Weekend Round Up

Posted on May 20, 2013 by gingersneezes

This weekend was a bit of a mixed bag. It was great in that I got to see a bunch of friends, and their rapidly growing babies and it kind of sucked in that I was sick and had spent most of it resting, with intermittent dog walks (I got to babysit this weekend – just look at his face!).

So instead of harping on how awful I have been feeling and how many echinacea, garlic and vitamin D pills I have been taking I figured I will focus on the happy fun things that I participated in this weekend instead.

So for some weeks now my running buddy, Susan and I have been planning a lady’s party in the form of a tea party. We planned the menu in accordance with the Gingersneezes Clean Eating challenge and made sure to have loads of flowers, and cute little rustic decorations to really bring it all together.

The tea party was a great hit, and we seriously couldn’t have asked for nicer weather. Originally the event was planned for indoors but when the Weather Network was forecasting 25 degrees and sunny we moved the party outside. Besides a lack of shade it was great and we all had a chance to bask in the glory of the sun, while we sipped on naturally infused water and tea, and ate a host of delicious finger foods.

We made small jars of raw jam for everyone as a parting favour, and their tiny little containers were just so adorable and went with our rustic theme so well.

The guests were all happily surprised to find out that all of the food was acceptable for the Gingersneezes Clean Eating challenge, as well as encouraged about how tasty the food was.

Just a little note the chocolate moose is made with organic non-GMO silken tofu, and those deviled eggs are actually made with hummus not with mayo, both are super tasty snacks packed with protein and low in calories.

After the tea party we quickly cleaned up and I promptly passed out from exhaustion. Even with taking some DayQuil to make it through the event my body was in a full out revolt and it was time for me to get on the couch and not move for the rest of the day.

My Sunday was much of the same, after a brief trip to the farmer’s market in the morning for some groceries I was quarantined to the couch. With my 10km race coming up in less than a week I figured it was time to rest this body up, so I am respecting my body’s wishes for some rest and doing my best to slow down and listen to what it has to say.

Considering today is still a part of the long weekend I hope you are all still enjoying your long weekend! and Happy Monday!

PS. Don’t forget to go and sign up for the Gingersneezes Giveaway, the contest ends this Thursday!

Food Fridays – PB Banana Protein Pancakes

Posted on May 17, 2013 by gingersneezes

I hope everyone is having a great day, it looks like the weather is working with us for the upcoming long weekend and I couldn’t be more excited. I am not going anywhere for the long weekend, but it will be nice to have several consecutive days off and I am co-hosting a tea party so that should be pretty nice, I will be sure to snap a lot of photos for my weekend update on Monday.

Now for what Fridays are all about, sharing tasty tasty foods. The other day I had an over load of bananas at home and I have been experimenting with various protein pancake combos so I figured this might just be a completely delicious mash up, and it was! It really turned out to be so delicious. So here it is:

PB Banana Protein Pancakes:

1 cup Oat Flour
1 scoop Vanilla Protein Powder
1 Egg
1 tsp Organic Peanut Butter
1/2 banana
1/2 cup – 1 cup Water

PB Banana Pancakes 2 Method:

In a small bowl combine oat flour and protein powder.
In a separate medium size bowl, mash up ripe banana until smooth. Add in egg and peanut butter and stir.
Once combined add dry ingredients to the wet and stir. Mixture will become thick and hard to stir, begin adding water, and stir until you have reached a runny consistency. I have made these twice and the amount of water I used was a bit different each time. When adding water just make sure it doesn’t become soupy, but it is still runny enough to pass a fork through without much resistance.
Using a 1/4 cup scoop out the mixture and place in a heated frying pan. When the pancake begins to bubble it is ready to be flipped. It should take about 3-5 minutes per side.
Serve hot or package them for later, they go great with the jam that was mentioned last week.

These have made great breakfasts or a quick post work snack. I hope you enjoy them as much as I am.

Happy Friday everyone! I hope you all have a great weekend!

If you haven’t already don’t forget to sign up for the Gingersneezes Giveaway it ends next Thursday!

Clean Eating – Giveaways

Posted on May 16, 2013 by gingersneezes

So folks it is finally here Gingersneezes’ very first giveaway! I couldn’t be more excited especially because of who is donating the prize! Seeing Gingersneezes is doing a 50 day Clean Eating challenge the prize is completely perfect! The generous people over in Tosca Reno’s shop have donated an AMAZING gift filled with a bunch of clean eating essentials!

I figured now would be a great time for a giveaway to help pump up all of your motivation to stay on course. I find that generally speaking heading into week three of something can be pretty challenging. Week one you are all full of motivation and energy to succeed, week two you are starting to feel some positive effects of your lifestyle change, and then week three sinks in.

It is a point in a lifestyle change, a cleanse, or some type of challenge where your motivation may have dwindled a bit, you might be struggling with overcoming a barrier you haven’t ever had to face. You may be feeling like you have been so good so you deserve your sugary, processed food you normally have on Friday nights. Or that perhaps just a couple drinks won’t be so harmful to all the progress you have worked for. I find it is at this point where you really need something to keep you going and keep you focused on what you goals are, why you started this challenge and why you wanted to commit to it 100%.

This giveaway is inspired by the Gingersneezes Eats Clean challenge but it is open to any of my readers and hopefully this will inspire you to try the challenge for yourself, we are 16 days in but it is never too late to start!

I have made you all wait long enough, what could you win? Well you could win an Eat-Clean Diet and Raw Elements Inc sponsored goody bag! The goody bag includes Tosca Reno’s favorite Sunwarrior supplements, a special recipe from Tosca and two titles from Tosca Reno’s best selling Eat-Clean Diet series!

And now for the important part…How do you win? It is simple, in the comments below answer the following questions….What is your favorite clean eating treat? or What processed food do you find yourself missing the most?

The winner will be selected at random on the 31st of May, the winner’s name will be posted on the site so that I can get in touch with them for shipping information. Although the grand prize will be selected at random I may be giving away some extra little goodies for originality and enthusiasm. I can’t wait to see what you have to say!

Happy Thursday Everyone! I hope you are all gearing up for a nice May 2/4.

*I have not tried any Sunwarrior products as previously mentioned in a post, so you will have to get back to me on what you think of it.

Jello Legs – Running Hills

Posted on May 14, 2013 by gingersneezes

Lately my posts have been focused on the Gingersneezes Eats Clean challenge seeing how it is the big thing I have going on right now, but I don’t want to forget about our Run Club. The Gingersneezes Run Club has been going great, and remember it is never too late to join in! The club started as a learn to run and 10k training clinic and the women who joined are quickly becoming great strong runners, it is so exciting to see each and everyone of them excel week after week.

Now that I have gotten my gushing out of the way I figured I would do a bit of an informative post on hill training and why it is important to a balanced running program. There are other forms of training (tempo and interval) that are important too, but today I want to focus on hills because I personally think they are so very important to good form, strong legs, glutes and abs and good performance as a runner.

Yesterday because of my bum ankle instead of going on a 60 minute run of 5:1 intervals we (running partner and I) decided to take the group over to a magnificent hill. We figured at least everyone would still be getting in a good workout, and they wouldn’t be penalized by my bum ankle. It also gave me the chance to see everyone’s form and encourage the group from the bottom of the hill while Susan (my running buddy and co-leader of the group) ran the hills with the group to keep them moving.

The hills maybe weren’t loved by everyone but it was a nice way to shake things up and a way to give the group a little taste of things to come as training progresses.

Why are hills so great for you as a runner? Besides me loving hills just because I personally find them challenging, they do a whole load of great things for you. One of the main things is that hills (either hilly runs or hill repeats) help remind you of your form. As runners we sometimes take our form for granted or we get a little stuck on what “perfect form” looks like. With hills you have no choice but to straighten up a bit and remind yourself of your abdominal and glute muscles so that you can power through each hill.

If you exercise poor form while running hills your body will let you know almost immediately, everything will feel much more challenging, and you are likely to become winded much more rapidly. But a quick reminder to engage your core and glutes will have you up right and taking on those hills in no time.

Hills are great for your form, but are they great for anything else? The short answer is YES! The longer answer is that by doing hills and being mindful of engaging the appropriate muscles you are actually working those muscles out much more than you would be had you done the same run on a flat surface. Hill running allows you to build your running muscles (quads, calves and glutes primarily). Building these muscles helps you to avoid injury and to make you a faster stronger runner.

The run is shorter am I still burning enough calories? Hill running is awesome for torching calories. The high intensity of the hills challenges your body to rev it up, more than it would if you were just running on a flat surface. The quick bursts of energy are completely exhausting for a reason, you are burning up your fuel source like no one’s business and the steeper the hill the harder the workout.

Now that you are all super excited about running hills and are all itching to lace up and test it out yourself. I have a wonderful beginner’s exercise to share with you.

Test it out and let me know what you thought.

Happy Tuesday! The sun is peeking out. I am hopeful that it is warming up!

P.S. remember to be careful when running hills. It is important to watch your footing and to stay alert, you don’t want to slip and then stall your progress from an injury that could have been avoided.

Day 13 & Another Weekend

Posted on May 13, 2013 by gingersneezes

well you have made it this far!!! 13 days into the challenge and 2 weekends under your belt, I am sure you are all started to feel the great benefits! You are probably less bloated, more energy, and feeling lighter. I hope for you all these positive side effects of eating clean are making it easier for you to resist temptation throughout the days.

This weekend may have been a bit tricker for a lot of the ladies out there, especially the moms seeing how love and pampering can often come in the form of a good glass of wine and a nice slice of chocolate cake, so hopefully you either used a cheat meal to avoid driving yourself nuts or you were able to navigate the treats and stick to your clean eating, either way I am sure you made the right decision for you and your situation.

This weekend was a little tough for me because we were at my inlaws and my mother-in-law is a particularly amazing baker, so it took a little bit more willpower to resist the delicious chocolate chip cookies and cherry cheese cake that were waiting for us when we arrived. Even though I didn’t partake in any of the decadent sweets my mother-in-law made sure to have loads of fruits, veggies and pre-cooked lean protein for me so I never felt like I was missing out, and boy was I ever grateful for that. It is easier to say no to a slice of cheesecake when I had a bowl of fresh strawberries specially prepared for me.

Besides resisting the temptation to stuff my face with all the sugar treats my belly could handle my husband and I got to visit with his family. It was a great weekend filled with good conversation, catching up, and getting to marvel at how grown up our niece is getting. Kids really do grow up so quickly and it is pretty exciting to see such huge changes. The little lady had a better idea of what was going on on my iphone than I do.

We headed home after some more visits and a nice mother’s day breakfast, and headed right into the regular grind of life, so that means my mind is back on food prep, routines, and the Gingersneezes run club. Although, I do enjoy breaks from my regular routine, I always seem to miss it after an extended period of time, so I am happy to be returning to my routine. I understand that I might have a love for routine, that sentiment might not be felt by all, and see how we are moving into our THIRD week of the Gingersneezes Eats Clean challenge I wanted to throw in an extra challenge for everyone.

Starting tomorrow, for the next 7 days I want everyone to start having a glass of warm lemon water in the morning. Warm is the ideal temperature, but if you are like me and know you won’t make your way to the kitchen in the morning to warm up the water prepare your lemon water the night before in a bottle or cup with a lid, and set it on your nightstand for you to have first thing in the morning. The goal is to have your glass of lemon water within 30 minutes of waking up so your body has some time to process it before you eat your breakfast.

Why lemon water? Well besides tasting GREAT lemon water helps to clean you out (it is a natural diuretic), it will help balance out your internal pH, it will help to clear your skin, give you energy, boosts your immune system and aids in weight loss (as if you needed anymore reasons why).

So get ready to experience some awesome benefits to adding this extra step to your morning routine.

I hope everyone has had a wonderful weekend and I hope that positivity translates into your week.

Happy Monday!

P.S. Gingersneezes has a competition for everyone in the coming days. So keep your eyes peeled for the details!

Food time Friday – Clean Condiments

Posted on May 10, 2013 by gingersneezes

Coming into the second weekend on the Gingersneezes Eats Clean challenge I am hoping you have all been starting to notice some healthy benefits. To avoid getting stuck in a rut or pattern I figured I would share some super tasty condiment style foods that will help bring a burst of flavour to any meal or snack. Hopefully it will help to keep things interesting for you as this challenge progresses.

Spicy Hummus:

1/2 cup Tahini
1 can Chickpeas with liquid (salt free, organic if possible)
Squeeze of Lemon (about 1tsp)
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (you can omit or increase depends on your tastes)
1/2 jalapeño seeded and diced
1 clove of garlic
1 tbsp olive oil, plus more for topping.

In a blender/food processor or with a hand blender mix the above ingredients together until creamy.
If you like less creamy hummus do not add all of the liquid from the can of chickpeas.
Place hummus in a bowl and top with a bit of additional oil if desired. Keeps for about 7 days.

Roasted Garlic Hummus:

1/2 cup Tahini
1 can Chickpeas with liquid (salt free, organic if possible)
Squeeze of Lemon (about 1tsp)
1 bulb of garlic
1 tbsp olive oil, plus more for topping.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Take the bulb of garlic and cut the top so that the cloves are exposed. Wrap in tinfoil and place directly in the oven. Allow to cook for 35-40minutes.
Once roasted remove from oven and peel back tin foil to allow to cool.
In a blender/food processor mix the above ingredients together until creamy. If you like less creamy hummus do not add all of the liquid from the can of chickpeas.
Place hummus in a bowl and top with a bit of additional oil if desired. Keeps for about 7 days.

Salsa:

1 medium sized tomato, seeds removed
1/4 green pepper
1 jalapeno, seeds removed
1/2 cup fresh cilantro (can be omitted if you don’t like the taste)
1 small shallot, diced
Juice from 1/2 a lime
1 tsp olive oil
1 tsp garlic salt Pepper to your

This will be easiest in a food processor, however if you do not have one you can just chop everything up really fine and mix it all together in a bowl.

Add green pepper, jalapeno and shallot and chop for a few seconds, then add cilantro and tomatoes, you will only need to processes the mixture for another couple of seconds as the tomato breaks down fast.
Remove from food process and place in bowl, manually stir in lime juice, garlic salt and olive oil.
Serve and enjoy. This goes great with corn chips and rice crackers. It is also super tasty as a salad dressing, and as a dip for your carrots.

Jam:

1 cup of blueberries or strawberries or raspberries
1 tbsp chia seeds
1 drop of raw honey (if additional sweetness is required)

Place fruit in a food blender and purée. Continue to chop until all larger chunks have been ground up.
Mix in chia seeds and honey by hand.
Transfer mixture into a seal-able glass jar, and let sit for a couple hours to overnight. In the morning you will have some tasty jam for your Ezikle bread or whole wheat english muffins. Keeps for about 7 – 10 days.

I hope that these flavour items help to spice up (literally in some cases) your meals.I will keep working on different sauces and stuff to hopefully bring you something new and tasty really soon. If you are looking for ideas drop me a line with what you are craving and I can try and curve my cooking creativity in that direction.

Happy Friday! Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Accepting and Respecting Injuries

Posted on May 9, 2013 by gingersneezes

It feels like for the past couple weeks I have been a walking target for illness and injury, and well that frustrates me to no end. I guess you could categorize me as “type A”. I like to plan for a scenario and then ramp-up until that scenario has come to fruition and I get kind of annoyed and frustrated when there are unexpected obstacles and challenges that I have no real control over. ( I think most people can sympathize with this feeling).

First it was my heel (plantars fasciitis), then it was a stomach thing, which left me unable to eat properly or exercise and this week I was lucky enough to roll my ankle. The ankle is healing up fine, and this tapping job actually helped considerably, but it is still slowing me down.

Now I understand that life comes with obstacles and I am always game for a good challenge, heck eating can be a challenge with my allergies. I have no issue with obstacles such as it being too hot or raining out because these obstacles, along with my allergies, have tangible work-it-out solutions. It is often as simple as modifying my training schedule, putting on a rain jacket, wearing a hat and a tank top, bringing extra water, and reading the ingredient list for food or just making it myself. Each of these solutions helps to fix a problem/challenge. But when the fix is rest, it seems that my brain has a bit of a struggle with figuring that one out and accepting it as a solution instead of a white flag.

[source]

So what do I do? What a great question. I am learning to start listening to my body and respecting it when I am injured, sick or fatigued. Instead of constantly pushing my body to perform at its maximum I am starting to learn that it too may at times require a bit of a break in order to continue to perform at its full potential.

I am starting to wrap my head around the fact that rest is infact a solution to an obstacle and not throwing in the towel, however much I may not like the solution. Currently it is a pretty large struggle because I will be participating in the Ottawa Race weekend at the end of this month, so I feel the need to train and to avoid resting too much. But I also need my ankles, stomach, knees and feet to start cooperating with my brain and that means listening to what my body is telling me instead of powering through at all times.

So you might now be thinking “how is she listening to her body if she is still training for a race?” and what an excellent question that is indeed. At this point I am kind of just making deals with my body, sort of bribing it to let it know that after it does an awesome job in the Ottawa Race Weekend, I will give it a solid 1-2 weeks off with nothing but foam rolling and yoga. So yes, I am still training but I have drastically cut back on the amounts of and distance of my runs in order to be a bit more gentle with my body. I am also trying to go to gentle and yin style yoga classes so they are more about stretching than they are about strength and power. So although I am still training I am being much easier on myself than I would normally be, so that’s how I am compromising with my body at the moment.

I am still struggling with listening and respecting my body and its injuries on a regular basis I am getting much better at it, and much more accepting of the need to rest and do nothing sometimes. I hope that over time I will get better at this and it will just become second nature to me instead of something I have to force myself to remember.

How do you know if your body needs a break? Do you tend to listen to it or do you push the thought out of your mind and lace up anyways?

*just a little side note. I am writing my intention to “rest” and “relax” after the race here to make sure that I follow through. Sometimes you need an extra push to make sure you slow down.

I hope everyone has a great Thursday and I hope no one has forgotten that it is Mother’s day this weekend!

Sugar – What a Sneaky Little Guy

Posted on May 7, 2013 by gingersneezes

We are in our last day of the first week of the Gingersneezes Eats Clean Challenge, things are probably starting to sink in now, and perhaps grocery shopping has become a bit more frustrating because of infamous sugar. Going down the shopping isle picking up products whose packaging promises health and fitness only to find out the first, second or third ingredients is processed white sugar or better yet high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) can become a little exhausting. So you are probably quickly finding out that sugar and HFCS is in pretty much everything, even things that you wouldn’t consider sweet.

So why the heck is this stuff in everything we want to eat? I am not even going to get into the addictive nature of excessive quantities of these items, instead I am just going to focus on what they are good at (besides being kind of delicious). Sugar is a great preservative (shelf life extender) and where sugar can’t take the lead HFCS will definitely get the job done (in products that have been artificially sweetened generally speaking). And most importantly that shit (normally I wouldn’t swear but it was the best word to sum it up) is cheap making it pretty attractive to commercial producers to use it.

[source]

It is in everything from ketchup to bread what do you do? My first suggestion to you would be, if you didn’t have the chance to go through your pantry and fridge before the challenge began, to do it now. See what you have lingering in there, you might be surprised to find out how much of the “food” you have is full of HFCS and/or sugar, plus a bundle of other chemicals, additives and preservatives.

Secondly, I would recommend getting familiar with your kitchen. Cooking your own food and making your own sauces will seriously help to not drive you bonkers looking for food without sugar in it and there are a bunch of great books, magazines and web resources out there (heck Gingersneezes is one) that can help you find great recipes that will for sure satisfy even the pickiest of palates.

If you aren’t the cooking type there are brands out there that can help you out, but it might take you reading the ingredients label for many products before finding something that doesn’t have some form of processed sugar in it. A general guideline could be for looking for whole grain or sprouted grain products when looking for breads, stay out of the snacks and chip aisle (it will only bring you heartache), and try to sweeten things using fruits, raw honey or pure maple syrup.

It is so difficult how do I keep going? So if you are a bit new to reading ingredient labels (I am not due to allergies) it might feel a bit overwhelming when you are doing your groceries, and you might feel like for every 10 products you pick up you can only actually bring home one of them. Well that feeling might be based in fact, but don’t lose hope.

you-can-do-it

The first 1-2 weeks of anything (new diet, new workout regiment, new practice schedule, new sport) is always the most challenging. You are swimming against your natural instinct to grab something that is “easier” or “familiar” so it is going to feel a little rough, but you can take solace in knowing that it will definitely get easier. Soon you will have a better idea of what is out there, what to avoid and soon enough you will be a master of your kitchen (if you aren’t already).

So what do I take away from this? Well I think the best approach is to remember that this is a challenge. There should be points during the next 44 days that you feel like things are difficult/challenging, just try to remember that at those points you have the option to make several different decisions. You can decide that it is too tough and throw in the towel, you can decide that you will find a solution, and if you are feeling like your soul really needs it remember you have 3 cheats that you can use at any time if you have to. This adventure is supposed to be challenging not destructive or painful, it is supposed to push you and encourage you, not deflate you. So remember at every point in this challenge to listen to yourself, and to encourage yourself and most importantly remember why you started it in the first place.

Sugar is pretty tricky so I really hope this post helps you navigate a bit. My best suggestion would be to stop picking up the boxed foods unless it is absolutely necessary. 9 times out of 10 a prepackaged food item will not conform to a clean eating diet, and won’t fit into this challenge so it is better for your brain (at least it is for me) to just avoid those items for now.

Happy Tuesday Everyone.

Let me know what you are struggling with maybe we have the same vice and we can support each other.

Weekend Round Up – So Sunny

Posted on May 6, 2013 by gingersneezes

This weekend was glorious, not only did it mark the end to my week without being allowed to exercise (doctor’s orders), it was also my hand balancing class and the beginning of the farmer’s market and it was the first weekend during the Gingersneezes Clean Eating Challenge! With so much going on I wasn’t quite sure where to start, so I figured the beginning would probably be best.

Friday night started off with me heading on over to the gym to solidify some training plans. After 6 months of regular personal training I am really enjoying continuing my workouts solo, and having a lot of fun pushing myself. However after getting really hooked on strength training/ functional training I decided to keep my progress moving in a forward motion and to get some personal training session to keep me motivated and progressing. I won’t be doing personally training three times a week like I was but instead I will just have a couple of sessions at the beginning of each phase to set me up and keep me on track.

When Saturday rolled around I was up and out of bed before 8am (I suck at sleeping in) and I started my morning off with a spinach and plumb smoothie, followed by renting a cargo van for two purposes:

to get a new futon
to clean out the over cluttered garage (totally blanked on taking pictures of this, we were way too in the groove to stop and snap shots).

After braving Ikea on a Saturday we successfully escaped after selecting a new futon for our smaller spare room. Then it was time to get rid of some trash, which included the old run down futon, and about 5 years of clutter that we had collected in our garage. Now you can actually see the floor! It is pretty fabulous. While my husband headed over to the dump with our van full of trash, I decided to see how difficult building the Ikea futon was going to be, turns out not hard at all. Took me just about an hour to put the whole thing together on my own, and it was quickly approved by Lola.

I finished building the futon just in time to pack up for the yoga workshop on hand balancing. The workshop was really interesting, not what I was expecting but completely awesome anyways. I am someone that has yet to learn how to feel comfortable upside down, so it was a really interesting course. It was great because the yoga teacher came at it from a bit of a different angle which was refreshing. She spoke of functional training exercises and the need to find a balance between yoga flexibility and muscular strength in order to find a healthy balance in a handstand. There were a lot of exercises that I was totally not expecting, but all in all a great way to spend 2 hours on a Saturday.

Once I finished up my workshop I went home to get ready for a nice date night with my husband. We had some delicious brown rice sushi for supper, followed by some fun movie watching. It was a perfect ending to a bit of a busy (but fun) day.
And then SUNDAY!!! Normally I am not a huge fan of Sundays because well that means the work week is about to start and that is never a fun thing, but this Sunday was the first Farmer’s Market of the season! I was so excited to get out there, buy some locally raised, hormone free meat, and whatever produce were available, luckily we found some AMAZING looking asparagus, I can’t wait to eat it. Before heading over to the farmer’s market, my running buddy Susan and I decided to lace up our shoes and go for a nice long run. This is something we started doing in the fall last year, and it is a welcome addition to my weekend routine that is for sure.

run So Susan and laced up and headed out for a 10.75km run, it was our longest of the season so far and it felt amazing. It was one of those runs where at the end I felt like I could just keep going and going, although I am sure my legs are super happy today that I did stop when I did.

The rest of the afternoon was spent doing some food prep (clean eating BBQ sauce! so tasty), stretching, some more stretching and then just some hanging out on the patio taking in the sun and the warmth. The weather is starting to get me excited for the summer! I hope the beautiful weather keeps coming!

Last little thing before I end this novel of a post. Congrats to everyone who made it through their first weekend of clean eating! It might have hurt to not have a beer and sit on a sunny patio but I am sure you body is happier for it. I for one am bursting with energy today! After some yoga and running and fueling up with delicious fresh and healthy foods my body and soul couldn’t be happier and hopefully you are starting to feel some really positive benefits from this challenge (less bloated, skin clearing up, more energy, etc.) also.

I hope you all had some wonderful weekends, and those of us going back to work today, I hope it isn’t too rough. Happy Monday!

Food Friday – PB Banana Oat “Cookies”

Posted on May 3, 2013 by gingersneezes

So today is Day 3 in our Gingersneezes Eats Clean challenge and I hope it is going well for everyone. Depending on what your eating habits were prior to starting this challenge you might be feeling some sugar withdraws which probably aren’t super fun, but stick with it and soon they will pass I promise.

Personally I find the first 4-7 days the most difficult during of a challenge or a cleanse or a new way of eating. I always find it is during those days that I just want to call it what it is and maybe you know “start again next Monday”. Part of what I find so amazing about clean eating is that I rarely get this feeling, because I am not being deprived of anything. So if you are feeling deprived what I recommend is writing out what you are really missing, and then just doing some quick research to see how you could make yourself a clean version of that. There are options out there for everything, so if you want something sweet, salty, crunchy, warm, filling there is a clean eating option out there for you. It might take a bit more work than opening a box but just think how much more delicious it will be if you make it with your own hands.

For the past week, I have been dealing with some stomach/abdominal issues so I haven’t been able to eat much but yesterday I started feeling like I wanted something sweet and not just another apple, so instead of breaking and getting a chocolate bar I made some delicious PB Banana Oat cookies. I had been seeing banana oat cookies floating around the blogosphere for a while and I decided to give them ago seeing my stomach had been handling bananas pretty well. These are so easy and naturally flavoured.

PB Banana Oat Cookies
Makes 15-20 cookies

3 Ripe Bananas mashed
2 cups rolled oats
2 tbsp Natural Peanut Butter

1. Preheat oven to 350 degree.
2. In a large bowl mash bananas until smooth, add in 2 cups of rolled oats and stir until mixed. Add in peanut butter and stir until combined.
3. Using two spoons scoop mixture and fold into balls. Place on sheet about 1/2 inch apart, the cookies won’t grow. If you are worried about sticking spray the pan with some olive oil or use coconut oil to coat the bottom. I didn’t use any oil and the cookies came off the baking sheet just fine.
4. Place in pre-heated oven for 15-20 minutes until they firm up.

I hope these help to satisfy your sweet tooth if you are having a bit of a snack attack. Let me know what your cravings are, and how you are coping with them. If you need ideas I am always here to help.

Happy Friday everyone!

gingersneezes

yoga, health, food and balance