Sledgehammers And a Recipe

I've always watched the trainers on the Biggest Loser take the contestants outside and have them beat a tire with a hammer and thought, "I want to do that!"  I also would watch them swing those heavy ropes up and down and thought, "That would be cool!"  Today I got a chance to do both.

I had a great workout with John where we did bench presses, kettle bells, lunges, squats, push ups, bench curl presses, the cable machine, and my favorite - boxing. Each exercise lasted a minute and if you think that's not a long time try it sometime. Then we went through all of those things again, and that is before we headed outside.

John had me swinging a sledgehammer onto a big 18 wheeler tire and it is harder than it looks!  So are those ropes. You think, that looks pretty easy.  Heck to the no.  Those ropes are heavy as lead and you have to swing them like a furious stage coach driver.  If I could have talked at the time, I would have been tempted to say, "Ya! Git along little doggies!"  Whew!  Crazy hard workout but I enjoyed the heck out of it and felt so accomplished at the end, even though all my muscles were shaking. 

I arrived home hungry like a wolf and was so happy that my supper was ready in my BFF, the crockpot. The recipe, from sparkpeople.com:

Easy Slow Cooker Beef and Mushrooms
1 pound lean beef stew meat (in pieces)
1 can low-fat cream of mushroom soup
1/2 cup of water
1 packet dry onion soup mix
8 oz fresh mushrooms (whole or sliced)
Brown meat in skillet (or you can skip this step, I did). Place meat in crockpot. Place mushrooms on top of beef. Combine soup, water, and soup mix and pour over mushrooms and beef.  Cook on low 6-8 hours or high for 3-4 hours. Number of servings: 4


It was 214 calories per serving, 6 grams of fat, 12.4 grams of carbs, and 26.9 grams of protein.   We ate it over one cup of brown rice and had brussel sprouts on the side.   So tasty and hit the spot after quite a workout!