Tuesday Eats...

Good Morning!

We are now mid way through the week. Hope you're week is going well. I'm excited for today because temperatures are suppose to tip into the 90's :-) This could be my last hot and humid day of the season to enjoy. 

Alright, lets get down to business. Yesterday I had a very clean eating day. Mainly because I was equipped with healthy snacks. 

I started my day off with a slice of ezekiel toast with almond butter, sliced peach, and a hard boiled egg. A perfect breakfast with fiber, produce, protein and healthy fats :-)

A few hours later I had a Larabar for a snack. This held me over because I wanted to go to the gym before eating lunch. 

For lunch I had leftovers. Curried chicken with kale and barley in a sesame oil dressing:

A few hours after lunch, another snack: hard boiled egg and almonds. 

Last but not least for dinner I made whole wheat pasta with broccoli tossed in a garlic chili oil dressing (recipe to come later).

I also managed to get a lot of exercise in. During the day I went to the gym and hot up the elliptical and weights. At night, I went to the pool and practiced swimming for an hour. Not bad!

All in all I'm very happy with how the day went yesterday. I just have to keep up with clean eating and exercise :-)

How was your day?

Monday Recap...

Good Morning!

Monday is finally over and we are now into Tuesday. Four more days until the weekend!!!

So, let me tell you about my day yesterday. Well, I will mainly tell you about my eating habits. Breakfast started off great:

I had almond bread cake with a side if peaches. After one bite I knew I needed more since I was ravenous so I smeared some peanut butter on top. This was an 8:30am breakfast. 

By noon, I decided to forgo my lunch workout because I was starving and wanted to eat my lunch at that time instead. 

Lunch was a curried chicken kale salad with avocado. I devoured this in seconds. I was still hungry afterwards but decided to wait some time before I had something else. 

After about an hour I was still hungry so I had a Larabar. For some reason this only kept me full for half an hour. This is where things took a turn for the worse. 

I had TWO bowl fills of goldfish crackers and a cookie. This was followed by a handful of Hershey kisses. I was just so hungry!

Well, when I had all this I was finally full. So full that I could not eat dinner. I also felt extremely lethargic, down and my stomach was cramping up. Despite all these issues I had a large slice of chocolate cake with almonds at night. 

As you can see, there was absolutely nothing nutritious put into my body after lunch. Not one thing and I definitely felt it. 

I think I wrote this post more for myself. To see the choices I make and the way they make me feel. To remind myself that if I have a goal in mind to keep at it to see results. Yes, I was starving yesterday. Maybe I need to readjust my portions but I also need to work on better food choices when hungry. 

Today is a new day. I've packed a nutritious breakfast and lunch along with a few healthy snacks. If I continue to be ravenous I at least have healthy choices on hand. 

Recipe Alert: Pumpkin Cake...

The official day of Fall is September 22nd but as soon as Labor Day is over I get pumpkin fever. I LOVE pumpkin anything.  Pumpkin coffee, pumpkin pie, pumpkin cake...I love it all. I love it even more when it's healthy :-) The calories for a few of the pumpkin desserts mentioned can be high. They can also be loaded with tons of preservatives. 

As I was experimenting in the kitchen, I came up with a delicious recipe for a pumpkin cake. I love having this in the morning because it's not too sweet. It also has minimal ingredients. I also feel like each serving is perfectly portioned with 2TB of almond butter for plant fats, 1 egg for protein and when topped with fruit, you have a good portion of produce packed in there!

Try this recipe out for a healthy breakfast treat. 

Pumpkin Cake

Ingredients:

1c pumpkin purée

1/2c almond butter

4 eggs

1tsp vanilla extract

1tsp baking soda

1TB pumpkin pie spice

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine all ingredients to a uniform batter. Grease or use a non stick spray to spray an 8x8 dish. Pour batter. Bake for 30 minutes. Enjoy!

Servings: 4

***Note:  I did not use any sweetener in this recipe and found this to be delicious. If you would like a sweet version add 1/4c honey or agave to the batter.