A Great Day of Skiing at Crystal

What a perfect day skiing!! Crystal got about 9 feet of new snow since the last time I went and the friends I went with are just plain awesome. We buzzed down the hills like no tomorrow. There was this one long trail called Kelly's gap that was so much fun we just kept going down it. One time I took a wrong turn and ended up on a double diamond run called Exterminator. That one took me some time getting down from because of all the moguls. :)

Chunky Monkey

Ahh, there's nothing like a refreshing meal replacement drink like a chunky monkey.

About 734 Calories, 29g fat (16g from the peanut butter and 12g from the Hershey bar), 9g Fiber & 40g Protein.

Put in Blender:

• 8 oz Milk (I use 2%)
  
• 1 oz Coffee Concentrate (I use Victorian House Concentrated Coffee)


• 2 heaping tablespoons Peanut Butter (I use Costco's Kirkland Brand Creamy Organic Peanut Butter)


• 1/2 to 1 Frozen Banana - depending on size (You can use fresh but I found that when you unpeel and freeze them is much easier and they don't go bad)


• 2 scoops (1 serving) Chocolate Whey Protein (I use Biochem Whey Protein at VitaCost.com)


• 1/2 scoop (1/2 oz) Ghirardelli Premium Baking Cocoa Sweet Ground Chocolate


• 16 oz ice

Now blend that all up to a smoothie consistancy then this is where the chunky comes in:

• 1 serving Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate bar
  

Put the blender on low and put in the chocolate bar and let it chunk it up so you can get the chips into a straw. Then Enjoy :)

Lentil Stew

Lentils are a "super food", they are high in protein and fiber. This was one of the keys to my weight loss. I was eating canned lentil soup before and not losing much weight. This will last me about 2-3 weeks eating it for lunch. Oh, as an extra kick you can put some fresh broccoli on top of the bowl with a paper towel covering it when you reheat it and it will cook the broccoli just right.

3 qts. water
1 lb lentils, washed
2 packages or 4 cups sliced mushrooms
4 medium carrots, sliced
1 bunch green onions, fine chopped
3 stalks celery and tops, fine chopped
1 leek, fine chopped
3 medium potatoes, cut
1 can corn
2 tbsp. butter
1 tsp. garlic
1 tbsp. beef stock
1 tsp. salt (optional)

Use 4 quart pot or slow cooker. Sauté mushrooms, onions, leek, celery and garlic in butter till tender.

Put beef stock in 2 cups of water in microwave to melt beef stock.

Combine all ingredients in pot add water to almost top of pot and simmer at least 3 hours until lentils and carrots have softened. Add salt to taste.

Big Climb 2009

I had an awesome time doing the Big Climb with Team Foot Fire!

We ran up 69 floors in the Columbia Center in downtown Seattle. The Big Climb is held each year to raise funds for blood cancer research.

Even though I would consider myself being in great cardio shape it was the most labored breathing I've ever done. My time was 12:08. I was 74th out of 290 in my age group and 443 out of 2927 racers.

A professional picture was taken by the event organizers and can be seen here.

Learning to ski

Well come to find out that my new friends ski and in order to spend some time with them I thought it would be a good idea to take up skiing. Now the last time I was on skis was 25 years ago and the most I could do was snow plow. Before going to the slopes I thought I would take a look on YouTube to see if I could get any pointers. So I typed in "Learn to Ski" and found a great 12 chapter ski lesson by LasseeLyck

Well after watching these videos I headed off to Crystal Mountain with my friends and they were amazed at my abilities after watching some videos. They called me a sandbagger :)

Here is the Introduction:

Before and after picture

I went back and found a picture of me on July 20th, 2003 (left) I think I was around 220 lbs and a recent one of me on December 26th, 2008 (right) at 150 lbs.

At 42 I thought my life was basically over. I had very high cholesterol, constant back pain and could hardly move.

Well sometime in 2005 I decided to take action to improve my quality of life so I changed my eating habits (no more fast food and very limited sugar if any) and started exercising. I started with a Water Walking class at the gym. I think the 80 year olds got around better than I did. Well after about 8 months of that I was able to get around better and I found out about a spinning class and started doing that. The first month or so all I could do was light pedaling. Boy what a workout. Then that is when things really started coming off and taking off. What I learned my body does best with is eating the following:

Breakfast: 1/2 cup berries, palm full of walnuts and natural yogurt.

Lunch: Homemade lentil stew.

Dinner: switching between salmon, chicken or tuna salad.

Snacks being an orange, apple and/or natural nut bar.

In 2008 I started running outside, cycling (I did 700 miles in 3 months) and my classes I take regularly are spinning, bootcamp, body works & zumba.

In late 2008 I got a little too thin (I got down to 148 lbs) and so I started making what I call a chunky monkey protein drink. That seemed to help put on some muscle.

Marathon on a treadmill

"I just felt like running I guess". That is what I said after completing a full 26.2 miles on the treadmill at the club on December 7th, 2008. The darn machine would stop every 60 minutes so I took a picture with my iPhone and restarted it for another 60 minutes. (Sorry for the blurry picture but I still had to put it on walk to get the stats). Well it took me 4 hours and 15 minutes to do 26.2 miles. I know the distance only adds to 26.1 but I did do at least another .1 after taking the pictures. It looks like I also burned 3231 calories. Not bad.

Before this the furthest I've ever ran was about 18 miles outside. Normally I run about 6 miles on the tread mill but this Sunday morning I woke up and said, "I feel like running a marathon".