Finals Countdown

Hello strangers!  Quick Week Recap:

2013-12-02 05.51.41Workouts: 1

I managed to hit the gym on Monday morning at the crack of dawn.  I did my lifting workout again and found it quite boring.  It also takes too long for the amount of time allotted for the gym in the morning with Rob.  We ride together to save fuel and he has to be to work!  So I might modify it a bit.  Then I won’t be following “the program” (from the book Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle) exactly but the key is to make workouts work best for you.  If that means changing your plan to make it work in your schedule, then that’s what you do!  When I modify it to make it my own, of course I will share Smile

Nutrition

I only tracked a half a day this week.  I am working on getting back in that habit.  The hardest challenge I run into is that I make a lot of random meals and don’t measure ingredients.  For example, I made Turkey Leg Soup with the Thanksgiving leftovers.  I threw the legs and wings in a pot of water with shallots, carrots, potatoes, and spices for about 2 hours on simmer.  It made several 2-cup servings but I have no idea the nutritional breakdown, I just know it was healthy!

IMG_20131202_111306Life & School

The holidays are here!  And I have not a single decoration up.  Holidays parties are starting to pile up but I’ve learned to decline pretty easily, only committing to the ones that won’t interfere with my studying and such.  The school semester is in its final weeks so things are getting busier than ever!  I’m all done with homework assignments and all that is left are 3 in-class exams and 1 take-home exam.  The first exam is on Monday so things will be crazy until I hand in my take-home (due December 22nd).

And that is pretty much it!  I have a “field trip” today for one of my classes.  Lots of driving around for hours but it should be interesting.  We’ll be taking radiation measurements around linear accelerator vaults at various hospitals in the area (don’t worry, – they are shielded, you won’t get dosed at your local hospital).  That is one thing I really love about the Master’s program I am doing – lots of hand on learning and experience.  I will definitely be prepared when I graduate!

Well, its time for me to get started on all that studying I have to do.  The exam on Monday is going to be really tough.  The teacher basically gives trick questions on the exams.  He changes one little word in the multiple choice, you have to draw graphs completely from memory, etc.  It is just straight memorization while I’m used to more applied things (think open-ended problems).  So, off to study and get my day going!

What are your plans for the holidays?  Do you have lots of parties?

I am really looking forward to Lauren’s Cookie Exchange.  I love theme parties and I’ve got big plans for my cookies!  And the aftermath will be very sad.  I totally plan on eating the cookies I get, you can’t talk me out of it!  Luckily Rob will be around to help and its close to Christmas so I can put them out on Christmas morning too – We also host a meal on Christmas (usually breakfast but its a toss up with dinner this year depending on family plans).  I love having everyone over!

4 thoughts on “Finals Countdown

  1. PITA to do but I add recipes to MFP — and often, I don’t measure exactly. Like if I know that I used X amount of fat and X amount of protein, I’ll skimp on measuring the veg (I’ll say 1/2C carrots but maybe it was 1/4 or 1/3 or 1C!). I know that’s not right but what I really want to know is the fat (since it’s so calorie dense) and the protein (because I want to get enough). If I’m focusing on carbs, I have to be careful about counting the veg but most of the time, that’s not my focus!

    Here’s an example: today’s lunch (the salad) is 100% counted and so is the day before. Since I re-eat a LOT of the time, I simply click ‘quick tools’ and copy to the next day! If I had yesterday’s lunch for today’s supper, I copy to today (but it thinks that means lunch today) and then click each item and pull down to supper. It sounds like a lot of work but it takes less than 10 seconds because all those foods were already entered.

    And notice my pesto is my recipe that I added to MFP. The other foods are actually *in* a recipe but I didn’t feel like adding it. I just did them all once and do the copy to X trick.

      1. I have a cheap (good!) scale and I weigh as I’m first cooking. Then, I know how many servings my whole pot of said soup is, too. Like I’ll know that a tiny pot is 4 servings and a large pot is 10 servings.

        When I put in MFP for the beef, say, I use the WHOLE PACKAGE in the recipe. That’s 16oz. In MFP, I call up the whole package and scroll to 1/4 of whole package (unless 4oz is offered as a choice because they often have more than one size in there). The spaghetti squash, for example, gave me 8C of flesh (after cooking, it fills an 8C container). When I slapped some into my bowl to take to work, I used .75C. I just know that because I cook so much, I know what 3/4C looks like. I seriously doubt that I was off but if I was…that’s the squash, so for me, no biggie.

        In this meal, I didn’t add fat but I often add 1T of coconut oil when I cook extra lean meat. I know that I added 1T when I cooked. When I get 4 servings out of it, I add to MFP 1T coconut oil with a serving size of .25. This sounds harder than it is. I need to make a video ;p

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