Lately

Hello Gym Rats! First off, I'd like to apologize to my loyal readers for being MIA for so long. My excuse? Outrageous busyness to the point of literally not having enough hours in the day to do everything that I need to. Even my training and diet have suffered as of late. These 4:30 am daily wake-ups in order to be on the gym floor by 5:00 are seriously killing me. Not because it's "too early" but because by the time I get everything done for the day and settle down to sleep, there's just not enough hours left for a decent slumber between then and when the alarm goes off again! I am someone that has and probably always will require AT LEAST a solid 7 hours in order to function properly. When I list out my major priorities at the moment, training is still numero uno. I just feel like I'm rushing through things in order to get in-and-out in the measly hour I can devote each morning and letting equally important things like stretching, cardio, foam-rolling and ice bathing fall a bit to the wayside. I know…no excuses right? So I keep trudging and working on some workarounds.

I decided to call this post "Lately" because some of my favorite bloggers are always posting "Lately" posts of their week's recent events (OK, month in this case). I don’t even know where to begin though! The biggest life change (and consumption of time) for me is something I can't share here yet but I promise as soon as I can, I will! It's officially Fall here in Maine and that alone brings many changes in our day-to-day lives. Do your training and eating habits change with the seasons? Mine sure do! I've been freezing my ass off here (as usual) and have been in full-swing with the Fall baking. As clean and protein-packed as possible of course LOL. So far I have made two separate batches of pumpkin apple protein muffins, yum! I don't really have a recipe for them to share with you guys. Basically I just googled a simple pumpkin muffin recipe that included chopped apple chunks, did my usual swapping-out of butter with apple sauce, lowered the sugar,  added-in a couple scoops of protein powder and doubled the baking powder to offset the denseness brought on by the protein powder. This is a great baking trick a friend told me about. If you find that your recipes get too dense and don't rise enough when you add-in protein powder, just double the baking powder/soda (whatever is in the recipe). Works like a charm!

Last Sunday I finally had a few free hours of "me time" so I met up with a couple of friends and went apple picking. I try to go apple picking every year. Store-bought apples just aren't the same. Nothing beats a bite into a crisp Macintosh just plucked from the tree! I also picked up a small jug of fresh apple cider. Sooo good; especially when heated-up! Here's a pick of me doing some necessary orchard taste-testing.

I have no idea what I was laughing at but apparently it was a riot. Sunday night I whipped-up a delicious apple crisp with a protein crumble topping. I've been having a small bowl of it for breakfast each morning with my eggs. Great pre-lifting fuel! I think this weekend I am going to try making a pumpkin bread with dried apricots and sunflower seeds. I found the recipe while sifting through my recipe binder last weekend. I think I cut it out of a magazine last year and never made it. I'll post the recipe here if it comes out as good as it looks!

As far as training goes, nothing really changes for me in the Fall but I am being a bit less strict about calorie control (i.e. I may or may not have had pizza and wine for dinner last night). My favorite fitness idol, Pauline Nordin (check out FighterDiet.com if you aren't already in-the-loop) posted a good point the other day when she said something like "you can always loose an extra few pounds of fat so use those added calories today for greater muscle gains!". Well she said it much better but anyway my point is that I'm feeling like I'm making great progress on my "problem" areas thanks to added carbs/calories in my diet so if I my abs aren't quite so visible right now I don't really care. It's not bikini season, right? Plus, a guy who I constantly avoid getting into a gym convo with because of his highly critical nature actually went out of his way to compliment my progress the other day so I figure it's not totally in my head LOL.

As I mentioned before, I really haven't been doing much cardio at all other than my one day per week where that's all I do in the gym. My shins haven't been bothering me at all lately but that's probably more due to lack of cardio than it is true progress on my skeletal imbalances. I am still trying to get-in a 10-minute ice bath post Sunday morning leg training because it really does make a HUGE difference in my recovery. There's just no time for it any other day of the week unfortunately. Outside of the gym I did get out for a beautiful pre-Fall hike a couple of weeks ago from which I was literally crippled for a good 3 days afterwards. Maybe doing legs the day before wasn't my best idea ever LOL! Here's a pic of the miles and miles of Maine woods you could see from the top of Burnt Meadow Mountain in Brownfield.

Gorgeous, eh? I hope to get in at least one more hike before it gets too cold (i.e. two months ago LOL). Maybe go somewhere with some good foliage viewing! Alas, I must cut this short so I can check more items off of my Thursday "To-Do" list. Side note: it's not too bad with only about 386,206,173 tasks to get through today! So, that's it for my "lately"…How does your life change with the changing of the seasons?