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Hi everyone, hope you’ve had a good week! I’m buzzing as I am now off work for the week :-)

Yesterday morning I got up and did my usual yoga podcast. This time I decided to try something new and did the Yoga Sculpt workout which uses weights. I just used my smallest hand weights but my word this was tough! I really enjoyed it though, using the weights really took it to the next level!

Breakfast was a big bowl of cherry coconut porridge (1/2 cup of scottish oats, 2 tbsp of 10 grain hot cereal, 2.5 cups of water cooked in microwave) with ground flax, 2 punnets of fresh cherries (yes it took me forever to de pit these but so worth it!), coconut extract, sweet freedom sweetener, lots of coconut butter and desiccated coconut:

Absolutely delicious, coconut and cherry flavours go together so well!

Lunch yesterday and repeated today, was a big salad with mixed lettuce, pepper, carrot, cucumber, tofu rosso and braggs plus lots of un pictured fruit:

First try of the Taifun Tofu Rosso and it was gorgeous!

Also had my first try of a carrot cake Lara Bar:

This was lovely with a slight hint of pineapple and it had big chunks of almonds in it :-)

I’ve made a big change to my usual workout routine this week, instead of doing a 3,2,1 workout on Thursday evenings I’ve tinkered with my schedule and did some weights this morning instead. Last night I still went to the gym but did my usual Friday morning workout instead (40 minutes of cardio intervals and abs and core).

I decided to switch up my weights to a Friday morning as my gym only has a very small weights section which usually gets too busy on a Thursday evening. This way I can have it all to myself! I decided to go with a modified version of a workout from The New Rules of Lifting For Women (I was inspired to get this after reading Amanda and Emma’s reviews). I won’t be starting the full plan yet as I still want to incorporate my Body Pump and obviously my focus on running. Here’s what I did:

5 minute warm up – treadmill 6.0mph

A Wide grip dead lift x 10 x 2 sets

B Alternating set x 2

• Bulgarian split squat with plate x 10
• Lat machine x 10

C Alternating set x 2

• Reverse lunge with forward reach x 10
• Dumbbell prone cuban snatch x 10

D Alternating set x 2

• sit ups on stability ball with medicine ball x 10
• Captains chair leg raises x 10
• Hanna side flexion x 10

E – prone cobra x 10 x 2 sets

15 minutes cardio intervals on bike, 1 minute hard, 2 minutes recovery

This workout was fantastic, I felt like I had really worked hard. Even better, it was all done in 45 minutes!

Today’s breakfast was a blueberry cookie dough smoothie:

I made this by mixing 1/3 cup of oats with 1 tbsp of chia seeds and 1.5 cups of water overnight. Then this morning I added that to the blender with a sachet of blueberries and cream spiru-tein protein powder, frozen blueberries, 1 tbsp of nutritional yeast, ice, water and xanthan gum for thickness. I then topped with a crumbled almond oatmeal raisin cookie and more blueberries! So tasty, the blueberries and cream spiru-tein was lovely.

Tonight I had a fancy for a curry so I made my Simple Red Lentil Dahl and served with brown rice, some gorgeous reduced price organic tenderstem broccoli and steamed kale sprinkled with coriander and mixed seeds:

This was just perfect, I haven’t had dahl in far too long! Of course there has been more of the usual sweet treats:

Chocolate carob protein ice cream (1.5 scoops of chocolate sun warrior, 1 tbsp of carob powder, ice, water, stevia) topped with dark choc chips and freeze dried berries. Nom! Tonight I indulged my sweet tooth with some soya milk chocolate:

I’d picked this chocolate up from a health food store on a trip to York a few months back. I’ve already eaten the green tea bar and this soya bar was absolutely amazing, so rich and creamy with a wonderful crunchy smooth texture. I really need to see if I can get my hands on another bar!

I also need to announce the winner of this months sponsor giveaway for 1 months supply of Total Greek Yoghurt! The winner is:

The lovely Bronagh! Congrats! Please email me with your address :-)

Does everyone have a nice weekend planned? I’ll be getting myself sorted for going away tomorrow – we leave for Brighton very early on Sunday morning to miss the traffic. I am a bit sad as James isn’t coming down (he’s just started his new job he didn’t want to take time off) but I’m going with my Mam and Dad and looking forward to having lots of me time instead, and a couple of exciting blog meet ups!

Before I go I just have to briefly mention this post over at Choosing Raw. This post is part of Gena’s Green Recovery series looking at how a plant based diet has supported recovery from disordered eating. I found this post very moving as Laura’s story really resonated with me and reminded me of many of the issues I had growing up and some of the issues I’ve been dealing with recently. I really loved her thoughts on not seeing things as black and white, that no one is perfect, and her beautifully expressed thoughts on how a plant based diet makes her feel – I could have written those words myself! We are all a work in progress, all of our bodies are different and no one is perfect. One size does not fit all, one way of eating may be right for one person and not for another, we are all so wonderfully different and unique! That’s one of the things I love about the blogging community – the wonderful variety of people within it :-)

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!