Happy Sunday. When I was a kid I hated Sundays. Sunday meant school was the next day. It meant I needed to stay in after dinner and finish homework. I was not a great night for kid’s tv shows. For a lot of my adult life Sundays felt that way too. It did not matter if my place of employment at that time had me scheduled off on Mondays, because the majority of folks that were employed would be at work then, so what did it matter if I was off. Sundays are different now. They are a day that holds the possibility that anything could be done and anything can be fun.
Today I woke up early and was just awake. No reason to lay in bed so I got up. My wife was already up herself so our day together was starting early, YES! She wanted to some DVD workouts and I decided to get to the gym close to when it opens. I planned to do a light workout knowing she and I were going to be walking to see the Cherry Blossoms in DC. It had snowed during the night and that made us smile. Snow and the Cherry Blossoms. Once I got to the gym I abandoned my plan to use the elliptical machine and bike as my cardio workout. I saw the treadmill and had to get on it for 30 minutes. I did not want to run since I knew I would be walking for hours later. I could not help myself. I decided just one mile, you know to get the sweat going. That was a lie. I was lieing to myself. I knew I wanted to do two miles and I did. I did 2 miles back to back days. I then decided to walk for 25 minutes at 10% incline at 3.2 mph to keep the sweat going. I lied to myself and I am better off for it. I headed home and within a hour or two we were on our way to see the Cherry Blossoms. The snow had all melted but it was still a chilly day. We parked in Virginia near the Pentagon and walked to DC. We walked past Monuments, past Cherry Blossoms, past crowds of folks all there to see the trees. Had the weather been warmer it might have been unbearable, but with the chill in the air it was not so bad. We packed lunch but I was not hungry when we stopped. In fact the whole day was off for me when it came to food. I had a bigger than normal breakfast before I left, a snack while hiking that was 8 crackers and one red pepper slice, and I did not eat again until dinner. We were done hiking at 3:10pm. We did between 5-6 miles. We were gone for 3 hours. Sometimes we were walking faster, sometimes slower, but it was an activity for sure! Once back to the truck we were off to do our grocery shopping. Time flew by. Once everything was put away and I was showered it was time to make dinner. We both were in the mood for hamburgers so we paired up some asparagus, some sliced peppers and drizzled them with olive iol and got the into the oven, We also took 2 potatoes that we would have baked and sliced them up into french fries and drizzled them as well and set them in the oven too. It was a great dinner! It felt like a “bad meal” from a restaurant but it was really a good one. I totaled 778 calories for the burger, bun, mayo, ketchup, fries, asparagus, roasted peppers and the olive oil. It was a meal I was craving since last week when I felt like I wanted a burger. We used 92 % lean ground beef and made the burger 6 ounces each. I had one, my wife had one and I have one for lunch tomorrow. Since I did not have a real lunch today I was way behind on my calories for the day. I decided to add a Special K fruit bar to dinner and I had one pretzel rod and 30 grapes for an evening snack. Total calories for the day were only 1738. I guess that is ok. It is lower than my target goal of 2,200 that seems to keep my body happy. I will have to see how I feel tomorrow. I did not have it in me to eat more just to push up the totals. I guess this helps offset the times I run higher on calories. If I remember I will add a picture from today’s walk when I download the camera this week.
