Keep It Coming, Spring!

Hi friends! Lovely weather we’re having, right? It is just absolutely GORGEOUS I can’t stand it.

Warm weather definitely brings out the healthy in a girl and inspires clean eats. Unlike winter where my hibernation happens and I feel like I need to eat hearty stews and desserts all day, Spring inspires fresh clean eats and smoothies. Smoothies galore.

I got back on the meal plan train and decided on smoothies for breakfast this week. No pics, sorry. I didn’t really prep any of the smoothies on Sunday, but I did prep 5 tiny containers of my dry ingredients: Sunwarrior Protein Powder, ground flax, and acai powder. The night before I prep the smoothies with my fruit and veggie combos and in the morning I throw the dry ingredients on top before Magic Bulleting those suckers. Right now my smoothies are consisting of

Veggie/Green: Spinach
Fruit: Strawberry, blackberry, blueberry, raspberry frozen mix
Fat: half an avocado or half a banana (frozen bananas– peel before freezing)
Liquid: water or almond milk
Extra: Kefir from Trader Joe’s.

Definitely a great way to kick start your morning and set yourself up for success.

I was also craving wraps this week with avocado, tomato, spinach or kale, and bacon. A little BLT+ wrap. But I didn’t feel like cooking bacon and I bought turkey lunchmeat from TJ’s so I rolled (haha, get it roll… wrap) with a turkey wrap.

Only problem? I tried these brown rice wraps to help reduce my gluten intake and I am not a fan. Wrap fail. They are too hard and crumbly and really don’t make a very good wrap. But the rest? Pretty bombtastic.

I like to mash my avocado to make it easier to eat on the wrap. Slices of avocado slip out too easily. Slippery suckers. I mash, then add a good amount of salt, then throw in chunks of tomato (also makes the tomato application and consumption easier). Kind of a quick guac.  I pack all the ingredients in tupperware like this and assemble at work.

Yesterday I wanted to take advantage of the beautiful weather, feeling springy, and the pretty flat circular nature of the gigantic area my work building is in so I packed my running gear, changed at work, and headed out for a run. So lovely. I haven’t run in a really long time and my legs were still ridiculously sore from moving saturday (DOMS for the fail) so I took it easy. Just did a slow 1.5 mile but it felt fantastic. I thought I’d be really sore today but I’m feeling pretty good so I think I’ll do a repeat. After the run I was staaaarving and it takes me about 30-60 minutes to get home so I did another TJ’s run and grabbed one banana, strawberries, and precut cantaloupe. I devoured that banana on the drive home and some of the loupe. It was my first time getting loupe from TJ’s and I’m not a fan… it had a poison taste to it. Anyone else experience that? I never really buy precut veggies and fruit but the loupe was singing to me.

I thought I’d be more sore today from DOMS and the run but I’m feeling pretty good so I think I might repeat yesterday’s run.  And hey, I’m already on my way to making April Amazing.  Goal 1, 2 and 8 all in this post!  Boom!

Have you entered the birthday giveaway?  How about another sneak peak?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How does the weather affect your eats and moves?

Meal Prep Sunday

Meal prep and getting ready for my week isn’t that difficult for me.  I’m an organized person by nature and if I don’t do some sort of prepping for the week, I feel frazzeled and rushed the whole week.  But I do know not everyone finds this easy and not everyone goes as crazy as I do.  One of my favorite bloggers, Gina from The Fitnessista, is definitely a huge fan of prep work and posts regular Sunday blogs reminding everyone to do so and sharing what she has done.  So I thought I’d join in the fun.

Fitness Schedule

Monday: Yoga

Tuesday: Ballet

Wednesday: TurboFire Tone 30

Thursday: Yoga

Friday: TurboFire (a cardio, I haven’t picked it yet)

Saturday: Off

Sunday: Home stretching

Does anyone else schedule this in their phone?  Not only that, does anyone else use fun little icons?

 

Meal Prep:

Today I spent the day prepping my breakfasts, lunches, and some dinners for the week.  On the menu:

Breakfast everyday: make ahead steel cut oats with brown sugar, 6 almonds, and 6 pecans.  Cook steel cut oats the night before, let cool, divvy into 5 containers with sugar, almonds, and pecans, and store in the fridge.  When you’re ready to eat, add a little milk of your choice and microwave for 30-60 seconds.  So easy, yummy, and filling.

 

Lunches: prepped 5 salads with spring mix, avocado, tomatoes, egg and chicken.

 

Also for lunch, pita pockets with turkey, provolone, avocado, mayo, and tomatoes.  I don’t make sandwiches ahead of time… don’t want a soggy pita!

Snack: grapes and string cheese.

Dinner: some nights I go right from work to yoga or ballet and Monday is one of those nights so I made 2 halves of a pita sandwich, one for lunch and one for dinner.  And I’ll probably grab a banana from the snack counter at work.  Gotta keep it light before yoga.

Everything is stored in the spare fridge in the basement and I just grab what I need the night before and bring it upstairs.  Saves me so much time and worry every morning!

How do you prep for your week?

I <3 Oatmeal

I have a few new loves.  I’ve written about my asparagus, kale, smoothie, quinoa, and raw and rice milk loves.  And sometime soon I’ll be writing about my peanut butter love.  But now I’d like to share with you my oatmeal love.

I was never an oatmeal fan.  In fact, growing up my hot cereal of choice was cream of wheat and my brother’s was oatmeal.  It was one of the only foods we didn’t fight over since we didn’t like the other’s hot cereal.  A few years ago my mom started making steel cut oatmeal on the stove and I still didn’t like it.  But for whatever reason, call it getting older, maturing, being healthier, tastes changing, whatever, I started liking and craving oatmeal.  I find it to be an easy and healthy before bed snack, something you can quickly eat before work (or on the way to work), and often a dinner substitute.  I never thought to add protein powder to my oatmeal until I saw the Fitnessista doing it as both a cereal and her famous, and highly suggested, breakfast cookie.  What an easy way to add some protein and really get your fill!  And so began my journey in trolling the blog world for oatmeal recipes and realizing I am not alone in my oatmeal love.

Check out…

Chocolate-Covered Katie’s Cookie Dough Baked Oatmeal

Eating Bird Food’s Creamy Overnight Oats

Cara’s Cravings’ Quick Pumpkin Protein Oats

Carrots ‘N’ Cake’s Instant Baked Oatmeal

Kath Eats Real Food’s love of Oatmeal is so intense she is an entire section of her blog devoted to it.  Tribute to Oatmeal

When you visit each of those links, be sure to click on their recipe page and you’ll find in almost every single one of them a separate section labeled oatmeal.  I’m telling you, people’s love of oatmeal is deep.

So because I’m new to oatmeal I have been relying on a lot of these recipes for ideas but I quickly found that it is hard to mess up oatmeal.  And so I give you tonight’s creation:

Quick Nutella Protein Oatmeal

(all measurements are an approximation as I didn’t measure when making this!)

–          ¼ cup oatmeal

–          1 tbsp protein powder (I use Sun Warrior)

–          Dash of salt

–          Soy milk to your wetness desire (teehee)

–          A spoonful of Nutella

Combine oatmeal, protein, salt, and soy milk (or your milk of choice) in a microwaveable bowl.  Microwave to your desired doneness (I left mine pretty wet).  Take out, stir, and plop a spoonful of Nutella on top.  Delish.