Need more zombies!

Monday evening:

I was so excited about my Zombie app that I went out running again late this afternoon! Can you believe that? Me, twice in one day! Of course the first session was nearly all walking, but I'd done my exercise for the day and chose to do more -- and chose running. So I guess this is a strong recommendation for the app. They've made running fun.

I took Jas to her dance class then Aiden & I went to a nearby park. He is six, much more active than me so I wasn't worried about him keeping up! He was totally excited about running with me, and only disappointed that he couldn't listen to the app himself. Week 1 Day 1 was a 10 min warm-up walk, then ten 15-second jog/run sprints with 60 second recovery walks in between. Then a 10 min "free form" where I chose to walk and Aiden did a bit of running off ahead.

I didn't feel there was enough zombie action in this session, but the 15 second intervals were great. As you know, I had been really struggling -- having tried two other apps -- starting with longer running intervals. Being able to actually complete all these ones made me feel really empowered and eager to keep training with this app. I even felt a bit defiant when the session finished with them telling me to take a day off running and they'd see me the day after that. My plan is to do BodyPump tomorrow, but I really want to go out running again!

Daylight savings just finished here and it was getting gloomy by the time we finished, and was fully dark 15 mins later.

My legs and ankles are pretty tired tonight, but better after a hot bath. Probably a good idea to alternate days with strength work.

I am trying to transition into more whole grains (instead of going low-carb, just going healthier-carb) as part of eating real food, so when shopping today I bought the usual white hi-fibre bread plus a loaf of grainy wholemeal bread. I haven't tried it yet. I still have major problems deciding what to have for breakfast (particularly since they've taken both my cereal and my yoghurt off the shelves), but for the moment I've decided on toast. With creamed corn, or cheese, or eggs, or peanut butter or even vegemite. I'll vary the topping. I've tried the white Country Grain before but not the wholemeal Country Grain.

I also bought some wholemeal flour, in case I want to make the healthy banana bread from www.100daysofrealfood.com (lots of interesting info there). And I looked at the wholewheat pasta but it was so dark brown and gritty looking I couldn't imagine the kids eating it (or me, for that matter). I decided to try the 51% wholegrain version. I'll let you know how it all goes.

An interesting thing they say on that site is that low-fat milk is worse than normal milk because they take out the fat but then add back in other stuff to make it acceptably creamy. They avoid all low-fat or diet versions of everything. I never use artificial sweetners and I know that "low-fat" can often mean added sugar to make it palatable, but it never occured to me that low-fat milk was anything other than regular milk with some fat removed.

I'm not going to quote all their stuff here, but it's worth having a look. I was fascinated by their report of a study about the effect of (approved) yellow food colouring in mice.

I'm not all of a sudden never eating pasta sauce out of a jar again, but I am trying to head in the general direction of clean eating. I think of myself as someone who generally cooks from scratch, but some convenience items do creep in. I never thought of making my own tortillas, for example, or salsa, although I do marinate and season the meat for fajitas myself not from a packet. Every step towards real food is progress. And every step away from a zombie saves brain cells.