Love Of Oats

A blog dedicated to balancing a healthy and fun life… with oats!

Breakfast Makes It Better

Ehh, it was a really rough start today getting back to work after having off yesterday, but my breakfast made it better.  Today’s breakfast was inspired by all of you:  Quinoa in place of oats in my breakfast bowl!  I mixed in ground flax, chopped strawberries, sunflower seeds, cinnamon, and of course a blob of peanut butter again hehe…

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Mid-morning, I snacked on a Clif Z Bar

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For lunch, I had a nice change: tofu sammie.  This was chili pepper rubbed tofu that I made last night in a skillet with some spinach on two slices of wheat bread.

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On the side I had some cottage cheese & the last of my Girl Scout cookie 100 calorie packs.  I wasn’t a huge fan of these, which is why you are still seeing them now, although I do love that they are cinnamony!

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Mid-afternoon, I had my standard pre-workout snack, a Clif bar!  I started out eating half the bar, but it didn’t satisfy me, so I ate the rest of it :)

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For my workout o’ the day, I had planned on going for a run but it was COLD out, a nice 34 degrees with crisp winds blowing!!!   I started up with the excuses again and then I thought back to Caitlin’s post yesterday about motivation and how if you don’t want to do it, just run a shorter distance.  So I thought ok, I will run to the park and back, which equates to 1.1 miles.  Well, although I was freezing the entire time I wound up doing it three times which equates to 3.3 miles!!!!!!!!!!! I ran pretty steadily, at a snail’s pace (but it works for me!), the first two rounds with walking two times for 1 minute each time… and then for the last lap I was really chilled to the bone, so I wound up running / walking using street signs as my signals whether I should run or walk, yes I know, I come up with games to occupy myself during my run…

After my run, I decided to treat myself to Polly’s Yoga for Runners!  I felt amazing afterwards and it was just what I needed to stretch out and easy my muscles.  If you have not been to Polly’s blog, I urge you to go check it out!  Reading her blog has really helped me to dedicate time back to reading the Bible and appreciating life as well as myself both inside and out :)

Dinner was nice ‘n easy, but it was delayed.  Bill is off for the next couple days (he didn’t get to take off last week when I did) so he was bombarded at work and put in a 12 hour day ~ yikes.  So I made sure that I had one of his favorite dinners waiting for him when he got home… jerk chicken, roasted red potatoes (I had cinnamon sweet potatoes), corn (I’ve been craving corn!  Can’t wait to get my hands on Jersey corn this summer!) and I did make a side salad, but was too full to eat it!

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I’ve gotten comments on how I make my jerk chicken and I must say it’s quite easy :)   When Bill and I went to Jamaica we STOCKED up on jerk sauce (and it’s HFCS-free!) so I just marinate chicken in the jerk sauce all day in the fridge, take it out and bake it.  Simple and so good!

Now I’m getting ready to settle in with Bill and watch the 2nd half of The Biggest Loser while flipping to the Phillies game off and on, sorry I think Biggest Loser takes precedence haha… I love the Phillies but Biggest Loser is just a tad better, especially considering our Phils are losing :/

Tomorrow’s is another Phillies Game Day (World Series Ring Ceremony game too!) that Bill and I are going to… can’t wait!

Convenience

Hi Everyone :)   Happy Monday!  In reality, it’s Wednesday for me since I’m only working thru Wednesday of this week due to the big “move”!  I feel like I should put a huge disclaimer in my blog because I’m desperately trying to make my meals balanced but also avoiding grocery shopping AND trying to use up all food that is perishable because I don’t want to have to throw anything out, so bear with me the next few days, although I know you are all wonderfully understanding & supportive, so I don’t know why I’m even saying that… ;)

This morning I started out with a new find:  Stonyfield Farms Pomegranate Yogurt with sunflower seeds, which was ABSOLUTELY amazing.  If you love Pomegranates, you’ll love this “People’s Choice” flavor – now I know why it is “People’s Choice”.  I just chatted with my mom who also tried this flavor and she LOVED it also :)

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On the side I had an ultra toasted Arnold’s ww sandwich thin with pb & j

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I definitely didn’t think about the snacks I packed for the rest of the day when I had my breakfast so I was a little surprised when I pulled out a yogurt & vitatop for my mid-am snack… oh well, it was very delish, so I’m not complaining!  I crumbled half of the deep chocolate vitatop into the Oikos vanilla yogurt (so smooth!) and ate the other half on the side ~ it was such a yummy & sweet combo!

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Lunch was plastic bags?  No, but I packed up all of our tupperware so I was kind of stuck and had to resort to plastic bags… I was NOT environmentally friendly today and it killed me :/  For my lunch I had a gardenburger on Alvarado St. Bakery Bread with pretzels & an orange.  I cooked my veggie burger in the work microwave and toasted my bread… I added some mustard to make it a delish lunchy!

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Mid-afternoon I snacked on half a Clif bar before heading to the gym…

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At the gym, I did my P90X Kempo X workout & let out a ton of aggression & stress :)   When I was done, I snacked on H2H.

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Dinner consisted of some frozen tilapia that I thawed out and marinated in lemon juice, garlic, and black pepper.  Simple, but flavorful.  I also had some steamed broccoli & roasted string beans.

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Do ya’ll like my leopard pj pants ha… yes I change into pj’s as soon as I get home!

I made Bill roasted potatoes but I wasn’t feeling them, so what did I make?  Oatbran on the side!  I was emailing with Brooke, a reader, just before I started to make dinner and we were professing our love for it so I had to indulge the craving.  I even added some Old Bay seasoning to it to make it savory.  Bill gave me dirty looks and said that is the grossest thing ever… I smiled back :)

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I am 99.99999999999% certain that I’ll be getting a snack later but not sure what it will be so I’ll post it tomorrow!

Ok now back to packing :)

PS.  As for the title of my post, this week I’m all about CONVENIENCE!  I’m trying to still make dinner as much as possible, but I won’t be making anything truly homemade this week.  I got a few comments last night regarding whether my turkey meatballs were homemade and sadly they were not :)   They were Jennie-O brand that I had in my freezer!

Stay tuned for something special that I want to share with you tomorrow regarding a fitness goal!!!!