Delicious DOMS

I has them :o)

My cobbled together routine from my first real session with Geoff does the business:-

• Warm up (500m on the rower at L7, aim for under 02:00)
• Squats - 3x10
• Kettlebells - Dual arm swings, 3x15
• Kettlebells - Single arm swings, 3x10x2
• Cable lat pulls - dual arms, 3x10
• Cable push down rows - single arms, 3x10x2
• Kettlebells - walking lunges, 3x12
• Straight leg raises with twists - 3x20
• Weighted plyometric squats - 3x8
• Arnold presses - 3x10

 Shoulders, back and thighs are acheing really nicely from doing that on Wednesday and Friday.  I didn't want to go any earlier in the week due to being exhausted and more than a bit broken.  Gymming in that state would have been a very bad idea.

Amusingly or not, we went to bed at 2am after me being on a work call until 11.30pm and got woken up early by the bedroom being stiflingly hot.  I opened the windows a bit and turned off the radiator.  Then the shopping came.  Then I had to be on another call at 9.30am.  The short of it was that the thermostat button got stuck on "+" and was reading "30C", which explained the insane heat.  And then we had a nap at 3pm.

The chicken is roasting and the veggies are about to go on.  It all smells incredible in the kitchen and we're going to watch a film and I'm not doing any more work this weekend.

A favourite

This is one of my favourite recipes - there's quite a bit of preparation involved and that can be a drag mid-week but it's really worth it.  Really.

Chicken in black bean sauce with noodles (Serves 2; 530kcal, 46g protein, 62g carbs, 10g fat, 9g fibre, 3.5 fruit & veg)

• 1 medium onion
• 2 tbsp good soy sauce
• 3-4 fat cloves of garlic
• 1 large red or green chilli pepper
• 25g fermented black beans
• 15ml flavourless oil (groundnut, grapeseed etc.)
• 10g cornflour
• 120g mushrooms
• 2 large chicken breasts
• 1 large piece of ginger (approx 10-15g)
• 1 large green pepper
• 1 Tbsp rice wine/Mirin
• 1 medium carrot
• 84g bundle of Clearspring Noodles, Organic Wheat, Brown Rice
• 100g white cabbage
• 1 vegetable stock cube OR 1 sachet of miso

Measure the cornflour, mirin and one tablespoon of the soy sauce into a dish and mix gently to dissolve the cornflour.  Cube the chicken breast and add to the mixture in a bowl at least 30 minutes before you intend to start cooking.   Stir and turn occasionally to make sure the chicken is well-coated.

Make up the stock/miso with about 200ml water and set aside.  Peel and finely slice the garlic and ginger.  Also finely slice the chilli pepper (leave the seeds in unless you want to keep the fire levels a bit under control in which case de-seed and make sure the white skin/flim on the inside is removed and discarded).

Finely dice the onion.

Finely slice the cabbage and cut the carrot into fine batons - the closer to matchsticks the better.

Slice the mushrooms.

De-seed and slice the peppers (I used yellow ones this time, but green is better).

Finely chop the black beans (a mezza-luna is best for this if you have one).

Prepare and cook the noodles as per the instructions and set aside.

Add oil to a large wok or other round-bottomed non-stick pan and heat.  Add the onions, chilli, garlic and ginger and soften for a few minutes before adding the chicken and marinade into the pan.

Once the chicken is sealed, add the cabbage and carrot and cook for a couple of minutes to soften a little.

Add the peppers.

Add the mushrooms and stock and cook for another minute or two.

Add the black beans and heat through before adding in the cooked noodles. Stir for a few seconds to mix thoroughly and then serve and eat immediately.

It's all about the vitamins

Feeling under the weather and a bit concerned my fruit and veg has been low the last week or so, I've gone for a recipe from Tone It Up Blog a Warm Flannel Hash, a nice variant on hash browns that involves sweet potatoes and beetroot.  Lots of B vitamins from the beetroot and complex carbs in the sweet potatoes and tons of fibre from both.  Topped with a chicken breast baked with honey and Dijon mustard.  Juicy and really very tasty as dinners go.  Although the hash didn't crisp up very well as it was too thick and not mushed enough in the pan or cooked hot enough it was still really nice.  So pretty and colourful too!

Rawr!

GOOD gym today!  Increased my clean and presses to 30kg!  OK so I only managed 8, 8, 4 but still... a while back I couldn't get it over my head even once :o)  Unassisted (no counter-weights on the Smith machine) squats at 45kg as well... feeling faberlous!

Roasted a Black Farmer organic chickie for dinner and feeling great given that I've dropped some fat since coming back from hols (down to 66.6kg today from over 68kg on hols :o)) and gymmage went nicely.  Plus, I'm feeling a lot less stressy not logging foods though I have cheated a bit during the week and discovered I've been heading way low on active days so ended up snacking in the evenings.  It is nice not to feel that I have to eat at particular times to fulfil my set snacking through the day, but that I can eat -something- when I get hungry anyway.  And... getting hungry... well, I've been a bit scared of it and ending up scarfing loads of food but having available snacks in the office is helping a lot there.  Nibble on an appropriate amount of dried fruit/nuts/yogurt&fruit/carrot&houmous/beef jerky and I feel fine to wait until a reasonable meal time etc.

Brekkie was nice this morning (see photo)... again prepared by Mr TOTKat.  Toasted wholemeal seeded Food Doctor bagel with butter, Marmite and a poached egg.  NOM!

A little extra effort

Today is another good day for keeping it real and hauling ass into exercising.  Though I love going to the gym, I'm not so enamoured of functional swimming.  As I did weights yesterday, however, it had to be a swim or a run today and it's way too hot for me to run any time after about 8am, so swim it was.  Intervals make it a little bit less boring and as I'm stronger, I'm feeling stronger in the water too.  It's not translating into extra speed though as it does require more than just the bare strength itself so this is where the intervals come into it.  And then, once I've done the Nokia Thames Swim, I'll dial in some proper structured sets, e.g. of 8x200m with 20s rest in between sets at a pace of 01:45 per 100m (i.e. 18s lengths - which is pretty achievable given that my 200m time trial time is 03:15 or so).

Dinner tonight was a really nice one... take one chicken breast (125-150g), lay it on some kitchen foil enough to wrap comfortably and loosely with some to spare.  Smear cream cheese on one side really really thickly (30g).  Grind some black pepper onto the cheese and press chorizo slices (x3) onto the cheese.  Wrap the whole lot up in the foil and bake in a pre-heated oven at 190C for 15 minutes then 150C for 15 minutes.  Serve on a bed of mashed butternut squash.  NOM!

The cheese goes soft, mixes a bit with the chicken and chorizo juices, so make sure you pour that liquid over the top as it's really flavoursome.  That little bit of extra effort with tonight's dinner was really worth it.  I'm glad I bothered :o)  Really nice flavour and I'm feeling nicely full and almost clean too! (though the cream cheese is a bit on the processed side as it's an extra low fat one with added thickeners)

Nutritional info (including 400g butternut squash):-

Calories (kcal)	339
Carbohydrate (g)	29.3
Protein (g)	41.5
Fat (g)	6.8
Fibre (g)	5.5
Fruit & Veg	4.4

B - greek yogurt with 1 scoop MP Max, Yeo Valley fruit compote and flaked almonds
S - strawberries with greek yogurt and a small squirt of agave nectar
*swim*
S - 1 scoop MP Max in skimmed milk
L - lettuce, celery, beetroot, cherry tomatoes, sweet pepper and a chicken breast
S - mango and single cream
S - Frijolemole with carrots
D - chicken stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in chorizo, with butternut squash mash

Exercise - 33 minutes swimming (315kcals before background tax)

Calories (kcal) [kcals to maintain weight (inc. exercise)	1463 2068]
Protein (g)	152.5 (42.1%)
Carbohydrate (g)	141.4 (36.6%)
Fat (g)	34.1 (21.2%)
Fibre (g)	23.5
Fruit & Veg	16.5