Welcome (or welcome back) to the 2009 DKos Fitness Challenge.
This is a shared weekly diary to celebrate a new year and a new start on life and encourage Kossacks to shape up this year and to personally recover from the apathy and sloth of the Bush years. We encourage you to join in, sharing your fitness goals, progress, training regimes, tips, recipes, and moments of backsliding. Try to be supportive, and let's not have any negativity - few are where they want to be yet, but we WILL get there.
Hey gang, welcome back.
I'm over my brief illness, which sadly means I quit losing water weight and put some back on :P I started the year at 286.4, with the goal of losing 100# by year end. We're 10 days in, and I'm at 284.5, so I'm a little behind; I'd have preferred to stay at least where I was last week, at 283.6, heh. The year is young, just gotta step it up :)
Been starting a mix of traditional exercises scattered around around with more walking, a bit of weight bench work so far. Was looking for my jumprope, but haven't found it yet, so I'll probably have to buy another, did a couple sets of jumping jacks instead this morning.
Have to keep this week's bodytext short, I've got a walking date with my Dad in a few minutes, we're going to hit a few seed stores to get started on prepping for this year's garden, then the local mall to walk around inside.
Before I leave to hit the trail land let folks talk about how they're doing, I'll leave you with a recipe I'm going to be doing as part of dinner tonight. It's cold and drizzly out here, not quite cold enough for snow, although it's expected later, so I'll be cooking 'warm'.
Sauteed Corn and Black Bean Salad
Ingredients
2.5 cups corn kernels (roughly 5 large ears)
14 oz black beans (I use canned)
1 yellow bell pepper
.75 cup tomatoes, either halved grapes or diced regular (optional)
3 Tbs coarse chopped cilantro
2 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil (EVOO!)
1 Tbs lime juice
.5 teaspoon ground cumin
1 small jalapeno
Prep work
Drain and rinse your black beans and place in a bowl.
Cut the stem and seeds out of the peppers, and coarsely dice the bell and finely chop up the jalapeno what's left up and mix into the beans.
Either halve your cherry/grape tomatoes, or dice up 3/4 c worth of a regular tomato and add. (Optional step for me, I'm not a big fan of diced tomatoes except in salsa)
Coarse chop the cilantro.
If your corn is still on the cob, cut it off, if canned, drain.
Dump kernels into a frying pan with a dash of olive oil, and stir over
medium to high heat til most of the kernels are starting to brown up, then dump into a bowl.
Basically just add everything else in now, and mix up with salad tossing forks or tongs, making sure you don't get big clumps of cumin or jalapeno.
As a side, this should serve 4-6, and it'll spice up the meal nicely.
Feel free to add or subtract ingredients to taste. I usually leave the tomatoes out of mine, but leave a small cup on the table for folks who want to sprinkle some on theirs if I've got company. If it's just the two of us, they get left out. (Actually, as does the jalapeno, which similarly only winds up on mine, not my housemate's.)
So how's your week gone? Who's lost what, are you on track, what have you added in to your routines, and where'd you start and where are you headed? :)