fitnessprincess’s BodyBlog

My coach Cathy Savage Fitness recommended these - they are made locally by a fitness competitor and her husband - so after visiting the Vegetarian Barbarian website (http://thevb.myshopify.com/) and reviewing the nutritional facts I decided to give the mini loaves a try. The ingredients are truly all natural - no preservatives. For example, the chocolate peanut butter bar contains tofu, ground almonds, chocolate whey protein, avocado, peanut butter, apple sauce, hemp protein, water, peanuts, hempseed, coconut palm sugar, walnut oil, cocoa, agave, flaxseed, chocolate extra, peanut butter extract, cinnamon, salt, 85% chocolate bar.  I thought wow!  sounds terrific!  I ordered the variety 12-pack for $27 plus shipping. The loaves came in a couple days - pretty quick, by USPS. I brought two different flavors home to try them out with my mom. We ate the first one, pumpkin pie, after dinner as an evening snack. Both of us were a bit disappointed with the size - these things are tiny!! You won’t find any photos of the bars on the company’s website and my guess is that’s why there aren’t any photos - would have been an immediate tip off! Anyway, the pumpkin pie mini loaves don’t taste anything like pumpkin. There are lots of different seeds and things in them including cranberries - not something I have ever had in any pumpkin pie I have ever eaten. The bar didn’t taste bad but it sure didn’t taste like pumpkin pie and both of us were hungry and unsatisfied afterwards. I ate an apple and enjoyed it a lot more than I did the pumpkin pie mini loaf. Today mom and I ate our second VB mini-loaf chocolate peanut butter with tea after lunch. Mom said not to bring any more of those “things” home. I agree. We both came to the same conclusion: not worth it! The chocolate peanut butter mini-loaf was disappointing because it really didn’t taste anything like chocolate peanut butter - yes there were some small chocolate pieces and raw peanuts in there but this was no more chocolate peanut butter than the pumpkin pie mini loaf was like pumpkin pie in flavor. Neither was satisfying and the mini loaves are high in calories (ca 200) and fat - admittedly so-called healthy fat (ca 14 g) but fat nonetheless and relatively low, from my perspective, in grams of protein (ca 14 g). Each tiny loaf (ca. 1″ x 1″ x 3″) is packaged in heat shrink plastic that was very difficult to remove without injuring the loaves. The nutritional information is written in tiny letters and is virtually impossible to read on the packaging. If you want the nutritional facts you are best off going to their website and reading it there. Finally these things are tiny! LOL! Did I say that before? I really wish I could recommend these but I can’t. If I were in contest prep I would probably end up binging from hunger after eating one of these things. Flavor-wise very disappointing as they don’t taste anything like what you were hoping for.

This low-fat, meatless jerky, made from seitan (wheat gluten), is simply the best jerky product I have ever had! It comes in 1-oz strips in a wide range of flavors including mesquite lime, teriyaki, hot & spicy ****ake, and thai peanut. The strips which cost $1.50 at Whole Foods but which you can find at 1.25 on-line come in double-sealed packages that you really can take with you anywhere. They taste simply amazing!

I am by nature a vegetarian but I will eat fish and I like shrimp so when I saw this product at Whole Foods I was willing to give it a try. The soup is sold in a 5.1-oz single serving package and comes in a rather substantial (reusable plastic container with lid (recyclable). Inside there is a pellet of concentrated soup/stock and 5 decent sized shrimp wontons. Simply add water, microwave for 3-4-min oh high and enjoy. The broth and the wontons are flavorful and tasty. My only criticisms of the product are that (1) the soup contains 1.5-g sodium (the FDA recommendation is 2400 mg of sodium PER DAY!); (2) the nutritional facts on the packaging are incorrect as the nutritional facts doesn’t include the data for the broth which you can find on the CP website, and (3) the product costs $3.50. That said, I really like the soup - good on a cold fall day and I think the product’s worth the cost.Nutritional facts 115-calories 7 g protein, 2 g fat, 17 g carbs, 0.75 g fiber. 2 WW pts

Cottage cheese is actually not half bad. I have discovered that I actually like it if I prepare it a certain way. So, here’s my recipe:

As a general rule, I prefer to only discuss products that I really like and therefore endorse.  I guess part of me always feels that just because I don’t like something this doesn’t mean that someone else won’t like it, right?  Also, I am a good girl.  I always do what my mom taught me and she taught me that good girls keep their mouths shut if they don’t have anything nice to say.  LOL!  From time to time though I have experiences that remind me that I also have a duty to share information concerning those products that I try and which I don’t like.  Today is one of those occasions.  Recently, I paid a good amount of money and bought several products that were just awful so much so that I threw out what I baked and I threw out the mixes as well.  Both were products of Parillo Performance.  I paid $20 for a container of the pancake & muffin mix and $35 for a container of the protein frosting mix.  Both were super sweet - sickeningly sweet - they are sweetened with a mix of three sugar substitutes (why, I don’t understand) erythritol (a sugar alcohol), sucralose, and stevia.  I bought the banana flavored muffin mix and attempted to make a batch of 12 mini-muffins.  The mix had an odd bumpy texture to it when I added water and MCT oil as specified on the bottle.  The next problem I encountered was trying to figure out when the muffins were done.  The muffins didn’t brown like regular muffins would.  When I finally decided (by sticking a cake tester into one) that the muffins were cooked, I set them aside to cool and turned toward making the vanilla frosting.  I prepared half the recipe given on the side of the frosting mix bottle and that was enough for who know how many million muffins!  The frosting also had an odd texture to it and was a bit off-white.  When I finally sat down to eat a mini-muffin, the muffin had a very odd spongy texture to it that was really objectionable.  The taste was absolutely awful - the muffin itself was sickeningly sweet and honestly you didn’t need any icing on the thing!  The icing really didn’t taste like vanilla.  All I could taste was sugar - sickening sweetness.  I spit it out and threw the rest away - now this is saying something for me as I love everything sweet.  Consider yourselves warned:  do not buy this vile stuff!! 

This has been quite an eye opening experience for me.  I think I have been overdoing things for a couple reasons:  1) trying to outrun a mediocre diet (gotta nail the diet folks - that’s where you create a caloric deficit not in the gym); 2) too much heavy lifting; 3) too much plyo.  The latter two are because I have been so driven - wanting to add muscle, wanting to hone my legs - good goals but I am - LOL! 49 years old and I need to remember that!  4) willingness to buy into a "myth" that you have to be in agony for a workout to a good workout.  Pain is not a good indicator of whether or not you get a good workout.  You should not be in agony on a regular basis. 

In hindsight I can see that I also wasn’t sleeping well - another indicator of overtraining.  I had also been sick a couple times - decreased immunity - yet another indicator.  Bottom-line:  you gotta listen to your body.  Remember you are in this for the long haul!  I will certainly say that I have a tendency to fixate on a goal and then damn the consequences I press forward putting all my effort and intensity on the problem until it has been resolved.  Gotta learn balance!

For the past couple weeks I have really been fighting my body.  Part of me still thought maybe just maybe I could pull off a miracle and step on stage in a couple weeks.  SO I have been giving it my all in the gym.  Well, I started having a throbbing pain in my lower right leg.  Dull, throbbing.  Ugh.  Worse at night.  I thought maybe some more abuse would solve the problem so I kept at it.  Next thing I knew I had pain in the inside of my right elbow - affected my lifting objects including my backpack, Nikki, etc.  SO, I decided brightly I would lay off upper body exercises that exascerbated the elbow but keep at the legs and do shoulders, which seemed OK.  Tried chest and back but found rows and chest press just aggravated the elbow.  Ugh.  Kept at it.  Stupid.  Smart enough though to schedule a visit to my doctor.

Well, the prognosis:  tendonitis in both cases.  Cause:  overtraining.  Treatment:  lay off the gym for the next 10-15 days.  Huh????  Yep.  LOL!  Too funny because I was up at 5 am this morning working out AND I walked from my apartment to my morning meeting downtown.  OK girl time to give your body a break. 

So, it looks like my job for the next couple weeks is to focus on my diet and eating clean - yeah I hate that word too but what I mean is no mess ups - binging. 

Well, that’s all for now - have a great day! and take care of yourself!!

I am the walking wounded right now.  LOL!  Kind of ironic as I try so hard to warm up properly, use proper form when I work out, etc. and here I am in pain.  I have two problems.  My lower right leg has an almost constant dull throb which seems to get worse at night.  At some point recently I did something i am not sure exactly what to something in/near my inside right elbow.  I have been trying to avoid exercises that make it worse but even in doing back exercises I seem to be aggravating the injury so I broke down yesterday and called my pcp for an appointment to have both problems checked out.  Looks like I am in luck as I got an appointment Tuesday - now I simply have to make it from today until Tuesday.  Sigh. 

I feel badly that I haven’t been posting more frequently and more regularly.  It has simply been a busy fall semester and that’s not a bad thing.  Dietwise I am still learning the ropes of my new program with Cathy Savage Fitness.  In many ways I have to say I like it alot better than any of the other systems I have followed.  Basically they are teaching me how to eat for life.  Believe it or not I am not counting milligrams of protein or carbs - ha! I am not even weighing my food.  I am definitely NOT subsisting on a stupid low calorie, low carb approach like Dr. Joe uses either.  Finally I am not eating "hard cheddar" or other foods that my coach thinks I should eat like I did with Noel either (I hate!!!!! cheese and I especially hate cheddar). 

Yesterday I went to the gym and did SOS workout A week 1 189-cal HRM 38-min followed by 30-min Star Trac stationary bike alpine pass L9 11.23-mi 240-cal HRMThis was my first time back in the gym since Friday because I was sick. As I wrote the other day I purposely didn’t workout because I didn’t want to make anyone sick and I sure didn’t want to extend oer exascerbate my illness. SO it was pretty funny when there I was on the exercise bike about 10-min into my cardio and a cardio bimbo comes and decides to sit at the bike to the left of me. She is dripping and slurping - red eyes - so I asked her “Do you have a cold?” “Uh..yes.” She replied. It was pretty clear she could see where this was going. I replied with attitude “Oh, then you won’t mind taking a bike further down the line then.” Off she went. She only lasted 10-min before walking off after “toweling off” the bike (in reality wiping her germs all over the bike). Sigh. LOL! Too funny!