Mexican Chicken Soup with Arms and Shoulders

Chicken Soup, Soreness, Etc.

Today I made some very healthy and yummy "Mexican Chicken Soup". On Tuesday, I made a huge batch of salsa, and since I don't eat corn chips, and that's really the only thing I love salsa with (besides eggs, which I"m not eating too much of either these days), I decided I would use the salsa as a base for a soup. It came out quite good! Here's what I put in:

3 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breast
2 cups home made salsa
1 can black beans
1 can cannelloni beans
1/2 pound fresh mushrooms
1/2 red onion
3 shallots
3 red peppers
1 can corn

What Would Go Well With This Soup?

I cooked this in the slow cooker for about 6 hours. We had it with salad. My housemate said, "You know, this would be really good with some brown rice or macaroni in it". While I know brown rice is healthier than white rice, I still don't feel my best eating it - she knows it :) I also DEFINITELY don't eat macaroni - wheat or white or anything. She knows this too. While I agree with her that a starch would have made the soup yummier and more filling, macaroni and rice is not in the plan! I suggested that a hot fudge brownie sundae would be an EXCELLENT complement to the dish. She suggested a loaf of bread with a stick of butter. I suggested a rack of ribs with sugary barbeque sauce. We broke out in laughter and continued on with our healthy soup and salad meal.

I did the arms and back DVD of the P 90 X workout. It was awesome! Probably the toughest upper body workout I've done since I started this journey in June. Hammer curls, tricep extensions, seated Congdon curls, side lat raises, and some crazy thing at the end which is like a push up lying on your side. I managed to get about 6 of these out of my right side and three ridiculous looking reps on my left side, because I was so tired from all the arm work during the previous 40 minutes of the workout. But all in all it was great.

Yay, I'm So SORE!

My shoulders and pecs are still a bit sore from the 150 pushups I did on Monday. Finally! I was starting to think there was something wrong with me, or at least something wrong with the way I was working out, due to my lack of soreness. While I know soreness is not MANDATORY for resistence training, it's definitely a marker of pushing one's self. So Yay, I am sore today! Quads are still feeling Tuesday's Plyo routine. The soreness is nowhere NEAR what I experienced back in June when I went from completely sedentary to starting my workout. Back then after the first day of legs I could hardly WALK. Literally, my legs would start to give out from under me when I walked across the street. I have yet to come anywhere close to that level of soreness. But I'm pushin' for it - in a healthy way :)

Today - Day 4 - Is Yoga

Today's P 90 X DVD is Yoga X. I've only done a few sessions of Yoga, back in July before I moved from NYC to FL, and I loved it. I am looking forward to this. I'm finding it important to time my eating with my workouts, in terms of energy levels. And so, I will wait until about an hour after dinner to do this DVD.

Water Weight - Water - Wait!?!?!

Do what I say, not what I do. That's definitely going to be a common theme in this blog. I know it's not good to weigh one's self every day during a fat loss effort. But I've been doing it anyway. About 10 days ago I was traveling and I got a little lax with my diet - not BAD, but not as clean and healthy as I am at home. Came home,l waited 2 days, yep, 2 pound drop on the scale. Yes yes, I know with all the working out I'm likely building muscle, and that most day to day fluctuations can be attributed to water weight fluctuations, but I admit, I'm a former scale slave and old habits die hard. I did go through periods of a few weeks at a time since February when I didn't weigh myself at all. Right now is not one such period.

So last Thursday, I finally got into the 160's. The scale had gone from 170 to 168 during my travels. Then Friday - exactly 168. Saturday - exactly 168. Sunday, same. What's odd about this is that my scale measures in 10ths of a pound - so it's curious that I'm staying EXACTLY the same, every day. Monday same Tuesday same Wendesday....SAME! WTF? So today...I was prepared for 168. I was not prepared for 169.4! I'm quite sure the culprit was the beans and corn in the soup last night. I usually only eat carbs before my workouts, and burn them off during the workout, so they don't seem to cause any water weight gain. These starchy carbs I ate at dinner. I was suprised to see that much water show up though. No worries - even though I would *prefer* the scale to go down and not up, I'm content to go by what the tape measure and mirror say. And they're saying pretty all right things these days, yay!