The Glory/Curse of Being Italian...

It's pretty difficult not to discuss food in this blog since well if you're a fat girl or even a former fat girl you have a deep love of food. Let me just say, being Italian makes the battle so much worse. My family centers around food. We love cooking it, eating it, talking about it, and dining out to eat... so needless to say, trying to stay in shape is A LOT harder than if it wasn't such a huge part of our culture. As detrimental as the whole food thing can be to my figure, I love my heritage and I love my family's love of cooking and how it has been passed down. My father's mother comes from a region in Italy...the Emilia Romagna region and it's known for food so yesterday we had left over Bolognese sauce tossed in a pan with a touch of cream. That my friends, is a small slice of heaven. I didn't feel too bad about it because I had a killer work out Saturday. I learned a new ab exercise and it's SO challenging so naturally I love it! Plus, after a two week hiatus I got back into the boxing groove. Man, did that feel good.

Today was a standard busy Monday. However, I had the misfortune of getting slipped a caffeinated iced coffee this morning and by early afternoon my heart felt like it was going to leap out of my chest. For anyone who can't handle caffeine, you know exactly what I'm talking about. The feeling is so uncomfortable and the next thing you know you're sweaty and you can't sit still. And for anyone who thinks that means you have an outburst of energy... WRONGO! You basically feel like your insides are about to jump out of your skin and it takes HOURS to go away. I debated for awhile, but I decided that I wasn't going to skip my cardio session at the gym. My cousin John has been encouraging the increase in cardio, so to show I respect his future medical opinion, I've been doing so. I did feel much better when I left the office so I took that as a good sign and hit the treadmill and elliptical. I really wish the gym had a pool...that would be much more fun cardio than just standing on those machines.

After 20 minutes of that and my new ab exercise, I'd had enough. Food was pretty good today. Whole grain English muffin with peanut butter for breakfast, a small taste of the new pound cake recipe I made for work today, chicken with asparagus, beans, tomato and mozzarella salad for lunch, some fruit for snack, and dinner... well that goes back to the whole curse of being Italian. My dad had some left over spaghetti carbonara which is also a little slice of heaven in a dish, and a stuffed pork chop for dinner tonight. I know how that wipes out a lot of what I did today but while I was eating it, it didn't seem so bad. The double edged sword of being Italian rears its ugly head again.

I've already got my eggs ready to scramble for the morning so I'll be kicking the day off with a nice healthy dose of protein. I plan on doing a combo of cardio and lifting tomorrow. As of tomorrow, Wildwood will be 9 days away so I gotta keep up my pace to be in the best shape possible before I get there. CAN'T WAIT! Until then, I'll keep on trucking. Hoping to have some new pictures by the end of the week! Stay tuned!
Marisa