar to the pizza problem. I will make sure I am not starving before I get home, perhaps by eating an apple during my drive home or just before I leave work.

Rule 6: Get sleep.
I will try my best to get 7.5 hours of sleep a night. Even if it means I am just laying in bed, not ready to be there.

Most of this stuff I can do at work because most of my time will be spent at work. What I will do is make reminder notes and put them where I can see them. On my desk I will have a note that tracks my water intake and my meals. I will also have a reminder to eat less pizza. Let's hope this works because I have not budged on my weight for the past two weeks.

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