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I can’t believe its the 1st November already, only a few weeks to Christmas!

I haven’t forgotten about organising the bloggers Secret Santa, I’m just waiting until after Bonfire Night (5th November for those not in the UK) as I refuse to do anything particularly Christmassy until after that date. Then I’m a full on Christmas fan!

Breakfast this morning was my first try of the Bob Red Mills 10 Grain Hot Cereal I ordered from iHerb. I used 1/4 cup of cereal with 1/4 cup of soy milk and half a cup of water. When cooked I added some frozen blueberries, chopped walnuts and a little brown rice syrup then topped my bowl with more walnuts and some maple syrup.

So lovely and filling. I’m also loving the brown rice syrup, it has a much more mellow flavour than agave or maple syrup. I can see this becoming my regular sweetener of choice.

Mid morning I snacked on some pumpkin yoghurt.

I should have mentioned last night that I had opened my first tin of Libby’s to make my pumpkin smoothie. I mixed what was left with some 2% greek yoghurt. The tinned stuff is amazing, such a lovely intense sweet pumpkin flavour, delicious!

Lunch was a repeat of last nights amazing Roast Butternut Squash and Radcchio Salad with Goats Cheese and Seeds followed by two plums. I also snacked on some orange nakd raisins before going to the gym.

In line with my refreshed training plan for this month I changed up my HIITs from my usual 1 minute medium intensity : 1 minute hard intensity to 30 seconds medium, 30 seconds hard, 30 seconds feel like I’m going to die. This certainly achieved my goal of making my HIIT session more challenging! I did 15 minutes of this on the cross trainer and 15 minutes on the step machine plus some abs and core exercises before heading into my 30 minute spin class. I was wrecked after all of that!

One of my goals for this month is to try and eat more whole grains. The Kind Diet really places whole grains at the centre of healthy eating and I recognised that I don’t really include as many grains in my diet as I could. To try and remedy this I will be having a Grain of the week. Each Sunday I will make up a batch of grain to sit in the fridge and be used within meals for a couple of days. This week I used a bag of mixed grains I had picked up in Tesco a few months ago.

This mix includes spelt, barley, whole thaibonnet rice, kamut wheat and oats. The grains are pre cooked so they only needed to be boiled for 10 minutes.

I used them to make a fried grain dish by frying some leek, mushrooms and carrots  in a little garlic olive oil then mixing in the grain. I also steamed a big bunch of russian red kale and added some shoyu (Japanese soy sauce – another Kind Diet ingredient that I found in Sainsbury’s) and Ume vinegar plus some toasted mixed seeds.

This made an incredibly simple, healthy and tasty dish! For desert I blended a scoop of Fruit-ein powder with some soy milk, ice cubes, xanthan gum and guar gum to make a delicious bowl of protein ice cream. I topped it off with a few goji berries.

So good, the Fruit-ein reminds me of bubblegum flavoured sweets! I also ate a lovely little russet apple.

Do you include whole grains in your diet? 

Whole grains are packed with nutrients including protein, fibre, B vitamins, antioxidants, and trace minerals (iron, zinc, copper, and magnesium). A diet rich in whole grains has been shown to reduce the risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and some forms of cancer. Wholegrain diets also improve bowel health by helping to maintain regular bowel movements and promote growth of healthy bacteria in the colon. To reap all these benefits its important to go for the unrefined grains – as close to their natural state as possible – so go for brown rice instead of white etc.

I’m looking forward to experimenting with more of these grains including brown and wild rice, quinoa, pearl barley, millet and bulgur. I’m also going to try and sneak some into my hubby’s meals too! What’s your favourite grain?