10.3.12

I didn't have an afternoon class today, and we didn't have enough business at work for my manager to want me to come in, so I got to head home early. I did some laundry, ate a sandwich, and then took Ruby for a walk.

My neighborhood has a few different walking routes sort of built into it. It's pretty nice, actually, so we elected to take the "medium long" route. By we, I mean I decided, and Ruby did what I wanted. She isn't capable of opinions that I care about, lol. We went through the main part of our neighborhood to the back side, turned onto a side street that cuts through, down into the other neighborhood, then up the hill to our house. It's probably only a mile or so, but the hill at the end was fairly difficult. It's steeper than it feels in a car, that's for sure!

The aftereffects of yesterday's workout on the elliptical are more apparent today. Oddly, the only place I have real soreness is on the lower part of my calves (the tendon area). I think that's mainly from not being super flexible anymore, so the tendons aren't used to the stretching they had to do. My glutes are a bit sore, but not bad. "Pleasant workout" soreness versus the pain of the tendon/calf region. That hurt the most when I was going down the stairs... and all of my classes are on the third or fourth floor of the building, lol. Going up wasn't so bad, though, so I felt good about that.

I know that I need to work on my eating habits, as well, and Josh and I have been trying to work on this for some time now. We've incorporated a lot more vegetables into our diet, which was hardest for me since I have never been a huge fan of veggies. I still don't care for many fruits, but the veg situation is a lot better than ever before. My current biggest problem with food, I feel, is my lack of portion control. Josh will make us these huge steaks, I'm talking 10-12 ounces, and I'll eat the whole thing, plus mashed potatoes and zucchini or asparagus. Sometimes I make rice instead of potatoes (actually, we've really decreased our potato consumption over the last year, and only have them once or twice a month at this point. I'm proud of that, even though I LOVE mashed potatoes), or maybe pasta. That's a HUGE amount of food, especially for one person to eat for one meal. It's probably enough food to last me the whole day! I've decided that a good way to start thinking about the quantity of food that I'm consuming is to start using a smaller plate. We have your standard dinner plates, then some "salad plates". There is one salad plate that is mismatched, and about 1/2" more in diameter than the others are. That's going to be my dinner plate from now on, and I think it will really help. I'll still be able to fill up the plate, but I've made a "no stacking food" rule that should keep my intake amounts reasonable. Ideally, the food won't touch, either, but that might be unavoidable.

Bowls are also a problem, because we have some very large bowls. Anyone who has seen my dinnerware knows that I have a set of striped bowls that are really large. They go with my oversized stoneware dinner plates. Sadly, I don't think I can use those bowls anymore. Any bowl that can fit an entire can of soup in it isn't one that I should be using! I'm going to stick to the smaller bowls that came with our Corelle dinnerware sets. They should help with things like pasta and salad. Tonight, I'm making chicken fettucine (well, probably penne) alfredo, and using one of those smaller bowls will be a good start to portion control!