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Thanks for your comments to yesterdays post about how you deal with stress. It was really interesting hearing about the different ways that stress effects our eating. Apart from a few spoonfuls of Greek yoghurt before bed time I avoided any major blow outs. I also got my work done and was happy to hit the ‘submit’ button this morning!

Before I went to work I headed to the gym for a quick workout – 30 minutes of HIITs with a 5 minute warm up on the cross trainer, step machine and bike followed by some sit ups on the stability ball and a plank and side planks.

For breakfast I had some chopped melon topped with 0% Total Greek Yoghurt and some of my new Dorset Cereals Tasty Toasted Spelt Muesli.

I really liked this muesli, it seemed a lot less ‘dense’ than other muesli as the spelt flakes were very light. It was also packed with dried fruit, nuts and seeds including yummy dried pineapple chunks.

It was a busy morning as we were preparing for our big event to celebrate our organisations 10th Birthday. I snacked on an unpictured apple as I wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t be hitting the buffet starving as this would usually lead to me making some less than healthy choices! As it turned out the buffet was pretty healthy anyway. I had 3 small wholemeal wraps, 2 with smoked salmon and cream cheese and one with tuna. I also had a small wholemeal ham sandwich and lots of hummus with cucumber, carrot and pepper for dipping.

I also had a glass of watered down orange juice. The event went very well, we had an amazing group of young people perform as the entertainment – they were incredibly talented! The event was a great celebration of the 10 years of work my charity has done with the community and was such good fun!

Mid afternoon I had some of the birthday cake with strawberries.

I had this little bite sized slice x 2 plus more strawberries.

Unfortunately all the refined sugar in the cake gave me a crazy sugar high and then left me crashing and completely starving by 5pm. I came home and instead of waiting to have dinner I just made it straight away. I had some of my Summer Bean Stew that had been defrosted from my frozen stash with a little added tomato sauce, some kallo rosemary crackers and a few spicy roasted chickpeas thrown on top.

I’d picked the spicy roasted chickpeas up from a market stall last week and they were gorgeous added to the bean stew.

I then had another apple, chopped and sprinkled with cinnamon.

I had to really stop myself snacking on anything else as I was just ravenous. I managed to hold off until 7pm then made myself this energy giving green monster. I’m planning a big run in the morning so I decided to fill it full of energy giving ingredients:

Energising Green Monster (makes 1 big serving)

• 1 frozen banana
• handful of spinach
• 4 chopped dates
• Soy milk (or any other milk)
• 1 tablespoon of smooth peanut butter
• 3 ice cubes
• 2 tablespoons of muesli as a topping (or your choice of topping)
• 1 tablespoon of wheat germ (optional)
• 1 teaspoon of maca powder (optional)
• 1/4 teaspoon of matcha green tea (optional)
• 1/2 teaspoon of xanthan gum (optional)

Chuck all the ingredients in a blender and wizz till smooth. Top with the muesli.

A bowl full of green goodness, I didn’t want it to end! In case anyone was wondering, the reason why I eat my smoothies in a bowl is firstly because I like them extra thick, and secondly because it takes me longer to eat them that way and makes them feel more filling. I have a tendency to just knock back smoothies in a glass in 10 seconds!  While I’ve been training I’ve really found that bananas and dates are my super fuel and eating them the night before a long run tends to do the trick, so I’m hoping that this smoothie will leave me well charged up in the morning.

I’m still feeling extremely snacky – I’ve just stood in the kitchen and ate more muesli straight from the box with a spoon! I’m not going to be too hard on myself as I haven’t had a snack attack like this for a while, and at least I should be able to burn some of it off with my run tomorrow.

Yesterday I mentioned that I had been sent some more goodies to sample:

Beet It Organic Stamina Shots – kindly sent to me by James White Drinks. This is an unusual product and I’m really looking forward to trying it. Basically these are small shots of pure concentrated organic beetroot juice cut with some lemon juice. Beetroots are naturally high in nitric oxide (NO). Here’s some info from the website:

So what does NO do?

• regulator of blood pressure;
• a gatekeeper of blood flow to certain organs;
• a stamina enhancer via oxygen usage efficiency;
• a weapon against infection;
• a signal molecule in the nervous system.

‘The Beet It shot version is an organic concentrated beetroot 7cl bottle that delivers a comparable dose of dietary nitrate as a 25cl Beet It organic beetroot juice. It is cut with lemon juice to  reduce the sweetness of the beetroot and actually does not taste of beetroot (unlike the Beet It juice). So it is a quick easy dose for people that do not like beetroot juice!  We have only just launched it but the UK elites sports teams (UK athletics team took them to the July European Championships and both the England and Welsh rugby teams have been trialling them) are very interested’

I’m going to be trying these out before my gym workouts and seeing how I go. Each shot is one of your 5 a day too. I also have 2 shots to add to my big GIVEAWAY prize coming soon.

What’s your favourite exercise fuel? Alongside the bananas and dates I love my natural bars such as Nakd and 9 bars and any kind of dried fruit seems to work well for me too. Do you always fuel for a workout or do you ever workout without eating at all? I’m interested to see how the Beet It Shots will work as workout fuel for me.

So glad we’ve hit the weekend! What does everyone have planned? As I mentioned earlier I’m planning on running 13 miles in the morning as my final really long run before the Great North Run (only 2 weeks away!) I’m also planning more cooking and baking, cleaning and tidying, grocery shopping and sorting out some old autumn / winter clothing for ebay. Hopefully some chill time too! Hope you all have a fantastic weekend whatever your up to x