new home :)

I just bought my own domain name!  This blog has now moved to www.healthygrindz.com

the hi 5: boys

The older I get, the more I learn about love, relationships, what can go wrong and when they can go right.  Today while I was in the shower I started thinking about the top five qualities that I look for in a significant other… This list has evolved as I have grown up, as I have entered and exited failed relationships.  I think I’ve got it right… for now

The Hi 5:  What a man, what a man, what a mighty good man.

1.  Caring:  In the past, I have dated some very selfish boys.  Only concerned about themselves, what I can do for them and pushing the boundaries on what they can get away with.  I recently started dating the most caring boy in the world.  The smallest things set him apart from the rest.  Opening my door for me, buying me a new dish sponge when mine is old and gross, making my bed in the morning, taking out my trash while I am at work, folding the clothese I leave strewn about on the floor while I’m getting ready for work.  I have realized that of all characteristics, caring has to be the highest on my list.

2.  Hard Working:  By nature, I’m a hard worker.  I like to be perceived as a hard worker.  It is hard for me to be with someone that is not equally as hard working.  The older I get the more I am reminded that I can not be with someone that is lazy.  I have too many friends that have started families with “lazy” boys, only to wake up one morning and realize their household is a one woman show.

3.  Open Minded:  I am an adventurous girl.  I like to explore new areas, step outside of the box and try new things.  I have realized how important it is for me to be with someone that enjoys trying new things as well.  I lie for an adventure and I want that to be a passion for someone I am with as well.

4.  Intellectual Conversation + Fun:  For obvious reasons, it’s important for me to find someone I can really connect with.  I can get extremely passionate/heated about certain issues and I love to have someone there that can keep up with me.  Although I love the deep conversation, I’m not like that all the time (actually I’m only like that 15% of the time), so someone I can laugh and kick back with is equally important.

5.  Cute:  Bring on the criticism for this one.  I know, I know, looks aren’t everything.  But if I can’t look at my signifcant other and say “You’re so cute”… I don’t know if it will work.  Cute is not just looks, but it’s their personality, the way they treat me, the way they talk, the things they like to do.

I remember thinking I can’t be too picky.  Don’t set so many guidelines or you’ll never find a guy to date.  As time goes on, I’ve realized there’s no reason to not be picky.  If I’m not choosy, I will end up with someone that doesn’t fulfill me, and worst case scenario, I marry that person, we have kids together and we get a divorce.  So what’s wrong with being picky?  What if that means I never get married?  I guess that means I didn’t settle.  I’m confident in who I am and what I have to offer, I know that I am deserving of an outrageously spectacular person.

No grindz in this post!  I’ll post some pics of my latest foodie adventures:

Tonkatsu Heaven

Hank’s Haute Dogs – The Chicago Dog featured on Diner’s Drive Ins and Dives

1/2 Curried Chicken Salad + 1/2 Tempura Mahi Mahi sandy from The Pineapple Room

I do have a new long term goal:  MY 24th birthday is on June 5th and I am determined to lost the last 5 pounds!  I weighed in today at 131.6.    I have essentially 8 weeks to lose 7 pounds.  A pound a week?  Totally doable, but so hard.  I have been struggling with this weight for a while.  Time to buckle down on my eating habits and kick up my workout routines!  I’ll post every Monday night from here until June 5th with updates…

goals for the week

Oops, forgot to post a recap on my goals:

Last week’s goals:

1. Spin on Wednesday
2. Run around the lagoons twice this week.  Hopefully Friday and Saturday. Missed Saturday’s run
3. Soccer on Tues/Thurs.
4. Some sort of body pump DVD on Thurs? Ended up doing Core Fusion on Fri and 30 Day Shred on Saturday.
5. ADDITIONAL GOAL:  Hike on Sunday!

This week’s goals:

1. Soccer on Tues/Thurs
2. Spin at least one time this week
3. Body Pump on Thurs
4. Run + Workout Video on Fri

Saw this bag this weekend, and the logo made me laugh…

They HAD to have done that on purpose, right??

Weekend Recap

This week was filled with SO.MUCH.DELICIOUS.FOOD.  (So what else is new?)  Here are a few eats from this weekend…

The Pineapple Room –

Curried Chicken Salad with avocado, papaya, tomatoes and cucumber.  + Tempura Battered MahiMahi Sandwich

I went to the Pinapple room with Tami for lunch on Saturday and we ended up splitting a sandwich and salad.  They were both so delicious.  The papaya was SO fresh and sweet.  Definitely going to try and recreate this salad on my own at home.

That night I made the following for dinner:

1/2 Pesto chicken 1/2 regular chicken pizza w/ goat cheese

+

Pear and Gorgonzola Pizza w/ carmelized onions

I had the idea to make the pear and gorgonzola pizza from a pizza I used to get at California Pizza Kitchen.  I used pizza crusts from Costco and they ended up being pretty tasty.

After a super long hike in Palolo Valley…

(Took a total of 4 hours, hiked up 3 waterfalls, saw 1 crater and almost a liter of water later)… I was rewarded with this beautiful acai bowl…

Strawberries, bananas, raspberries, blueberries, coconut, granola and acai smoothie.  YUM.

This weekend was definitely a fun one

Taking a breather

Lately, I have been on a major exercise binge.  I’m doing a really great job at sticking with my weekly goals, but today was a different story.  I woke up feeling exhausted and thus, have decided to take a breather from working out today.  Since I’ve been in Hawaii, I rarely wake up sleepy.  There’s something about waking up in this bed…

In this lovely location…

that energizes me everyday!  With the exception of this morning.  Needless to say, I was dragging all day and decided to take a break from my workout today.  I was kind of bummed, and was actually thinking about taking a run along the beach, but my knee was bothering me from this…

One thousand-forty-eight steps to the top.  KOKO HEAD MOUNTAIN!  This hike was killer.  I didn’t think it would be that bad.  But it was.  My friend Tami and I made it to the top in only 30 minutes but my lord, our legs were on fire.

The pain was bad, but so worth it.  We got to the top of the mountain just as the sun was rising…

1,048 steps = ultimate stair master.  My knee has been bothering me ever since the hike.  I think it just needs to rest today and I will be back at it again tomorrow.

This weekend included some of the following…

Shave ice w/ mochi balls:

Vermicilli Bowl:

Pedicure:

A new naners!!:

And for my baking adventure of the week….

Peanut Butter cookies w/ Hershey macadamia nut on top

I had two of these puppies today… For some reason when I don’t exercise, it just lends more time for me to stuff my face after work.  I need to get a handle on that!

Last week’s goals review:

1. Go to two spin classes this week. Done and Done!  Such a great workout.
2. Run around the lagoon once. Friday after work.
3. Go on a hike. Koko Head
4. Make something NEW for dinner Dang it!  I made pork tacos with pineapple coleslaw, but forgot to snap a pic!  They were pretty yummy, and will probably have it for leftovers soon…

This week’s goals consist of some in the same:

1. Spin on Wednesday
2. Run around the lagoons twice this week.  Hopefully Friday and Saturday.
3. Soccer on Tues/Thurs.
4. Some sort of body pump DVD on Thurs?

Happy Monday!

Happy Girl’s Day!

Today is Girl’s Day aka Hinamatsuri aka Doll Festival aka March 3rd.   Girl’s Day is a Japanese celebration in which families decorate one room in their house with ceremonial dolls to ensure their daughter’s future happiness.  The dolls are kept out for a few days and then put away for the rest of the year.

I am 100% Japanese and for as long as I can remember we never put dolls out for Girl’s Day!  Although, my parents like to remind me with old pictures that they once did put the lavish display up when I was a baby, but peetered out by the time I got older.  We do still celebrate it with a card and a little gift

Although I’m a California girl born and raised, I have been living in Hawaii for work for the past 6 months.  I love living in Hawaii.  There is a large presence of Japanese Americans and it has helped me learn so much about my culture and heritage.  This morning at work, someone came around with strawberry mochi in celebration for Girl’s Day.  I wish I snapped a picture, but I didn’t have it with me  Anyway, happy girl’s day!  On to the food, that I actually took pictures of today!

Breakfast started with my current fave:  Cottage cheese + granola + jam.

Lunch was salad, string cheese and half an apple…

The salad consisted of spinach (lots of it!), tomatoes, broccoli, carrots, and taco meat.  I topped the salad with some fresh salsa verde that I picked up at the local farmer’s market.

Today was one of those days where I felt like I couldn’t.stop.eating.  The rest of the days eats included, a hard boiled egg, carrots, yogurt, the rest of my apple and a macaroon

After work I went to spin class and worked my tail off.  I came home and made an egg scramble with leftover veggies from my salad.

For accountability’s sake, I also had some dried blueberries and tortilla chips after I ate this

I’m off to chill out in front of the boob tube for the rest of the night!

Organization

Is it just me, or does the disorganization of your bookmark folder make your heart race?  The bookmarks on my Safari web browser are so disorganized.  Don’t get me wrong, I have them somewhat organized in different folders, but some of my folders are just huge dumping grounds, where everything and anything gets saved to.  The blog titles are messy, there is no order to the list and I can never find what I want when I need it.

Recently, I stumbled upon delicious, a social bookmarking website.  This website is awesome!  It allows you to tag your bookmarks with customizable tags, bundle your tags into groups, organize alphabetically all with a simple and clean interface.  The coolest part is, you can access your bookmarks from wherever you are, not just at your computer!  The website tracks how many other people have bookmarked the same exact thing you have, it allows you to see the most popular bookmarks on the network, the most recent websites bookmarked on the website.  You can keep your bookmarks private or public, you can even share bookmarks with your friends with a simple click of a button.

I’m still on the hunt for a good blog reader.  A lot of people recommend Google Reader, but for some reason I just can’t get into the design and layout.  Any ideas?  How do you organize your bookmarks/blog readers?

ps.  No matter how close to empty a bag of chips is before, I can’t help but feel like I overindulged when I finish a bag of chips.  I just finished a bag of popchips! and even though there were only a few left in the bag, I still feel like I overdid it.  Oh well, tomorrow is another day!  I managed to play a game of soccer today at lunch and went for a run when I got home from work

Long goals, short goals, some as big as your head!

(This posts title is in reference to one of my favorite childhood songs)

It’s Monday AND the first day of March.  If today doesn’t scream time for new goals I don’t know what does.

First, a recap of last week’s goals:

1. Go to spin class twice this week.
2. Run around the lagoons once.
3. Go on a hike. FAILED! (But I really do have an excuse.  The day I was planning on going on a hike we had a terrible tsunami warning in Hawaii and had to evacuate our house for almost the entire day).
4. Catch up with two friends I haven’t spoken to in awhile.

So now that it’s a new MONTH and a new week, I have decided to write down some short term and long term goals.

Short term goals:

1. Go to two spin classes this week.
2. Run around the lagoon once.
3. Go on a hike.
4. Make something NEW for dinner.

Long term goals:

1. Keep a Food Journal For the past couple of weeks I have been tracking my food intake on a little spiral notebook that I can throw in my purse.  However, after reading several reviews on the Fitbook I decided to purchase one to expand some of my tracking options.
2. Enter a challenge and complete it! I have been reading about several different challenges for the month of March.  Yoga Challenge, Core Fusion Challenge, Push Up Challenge, etc, etc, etc.  I think I will buy the Core Fusion Challenge DVD on Amazon and do that one.  I would be interested in incorporating some yoga into my routine also though.  We’ll see…
3. Only eat when I’m hungry I really don’t understand why this is so hard for me.  I feel like I’ve been struggling with this all my life.  I eat when I’m bored, I eat when I’m full, I eat just because I need to finish off every meal with something sweet even though I’m already stuffed!  Sometimes I think I eat like it will just dissappear if I don’t eat it then.  I really need to work on this because I think it’s one of the main reasons I’m not at the weight I want to be.
4. Stop chewing ice Oh my gosh.  I’m embarassed to even have to write this on here.  I seriously have an ice addiction.  Crushed ice, cubed ice, the circle ice with a hole in it.  Gahh, the list goes on and on.  Sometimes my teeth actually hurt when I go to bed because I’ve chewed too much ice.  I really want to break this habit.  Maybe writing it down will help me accomplish it.

I feel like all of my goals, both short and long term are realistic and do-able.  :)  I’m excited to track my progress along the way.

too hungry to document.

So I realized that in order for me to really get into this whole food blogging thing, I need to take pictures of my food!  During the week I eat almost the same thing everyday (boring, right?) so I never think to take a picture of the same ol’ salad.  However, I do try and switch it up when it comes to dinner time I am just usually so hungry after leaving the gym I never am patient enough to snap pics of my food for the blog.  I’ll try to make a conscious effort to start taking more pictures so my blog isn’t pictureless.

In the meantime, I’ll post pictures of some of my favorite food in Hawaii.

Saimen – This one comes from the Forty Niner Restaurant.

Loco Moco: Hamburger patty, egg, rice, gravy.  (Drooling).

Sushi: Ahi from KuruKuru Sushi

Banana pancakes w/ Macademia Nut Sauce from Boots n Kimo’s:

Poke from Tanioka’s:

Lunch Plate from anywhere:

Lemon Crunch Cake from Aiea Bowl:

… and that’s not even all of it.  Yum-bo-za.

“If you can dream it, you can do it.”

Today at work we had a motivational speaker talk about working together as a team, fighting adversity during tough economic times, the standard “bring it on 2010″ speech.  He talked about a number of different quotes relating to innovation and this particular quote by Walt Disney, really resonated with me.

I’ve always been a dreamer.  And not just a dreamer like I think big.  I mean it in even the most general sense… a dreamer.  I have the most intense dreams at night, so intricate and detailed, some unrealistic and some too real to be a dream.  I’ll have a handful of daydreams throughout the week, being swept away into the depths of my imagination where I watch the most vivid situations play out right in front of my eyes.  I have always dreamt of starting a blog, but never really known where to start.  I’ve spent countless hours trying to determine what I want to write about, what the title should be, what font to use, should I buy a domain name???  The questions go on and on, it got to the point where I wasn’t even posting anything because I was so focused on the little things.  Today it hit me, why does my blog have to start out exactly how I envision it.  I don’t even have a clear vision yet!  So I’m done nit-picking the little things, I know it will start small and the format and content may change and evolve, but that’s the way life works, right?

So here we go.

Goals for the week:

1. Go to spin class twice this week.
2. Run around the lagoons once.
3. Go on a hike.
4. Catch up with two friends I haven’t spoken to in awhile.

I just got back from spin class #1 of the week as well as a walk around the lagoons while I chatted with my sis on the phone.  So I’ve half knocked 1 & 2 already.  ;)

Off to shower and get ready for bed!