Tracking Changes

One of the things I have been horrible at ever since I started being athletic (when I was in elementary school I started with soccer and continued for 11 years) is keeping track of my fitness level. I have never really been one to obsess with how much I weigh because I know that muscle weighs more than fat. I have thought about how else I would want to track the changes I hope my body will go through and I came up with photo progression. I am a very visual person so why not take photos of myself at the same time every month and see the changes that way. I will also be taking measurements around different parts of my body to track change that way.

How do you track you fitness progression?

This morning I had my usual blueberry oatmeal with brown sugar.

Snack was again apple granola with blueberries and vanilla yogurt. I'm beginning to think my diet is kind of consistent. Ha ha ha. Tomorrow I will NOT eat oatmeal and yogurt with blueberries and granola.

Lunch was an EXTRA large helping of sheppards pie. Give me a break, I was hungry and it was the last of the left overs so I just took it all.

Then I snacked on a banana and some more halloween candy in the afternoon.

I started reading Meghann's blog today. She did a series of 4 posts about how to make a great blog. One of the topics was photos. So far I have been just taking photos of what I eat and not really care about composition, it's about what I ate and not how it looked. Right?? Wrong. All bloggers wants lots of traffic on their blog, and one of the things that will keep readers coming back is really great photos. So after I read this post I decided to think more about my photo composition (hence the amazzzzing photo of starburst ;) ).

How do you think I did with the rest of the photos?

In my last post I talked about how I didn't get up early this morning to work out like I wanted to. Instead I worked out when I got home. I also decided not to do the shred video, instead I just did some different exercises. I was diagnosed with patella femoral syndrome a few months ago and I had found some good quad strengthening exercises at Made Fit TV. Also some ab, back and arms exercises.

Matt and I both realllly enjoy spicy foods. One of our favorite is chili. Therefore we make it often. Like probably once a month on average :) I decided it was time again to make it. This time try to make it even spicer than last. Does anyone have any tips on how to make chili really really spicy? We can never get ours hot enough.

This is what the tomato base is made of.



What it looks like all mixed together.



As you can tell, we really like mushrooms. I also put in red and green pepper, jalapeno pepper and pickled banana peppers.



Everything mixed in so far.



All of the spices I used when cooking the ground beef. They're realllly yummy.

One tip if you try making this is to drain the ground beef after it is fully cooked and then add all the spice. That way you aren't putting all of the fat in the chili.



All of the ingredients finally put together.

For dinner I made an omelet with some of the ground beef from the chili, mushrooms and some pomegranate/berry juice.

Tomorrow I'm going to get up and go for a jog before work in the morning. hehehe. So now I have to do it.