I had a very active day. I completely exceeded my 30 minute exercise minimum and it felt great to exercise and enjoy it.
I had a light breakfast of a mint chocolate green monster.
I knew I had to keep it light because I was joining Jen at Y2Yoga for hot yoga at 9:15 am. Remember when I decided to eat dinner before my first hot yoga and thought I was going to die and/or throw up the whole time?
This smoothie was exactly the right amount of food. I also skipped coffee and guzzled water beforehand.
I’m not going to sugar coat this, it was hard. I mean, really hard. I haven’t been to yoga in forever, and although I’m used to being the least flexible/worst yogi in the class, I hate that I’ve lost the little bit of progress I had made several months ago.
But, it was nice to do something different and sweat out every ounce of fluid in my body. I was running late to class because my alarm never went off and ended up in the back, directly in front of a heater. I think I went into child pose at least 10 times for a break. At least I didn’t see spots this time. Not almost blacking out = success, in my book.
After yoga, I rushed home, showered, had a piece of PB toast and coffee, and headed over to my grandmothers house for a belated New Year’s Day meal. We usually eat this meal on New Years Day, but today worked better for all of our schedules. I’m pretty sure this is a “southern thing”, but there are specific foods you are supposed to eat to have good luck in the new year. But, we’ll get to that in a second.
When I arrived, my cousin Ashlyn showed me her new camera. Another budding photographer in the family.
We always eat buffet style and sometimes we have more people than the dining room table allows. Wess and Jen shared the bar to make room for us at the table.
There is always so much food at my grandmother’s that you can’t possibly eat everything. You have to pick and choose what you really want.
This was my plate:
Yams
Sweet pickles (made from “old timey cucumbers”, which are pale green)
Collard greens with vinegar
Pork with a sweet sauce
Black eyed peas and pinto beans with onion
Biscuit
Macaronia
Steamed veggies
Traditional southern New Years food: pork, greens, and black eyed peas. Pork symbolizes wealth and prosperity. Greens symbolize cash and black eyed peas symbolize change (coins). Cornbread is also traditional, which we had, but I cannot resist my grandmother’s biscuits.
When eating collard greens, most southerners douse them in apple cider vinegar.
Vinegar dousing in action 🙂
To show you some of the other foods we had, here is my dad’s plate. I bet you’re wondering what that purple thing is. Well my friends, that is a pickled egg, which is the only way I do not enjoy eggs. It’s actually not that bad. The eggs are purple because they are pickled with beet juice. Just not my cup of tea.
My dad chose to eat his pinto beans over white bread, which I also love. But like I said, at my grandparent’s house for lunch, you cannot have it all, unless you want to have a serious food baby.
After lunch I invited my cousin, April, to take a short run with me. She has mentioned wanting to run with my before, but we never could seem to find a time to do it. I wore running clothes to my grandparents’ and when April got off work she met me there. We ran/walked for 3.14 miles. She did great despite the fact that she had just eaten and felt nauseous. That’s a lesson I’ve learned, and relearned, and relearned again.
Running with a newbie reminds me of when I first started running. I truly believe that anyone, well anyone without a major health issue like knee problems, can become a runner. It’s so fun to see yourself progress a little bit at a time, getting faster, getting stronger, building up your stamina. After some races, I have temporarily lost my love for running, but I am determined not to do this after my marathon. I’m going to continue to try to make running fun, and having a running buddy is my favorite way to keep it interesting. 🙂
How do you keep exercise (running or otherwise) interesting and fun?