Confessions of a Fitness Instructor

This past weekend, myself and three friends (Arlene, Lisa and Cathy) piled into my car and headed to the city for a day of shopping and supper at Applebee’s.  I had never been to Applebee’s before so when I was contacted by them a month or so ago and asked if I wanted to come try out their new “Under 550″ menu items, and told me I could bring three friends I was excited to start planning the trip!

We started off by going to Lululemon (no shock there!), and then it was a trip to a shop I’ve been dying to go to ever since I discovered they existed

I’ll forgive them for spelling my name wrong

This place was like heaven.  So many cupcakes to choose from (not to mention cheesecake bites, cookies, ice cream treats, etc.) I really wanted one of each flavour but I held back and settled with two, a snowball and a turtle cupcake.

To say they were tasty in an understatement.  I think I would like to live in a bowl of that butter cream frosting, it was SOOOOO good.  Probably a good thing I live an hour away from the shop otherwise I’d be there every day, and I’m pretty sure I would soon be the size of a transport truck. :/

After we all had a chance to savour some Susie’s Shortbreads goodness, we headed to Halifax Shopping Centre for a bit more shopping.  I hit up The Body Shop and Sephora and got some goodies (face cleansing wipes, exfoliating face wash, satsuma fragrance oil, hand & nail cream, and blush), after a bit more shopping it was getting close to our Applebee’s reservation so we headed there.

And thank goodness, because we (or at least Cathy and I) were starving!

Our table was already set up and waiting for us when we arrived.  Arlene and I both got 7-Up to drink, while the other girls got water.  And I should have known better, I never order clear pop (7-Up or Sprite) when we go to restaurants in Greenwood because their water makes the fountain pop taste awful, and because we were in the city where that water isn’t so tasty (we get spoiled out here in the country ) so the pop tasted a bit off.  I was going to ask for a different type of pop when it was time for a refill but forgot and actually the second glass tasted fine (maybe I had just got used to it?).

For our meals we all ordered from the “Under 550″ menu as that is what we were there to review, I ordered the Steak and Garlic Herb Shrimp (which contained 541 calories)

It included a 7oz. steak with shrimp covered in a light cream sauce, herbed potatoes, broccoli & carrots.  The steak and shrimp also had brushetta and almond slices on top.  It was fabulous.  My steak was cooked perfectly, was really juicy and flavourful.  The broccoli actually out shined the potatoes, which is a phrase I never thought I’d say but the broccoli was amazing!

Arlene ordered the Roasted Garlic Steak (410 calories)

Hers came with 7 oz marinated steak, sautéed onions, herb potatoes and a Portobello mushroom filled with creamed spinach.  Her only complaint was that her steak was really peppery tasting, almost so much that she couldn’t really enjoy the steak itself because of the overwhelming pepper taste.  She did say the steak was cooked well and was juicy, it just tasted more like pepper than garlic.

Cathy ordered the Sizzling Chili Lime Chicken (410 calories)

It’s hard to tell from the picture, but hers was bigger in volume than the other meals – but that is to be expected with a meal full of veggies!  Hers was basically chicken and stir fry vegetables served over rice with a spicy chili sauce.  It looked really good, and Cathy said she would order it again.  She liked the level of spiciness and her only complaint was that she would have rather it be served on a plate instead of the skillet.

And lastly Lisa ordered the Teriyaki Chicken Pasta (the calorie count wasn’t listed for this one as it was a substitution option under the Teriyaki Chicken Pasta which clocked in at 364 calories.  Though I expect the chicken version may have a few more calories)

I don’t recall any complaints from her on her meal, so I’d say she liked it

After we had finished, our server asked if anyone wanted tea or coffee.  I’ve been fighting a miserable cold for the past week and had brought some peppermint tea bags with me so I asked for  some hot water to make tea.  I was so happy when they brought this over to me.

They totally made my day.  Some places act weird if you bring your own tea, but since many places still don’t serve herbal teas it’s not odd for me to have some in my bag just in case I can get my hands on some hot water

Sidenote – if you have a cold/sore throat, peppermint tea is your best friend.  And peppermint tea with honey is REALLY your best friend.  I’ve gone through nearly a whole box of tea bags, and half a jar of honey since Friday!

Then, our server asked the phrase that girls who have been shopping all day love to hear, “Does anyone want dessert?”  The next thing we know three of these

and one of these

were delivered to our table.  I was one of the three with the lava cake (called the Triple Chocolate Meltdown) and let me tell you, it was awesome.  The cake itself was really spongy and light feeling, though it was certainly rich with its molten centre.  Of course in my mind it would be pretty hard to go wrong with warm molten cake and iced cream

Lisa had the apple chimi cheesecake, and while hers looked really yummy I would have a hard time ordering anything else besides the “Meltdown,” it was spectacular!

Overall, our experience was great, the staff was helpful and we were treated very well.  I would most certainly plan to eat there again when I am in the city for the day.

I think we all fell into sugar comas not long after this as our drive back to the valley was pretty quiet there for a while

Disclaimer: While all the opinions and thoughts addressed in this post are those of myself and my friends, Applebee’s Canada did provide our meal free of charge in exchange for a review on my blog.

Hi everyone!  I haven’t managed to get in and post since last week mostly because I was teaching all my classes last week while not feeling well.  This week while I’m feeling better some of my physical injuries/issues have been bothering me so I’ve been trying to spend my downtime either sleeping or chilling out trying to let my body get back to 100%.

I don’t like leaving the old blog sitting around for so long though so tonight I thought I’d share some random things that have happened recently, or things I’ve done that I didn’t feel were worth a dedicated post of their own but were still interesting.

Today I made tortillas.

I used this recipe that I found on pinterest.  They were pretty easy and turned out quite well.  The recipe was suppose to make 12 tortillas but I forgot what I was doing and ended up making 16 so they were a bit smaller than they would have been had I follow the recipe more closely.  It’s a little disturbing that tortillas in the store have so many ingridants in them when these only have four – flour, shortening, water and salt.  For my first try I think they were a success.

Over the weekend I noticed that my balance (which is normally quite good) was really off.  I couldn’t figure out what the problem was until I found this little charmer on my ankle

which came complete with some swelling.  Looks like I rolled my ankle and forgot about it (not a surprise).  It sure made the past couple days of teaching extra fun :/ thankfully it’s feeling better today.

For Christmas I got Zumba 2 for the Wii.  I wanted it because as a Zumba instructor I somehow felt I needed to beat the game in order to prove myself.  I’ve played it a few times with almost always the same result.  For most of the songs Gina or Tanya “instruct” I’ll get 4 or 5 stars right off the bat, and any song Beto instructs I’ll stink big-time.  There were a few times I only got 1 frigging star.  J would watch me and say he knew something was wrong because I was hitting all the moves but not getting any credit for them.  ”Suzi, I don’t know what you’re going to do about Ringo” he’d say (we’ve decided to call Beto “Ringo” instead.  We’re weird like that).  So this past Saturday I was playing it while he was on the treadmill.  As usual any song with “Ringo” in it I’d suck at.  Finally J asked me to give him the game box/book.  Turns out this whole time I’ve been wearing the controller on the wrong hip.  It’s suppose to be on your right hip and I’ve had it on my left.  I blame it on 1) being a lefty and 2) always reversing my moves when teaching a class.  It seriously never occurred to me that I might have it on backwards.  Which leads me to wonder – how did I ever manage to get 5 starts on all those other songs if I had the controller on the wrong way?

I can’t wait to see the new movie, “Haywire.”  Gina Carano has been my favourite athlete for a number of years (I stand by what I said in the blog post I wrote about her two years ago, I still want to be like her when I grow up!) and I’m super stoked to see her kicking butt on the big screen.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it’ll be at the theatre this weekend

Speaking of Gina and her kicking butt, man have I ever become some sorry little weakling.  I was doing another strength workout on the weekend and it was a sad state of affairs.  Even back in the summer I could bust out full push-ups pretty decently, now I can’t even go all the way to the floor on a knee push-up.  I’ve lost so much muscle in the past 6 months it’s horrible.  And to make matters worse, I’m still teaching so many classes I haven’t figured out how to get 3 or 4 strength workouts in/week like I need to.  Then I go and watch this video of Gina getting her a$$ kicked  and I think of what I baby I am.  My workout on Saturday was like: do 1 set of exercises, sit down and watch TV for 5 minutes, do 5 sad little knee push-ups, watch more TV.  It was really shameful.  I need to get my act together.

I’ve been watching The Tudors on Netflix for the past couple weeks.  I was down to the last 4 episodes of season 4 (which was the final season) when they took it off Netflix (it said that it would be taken down Jan 24th, but I was hoping that meant at the end of the day Jan 24th – it would seem that’s not what they meant).  I searched YouTube to see if someone had posted the episodes there but can’t find them.  As far as I can tell I’ll need to either pay $1.99/episode to watch them on Showtime, or $2.99/episode to buy them on iTunes.  Crap.

While Jen is in Mexico, I had planned to start watching “Dexter” as I know she just finished season 1 so we could watch it “together” when she got back, but last night I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be watching a show like that by myself at 11pm so instead I watched “Ramona and Beezus.”  It’s just about the same thing right?

Well, that’s it for now!

Have any of you seen “Haywire” yet?  

It looks like it’s got pretty good reviews so far.  Back in the early fall when I watched the trailer on YouTube, some goof had commented saying, “This girl sucks, they should have hired Uma Thurman, Kate Beckinsale or another actress that at least knows how to fight for the part.” To which someone replied, “She’s a professional MMZ fighter you idiot.”  Nuff said.