Where I’ve Been Wednesday

Hi everyone! See? I haven’t disappeared off the face of the Earth. Today is the last day of the summer semester. I have 3 hours of exams, 3 hours of work, and 1 hour of Zumba. Imagine that amount of work plus more every day for the past two weeks and hopefully you’ll understand my lack of postage. Although I am beyond fortunate that the amazing Amanda was gracious enough to write a guest post for me. Did you read it yet? Go, comment, follow her on Twitter, read her blog!

Anyway, moving on. I haven’t really been taking pictures of my eats either. I think that they have been fairly monotonous, but then again, most people don’t try out a new recipe every day for their entire lives. However, there is one recipe that I tried recently and loved my second result much more than the first (once I knew what I was dealing with).

Chocolate-Chip Cookie Dough SkinnyTop inspired by Chef Katelyn.

Yeah, it was pretty much the bomb dot com AND loaded with protein. I’ve really been trying to focus on my protein intake lately since I’ve been trying to up my strengths workouts. My Ripped in 30 DVD is seriously my favorite play thing right now. I have seen considerable strength and muscle gains, especially in my arms, which I’ve never had before. I’m going to try and improve my upper-body strength even more and try and focus more on my core muscles as well. I used to do core work every day and sort of fell out of the habit once I started straining for my half (only 32 days away now!).

Post-workout Vanilla Sunwarrior Protein Shake in a freebie water bottle.

I think that once school starts, my half is ran, and I’ve paid off my credit card that I’m going to get The New Rules of Lifting for Women. I’ve heard great things about it and have really fallen in love with my strength workouts and think that it would be a great addition to my library and help immensely when I have access to a real gym again in the fall.

But, some things have definitely been staying the same around here. Case in point: Green Monster Smoothies galore!

Green Monster Montage.

In other news, yesterday marked the first real day of my internship at College Lifestyles as a Health/Fitness Writer Intern. AH! I’m still in such awe that I was selected as one of their fall interns and that I actually get to write about what I’m passionate about! I get to write one article every week and I’ll be sure to post the links to my articles on here and on my Twitter account (Facebook as well for those of you I’m friends with).

Any ideas for articles you would like me to write about? Anything Health/Food/Fitness related is fair game, and if it relates to college life, all the better! Any health/fitness questions you want answered?

Strawberry Shortcake Pancakes; with strawberry preserves and oats in the batter.

I’ve been thinking more and more. And I think that, after my half marathon, I’m going to be signing up for the real thing. A full marathon! More news to come on that one, but all I’m going to say for now is that the one that I have my eye on as my first is local (in Michigan) and in April, giving plenty of time for training. I’m almost 100% certain that I’ll be signing up. I know, I know. I said that I would probably never run one, but now I really want to be able to say that I’ve run a marathon. And I think that I can actually do it and finish!

Chocolate Covered Katie's Frozen Hot Chocolate/Chocolate "Ice-Cream".

Another new recipe that I tested out recently, because I finally bought an ice-cube tray. I’ve tried both the Frozen Hot Chocolate and the Cake Batter Ice Cream flavors. Both are excellent, but if I had to choose I would say that I liked the Cake Batter one better.

Welp, I guess that that’s it for now! I can’t wait until tomorrow is over and I get to release a sigh of relief that the semester is finally over. However, then I get to start packing, finish buying books/school supplies, and all the other fun stuff that comes with the end of summer. Can you believe that August is already more than halfway over!? It hit me this morning and it just seemed so crazy to me.

Later, loves!

What I <3 Wednesday

Happy What I… Wednesday everyone! Shout out to Jenn. Hollah!

Here are a few my eats since I last posted on Saturday…

Thanks again for all of your kind words on my last post. The adjustment has been a bit difficult for me, but the other cats seem to be coping fine.

I don’t know how my mom is handling it, since she doesn’t let herself get emotional in front of me, but even though Chi-Chi annoyed the hell out of her (he had a bit of a throwing-up problem), she did spend more time with him these past 2 years since I couldn’t bring the cats with me to the dorms or to the apartment.

I had an exam on Monday in my Management class, so I couldn’t just sit around and mope all day Sunday, though I did continue mourning for a bit.

Chocolate Walnut Brownie Pancakes.

Couple that with work being really stressful right now and it’s helping me deal with the situation a bit. The entire office is getting re-carpeted and so I had to pack up our office. Add in that the director (my boss) is leaving her position in, I think, 8 weeks and I’m kind of freaking out a bit. A lot of pressure is being put on me to pull the office through the transition and I don’t have nearly the amount of experience needed to do it. I don’t even know if they’ve found a replacement yet.

2 weeks left in the summer semester, I have a good amount of my new schoolbooks purchased but quite a few essential ones are still unavailable since they are course packs exclusive to the university rather than a textbook that I can buy off the internet.

I have a lot of stuff planned for the next 2 weeks, some of which involves my 40 in 400 list that I’m slowly chipping away at. I just need to make it through August 17th and then I can breathe for a few days before a whole new set of worries takes over. Thank goodness I still have my running and workouts to keep me sane. They will most definitely be scheduled into my normal day when school starts up again. I need them; no doubt about it.

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What are you doing with these last few weeks of summer?

Do you feel about your runs/workouts the way that I do?

WIAW Numbah 10

Okay, after looking at all of the What I Ate Wednesday posts everywhere I just couldn’t resist posting my own even though I hadn’t planned on doing so. So, as a consequence, this is more of a “What Has Happened Since Friday” post. Oh well!

Protein cereal! PB&C Puffins and Kashi GoLean with SunWarrior and almond milk.

Saturday morning, I saw my mom off. She’s spending the week in North Carolina with my half-sister and one of our family friends (my half-sister’s mother). Yeah, I know, we have a weird family. My mom is friends with my dad’s first wife and so am I. But we all love each other!

6-mile medium-length run from Sunday.

That night, the boyfrand and I went out to a party for one of his friends that spent the last semester in Australia and is finally back in the States. I had a really nice time, even if there wasn’t any beer pong (love!). Although there were plenty of card and dice games 😉 .

Me and my love in our "going out" outfits. And, yes, there are zebras all over my dress.

Even though we didn’t get back until early in the morning, my body still wanted to get up at 7:30 apparently. I didn’t feel bad or tired or anything, so I decided to still go for my scheduled run, which didn’t go too badly as you can see from the table above! I just made sure that I kept well hydrated is all.

Green Monster; topped with Fiber One Honey Squares, chia seeds, raisins, and strawberry-banana puff cereal.

Most of the rest of the day, unfortunately, was spent in the fetal position. My IBS acted up near the end of the day and the tiredness kicked in as well. The boyfrand and I ordered Chinese take-out from my favorite place and we watched a few episodes of Big Band Theory. Okay, he watched. I sort of dozed off and tried to get my intestine to cooperate.

Tuesday's 4.5-mile short-run. Speedy!

Monday was back to the normal week. Class, work, and yoga class. This session’s classes are already 2/3 of the way done! I can’t believe it, and I’ve actually quite enjoyed this session’s classes too. I can’t believe that next week marks the end of July and, thus, the beginning of August. I even paid the first month’s rent at my new apartment today! It makes the end of summer seem like it’s coming up so fast.

Overnight Oats in a Jar; who knows what all was put in there. I like to make mine a day or two ahead of time instead of just the night before so I usually forget. P.S. this is my favorite unflavored nut butter ^^^

Tuesday was uneventful since I don’t have class or work, although I did run and that went pretty well I think. The new shoes are still holding up quite nicely and I think they’ll be perfect for my half. Only 53 more days! Then today I had class and work again. I usually have Zumba on Wednesdays, but since mom’s gone this week I decided not to go and instead opted for Jillian Michael’s Ripped in 30 DVD Levels 2 AND 4 back-to-back. I did Level 2 fairly easily, but Level 4 is still whooping my butt. Hello boob sweat. TMI? Nah!

Body by Jillian? Proof you don't need a rack of weights to build muscles.

Not really sure what the rest of the evening has in store, but I have an online exam tomorrow, a few hours of work, and maybe going to start studying for my Monday exam or read for class. It’ll be an active rest day (only biking to get to/from work) and then Friday I’m going to be attempting yet another PDR: my first ever 12-miler. I want to get two in before my race, so I figure do one now, another a month or so from now, and then taper until my race on the 18th of September. It sounds good in my head at least. I’ve really enjoyed following my “Non-plan” training plan. Next time will probably be a lot different, though, since I’ll be trying to improve on speed rather than focusing solely on completeness.

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I’m still looking for guest posts! Email me, shoot me a tweet or a DM, whatever!

Do you like following a set training plan or just going with the flow?

What’s the best thing that you’ve eaten lately?