Week 2 - Day 2
Oh God, It’s HIIT Day
I usually enjoy a good challenge. Today was not one of those days. As soon as I see one of these exercise acronyms like HIIT or AMRAP, my brain shuts down and I don’t want to move.
However, for the sake of the experiment, we did it.
In case anyone doesn’t know, HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training. It’s where you perform rounds (basically sets) of high intensity workouts. For today, I had to sprint for 30 seconds as fast as I could, then rest for a minute, do mountain climbers for 45 seconds, then rest for a minute, then do jumping jacks for 45 seconds. As you can see, they are really short, but intense workouts that you have to do 4 times.
The worst part of this entire thing were the mountain climbers. I hate mountain climbers. I don’t understand them, I constantly think I’m doing them wrong, and they’re just hard. My glasses don’t like to stay on my face as I’m doing mountain climbers, especially so when I’m sweaty. It’s just an all-around bad time.
As I did this exercise, I forced myself to get the reps done. However, it was by about round 3 that my body was giving out on the mountain climbers. Every one was a struggle and I barely got 10 in my 45 second time window. A friend once told me, “no matter what, get the set done. Even if it takes you twice as long as normal, at least get the set done.” This is what I was chanting to myself during those last 2 rounds.
Today also had a core circuit after the HIIT rounds. I know I did them because I feel my abs burning, but I don’t remember them. Same with the post-workout stretches.
It was just a rough day today.
Another Day, Another Meal Prep
Breakfast
I was going to use my last banana today for peanut butter toast with bananas (a legit breakfast that my AI Life Coach suggested). When I went to make it, the banana was gone! Someone else ate it and I’ll be honest, I wasn’t too mad about that fact.
Instead, we got to eat oats with almonds and cinnamon. It was, ok, still bland. Added some extra sugar to give it a sweetness it desperately needed which helped, but not a lot. The coffee helped wash it down though.
Morning Snack
With my bananas gone I was back to my rice cakes! I also had a work meeting at this point in time of the day, so rather than eat it like an animal with loud crunching, I was forced to break it into pieces. Didn’t matter, still good.
Lunch
Since I had chicken thawing for dinner, I decided to use some of it to make a grilled chicken salad.
Now, before I begin, I just want to say that I KNOW how to make a grilled chicken salad. This is another one of those “what is AI going to give me” kind of experiments.
I was pretty surprised with the spices it recommended for the chicken. It made a marinade and actually said “let the chicken marinate for 10-15 minutes for extra flavor”. That was word-for-word, but pretty close. Go check out the recipe for the actual AI words of the recipe.
However, this thing was delicious. My only complaint was the dressing it had me make. I thought it was a bit too oily for my taste, but that was probably because I didn’t have Dijon mustard and used my spicy Honey mustard. That said, I would definitely make that chicken again for a salad.
Evening Snack
Another meeting during this time period, but I actually remembered to eat this time. A handful of mixed nuts was all I really needed in my life at this point.
Dinner
Oh man, was I super late for dinner. I had to go help my cousin put together a bookshelf at her office after work and I didn’t get back until 8:00 pm. That was way later than my scheduled eating time, and I was starving by the time I got back.
Dinner, thankfully, wasn’t too hard to make. It was a simple chicken and vegetable soup. While the recipe called for “pre-cooked” chicken, I went ahead and grilled it while I cut the vegetables up. No seasoning which broke my heart, but the seasoning in the pan worked some magic on it.
The soup itself was good. Not too salty, the vegetables got nice and soft while it boiled, and the chicken just added that hint of meat that it needed. The only added spice besides the chicken broth was some thyme. It had a very subtle flavor that I needed. This would definitely be a recipe I would make on a nice cold, winter day.
