Sunday, November 18, 2012

F3 Check In Day and Party Pics

Festive Fitness Focus Challenge Check In!

F3 Challengers, it's check in day! You can either comment on this post, or email me your spreadsheet, or both.  How is it going?

Week two for me was.. ok. I'd give it a B. As mentioned in the last post, I find the 2-4 week part of a new fitness regime to be, well, challenging.  That's why it's a "challenge", I guess. If it was not somewhat difficult, it would be the F3 .. what? The 'F3 easy'?

I skipped one workout and eating got a bit messy near the end of the week. Weight was stable, and yoga happened, twice. This class, Power Vinyasa Flow #2 is very lower body focused. You spend minutes at a time holding variations of a 'sitting' position (like a wall sit, but without the wall). If you want yoga that makes your thighs scream for mercy, try that download.

I managed to party without any alcohol (go kombucha, ginger zevia and that funky Braggs Apple Cider drink). Actually, talking to drunk people when you are completely sober is wildly entertaining.  

Goals for week three include being FAR more organised - in fact, I'm devoting this afternoon to getting some food pre-preparation happening, and training with  more intensity.  

Now, about all that party food I was planning to make.  Things started badly. I failed a very expensive batch of macaroons by accidentally adding too much salt. Then, because it contained a $15 bottle of maple syrup, I attempted to save the mix by adding more coconut, then quinoa flour, incrementally creating a huge mass that my processor could no longer mix and that stubbornly remained too salty. When it was 'close enough' I cooked a trial batch, and burned them. That was at about midnight Friday. My kitchen was a mess, I had nothing to take to Mamasana's party and I felt like sliding dramatically to the floor, sitting in a pile of flour and just sobbing.  

Yesterday morning I resurrected my pride and commenced a flurry of activity. As time was ticking away like a bomb about to explode, I cut myself some slack. That is, no cake (I'd learned that both my Aunty and Grandma had gone into cake-making mode) and I let mustard makers do the dressing for my salad. I got organic corn chips and various delicious 'Mary's Crackers' (first pic) things that were lucky to make the party and not go directly into my face.

In the end, I made a huge batch of hummus and a kumara salad. In any case, there were about 50 people at the party, and food for at least 85. As usual, the women of the family (+ friends) tried industriously to outcook each other. Below are some pics from the day and I'll put a bunch more on Facebook later.

kumara salad all ready to go. I added gogi berries and roasted almonds

So much food that we had to expand inside, outside and.. to the ironing board. Grandma had to take pics to 'use up her film'. She uses approximately one film a year. Cute, huh?

Aunty K and her amazing cupcakes

KOMBUCHA in the glass. Probably laughing at some drunk people, or old people acting like teenagers.

How can this woman have a daughter that is 60?

Fifties theme. Apparently this rolled up jeans, white socks thing actually happened.


  1. Oh you look gorgeous! Love the dress & red lippy - looks like a wonderful party with all sorts of yumminess :) You're Mama would have been over the moon!

    I'm actually doing good motivation-yoga-wise... I have decided to quit the gym to save $$$ for next years yoga teacher training fees, and have been dedicated to home workouts which have been really good - a mix of my own creations + you tube goodies.

    1. Go you! I love home yoga workouts. I find that with the time of day that yoga is on, by the time I wrestle traffic all the way home, I'm rushed and have lost all my yoga floppiness. My office is perfect for yoga and only 20 seconds walk back home. ;)

  2. Looks like a fun party - I'm sure your mum enjoyed herself wildly; I can see your grandma did! :) Bugger about the macaroons but it looks as though nobody missed them. Food overload, anyone?

    My week has been awesome. I *almost* achieved all my planned workouts (a huge improvement on last week). One lower body workout, two spin workouts, one run, one outdoor session of mixed cardio and bodyweight stuff. 5 out of the planned 6, not bad.

    Food was exemplary until Saturday when I slipped and fell into a tub of ice cream. And some chocolate. And some wine. Oops. Amazing how I managed to land in all three. Never mind, weight on Friday was in a good place - I'm sure it's jumped upwards quite a bit (haven't checked, will do tomorrow morning), but I expect by the end of the coming week it'll be even lower than Friday. No biggie, moving onwards and upwards. Or hopefully downwards, in the case of the scales.

    1. It's just been a tough week all round, apart from yoga girl above you ;) It really is quite miraculous how you managed to land *splat* at just the perfect intersection of icecream, chocolate AND wine. Bet that couldn't happen more than once in six weeks.

  3. As predicted, my weight went "wrong way d*ckhead" this week due to a lack of focus and conference food. Overall, however, I'm still down a none-too-shabby 900g.

    I have now ridden more km and hours than any other month this year...and I'm not finished yet! I need to get back onto the weights workouts. They slipped this week instead of increasing due to late evenings and early mornings at the conference.

    The race today went well, but I got a bit sunburnt :( I fell into chips and a hotdog after the race and the 2 hour long search for food after it. Lunch at 3pm after a light breakfast and racing 41km is not such a good idea.

    1. You did notice that I lost only 100g (meaning 800g total so far)? It's ALL GOOD. Sounds like you need to get a bit more organised, just like I do. I know that a long wait for lunch is certainly something that puts my mind into 'stuffyaface' mode.

    2. Yeah, I didn't think the race was THAT far in the middle of nowhere. Having a bbq on offer with only sausages, onions and bread doesn't do much for me with my intolerance to wheat and onion....I usually have it sorted.

      Yay for your losses! I'll take whatever I can get this week, just hopefully not an increase. I'm drinking my water and paying attention to things hoping that'll get me headed back in the right direction.

      I'll get a photo to you soon, provided Alistair got a good on :)

      Got the protein today, thanks for the card and bonus extra :)

    3. You're welcome! I will grab one of those pics over the weekend and blog it.

  4. I'm down nearly 2kg this week - due to vomiting up most of my stomach contents on Saturday night and pooing out the rest on Sunday morning. Food poisoning sucks and so does dehydration!

    1. Oooo.. not good! I saw that on your blog. Hope everything is alright now, food poisoning can take a while to recover from. X

