Week in Review

Eats for the Week:

On Sunday, I went to my Italian grandfather’s house for lunch. Since he considers it a personal insult when I turn down seconds, I was forced to eat course after course of delicious, homemade Italian food – meat manicotti, breaded chicken cutlets, fried potatoes, salad. Life’s so hard!

From Monday to Thursday, I ate really well. All of my meals were homemade, fairly low calorie and very healthy with lots of veggies and lean protein. I avoided processed snacks completely and snacked instead on Greek yogurt and blueberries, carrots and hummus, almonds, mangoes and apples.

By Friday, I was craving a little indulgence so when the time came to meet up with my girlfriends for dinner in Little Italy, I decided to go balls out. For dinner, I had a glass of wine, a piece of bruschetta, half a roll with butter and half of a “mini” thin crust vegetarian pizza. The so-called mini pizza was so large, I could only eat half.

But there’s always room for dessert! Craving something sweet, my friends and I went to a cafe after dinner and split a Belgian waffle with ice cream, hot fudge and whipped cream. I want to say I ate one third of it, but truthfully I probably ate closer to half. It was definitely worth however many hundreds of calories were in it!     

Exercise for the Week:

I kicked off the week with the most gruelling workout at my gym, a sixty minute boot camp style workout with lots of plyometrics and weight bearing exercises.  This is the most challenging workout I do and I always feel really fit after I’ve completed it (although not so much while I’m in the middle of it, struggling to keep up with women who are at least twice my age).

On Monday, I did an hour of step aerobics (kind of cheesy, I know, but it’s a lot of fun) followed by an hour of yoga. On Tuesday, I did RPM, an interval training based spin class designed by Les Mills. I hadn’t been for two weeks and had to re-acquaint by butt with the bike seat, which is never fun.

Wednesday and Friday, I did Body Pump, a sixty minute cardio strength workout using a weighted body bar. I’ve been doing this class once a week for the past year and my hamstrings, butt and thighs still hurt every time I do it. I’m trying to incorporate more strength training into my workout routine so I threw in an extra Body Pump class this week instead of the cardio class I usually do on Fridays.

Today, I’m planning to do thirty minutes of step aerobics followed by thirty minutes of strength training. Gotta burn off that Belgian waffle!