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Dragon Boat Shoes!

26 Mar

It seems like every dragon boat season I go through shoe drama. Over the years I have tried wearing converse, flip flops, Skechers walking shoes and going barefoot. None have been perfect, all have had their pros and cons, as most things do.

Last season I was wearing Skechers walking shoes, I was super psyched for them because they seemed like the perfect shoe for dragon boating. They had a normal sole, so good grips in the boat and good for our on land warm-up. The fabric of the shoe was this quick drying, mesh but not mesh stuff – quick drying is important because nobody likes putting on a wet shoe, *shudder*. Sadly though, the shoes let me down. No matter how much I cleaned them they eventually had a stench that was impossible to ignore. The smell was because of the water in False Creek, it is naaaasty! Then, one of our away festivals had the paddlers tents on a beach and I got sand in the shoes. You wouldn’t think it’d be such a big deal but no matter how much I cleaned and rinsed those shoes I could never get all the sand out of that mesh-but-not-mesh fabric. By the end of that festival weekend my feet were destroyed! I had blisters and areas of my feet had been rubbed raw from wearing the shoes when they had sand trapped in them, omg it hurt!

It was so close to the end of the season I didn’t bother replacing the shoes last season, instead I waited, and the waiting proved fruitful! For Christmas my parents gave me a gift certificate to buy a specific shoe that I wanted for dragon boating. Some of my teammates have this shoe and swear by them.

My new dragon boat shoes.

My new dragon boat shoes.

The company that makes these lovely shoes is Native, their website is here if you are interested. They come in many styles but I didn’t pick them because of what they look like, though, I do like how they look so that’s a bonus lol They are awesome for dragon boating because they are made of rubber. Can’t get better than that for a water sport! They have a great grip in the boat, are comfy, despite the holes my feet stay warm even in rainy cold weather and as a little bonus there are these little bumps inside that sorta massage your feet while you are wearing the shoes. 🙂

The company amuses me, a couple of days after I got the shoes (I bought them online) I got an email from them that started with “Dear Human” lol, an enjoyable sense of humour don’t you think? The email was about proper care for my shoes so they last as long as possible.

Oh and the tags on the shoes made me laugh…

2015-03-02 16.33.26

The tag says: No sasquatch, unicorns, doves, jabberwoks, cows, werewolfs, whales, dogs, mermaids, pigs, yeti, anteaters, cats, antelope, cobras, possums, dragons, porqupines, owls, sloths, ostrich, crocodiles, bears, mice, pegasus, slugs, or any other beast was used in these natives! (the spelling mistakes are the company’s fault, not mine!)

There was another tag that lists one of the features of the shoes as being “beast free” and the third tag gives instructions for how to ride an escalator lol

I know its dumb but stuff like that makes me smile. 🙂

I’ve worn them for a couple of weeks now and they’ve been good. I haven’t gone running in them, because I haven’t been running during warm-ups, I think they’ll be ok for running except for the little problem that the heel of the shoe fits a tad too big so even when walking the back of my foot slips out of the shoe a bit, it’s not a huge deal, just an annoyance at this point.

I’m trying not to be too excited for these shoes, since every year I end up replacing what I’ve been wearing, but I’m hopeful these ones will last longer than one season! 🙂

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Should You Exercise When Sick?

9 Mar

My work is swarming with germs lately…by lately I mean the past two weeks. There is some nasty bug that is making the rounds and whoever catches it basically is doomed. It’s nothing horrible like the noro-virus, it’s just a nasty cold. Whenever a resident is sick we request they call the front desk and have their meals delivered so as to not spread their illness to everybody else. It doesn’t seem that unreasonable of a request in my opinion but you’d be surprised at how many people come down, sneeze and cough their way through their meals, through the various fitness classes, through the movies, through all the different social activities we have going on and then are surprised to find a couple days later we have a huge increase in the number of sick people. sigh.

I stupidly thought I wouldn’t catch it because hey, I’m not a senior, my immune system is strong. Ha-bloody-ha! I got sneezed on, as in, directly sneezed on last Sunday and woke up this past Tuesday incredibly sick. This bug just flattens you. With how poorly I was feeling, and how hard it was for me to do anything, I can only imagine how much harder it is for the residents who get it.

I was so sick I missed both my dragon boat practices this past week, which sucks! 😦 …and is a true indication of just how sick I was/am.

When you’re sick, do you wonder how much, if any exercise you should be doing? I always do. I always think I should be pushing through, forcing myself to exercise, to go to my practices, to go for a hike, because exercise is good for you, right? But sometimes you are just sooooo sick that it feels like exercise just getting your butt up off the chair to get a glass of water.

So I went searching and I found this handy dandy visual aid to help me figure out if I should be exercising when sick, and if so, what types of exercises I should be doing. And of course I am sharing the visual aid with all of you because I am friendly like that. lol 🙂

page one jpg

page two jpg

page three jpg

page four jpg

page five jpg

In case the words are too small to read just click here and it should open a new tab with all five pages in a larger size. *crosses fingers the link works* lol

Hopefully you all stay healthy and don’t need to know this for a while! 🙂

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A Healthy Muffin

26 Feb

Someone I know from work is following Weight Watchers and she was telling me about a muffin recipe she has, from Weight Watchers, that tastes good, is only two points per muffin, and the best part is the muffins are a decent size so you don’t feel like you’re wasting those two points.

She sent me the recipe and I gave it a whirl, it is dead easy! I’ll make a page for it under the recipe tab up top for easy reference but I’ll write it out here also so you don’t have to go searching for it today…

Chocolate Raspberry Weight Watchers Muffin

Prep Time 10 minutes, Cook Time 22 minutes, Serves 12, Weight Watchers Points per muffin is 2

Ingredients:

1 Betty Crocker Super Moist Devil’s Food Cake Mix

1 Cup Raspberries

8 oz Unsweetened Applesauce

2 Small Zucchinis

5 tbsp Water

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 400F

Spray a 12 cup muffin tin, or use two 6 cup muffin tins. Place dry cake mix in medium bowl. Grate 2 small zucchinis and squeeze out moisture. Add 1 Cup of raspberries and the grated zucchini to the dry cake mix. Mix thoroughly. Add 8 oz of unsweetened apple sauce and 5 tbsp of water. Mix well.

Use a 1/3 Cup measure to measure batter in to muffin tray.

Bake for 22 minutes. Let muffins rest 5 minutes then take them out of the muffin tin and cool on rack completely.

Chocolate Raspberry Muffins

Chocolate Raspberry Muffins

Voila!

Chocolate Raspberry Muffins you don’t have to feel guilty about! 😛

Pretty decent size, don't ya think?

Pretty decent size, don’t ya think?

So ok, they aren’t the prettiest things but meh, it all looks the same in the stomach lol They are an extremely moist muffin, as in super moist, I’m thinking because of the zucchini. Even though I pressed the grated zucchini to within an inch of its life and took out a lot of it’s moisture I think I could have taken out more. I was worried about taking out too much, I have learned that is not a valid concern lol You don’t taste the zucchini or the applesauce, which was a pleasant surprise.

I made some slight alterations, well, just one come to think of it. I didn’t use the Betty Crocker brand of cake mix, and can I say, buying a boxed cake mix felt like cheating! I never bake using a box, I always bake from scratch, so that part didn’t sit right with me but the first time I use a recipe I try to follow it to the letter and I guess they were going for the easiest possible baking experience, instead of you know, actually baking…I tend to think of using a boxed cake mix as more science experiment than baking but ok, I’ll stop my little rant about that now lol

Anyways! I bought a different brand, called Compliments! The exclamation point is part of the brand name, not because I’m so excited about it lol It is the “healthier version” provided by Safeway. You can find Compliments! foods all throughout the store, burger patties (which I have and omg they are sooooo delish!), I’ve seen it as cookies, um, crackers and I’m sure many more things. I checked the nutritional information and it was slightly more healthy than the Betty Crocker version so I opted for that, figured any little way to make it an even healthier recipe has to be a good change, right? Oh, and it was cheaper lol

I took the majority of the muffins to work and the reactions from people were positive, everyone was really impressed with how moist the muffins are considering they are a “healthy” muffin. I’m going to make a second batch, use up the rest of the applesauce cause no way I’m going to eat that as is, ugh, and freeze them. That way I’ll have an easy to grab food item stored in the freezer when I’m in a rush. 🙂 I was originally thinking I’d use them as I was dashing out of the house in the morning if I needed a quick breakfast but they are a tad rich for a first thing in the morning food, in my opinion, so I’ll probably end up eating them as an afternoon snack or dessert which is not a bad thing at all. 🙂

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A Teeny Tiny Fire

14 Feb

Bright ‘n early this morning I was on the water enjoying my dragon boat practice. It was cold, but I loved it, weird I know lol 😛

Then, I came home and proceeded to get ready for work. Part of my getting ready process was making lunch – to eat before going to work, not to take with me.

I wanted something substantial, and well really, I wanted something with eggs lol but I’d had two hard boiled eggs prior to practice and that is one egg more than my daily egg allowance sooooooo no egg dishes for moi. Instead I popped a Ricotta and Spinach stuffed chicken breast from M&M Meat Shops in to the oven and boiled some whole wheat pasta. I don’t know why I made pasta as the side dish instead of veggies, shrug, I just seemed to want pasta. Probably cause I had bought a jar of alfredo & garlic sauce and really wanted to try it lol.

Anyways! It was time to drain the pasta so I did what I’ve done countless times, I took a towel wrapped it around one side of the pot and used it to protect my hands from the handles since they had gotten hot. I have used a towel every time I’ve needed to pick up a pot with hot handles for years and never had a problem. Well, this time I had a minor incident…

See, the towel slipped and touched the burner, big deal right? Wrong! The towel touched the burner and all of a sudden…fire! Actual fire! Not just singed, there were flames, flames! So there I am, holding a towel around a pot full of cooked pasta and the towel is on fire, not exactly a situation I expected to be in lol I didn’t want to lose the cooked pasta so I ever so gently put the pot down (on a different burner) then put the on fire towel in to the sink and soaked it with water. Yay for water solving the problem of my towel being on fire! Boo for ruining my towel.

I’m kinda bummed, I really like that towel, it is part of a set that my sister bought me two Christmases ago. Now it looks like this…

My scorched towel.

My scorched towel.

You’d think the damage would look worse considering there were flames involved. Even though the damage doesn’t look that bad the towel is ruined, sigh. Is it weird I am more upset about the towel being ruined than causing a fire in my kitchen? I think this just proves my point that some people aren’t meant to be in the kitchen and I obviously should be wealthy so I can have a cook, it’d be safer for everybody! 😉

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Campbell’s Thai Chicken Vegetable Soup

13 Feb

Don’t do it, just don’t. Avoid the soup, save your tastebuds! lol

I bought one of those meant-to-take-to-work-packaged Campbell’s soups that you can pop in to the microwave for a quick and healthy meal. I bought it because (1) it was on sale, (2) I like soup and (3) I’m lazy and will try anything that means I don’t have to cook. 😛

This evening at work I was supposed to get dinner from the kitchen but my lovely salmon dinner sat out for a couple hours, not heated, while I was busy working and thanks to that FoodSafe course I had to take I now know just what might be growing in the salmon when it is left on the counter…I couldn’t bring myself to eat it. I’m sure I would have been fine but nope, couldn’t do it. I hate I have this knowledge in my head now lol

My unwillingness to eat the salmon and risk food poisoning meant I was super hungry by the time I got home, which sucked because the majority of the food I have in my kitchen requires at least 40 minutes cooking time, well, the protein type foods anyways. Then I saw the soup on the shelf and yay, problem solved! I love soup, this only requires 1 minute 45 seconds to heat in the microwave, can’t get better than that!

campbells thai chicken soup

In theory my plan for having the soup for dinner was great, in reality my taste buds may never forgive me. Ugh.

The herbs, despite the soup being heated, were hard, it felt like I had small sticks in my mouth. The only time I should be pulling food out of my mouth while eating is if I am ridding my mouth of cherry pits/seeds or if I am eating fish and a teeny tiny bone was missed. In a chicken and veggie soup I should not be having this problem…

Then there was the taste. I don’t even have the right words to properly describe the disturbing flavour that is this soup. There were some bites that had almost no flavour, sad. Other bites had a bit of a BBQ flavour, which I thought was odd but since I love BBQ I was kind of ok with that. Then there was the third flavour, the one I tasted most often, the one I don’t have words for…it was, well, not pleasant. Seriously, I don’t have a descriptive enough vocabulary for that flavour lol And before you say I didn’t stir the soup well enough, I did, trust me on this. 🙂

The soup wasn’t all bad though, the pieces of veggies were nice and large, and there was quite a lot in that container. I poured it in to a bowl and it filled my bowl so you’re definitely not getting jipped portion wise. But really, if the best you can say about a soup is the portion is large and so are the veggie chunks well, that’s not saying much.

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Eagle Ridge Fitness

12 Feb

Two weeks ago I saw an ad for Eagle Ridge Fitness on my facebook news feed. I don’t know what made me click on it but I did and it led me to a video showing all these normal people who had joined Eagle Ridge Fitness and had lost weight, toned muscle and just in general gotten in better shape using this gym.

eagle ridge fitness

 

I called them, asked some questions, and ended up making an appointment for a one-on-one consultation. It was supposed to be last week but I pushed it to this week because I was still too sick last week to go.

Google Map lied to me, it said it was a 35 minute drive but it was longer, plus Google Map sent me to the wrong address so not only was the drive longer than 35 minutes, it was even longer due to me going to the wrong place. Lovely. *rolls eyes*

I was super late for my appointment, luckily the lady I was meeting was understanding about my getting lost, also lucky for me she didn’t have an appointment directly after mine so there was wiggle room for me to be late.

The place is super small, and it isn’t like a traditional gym. You don’t just drop in whenever you feel like it, you choose two days a week that you go in, and you pick a specific time, so say, every Monday and Wednesday at 7pm, That is your time slot and you are expected to be there, if you don’t show they call you to ask where you were – so you are definitely held accountable! You work out with the same people each time you go so you start to feel like a team (so I was told). The workouts are partially tailored to what your goals are, the classes are kept small, 8 people max per session, and the trainers know in advance of any injuries or medical problems you have so they can take those in to account when devising your workout plan.

The second part of their program is about nutrition. They give you a welcome package when you join that has recipes, a generalized meal plan, information on what you should be eating, in what portion, things like that. They also require you to keep a food journal that they look at every month, that is partly to help keep you accountable to what you are eating and also, if you are eating properly and you don’t lose weight in a month then they know to tweak your program. Sounds like a good idea, it helps you avoid plateauing. The lady I spoke with said it takes a couple of weeks for your personalized meal plan to be made, that is why they give you the generalized plan when you join.

All in all I liked what I was told about this program. I don’t like how far of a drive it is from where I live but I’ve driven farther distances for things less important than my fitness and health so the distance isn’t, in my opinion, a good reason to not join.

A truly excellent reason to not join, and my reason for not joining, is the cost. You can either sign up for a year, for 6 months or month-to-month. If you sign up month-to-month it is approx $300/month, the 6 month contract is two hundred something per month and the year long contract is $191 a month. Talk about out of my price range! I asked why it is so much more expensive than a gym membership and the response was it is combining a nutrition plan and personal trainer in to one program, so instead of a person joining a gym and paying for a Weight Watchers membership (as an example) they just join one program and get both, for less. Um…no. Just no. lol. Least not for me. I have access to Weight Watchers material without paying for a membership, so I’m saving money there, and the cost of my local gym is nowhere near what they are estimating. Sure, I don’t have a personal trainer, and sure I don’t have someone creating a program just for me, and sure this means my results will come slower, and sure I don’t have someone calling me when I skip the gym and getting on my case so that I never skip again, but I also don’t have an extra $200-$300 a month to pay for someone to hold my hand while I try to get in shape.

If I had the money I would probably give them a try, it’s not that I think their approach is all that original or amazing, but I think there are times in your life where you need a nudge, heck, a full on push, to get you on your way. I know I need to exercise more, even if I don’t have an amazing workout plan figured out I should at least be running three times a week and doing some basic muscle work if only to keep active, but I don’t. I also know my eating sucks and trying to figure out how to get that back on track leaves me feeling confused and a little lost, which oddly enough leads me to eating bad food in a weird attempt to make myself feel better…using food for comfort, not a good plan!…and yet, I do it, sigh.

But none of that matters, because I don’t have the money. I had a moment where I thought I could maaaybe afford one month, use that as a kick in my butt to get me in a routine of working out, then take what they taught me and do it on my own, but since you don’t get your personalized meal plan until 2-3 weeks in, and from the sounds of it the first month is sort of a learning curve not only for you but for them knowing what works best for you, in order to get anything out of this place you should really go for longer than a month and that I know I can’t afford. I figure, no point in straining to find the pennies to pay for one month when it takes two or more months to really get results.

So for now I will stick with my outdoor walks, my dragon boat practices and my attempts to get my lazy self to the gym – I may not get results as quickly as I would if I was signed up with Eagle Ridge Fitness but I’m determined to get results, even if it does take me a little longer than I’d like. 🙂

Determination-1

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Dinner For Breakfast

24 Jan

This is actually about a breakfast I had a couple of days ago, I just didn’t want to publish two posts on one day so I put off publishing it until today lol 😛

Normally on my days off I make a toasted sandwich as my first meal of the day. Since I usually sleep in on my days off my first meal of the day is a combination of breakfast and lunch. The toasted sandwich is one of my favourite things to make and to eat, you can customize it so easily to suit whatever mood you are in and it takes a freakishly short amount of time to make – something that is crucial to me!

One of the main ingredients of my toasted sandwich is turkey bacon, it is imperative that my toasted sandwich have turkey bacon in it cause (1) I need to squeeze in protein wherever I can get it (2) I love how it tastes (3) without it my sandwich would just be egg, cheese and condiments and (4) I like it.

Well yeah, Wednesday I got up, stumbled in to the kitchen and realized I forgot to take the turkey bacon out of the freezer and plunk it in to the fridge on Tuesday so no turkey bacon for me. I know I could have taken a knife to it and hacked some of the turkey bacon off and used that but doing that messes with my sense of order so no, that wasn’t happening lol.

I was at a loss for what to make when I decided I’d have dinner for breakfast. I figure, people treat themselves every now and then and have breakfast for dinner, why can’t I reverse that? Out came some breaded chicken and on a whim I added some yam fries to that and boom! Dinner for breakfast!

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The chicken is a breaded cutlet from M&M Meat Shops, so tasty! The yam fries were something I picked up as a treat when grocery shopping one day, lucky for me they cook in the oven for the same length of time and at the same temperature as the chicken. The yellow stuff is honey mustard sauce. I dipped both the chicken and the yam fries in that lol 😛

Not gonna lie, it was too much food for a first meal, ugh. I felt really gross after eating it, just too full and icky feeling. I guess I am used to the toasted sandwich sized meal I normally have and swapping out was not appreciated by my tummy. I didn’t think it was that big of a meal when I was putting it on the plate but hey, my stomach doesn’t lie about these things so I guess my eyeballs were wrong, oops!

Even though it was too large of a meal it still tasted really good, as I knew it would since I have had it for dinner before lol Sadly, two yam fries committed suicide and jumped off my plate, one on to the floor and one into the sink so they didn’t fulfill their destiny of being eaten and instead were thrown in the garbage, what a waste, sigh. But probably good for my waist line! lol 😉

I definitely like having breakfast for dinner more, mostly because that usually means pancakes and who doesn’t love pancakes? But this was ok…though I made sure I put the turkey bacon in the fridge so I could go back to my toasted sandwich the next day!

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This Girl Can

22 Jan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aN7lt0CYwHg

 

I have watched the above video, oh I don’t know, 5 times or so…and that’s just today! I love it! I love that it is showing women of all ages and fitness levels engaged in all manner of fitness activities. I love that the women are having fun, working hard, feeling awesome. I love that it shows being active can make you feel good, or at least be one factor contributing to you feeling good. I love that it motivated me to go out and sweat. Oh, and I loved the song used. 🙂

That is a lot of love for a video that isn’t trying to sell me anything lol

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Breakfast Sandwich

16 Jan

My favourite meal of the day tends to be the breakfast sandwich that I make 5 out of 7 days a week. The main ingredients generally don’t change, there is almost always bread, turkey bacon, egg and a slice of cheese. The rest of the ingredients fluctuate depending on what I have on hand and what I feel like eating. I have a couple different sauces I swap between, I may add avocado, or miracle whip (light of course lol), cream cheese, salsa…the list could go on for quite a while lol

Todays breakfast sandwich was quite yum and I thought I’d share it with you. 🙂

On a whim I bought an Asiago Cheese Bread the other night, which means I now have to eat Asiago Cheese bread every day until I finish it or risk it going stale and have my money wasted lol I decided to lightly toast two slices of the cheese bread, then top it like so:

bread

chive & onion cream cheese

smooshed avocado

turkey bacon

white cheese

over easy egg

A Wonderful Way To Start the Day

A Wonderful Way To Start the Day

I suppose it doesn’t look as good as it tasted, but it was quite good. 🙂 I cut the egg in half so it would fit nicely on both pieces of bread, same with the cheese. It all worked out quite well and I’m figuring on making another version tomorrow, probably the last day I’ll be able to eat the bread before it goes too stale to bite in to lol 😛

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Stouffer’s Saute Sensations

9 Jan

Last week I came across a sale item at Safeway that I decided to try, it is the Stouffer’s Saute Sensations. I chose the Grilled Chicken Teriyaki and oh man was it tasty!

2015-01-01 16.44.13

 

It was on sale for about $6 and each package gives you two servings, even I can do the math that tells me my meal cost $3 – pretty decent!

The package contains brown rice and a medley of tender vegetables…that is a direct quote from the bag lol

Per serving (so half the bag) is 260 calories, 5g fat, 42g carbs, 3g fibre and 16g protein. So yeah, high in carbs but ok everywhere else, in my opinion anyways. 🙂

It tasted really good and one serving is plenty, I wasn’t left feeling hungry or deprived and it kept me filled up for hours, always nice when that happens. After I cooked it all I split it in half in the pan, put half on my plate and let the other half cool before putting it in a container to take to work the next day for my dinner. It heated up nicely in the microwave, the chicken didn’t dry out and the veggies weren’t overly droopy. Oh and the veggies kept their bright colour, which never happens when I make a stir-fry type dish from scratch…what’s with that?

It looked so good it impressed the people at work and one of the guys now thinks I am a good cook lol Since technically nobody asked me if I cooked it I wasn’t lying when I let it be implied I did in fact cook my meal and didn’t just pour it from a bag and heat it up lol

When I ate it at home I added half a diced avocado to the top, not because I thought the dish wouldn’t taste good on it’s own but because my avocado was at the stage of “eat me now or by tomorrow I will be brown and useless”, I don’t care to be threatened by avocados but whatcha gonna do? They always win!

a yummy and healthy dinner

a yummy and healthy dinner

I tried to push the avocado to the side so you could see the food from the bag unimpeded.

All in all I was really impressed with the meal. I don’t know what it’s regular price is so I can’t say if I would buy it all the time, but on sale it was definitely worth it! Something to keep an eye out for. 🙂

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