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Happy weekend blog friends! I am so glad Friday night has finally come around I’ve had an insanely busy week. I have an equally busy weekend ahead too, more on that later!

This morning I hauled myself out of bed and along to the gym. These dark mornings are really starting to kick in and make getting up that much tougher, but as always a good workout was just what I needed. I sweated out 30 minutes of high intensity intervals on the cross trainer, bike and step machine followed by 15 minutes of abs, chest and back exercises using the free weights and stability ball.

I headed home and jumped straight into my breakfast. I had a strange craving for a yoghurt bowl so I mixed brown rice puffs, quinoa flakes and wheat germ (for the chew) with some grape nuts (for crunch), a big serving of Total Greek Yoghurt mixed with some chocolate whey and a sliced pear.

Delicious, the pear was perfectly ripe and sweet.

Lunch at work was a salad beast that included tuna, red onion, green pepper, carrot, cucumber, romaine lettuce, raw kale, a sprinkling of omega seed mix and some red pepper and basil salad dressing left from the little single serving tub I had with lunch yesterday.

This took me forever to eat, but is so good for keeping me nice and full. I also had a sliced peach and two fresh figs.

I’m kind of obsessed with fresh figs at the moment, they just taste so good!

I kept myself going at work with liquorice tea during the afternoon. When I got home I made myself a soy matcha latte. I mixed 1/4 teaspoon of matcha green tea with a little warmed soy milk. I then added the rest of the hot soy milk which I’d frothed up using my little milk whisk along with some agave syrup for sweetness.

Sooo good, my new favourite way of getting my daily green tea fix!

Dinner was a portion of Thai Red Tofu and Veggie curry which I had taken out of the freezer served with cauliflower ‘rice’ and some stir fried kale dressed in soy sauce and freshly grated ginger.

I actually made the cauliflower rice properly in the food processor and it was excellent. After dinner I got my baking groove on and made another batch of banana nut muffins but instead of the nuts I thought I would try using frozen blueberries.

They turned out really well again, perfectly moist. These have been so popular with my family, friends and work colleagues, I think they’ll all be gone pretty quick. I had one muffin fresh out of the oven and then another crumbled on top of a big bowl of sliced strawberries and creamy Greek yoghurt for desert.

Reflections – Two weeks off the scales

Today marks two weeks since I last had a weigh in. I explain why I ditched the scales in this post. I wanted to write a little piece about how ditching the scales has impacted on me over the last two weeks as I feel it has made such a difference to my life. I had been weighing myself every 2 – 3 days and depending upon what the scale said I would feel completely rubbish or very happy. Since I’ve now reached what I feel is my happy weight my goal is to learn how to maintain this without using the scale. This is what I’ve discovered over the last couple of weeks:

• I feel that I eat in a much more balanced way. If I feel I overeat then I automatically cut back a little and so on. Its almost like I instinctively know when I’ve been eating too heavy for my body.
• I’m kinder to myself. I haven’t really beat myself up when I have succumbed to the snackies, I’ve tried to figure out why I ate but then I’ve moved on and ate a little lighter the next day.
• I’m more aware of portion sizes and have found it easier to keep these under control, mainly around calorie dense foods – I still pile on the veggies!
• I’m more aware of how I feel in my own skin and how my body fits in my clothes.
• Its been a lot easier to live by the ‘eat for health’ mantra when your not worrying about that tablespoon of almond butter or that chocolate avocado mousse showing itself on the scales.

I know I need to see how things turn out at my monthly weigh in to see if I have managed to maintain, and I know this month is a little more difficult to call due to training for the Great North Run but I feel like I’m achieving a good balance :-)

So what’s everyone got planned for the weekend? I have a pretty busy one – more baking and cooking, an 8 mile run, grocery shopping, seeing family and friends, movie night with the hubby and getting some clothes posted up on ebay which I didn’t get done last weekend. Hopefully I’ll be able to squeeze in some relaxation time too. Hope you’ve had a great week and have a fabulous weekend ahead!