Wednesday, December 23, 2009

A Solid Day






This morning I cooked at home and had some oatmeal, and VBites breakfast sausages - really tasty. A unique, but very satisfying flavor.

Today I was given a great gift by my assistant - she made me vegan chocolate candy with nuts and candy cane sprinkles. Delicious.

I went to the gym earlier than normal. I rode the bike at high intensity, alternating resistance levels between 14-18 for fourteen minutes. Then I stretched, alternating my abdominal work in there too. I would do 30...well, have no idea what you call them...where I balance on my tailbone, with feet six inches off the ground and with a medicine ball twist and touch the ball down to my left side, then right, then left. I'll call it the medicine ball twist. (Note: not me in photo - not yet). When I do 30, I then do 25 crunches holding the medicine ball aloft. Then while I am resting I stretch. My routine yields 90 medicine ball twists (45 if you count a full rotation of touching the ball down on my left, then right), and 75 crunches. Also on the stretching mat was the guy from the show Mad Men - no not the guy all the girls love, "Draper," the other guy with the white hair. I must say the guy was very impressive with the large work-out ball he used - doing all sorts of exercises with the giant ball, the guy is in great shape.

I then did squats - three sets of 15, and the same for lunges. My knees were quite painful during these exercises. I need to continue to build my leg strength and the pain will lessen. After the leg work I walked on the treadmill at a speed of 4.0 building up the incline to 10.0. I did that for 20 minutes. Then I went over to the elliptical machine for only 15 minutes and alternated my speeds between fast and slower. And then I hit the showers. Felt good afterwards, very tired.

For lunch I got the old stand-by. The vegan wrap at The Coffee Shop. I think by adding avocado, and a little bit of onion it is now a perfect sandwich! Ate the nice salad that comes with it. Felt like some tomato juice today and ordered a virgin Bloody Mary. They really add a kick to it there.

Tonight I went over to a friend's house where she generously gave me a book called La Dolce Vegan. She was inspired by my posting a couple weeks back and found this cook book online. Looks pretty funky, I may enjoy it.

We went to dinner at the Water Club - a cool restaurant right on the East River. It was decorated to the hilt for Christmas which was great. She had the succulent looking steak and shrimp, and I had the steamed broccoli and sweet potato. No matter, I was not starving so it was quite nice.

I must say my host offered me some nuts - nice and healthy. However, she did not have a nut cracker and was forced to improvise!

Today I felt tired the entire time. I often feel tired, and I will pay attention to it more and write about it in more detail soon.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I own La Dolce Vegan - Sarah Kramer is fun, and there's some great stuff in there, particularly the soups and some of the rice/bean based dishes. I recently made the vegetable biryani and it was fantastic, as was one of the red lentil soups with coconut milk. Enjoy it!

If you're into cooking, Deborah Madison also has several vegetarian cookbooks, many of which contain tasty vegan recipes.

Terrence said...

Thanks Annabella!

It's interesting that Sarah Kramer also runs a tattoo parlor!

Unknown said...

I was tired too as a vegan. Or maybe you could call it much more "relaxed" The vegan state might be a more natural proto-human state as opposed to the amped up apes we see today. It is worth considering that diet and lifestyle are intertwined, and a meat diet does afford more energy to perform acts that may ultimately be inhuman or superhuman, while vegans are more suited for a barefoot paradise. What do you think?

Terrence said...

I think you are on to something! Perhaps the answer lies somewhere between the Book of Genesis, The Origin of Species, and The Joy of Cooking.

Terrence said...

I will also state that this "relaxed" state is quite pronounced. For the first 4 weeks i swear someone was secretly putting saltpeter in my food.