Relaxing Evening In

My body is FIGHTING my desire to become a morning exerciser. Every morning this week the idea of exercising first thing has sounded dreadful. But this morning, I didn't care how disgusting exercising sounded. I pulled myself out of bed and struggled through a 3 mile run in 32 minutes and 25 seconds on the treadmill.



It was not graceful, but I made it through the 3 miles (holding on for parts of it, unfortunately). Every step I had to remind myself that this was worth it, keep going. Oh well, maybe tomorrow's cardio at the gym will be easier for me. The best part of the run was being able to watch/listen to the music videos on VH1 while I ran.

After my workout, STRETCHING, shower, getting ready, etc. I was running late (How can I possibly be running late if I don't have to be to work until 9am? I don't get it!) so I just grabbed a Z bar for breakfast. Not ideal health wise, but tasty.



For lunch today I had more of the potato and leek soup that I made on Sunday. This stuff is SO EASY and SO GOOD! I will definitely be making this soup again. I topped the soup with some unhealthy toppers: cheese, sour cream, and bacon. (After I heated the soup in the mic at work, I just poured my fixins on top!)



I also had some roasted red pepper hummus (I'm planning on making my own sometime now that I know how easy it is!) and 3 HUGE carrots. It's hard to tell from this picture how many carrot sticks that is, but it's a TON. And I ate every one of them!



When I got home at 6:30 tonight, I was really looking forward to my dinner: Sweet potato shepherd's pie! This is one of the meals that I made ahead of time on Sunday. I followed Rachael Ray's recipe to a T except for one thing: I used ground chicken (it was cheap and on sale) instead of ground turkey.




If I were to make this meal again, I would make two changes. 1) Use less cheese on top - it had so much flavor already that the cheese was barely needed. 2) Don't use the banana!

Instead of butter or sugar or something, there is a BANANA mashed up with the sweet potatoes! The sweetness of it was a little weird for me compared to the savoriness of the chicken, veggies, poultry seasoning, etc. (Notice I found a new use for my awesome pastry tool?)



It was really nice coming home to a ready made Rachael Ray meal!



I said that I was going to start eating more green veggies with my dinners, but I didn't tonight. We have tons of salad right now, so I should've had one. Gotta be better about this!

R is playing poker tonight, so my plan is to catch up on a few missed episodes of The Hills and The Office on my computer and be in bed by 9:30! Night!