Christmas Celebrations

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!

My Christmas was fairly uneventful, with the exception of my parent’s extremely sick cat, Charlie. We ended up having to rush him to the him to the vet this morning. Poor thing :(

Last night we celebrated Christmas Eve at my Aunt’s house. There was a ton of food; ham, green bean casserole, jello salad, cheesy potatoes, sweet potato casserole, and plenty of cookies. Unfortunately, I’m still an awful blogger and didn’t take any pictures of it. Hopefully that will change with time :).

After dinner, presents were opened.

 

My grandma suggested we play a fun game with a few presents. I’m not sure if it has an official name, but it involves a person picking a present and opening it. Then the next person can either take that present, or open a new one. I’ve played it at a few Christmas parties, and it’s always a blast to see what people steal from other people.

It was great to spend time with my family. Living five and a half hours away from them can make it pretty difficult to see them often.

Christmas breakfast is always a tradition at the Berg House. My mom makes this awesome baked french toast, with cream cheese and orange marmalade filling. My dad is usually in charge of making scrambled eggs and bacon. I was in charge of buying the OJ, of course. :)

After breakfast, we opened presents. My sister’s boyfriend, Eric, was in charge of taking pictures and he certainly did a good job of capturing almost every moment, including a few unflattering ones.

Unflattering moment number one… holding up a naturally nutty peanut butter while admiring my sister’s new sheets. That peanut butter is the bomb, by the way.

My parents gave me this amazing painting to put in my apartment. I can’t wait to hang it up in my living room when I get back!

Honestly, my workouts have kind of gone to the wayside since I’ve been home. Unfortunately, I don’t have easy access to a gym like I do when I’m home. I used my sister’s apartment gym a total of one time in the past week and a half since I’ve been here. At least it’s something, right? ;)

I’m hoping to change that in the next few days. I’ve never been a morning person and I don’t think I ever will be. This makes working out a little difficult when I’m at my parent’s house because I work mornings/afternoons at a local restaurant and I’m sure everyone knows how easy it is to use the excuse of being tired after a long day of work to not workout. Since I’m leaving to go downstate for the rest of my break soon, my last day of work is tomorrow. Hopefully I can get back to my regular workout schedule after that.

Anyways, enough rambling.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Seven Day Arms Challenge

This week has been crazy! There’s been a lot of this involved…

As well as this…

Finals started last night for me, so it’s been really hard to squeeze a workout in the past two days. In theory, 30-45 minutes of my day is not very long. It should be pretty simple to go to the gym, workout, and be done with it. I just haven’t had the energy to push myself out the door, and it’s always easier said than done.

The other problem I’ve been having recently is dealing with stress eating. When I’m stressed, I crave comfort foods. My favorite is pesto grilled cheese and tomato soup.

It’s one of my all time favorite meals (I’ve had this same meal, minus the tomato soup, three nights in a row), right next to macaroni and cheese. I haven’t quite figured out how to manage this, other than balance it out with healthier meals and snacks when I can.

Since dinner wasn’t exactly healthy last night, I made a salad for lunch. I didn’t snap a picture of it before I scarfed it down, but it had almonds, dried pomegranate arils, and goat cheese. I ended up pairing it with this superfruit dressing (soooo good!). With a couple of cuties, this was the perfect lunch.

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Usually, I’m not one to admit or even talk about how self consciousness I am. I don’t like to draw extra attention to body parts I’m already uncomfortable with. I would like to think that after 20 years, I’m comfortable in the skin I have. Of course this isn’t the case, and it probably isn’t in most people. I am most insecure about my arms. I’m not quite sure why; to me, they seem a little unproportional compared to the rest of my body. I hate wearing dresses without a cardigan, tank tops, and fitted short sleeve shirts. Maybe I’m the only one who sees this, maybe I’m not. Quite frankly, I’m not interested in knowing if anybody else has noticed. While staring in the mirror the other day, I decided I was going to do something about it.

I am determined to use these next few winter months to change the way I feel about my arms, so of course I was really excited when I came across this workout on pinterest. It’s called the Seven Day Arms Challenge. I plan to replace my current arm exercises with these for a week and see what kind of a difference it makes.

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I thought it would be a lot of fun to do a before and after with measurements to see if it really does make a difference. I do realize that it will probably take more than week to really see any noticeable changes, so I plan to continue this for at least two weeks. To be honest though, I don’t really see myself heading to the gym seven days a week just to fit in an arm workout, since I usually only go about five days a week. Hopefully I can do some of the exercises at home. Most of them look pretty quick, so it shouldn’t be too hard to fit them into my busy schedule.

I really like this workout because they put youtube videos at the bottom of the page for people (like me) who are new to the world of exercising and aren’t quite familiar yet with all of the technical terms associated with strength training. It seems beginner friendly, so I hope this challenge turns out well.

I would love for other people to join me on this, so please feel free to tweet me (or comment) about it! I always seem to have more motivation when I’m being held accountable for something.

Have a good day!

Relaxing Weekend and New Blog "Theme"

This weekend was exactly what I needed. Finals are in exactly one week, so I took this weekend to relax and prepare myself for the craziness that's about to come.

Saturday night was date night for this guy and I.

We try have one 'date' a week to keep things interesting. This week we ended up going to one of our favorite restaurants, Buffalo Wild Wings.

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I know it’s not the healthiest, but my favorite meal to get there is the honey barbecue boneless wings with celery and ranch. I usually get the order of eight, but I only end up eating five or six. Miles usually finishes up  his meal plus mine, so it works out well.

Saturday night, I went to the Clinical Lab Science (CLS) department Christmas party. This year, the party was hosted by Mary, one of the CLS teachers. Her house was beautifully decorated and she prepared a few different fun games for us to play. Side note: I won this super cute mug that looks like a beaker. We are such nerds.

 She also provided a yummy holiday themed punch that had sprite, some type of fruit juice, crushed raspberries, cranberries, orange slices, and mint leaves in it. Mary also has the cutest and fluffiest long-haired cats I have ever seen. Needless to say, they stole most of my attention during the party.

Everyone was asked to bring a dish to pass to the party. I should have taken this opportunity to make a healthy dish since I knew there would be plenty of desserts there. However, I thought it would be easier (alright, maybe I really just wanted cookies) to make sugar cookies with cream cheese frosting and Christmas sprinkles. Some other highlights from the party: minipasties, scallops wrapped in bacon, queso dip with homemade tortillas, pigs in a blanket, cheesecake, and pistachio pudding pie. I'm sorry for being a bad blogger and not taking pictures of the food. Everything looked great!

As I’m sure you can tell, a lot of unhealthy eating commenced over this past weekend. Being a busy college student, I find it very hard for me to have the time to prepare healthy meals. I feel like there is never enough time to cram in studying, homework, exercising, preparing healthy meals, and still have a little down-time for myself. This leads me to my next point and the new “theme” for this blog: healthy eating for busy people. 

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I hope to feature a new recipe every week, as well as healthy eating on a budget tips, tricks to squeezing in a quick workout, and easy on-the-go snacks. If you have a recipe that you would like me to post, please feel free to email me!

The first recipe I’d like to feature was inspired by Maria from M’s Wedding Blog. Maria and I have been close friends since junior high. She recently just got engaged, and her blog follows her journey through planning her wedding.

Spinach Pasta

Ingredients:**
2-3 cups of fresh spinach (I love spinach, so I use 3+ cups)
1 serving of your favorite whole wheat pasta
1 tlbs grated parmesan cheese
minced garlic
extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

Sautee the garlic (amount is up to you) in a little bit of olive oil. While this is browning, boil water for the pasta and cook according to instructions. Add spinach to the garlic, and steam until slightly wilted. Season with salt and pepper. Drizzle olive oil over pasta, and add spinach. Top with parmesan cheese.

**This recipe can be altered for whatever you have in your fridge. This would be great with roasted asparagus or baked eggplant. It also would be good topped with toasted pinenuts.


Tonight's workout will be another attempt at this treadmill interval workout. Hopefully I'll be a little more prepared for it this time. Have a good night!

My Running Playlist

First of all, I just wanted to say please bear with me while I get my blog up and fully functioning. I'm currently working on a more detailed "about me" page, as well as a more definite theme for my blog as a whole. Thanks for visiting!

Last night's workout kicked my booty. I am in no way able to run at a 6.5 pace for more than 10 seconds. I finished most of the run as planned, and tacked on 20 minutes to my workout with this machine.

I'm not quite sure what it's called (it kind of resembles an elliptical) but it's excellent for getting my legs into shape for ski season. I also used some free weights to do various arm exercises. Followed up by a post workout smoothie (sorry for the cell phone camera quality pictures):

In the smoothie:

Milk

Dark sweet cherries

Strawberries

Kale

Banana

Arbonne chocolate protein powder (a little expensive, but totally worth it)

This is definitely one of my favorite combinations. I usually stick with spinach in smoothies because it blends better, but kale was all I had on hand. The cherries and banana make it really sweet without any added sugar (besides the protein powder, of course).


Now, on to the main topic of this post: my running playlist. I am extremely picky when it comes to the music I listen to while working out. It must be something fast paced with a lot of bass. Pitbull is one of my favorite artists to listen to, especially while I'm running. 

My current playlist

I also get sick of my playlists fairly quickly. This is definitely a problem because my workouts always seem to drag if I'm not really into the music I'm listening to. 

I'm desperately asking for music suggestions to keep my playlist fresh and interesting. 

What are your favorite songs to listen to while you workout?

Today called for sweatpants, fuzzy boots, and lots of coffee.

I had a pretty late night last night and a very early morning to study for a chemistry exam. There are two more weeks until the end of the semester, so most teachers are trying to cram in last minute tests before final exam week. 

I did manage to pull together a pretty good dinner last night though. After a quick trip to the grocery store, I was able to make this delicious dish.

 Steak stir-fry with jasmine rice

The stir-fry had precooked steak, red, green, and yellow red bell peppers, broccoli, onion, and snap peas. I let the vegetables steam in olive oil and a little bit of water for 15 minutes or so, then added the precooked steak. After letting that simmer for a few minutes, I added La Choy Original Stir-Fry Sauce. 

I was hoping to have leftovers to last a few days, but it was so good that my boyfriend, Miles, ended up eating most of the intended leftovers. Oh well, at least it was good :).

While dinner was cooking, I munched on some pomegranate arils. I love pomegranate season.

Tonight I have a date with my biology homework. After I get sick of doing that, I'll mosey on over to the gym. I plan on trying a new treadmill interval workout. Side note: It's not unusual for me to not make it to the gym until 1am sometimes (thank goodness for 24/hr gyms). Does anybody else do their workout really late at night?

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Since this is a pretty short one, I'll probably hop on the elliptical for 15 minutes and add some strength training at the end.

What are your favorite strength training exercises?
Also, anybody have a favorite interval workout?

Have a good night!

First post!

Hi, everyone! My name is Courtney and I'm new to the world of blogging :).

A few quick facts about myself:

• I'm a junior in college, majoring in Clinical Lab Science
• I'm 20 years old
• I live in the snowy state of Michigan, so most of my workouts are indoors this time of year
• Telemark skiing is my sport of choice
• I used to run every single day in junior high, but became discouraged after joining track and field and realizing my teammates were much faster than I was

I hope to use this blog to document my achievements (and many, many struggles) that come with developing a healthy lifestyle. I'm specifically interested in running, so most of my workouts will be centered around that. I do try to eat a healthy and balanced diet; however, my main focus at the moment is maintaining a regular workout schedule. Hopefully I can incorporate healthier foods into my lifestyle more regularly at a later point.

Developing a regular exercise schedule the past few weeks has been a challenge. I haven't been doing the exercise thing long enough to form a habit of working out a set amount of times each week, but I'm working on it. I seem to be able to manage at least four days a week, so I'm definitely off to a decent start. Last week, I did a turkey trot 5k with my sister, Krista.


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The main reason I started to run again was for this race. I didn't want to feel completely unprepared for it (as I did last year) so I started "training" for it about two weeks before the race. I use the term training very loosely because I didn't actually follow a plan, and there really wasn't any rhyme or reason to my running other than trying to increase my endurance and speed. However, it seemed to pay off because I ran the best turkey trot this year out of the three years I've done it. I'm not going to lie, it was still pretty slow (42:04). Even though there's a lot of room for improvement, I'm proud I was able to do that with the little amount of preparing I did.

I hope everyone enjoys this blog; I will update as frequently as finals allow in the next few weeks ;). Please feel free to link your blogs to me. I would be happy to check them out!