Pretty Little Paleo: Juice Mania, Soup with a side of Sprouts & Rowing for Calories

I arrived home Sunday after a long weekend in Chicago feeling less than healthy. (to put it mildly) But Pete had the Vitamix up and running and juiced me back to life! As mentioned previously I was a little nervous that we wouldn't use the juicer but I was so wrong. We are both obsessed with it. I had a hangover cure of banana, apple, coconut milk, and wheat grass powder. AMAZING!!

So another feature of the Vitamix is being able to make hot soups. I tried that out yesterday and the results were life changing. I made a chicken tortilla soup that is not only paleo but according to Pete warms the soul! Any meal that makes Pete say that is going to be a staple around here. I served the soup with a side of sprouts. Perfect combo on a fall night!

"Soul Warming" Chicken Tortilla Soup

Poach 2 boneless skinless chicken breast in stock. You want the chicken to be able to be shredded like you would for a burrito.
Add the following ingredients into the Vitamix and hit the hot soup option and let it run its course. 3 cups low sodium chicken stock, 1 roma tomato cut in half, 1 thin slice yellow squash, 1 mushroom, 1 thin slice red bell pepper, 1 celery stalk, 4 baby carrots, 1 slice red onion, 1 peeled clove of garlic, a teaspoon of taco seasoning, 1 jalapeno pepper
after soup base is blended add chicken
garnish with avocado

On the workout front I had a rough one this morning. It consisted of a warm up of zercher squats with an empty barbell 3 sets of 15. That was hard but doable. Then we got to the main event aka HELL.

12 x 2 min erg sprints.

If you are asking what the heck are erg sprints don't feel bad. I had no idea what they were and that is probably a good thing because I would have skipped class is I had known. You row on the C2 for 2 a two minute sprint and then rest two minutes. After 6 rounds the rest decreases to 1 minute. I hate rowing so this was so awful for me. If you have never done sprints on the C2 it feels like your lungs are bursting and then on fire. We had to keep track of how many calories we burned in 2 mins. On average I burned about 22 calories each torturous 2 min. I left the gym really thinking how careful I need to be with my calorie intake. It takes no time at all to consume them and agonizing workouts to burn them off. Obviously nothing I have stated is rocket science or info we don't all know... but I think workouts like this are a good wake up call. I think I need a little reminder every so often to just be more mindful of amount of food consumed and even if you have a killer day in the gym that doesn't give you free reign at the dinner table.