Back to reality for this girl...unfortunately.
Jamaica was awesome. The theme of the week was doing nothing. We basically got up in the morning, got some breakfast, then sat in the pool until it was time to get ready for dinner, ate dinner, then wound down until it was time for sleep. It was so nice. The pool had these nice benches and tables that were actually inside the pool and 10' away from the swim-up bar.....so you could find Matt and I sitting at one of those pretty much every day with our Kindles. There were plenty of pina coladas had. And the wedding was awesome! Overall, it was very relaxing and just the right kind of break I was needing.
The working out and eating didn't go as well as we initially planned. We had great intentions the first day. We got up at a decent time and went to the gym before breakfast. Well we quickly figured out that this gym was teeny and we were apparently not the only ones with the same idea. Needless to say that was the only time we attempted it. That day I was pretty sore from all the deadlifting still so I ended up doing a ROMWOD and a lot of stretching anyway. I was feeling a little better after that but for the rest of the week my SI joints were feeling pretty insulted from the firm beds the resort had so my back didn't exactly take a vacation. BUT we DID try paddleboarding for the first time. I've been wanting to try for awhile and I figured since it was included in our resort stay, why not. It was a good time! We only went out for a little while and I didn't try standing since being on my knees was a struggle in and of itself, but it was cool to try! I'll probably try it again if given the opportunity. Other than that my physical activity consisted of whatever swimming I did when I got bored with reading and I am so fine with it. You never realize just how much of a break your body needs, until you actually give it a break. Just need to work a little bit on my flexibility and work out some of the stiffness I developed while doing nothing.
The eating we definitely could have done better. Buffets are my weakness and well, everything was buffet. But a big part of the issue was that I struggled to find healthy things that I wanted to eat. There was no shortage of carbs. In fact, there were always numerous kinds of carbs at each meal. Protein was hit or miss. There wasn't a shortage of protein, but if it wasn't an exotic protein source it was slathered or flavored with things I'm not a fan of. We really liked breakfast and weren't impressed with lunch, so we would eat a big breakfast and skip lunch. Let's be real, it was also partially because we didn't feel like getting out of the pool. Dinner we had pretty good luck finding things we liked. Wouldn't have killed me to go to the salad bar more often though. I don't regret the debauchery though. I did get to try some new delicious foods.
We got back late Sunday night and only had Monday before it was back to the grind. So we had meal prep Monday instead of Sunday. This week we didn't order Balanced Body since we weren't enthused by the choices so we were on our own for lunches. I've been jonesing for lentils lately, don't ask me why. My usual dish to make with them is lentils with rice and sausage, but I quickly realized that both lentils and rice are huge carb sources so that wasn't going to work out so well. Instead, I used quinoa, which still has a decent chunk of carbs but to a lesser extent. It ended up being a nice hearty meal and it's scratching the itch for lentils. Dinner we kept it super simple. We bought some pork chops and strip steaks to grill up and we just put zucchini and corn on the side. I feel like every week I'm talking about how simple we wanted to keep things. Not to make it seem like I don't like cooking, I love cooking, just very rarely have had the energy for it this summer. But I would really love to change that and start testing out some more things. Now that I'm getting a little more comfortable with how ingredients mix together as far as macros, I'd like to start branching out from the simple.
Today was my first day back at the gym. Endurance Thursday as usual, but now with new programming. Since I missed last week, today was my opportunity to test in for the endurance training
30 min row or bike
That's it. That's the workout. Just hop on a thing and do it for 30 minutes. The whole point of it was to find a pace that we could maintain for the whole 30 minutes and then in the upcoming weeks we'll do intervals to build on that pace. We did something similar last fall. It actually wasn't the worst thing ever. I got on a bike because I could never imaging rowing for 30 minutes. I picked a pretty good pace from the beginning and just went with it. It's hard finding a sustainable pace! I constantly want to start out strong just to see what I can do, but then I have to keep telling myself to keep it low key even though it may feel easy in the beginning because after 10 minutes it's not going to be easy anymore. The interval from the 10 to 20 minute mark sucked a lot mentally and my legs started burning, but I got through it and I didn't die. I think another personal goal of mine for this programming is to work on my breathing. I suck at breathing while I exercise. I just start breathing fast and shallow and everything else ends up going to hell. So considering it's looking like we're going to be working on longer intervals and increasing the speed gradually, I think it's a good time to work on it.
That's all I got for now! We've just been trying to get back into the swing of things. I loved going on vacation and just getting out of here for awhile, but at the same time I felt ready to get back into our routine. Well, most of it - the working out and eating right part of it. I wouldn't complain about sitting my ass in the pool for a little while longer, but I feel ready to tackle things head on again, and my body's ready too. Only thing I hope is that I can keep my back happy, which I wasn't very good at doing this summer...
