First Time Spinning

Do many of you go spinning? My sister started going a few weeks ago and loves it, so last night Mum and I went to a taster spin session (that you could only go to if you'd never been spinning before) to see what it was like. Monday is also Body Pump day so we ended up going to spin 7-7.45pm and then Body Pump 8-9pm! Body Pump I, as always, loved...spinning I'm still not sure about. The instructor said to give it at least 3 classes before giving up on it, so I am booked in to go tomorrow, eek! All but two of the spinning classes at my gym are at 6pm or earlier, which doesn't suit me as Liam doesn't get home until 6.30pm, so I will be going to tomorrow's class on my own (ie not with Mum or my sister) as they can't do Wednesday and are doing the early Thursday class instead. Must be brave, must be brave. I woke up this morning with a bruised bum (!) so went and bought some padded cycling shorts today, but I need to try them on again tonight - I'm used to wearing 3/4 length capri trousers so feel uber self-conscious in the above-knee lycra shorts!

Anyway, I wasn't really sure what to do about my eating yesterday as I was going to be out the house from 6.30-9.30pm and wanted to make sure I didn't eat to close to the spin class.

I ended up having early lunch with Toby at 11.30am of yorkshire puddings, goats cheese and sweetcorn (slightly weird, but what I fancied!) Toby wasn't overly keen on this meal so I ended up eating most of his two yorkshires with cheese as well, yum, the type of food I used to eat when I was at uni!! :)

I then had "dinner" at 4.30pm. This was a bit repetitive - leftovers from lunch of goats cheese and sweetcorn + houmous that needed eating, in a pitta bread leftover from the weekend! Judging from the poor quality photo I was nonetheless in a hurry to eat this!

I had 5pm as the "deadline" for eating (2 hours before spin) so when that got close and I was still hungry, I had a big spoonful of new-to-me honey peanut butter:

Not as nice as Dark Chocolate Dreams in my opinion, but still tasty!

A couple of hours later, off to the gym I went! The taster spin session was with the lady who teaches the beach body boot camp I go to, and probably wasn't really any reflection of the pain I have let myself in for tomorrow!! It was a 45 minute class, but a lot of that time was spent getting the bikes set up right for us, and explaining what normally happens in a spin class (while just leisurely cycling). It still got me and Mum super sweaty, and as I said earlier, I'm still feeling a little sore today, so we shall see what tomorrow's class brings!!

Whilst I didn't want to eat close before spin, I didn't really have the same reservations about eating before Body Pump as it isn't heavy cardio in the same way. So I'd taken a bar in my bag in case I was hungry between classes. My first time ever trying a Luna bar - thanks Maria for sending me one!

I only ended up eating a few bites of this before Body Pump as everyone started setting up their weights early, but I ate the rest when I got home later. This wasn't at all what I was expecting, it was really good! For some reason I have it in my head that I "don't like protein bars" but I think what I actually mean is "I don't like Clif bars" as every other protein bar I've tried I've really enjoyed!! So thanks Maria, for sending me yummy food, and opening my taste buds to things I might not have tried otherwise! ;)

Back to Body Pump - loved it! It had moved to a smaller room in the sports centre as the instructor had got a new speaker system and wanted to try it in the small room to see if we could all hear him. The class had been held in the huge sports hall previously and no one apart from perhaps the front row had a chance of hearing the instructions! This did mean that last night we were all a bit more tightly packed, which wasn't ideal for triceps or abs, but apart from that it worked fine and meant we could hear much more clearly...including the instructor singing along to the tracks which, whilst causing us to a cringe, did also make us laugh which I suppose is a good thing!!

As I didn't get home until 9.30pm I was too tired to eat much more, so I just had plenty of water and finished off the Luna bar. I made up for it today though with a trip to Costa for breakfast, half of this cake for an afternoon snack (I saved the other half for Izzy, very impressed my willpower lasted until she got back from school!!)...

Rhubarb and strawberry crumble cake from the bakery...delicious! :)

And also a delicious quick dinner - Liam got stuck at work longer than usual so the children and I made the most of being able to have a "non-Liam friendly" dinner - mashed avocado with nutritional yeast on toast with a sprinkling of Munchy seeds...

Yum, so good! Izzy and I loved this, but Toby took one look at the green and turned his nose up, nooo!! ;)

So, padded shorts - yes or no?? And any other tips for surviving my first proper spin class? I tried the shorts on again a minute ago and they cut into my thighs too much for my liking, so I think I will be taking them back. I'm possibly going shopping in Exeter tomorrow though so I will see if I can find any other ones that fit me better. Still not convinced I'll feel comfortable wearing them without capri trousers over the top though...will have to see how confident I'm feeling tomorrow evening!!

WIAW - Gardening and Swimming

Hello! Happy What I Ate Wednesday! :)


Jenn has been doing WIAW for 70 weeks now, wow, that's a lot of food that we've all enjoyed seeing...thanks Jenn!

I've decided to do a double WIAW this week as I couldn't decide between Monday or Tuesday - both great days!

First up, Monday. It started with oats in a jar for the first time in ages! Mashed banana oats in a chocolate chip peanut butter jar...simple but delicious!

As you can see, I like a little bit of porridge with my peanut butter! ;)

After the school run I had a quick coffee to wake me up a bit...

Had to fight Toby for it, but I won!!

...and then spent a couple of hours playing with the boy before he went for a nap about 11.30am. I then had a raspberry iced tea to give me a sugar boost...

...before spending a couple of hours tackling the garden. There's a reason I never normally show photos further than the decking! Before:

After:

Not perfect, but a lot better than it was. The garden is a bit of a nightmare as there is netting under all the gravel, but weeds constantly grow up through it and then are really hard to pull out. Urgh. My legs were shaking after 2 hours so I thought I better stop as I had important plans for my legs later that day!!! ;)

I had a cider ice lolly mid-way through gardening...

And then after gardening I popped some meat-free burgers in the oven whilst I had a shower. I only came back downstairs just as the oven was beeping, so I didn't have time to come up with anything creative to have with the burgers (!) so I just topped them with smoked cheese, ketchup and munchy seeds...

Doing the gardening over lunchtime threw off my timings a bit. I was planning to add more things to my lunch, but then I realised it was already 2.30pm and I needed to have an early dinner on Monday too, not ideal! I ended up just having an orange before the school run...

which was a good thing as on the way home Izzy asked really sweetly "Mummy, why can't we go for ice cream?" and I couldn't resist! Izzy and Toby both had butterscotch ice cream:

but I chose to have a tropical "Yoggie", which inevitably they both preferred!!

This was made of frozen pineapple, kiwi, mango & melon, orange juice and frozen yoghurt...so tasty!

Finally, just before 6pm I had a random snack plate of smoked tofu, smoked cheese, dried pineapple and dried pear...

before getting my exercise gear on and heading out a little while later... The reason my eating was off on Monday is because at 8pm I had a Body Pump class to go to! :-D My eating for the class still wasn't right, but the class itself was brilliant, sooo much better than last week!! :) I am happy to report that my legs have been slightly painful for the last 2 days (yey!), but I haven't had any pain in my arms so I think I need to up my weights for those tracks next week! It might hurt, but I love it!

After Body Pump I came home for my "proper" dinner...Liam and I ended up eating French toast at 10pm!

With banana, chocolate chips, cocoa powder and agave...delicious but more than a little too late to be eating! Next Monday I will have to make sure to be organised enough to eat lunch early and then proper dinner early too.

Moving on to yesterday, I started the day with a smoothie for me and the children. I am trying to eat up as much food in the cupboard so this had frozen mango, tinned pineapple (incl the juice), milk and coconut...

This was delicious, and made loads, so I put the rest in the fridge to drink throughout the day...

After the school run, Toby and I went straight down to the pool before I chickened out to go swimming. Toby is not the biggest fan of swimming (understatement) so we don't take him as often as we should at the weekends - he usually lasts about 15 minutes in the pool, whinging the whole time, which tends to ruin the experience for Izzy. So I have decided to take him during the week instead. It doesn't cost anything as swimming is included in my gym membership and Toby is under 3, so it doesn't matter hugely if he doesn't last long. I hadn't even imagined it would be as bad as not getting in the pool at all though! He had me worried at the beginning - I managed to get him changed, but then he crouched in the corner of the changing room refusing to move!!! I eventually persuaded him to at least come see the pool, and after sitting on the edge for a while, he eventually, thanks to some pool toys, decided to come in the water. Once he was in he loved it! It helped that the water seemed warmer than it usually is, but we ended up staying in for 45 minutes which is definitely a record for him! At first we stuck near the edge, but by the end we were in the middle of the pool with Toby splashing about. Yey! Between Body Pump on Monday night, and then swimming Tuesday morning, I had the biggest grin on my face for most of Tuesday!! :-D

Success!

After swimming, we headed home for lunch of raw carrots, houmous and more smoothie...

And for dinner I made a delicious stir fry with sesame tofu, pak choi and spring onions straight from the veg box, noodles, soy sauce and agave nectar:

This was a perfect dinner. Simple, quick to cook, fresh ingredients, and really tasty too! I'm sure I must've eaten other snacks yesterday, but my camera isn't showing them so no idea what!

What are your favourite "chores" to do outside? & what is your favourite type of exercise? I have so many housework chores that I should be doing ahead of the house move, but with the weather being so gorgeous I just want to be outside! Gardening was a good one, but today I have been mostly stuck inside sorting paperwork, boo! I did take the children outside to meet friends for a couple of hours after school this afternoon though, which was lovely, and not too hot by 4-5pm so ideal for the children to have a good run around.
As for exercise, body pump/weights all the way! My sister finds it really funny (& good!) that I say I love Body Pump, but as I pointed out to her, that is the only exercise I can really say that about - cardio, not so much! I quite like swimming, but if I could just do weights and never bother with cardio, except for walking everywhere that is, I would be much happier!

First Time At Body Pump...

Morning all! I'm feeling really energised this morning! I went to Body Pump yesterday evening for the first time, and my body must have needed extra recovery time as I slept until 10am this morning!! That's unheard of for me - Liam and I take it in turns to give each other lie-ins at the weekend, but even on my lie-in day I normally only sleep until 8.30am latest! I'm glad I did get extra sleep though - my body is feeling pretty sore this morning!! :-D

Let's go back to yesterday though. I had a pre-exercise snack a few hours before Body Pump of a couple of slices of malt loaf with peanut butter and strawberries:

This was really tasty. I normally just eat malt loaf with butter, but I liked the new topping!

Then at 6.30pm my sister, her boyfriend and I headed off to Body Pump. I was looking forward to it, but didn't know what to expect. The instructor didn't arrive until just before the class started but luckily there were other people there who helped us set up.

I can't remember what weights I used for everything, but my warm-up weight was 2.5kg on each side, and I went down as light as 2kg on each side for shoulders (as I'd twinged my left shoulder at the end of the previous track so didn't want to do more damage - glad I did this anyway as I was getting tired by then!!) and up to 4.5kg on each side on one of the tracks - one of the legs tracks I assume. I saw someone had a little notebook to write down the details - I wish I'd done that as it'd be interesting to see how I improve - by the time we got back in the car my mind had gone blank!!

I really enjoyed Body Pump - my whole body was like jelly by the end but I kind of liked that - shows I've actually worked my muscles for once!! There's no way I'd have worked on weights for that long in the gym on my own so it was really good to focus on a different aspect of fitness - and I definitely needed the instructor to tell us there was only 4 more reps left to keep me going by the end of most some of the tracks!! This morning I feel stiff and achey - particularly my thighs and upper arms - but I can walk which is a relief - I was a bit worried as I was so sore last night and thought I'd stiffen up even more whilst I was sleeping!

When I got home from Body Pump I had an easy dinner of half a pack of fresh pasta (pumpkin and pine nut stuffed fiorelli from Waitrose) with salad.

I wanted some kind of sauce but couldn't think of what to put on it (and was too hungry to take time to make anything!) so I just added some ketchup and grated cheese after these photos. Slightly boring way to finish it off perhaps, but it still tasted really good.

I hadn't been planning to eat anything else as I ate dinner really late for me, but after I'd finished the pasta I fancied something sweet. An evening snack plate it was. This was Urban Fresh dried pineapple, almonds and a couple of squares of Lindt dark mint chocolate:

The dried pineapple was my favourite part of this plate. I sometimes find dried pineapple to be too dried and chewy, but this Urban Fresh version is the best I've ever tasted. Really soft and, well, fresh tasting. Yum! I just wish I could get it more easily than going to "big" Tesco half an hour away...think I might have to do an online order sometime soon!!

After my lovely night's sleep, I woke up this morning fancying a smoothie. When Liam went to Waitrose on Thursday evening he'd got a bit confused by my shopping list ("2 bags of salad, preferably not spinach" = 2 bags of salad + a bag of spinach?!!) so I had a green smoothie for the first time in ages. Well, kind of - adding spinach makes the smoothie lose it's pretty colour, and this one didn't even go green - just a kind of sludgy colour!

This was half a banana, a couple of large handfuls of spinach, frozen strawberries, milk and a tiny bit of agave nectar. I'd never had frozen strawberries before (another Tesco purchase that we can't get in our little town!) and was really pleased with how strong their flavour was. I was expecting to have to add a lot more sweetener than I did, but the strawberry flavour really shone through.

This smoothie made 2 big glasses, but I only got to drink 1.5 of them as the children took a liking to it! Izzy had a few mouthfuls but then Toby decided the rest was for him...!

After he'd finished it all, he tried to "cook" it in his toy oven, haha, he wasn't too impressed that it didn't produce more smoothie!!

Bless him, he's still at the age where the colour of something doesn't put him off. So long as it tastes good, he's more than happy to eat/drink it!!

Right, that's all from me for now - typing this is making my left arm ache worse!! Liam thinks I need to "man up" but he's never tried Body Pump...I'm hoping it's not just me that aches this bad!!

Have you ever done Body Pump? Were you quite stiff & sore after your first time? Does your body get quicker at recovering if you go regularly?!! I'm definitely glad I went to Body Pump on a Friday evening - I don't think I'd have been ready to do the whole getting the children ready & school run this morning!!

Snack Plates + Exciting Exercise

I have been loving snack plates recently. They seem to be keeping my afternoon munchies under control. Whilst I am obviously still snacking, at least I'm deciding in advance what to eat rather than just eating anything and everything in sight! I had one on Thursday but mentioned it could have done with some nice chocolate, so on Friday I stocked up!

The Galaxy cookie crumble was for Liam to keep him sweet, the rest for me! :-D

I've only opened the mint and the sea salt so far but they have been featuring in my snack plates quite a lot. I'm impressed with myself though - I've managed to stick to eating two squares at a time (admittedly sometimes more than once a day) which is a huge improvement for me. I always worry when buying chocolate that I'll eat it all immediately!

A couple of snack plates that I've managed to capture on camera...

Lindt mint chocolate, brazil nuts, dried strawberries and blueberries.

Lindt sea salt, apple and a sauce made up of peanut flour, cinnamon, agave & milk.

I loved the peanut sauce with today's plate. I keep seeing Courtney eating honey cinnamon peanut butter and this was pretty much the same thing. So tasty and, as I have a big bag of peanut flour in the cupboard anyway, it's much cheaper than buying lots of different jars of flavoured nut butters!

I haven't actually taken many photos of my eating today. The children and I had a chilled out morning at home. They watched Anastasia DVD and I did the annoying thing of taking photos of them...they looked so cute!! ;)

Toby likes to go behind the sofa & lean over the back rather than sitting on it!

Then this afternoon we went out for ice cream (I had a latte, but also some of Toby's lemon meringue ice cream, yum!) before Izzy's swimming lesson. I hadn't been planning to take her as it's half term and I wanted a break, but I persuaded myself to make the effort and I'm so glad I did. Only Izzy and 2 other children turned up so the teacher was able to pay more attention to each child, and Izzy got moved up to the next stage :-) I've thought that she's been ready for a few weeks, but the teacher had to go through a checklist before she could move up, so I guess there was more time for that today. It does mean a later lesson though - we won't get home until 6.15pm on swimming days now! Part of them growing up...I'm only just getting used to after-school activities so I'll just have to re-organise our after-school routine a bit.

Once we got home, I made pasta bake for the others but didn't eat any myself...as I was going to the gym! Haha, first time in ages. I'd actually been thinking of cancelling my membership but now I'm going to give it another month to see how often I go. Tonight I went with my sister, Sarah, which was good motivation - now she's moved back to our town I'm hoping that I might start exercising more often again...she's a good influence! And - the exciting exercise mentioned in the title - Sarah mentioned that she and her boyfriend were planning to go to Body Pump on Friday so I'm going to tag along! After reading about lots of you going to Body Pump I've really wanted to go, but our local gym doesn't do the class. I can't don't drive so I haven't been able to try it out, but as my sister and her boyfriend are going I'm going to go with them. Excited! :-) Some weeks Sarah & I are going to try out Boxercise on a Thursday instead - it will be good to try out some interesting classes and hopefully find things I really enjoy so that exercise becomes something I don't always have to force myself to do.

Have you ever done Body Pump? What should I know?? How do you decide what weights to use? Etc etc!! And any other recommendations for "fun" classes to try? Once it gets warmer I want to start swimming again too - that's one exercise I do actually really enjoy, but the thought of the 15 minute walk home in the cold with wet hair is not appealing at the moment! Whenever I say that to my Mum, she does point out that I could dry my hair at the pool so I suppose that is a bit of an excuse!! ;)