Today has been filled with eager anticipation, but I can’t share the details until tomorrow!! EEE!!!

Okay, deep breaths.

Breakfast happened in courses this morning. I started off with lots of water (to offset last night’s whiskey + wine), then moved on to 1/2 cup of Udi’s granola with soymilk and a kiwi (the last piece of fresh fruit in the house, ahhhh!!):

udi's

Course 2 was a soymilk refill, per yesterday, plus 1/2 cup original puffins (because I’ve neglected them the past few days :-) ):

refill

and finally, 3rd course: a small piece of pumpkin pie banana bread with a dab of pb (I had 3/4 of this):

last course

(that’s a 1/4 c. measuring cup, for portion purposes).

After course 3 I was a little too full. Just a little. I should’ve just let breakfast part 1 settle before breaking into the bread! I picked up an iced coffee with soymilk on the way to work to celebrate the 40-degree weather, and sipped on it all day.

For lunch I packed a mix of 1/2 my leftover tofu scramble and 1/2 my last portion of tempeh salad, mixed with a large chopped carrot:

lunch

(it looks like a lot b/c it’s in a large tupperware, but there’s only a thin layer on the bottom).

I also packed a little snack bag mix of 7 prunes and 3 tbsp. sliced almonds (b/c I loved this mix yesterday!), and another slice of pumpkin pie banana bread:

snack

b/pp bread

I had to run an important secret errand (EEEE!!!) between 11 and 1 (sorry—I promsie I’ll share tomorrow!), which involved 2 miles of brisk walking and lots of excitement. I missed morning snack time, so I was definitely ready for lunch when I got back to the office at 1:15, and broke out the tofu/tempeh salad along with 1/2 the prunes/almonds and 1/2 the pumpkin pie bread. I also stole a mint from my coworker. I had the other 1/2 at 5:15, and also enjoyed around a cup of green grapes leftover from an IT meeting (couldn’t let them languish in the kitchen all weekend!) :-)

After work I went to a memorial reading of Agha Shahid Ali’s poetry at NYU (I featured him in my senior thesis in college), and walked the ~2.5 miles from work to the event. The reading was wonderful—if you haven’t checked out his poetry, I highly recommend it!

After that, I stopped by Dojo (a NYU haunt that my friend and I used to go to after an evening copyediting class across the street). When I go to this restaurant, I always, ALWAYS order the steamed veggies and tofu over brown rice with a side of tahini dressing (for dipping purposes), but I didn’t have enough cash with me to order the tofu (and it’s a cash-only place), so I experimented and just got the steamed tofu and veggies with rice and sauce:

din

I had all the veggies and rice and maybe 1/4 of the sauce (which is pretty salty and heavy but DELISH!)

Normally I wouldn’t eat something like this without a protein component, but thinking back, I realized I’d had more calories than usual earlier in the day so I wanted to see if something lighter would hold me over. And it did! I walked over to the East Village afterwards because Sonny had a concert here. That brought my daily total to 5 miles covered on foot. I love how easy it is to accumulate mileage in NYC!

On any other day like today (which was pretty rainy) pre-Fit for Free, I would’ve talked myself into going to the gym after work and done a lazy 20–30 minutes on the elliptical, with maybe some light weights and abs if I was feeling extra-motivated, and I would have been frustrated at the time it took to change/shower/etc. It’s SO much more satisfying to me to just WALK and get some semi-fresh air (in midtown Manhattan nothing is really “fresh”). I guess I wasn’t born to be a gym person (and that’s NOTHING against gym people—I envy your ability to focus and get in a good workout in an hour. I’m no good at it!! I also recognize that the gym isn’t everyone’s first choice, but they value fitness enough to get it workouts any way they can.)

At Sonny’s show I enjoyed a glass of Shiraz (thanks for the picture google!):

shiraz (thx google)

Home at 1 AM, SLEEP!

It’s felt so good to maintain an activity schedule throughout these winter months. I’m glad I’ve been able to do it without the gym or Bikram yoga this week! What is your ideal workout schedule/favorite exercise? Do you find a way to work it into your schedule? If not, what do you do instead?