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Hi everyone, have you had a good weekend? Mine has been very relaxed, we’ve barely left the house and have enjoyed pottering around at home which has been lovely.

On Friday night I had a total snack attack, I made some lovely snacks including millet puffs with peanut flour and melted Lindt Sea Salt chocolate, melted cherry almond dark chocolate with a spoonful of almond butter stirred in and bowls of Peanut Butter Puffins. I’m not feeling guilty for it or anything, but I did go to bed with a major food baby and ended up wide awake at 4am feeling like I’d been out partying with Keith Richards. It seems that my body now reacts to overeating sugar and chocolate by making me feel hung over! I know its down to the chocolate and sugar as I’ve had the same reaction in the past couple of months when eating the same way. I didn’t eat anything for ages on Saturday morning as I felt sick, and when I did all I fancied was a green juice:

All organic – cucumber, celery, broccoli, rainbow chard and lemon, I love my weekend green juices! After a while my appetite came back and I really fancied a fruity, nutty smoothie:

Frozen banana, blueberries, apples, raw almond butter, pumpkin seeds, msm, maca powder and water topped with more apples and blueberries, pumpkin seeds, raw almond butter sauce and some bee pollen. The bee pollen is really growing on me, I wasn’t sure at first but I really love its mild chewy sweetness.

We went grocery shopping on Saturday morning and I fell foul of the 3 for 2 offer on organic veg at Tesco so I ended up buying a lot of leafy greens. To use them up I’ve been eating yummy salads and green smoothies:

Lovely salad with red lettuce, romaine, home grown alfalfa sprouts, carrot, cucumber, pepper, beet, olives, crumbled RAW cracker and a dressing made with hemp oil, balsamic vinegar, apple cider vinegar and dijon mustard, yum!

Apple pie green smoothie with spinach, frozen banana, apples, vanilla sun warrior, spirulina, maca, msm, cinnamon, ginger, mixed spice, vanilla stevia, water, ice, xanthan and guar gums topped with treacle granola. This was utterly delicious, so autumnal!

Carob Cherry Green smoothie containing romaine, spinach, frozen cherries, carob powder, stevia, water, ice, xanthan and guar gums and topped with a few spare cherries and some buckwheaties. The carob made a nice change to the usual cacao

For dinner tonight I had half a baked sweet potato with almond butter, sautéed rainbow chard with chickpeas, raisins and shoyu and some roast broccoli and runner beans:

This was a plate of heaven! Why have I only just had sweet potato and almond butter now? So good! I’ve also been eating lots of fruit:

I loved this antioxidant filled plate of blackberries, black grapes and a tiny discovery apple.

I’ve also spent some time this weekend making up a big pan of Leek, Greens and White Bean Soup, some of my home made version of of sweet and salty popcorn bagged up for snacks, and my first attempt at fermenting veggies – Kimberly Snyder’s Probiotic and Enzyme salad, basically home made sauerkraut!

I’ve decided that after Friday evening I’m going to take a little break from chocolate and anything else too high in sugar that sets me off such as dried fruit and PB&Co nut butters, cereals etc. I just feel completely sugared out and I don’t think that’s doing me any favours with the snacking! I’m definitely feeling a bit out of balance at the moment, I’m swinging from craving chocolate and nut butters and then feeling stuffed, to probably not eating enough! I think at the end of September when I have some time off I’m going to treat myself to a mini ‘detox’ (I hate that word, but what I really mean is a couple of days of eating really well) to try and feel a bit more balanced. Of course, some of this ‘out of balance’ feeling may come down to stress being caused by this…

Running Injury update

I’m going to ramble on a bit here, so please skip this if you like! This morning I managed 4.3 miles in 39 minutes on the treadmill. By the time I had finished I was in a lot of pain, I managed a further 30 minutes on the bike but my knee was screaming at me when I tried to go on the cross trainer and step machine. I knew it was going to happen eventually and today I completely broke down and had a good cry. After two weeks my injury is getting worse not better, and with only two weeks to go until the Great North Run, I have to start admitting to myself that I may not be able to do it. I hate that. I am not a quitter and to have to drop out of the race makes me feel like I’m letting everyone down. The worry I have is that if I try and do it I may not be able to finish it, and for me, that would be worse than not doing it at all. I would also be gutted if I didn’t complete it in a better time than last year. I talked things over with James and I’m not going to run at all for the rest of the week and then I’m going to try a run next weekend and make a final decision then. I have my sports massage on Wednesday and I’m trying to stay as positive as possible, I know a week without running could make a big difference and if worst comes to worst there will be other races and I can try again next year.

Have you ever had to drop out of a race due to injury? What do you do to regain balance when you feel out of wack?

Hope you’ve all had a brilliant weekend, and because I hate ending things on a negative note I’m going to leave you with a few things that make me smile:

Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups:

Bright red lipstick:

Source

Sunrises:Source

Have a great week people!