OH MY GOD it feels like FOREVER since I last posted!! I have to admit, with last week being my first week back to school full time I wanted to really focus on that and I kind of put this little guy to the back burner for a few days. I'm sorry! I feel like a neglectful mother not looking after my child properly... or something.
My first week back to school went surprisingly well. Monday through Thursdays I have my first class at 8am. You might be thinking "Sarah, why would you CHOOSE to have 8am classes most days of the week?". Let me explain my reasoning.
1. I figure it's easier to get my body into that schedule rather than waking up at different times every day.
2. The earlier I start my classes, the earlier I end my classes and can come home (for now) and do homework, reading, and of course blogging! Eventually it will make finding time to squeeze in a part time job easier.
3. I figured most people DON'T choose to have class at 8am so I hope that the people who do come for 8am classes are serious about their studies and don't disrupt the class.
To be honest with you, getting up early is only really tough for about the first hour. I wake up at 5:50am and am usually out the door by 7am to catch the street car. I find that if I can finish a cup of coffee and my breakfast before class, I'm usually good to go, ready to learn and like 95% awake by the time I get on campus. I also actually find that I seem to have more energy throughout the day.. Maybe that's because I'm constantly doing something and not sitting at a desk staring at a computer screen for 8+ hours a day like I was doing at my old job.
That brings me to another point - I'm SO much less stressed than I was when I was working.... I can't even tell you the difference it's making. I can tell that my cortisol levels have dropped, I'm pretty quickly loosing the few extra lbs I carried around my tummy for a while (which is linked to higher cortisol rates due to stress and not eating properly) which I think is 1 part due to not being so freaking stressed and 1 part due to the fact that I'm being really good with my diet and exercise plans lately.
Last week I got in 3 visits to my personal trainer and it came up that it was posing as a challenge for me to get in all the meals I'm supposed to be in a day. I'm literally supposed to be eating a small meal every 3 hours and when I was in school and feeling things out, I wasn't doing that.. or I'd have part of a meal which in turn wasn't allowing me to have the correct amount of calories which was leaving my body in a deficit for training later in the day. So I've decided that every other day I'm going to do food prep for 2 days in total, and that started last night.
Taaadaaaa... so these are the meals that I have to take with me and not eat at home. I didn't prep dinners or anything because C and I usually cook those together and I'll just make those the day of. We have a breakfast there of chicken, steamed spinach with organic butter and some almonds and half an orange, a snack of hard boiled eggs and celery and carrots, a lunch of chicken, celery, carrots and almonds, a pre-workout meal of hard boiled eggs and blueberries, a post-workout meal of rice and chicken and I think another snack in there that I'm pairing with a protein shake. Deanna will be so happy when she sees this photo :). That was the one thing I was having trouble with, trying to figure out what to take with me to school at like 6am... but now I think I've figured it out! In class today I had some almonds, some cherry tomatoes and a protein shake. BOOM. :)
While I'm on the topic of good food, this weekend I took Jenny out for her birthday and we went to a place kind of close to us called Rodney's Oyster House. It's just that, an oyster house. I have a very public love affair with seafood and oysters are one type of seafood that I had never tried, so this was SUPER exciting for me. I don't know anything about oysters but luckily Jenny did so she ordered us some. We got 3 different kinds of oysters and 4 each (so 2 per person).
They were DELISH. They come with sauces that you can put on them and omg my mouth is drooling just thinking about it. After the oysters we shared a tuna tartare and some garlic scallops (along with a bottle of pinot noir.... oops). It was soooo so so so so so good and I want to go back there really bad. I should scout out some other seafood restaurants in Toronto and check them out, I bet I could find some really delicious places!!
On Sunday we hung out in a fancy area in Toronto called Yorkville. Jenny and I went for a coffee at a nice little cafe called Cafe Bacio. It was so cute, it had vintage photos hung on the wall and their latte's were so pretty...
A latte is probably not on my nutrition plan, but that's ok... it was worth it and it was fun spending the afternoon with Jenny. All in all it was a pretty good week! I hope I keep up the food prepping because it honestly made my morning today so much easier and less complicated when I knew what I had to take with me and could just put it in my bag instead of having to plan and weigh it all out right then.
What are some tips and tricks you have for planning ahead for meals? Are you good about it? Do you do a big prep 1x/week or a couple of smaller ones throughout the week? I have a small, condo sized fridge so I was worried about trying to fit in a week worth of meals so that's why I started with doing 2 days instead. I'd love to hear your thoughts!