Fat Camp -- Day 9

Another big day today.  At 9:00 I had a class called Eating Out Smart, where we practiced making healthy meals out of menus offered at classic American restaurants (everything from Ruby Tuesday's "fern bar" style places to Wendy's, McDonald's, etc.  Have you noticed that a lot of restaurants have apostrophes in their names?  Weird...)
Then I had therapy, and it was a good session, but a tough one, so I used the time I had left before lunch to decompress.

Doing phone therapy is HARD.

After lunch I had my Nutrition Intake, where we planned for when I get home.  Then I had time to kill before my next class, so I did 20 minutes on the recumbent bike, and got my heart rate up to 162!  This is excellent, this means I was working at close to 85% of my top heart rate zone, which about as vigorous as you want to get.  I followed this up with 50 minutes of Karate, which was still cardio but somewhat lighter, and THEN by doing 50 minutes of Pilates.

After this I showered because frankly?  I stank like a pig.  I stank worse than a pig.  I stank like... um... something really stinky.

shut up.

THEN was the highlight of my day, the special event I alluded to in an earlier missive -- I got to be part of a small group of participants who had structured a meal out.  Not only a meal out, a meal at a CHINESE RESTAURANT.  We went to P F Chang's.  I had 1 large serving of garlic snap peas, for 192 calories, 2/3 of a cup of steamed brown rice, for 190 calories, and 1 serving (note that this is 1/3 of what they actually serve you on a plate) of Ginger Chicken and Broccoli, sauce on the side, for about 273 calories.  (I say about because with the sauce on the side it's actually significantly less than that, and more importantly, the sodium is way less.  1 serving with sauce would have been 1,457 mg of sodium!  People my age are only supposed to have 2300 mg.  People who are middle-aged, have hypertension, or are African-American are only supposed to have about 1200 mg.)  So all told, I had no more than 655 calories, which fit within my budget for the meal.

While I speak of salt and it's overemphasized place in American cooking, I should point out an awesome substance I have become aware of during my stay here: Nu-Salt.  It's made by the company that makes Sweet & Low, and what it is is Potassium Chloride.  It tastes pretty close to salt (actually, a little more salty if you ask me), but it has no sodium.  Equally important is the fact that Americans almost never get enough Potassium in their diet -- we're supposed to have 4500 mg.  That's roughly 9 bananas a day!  (PS, Bananas?  90 calories each.)

So I had a lovely meal, and now I'm home and full and tired, because let's face it, I did a lot of exercise there.  Almost 2 hours, and it was all in a row.  My legs will probably not be happy with me tomorrow, which is a shame for them since I plan on doing spin class again before breakfast.

Silly legs, don't you know you have no feelings?  Feelings are for people, not limbs!