Sunday Links for everyone!

Ahhhh, rise and shine to the sounds of Sunday (ie. nothingggg)!

I mention this every week, and I'm gonna mention it again, I just love the relaxing vibe Sunday offers to the week. Without a Sunday every 7th day I would be a frazzled loon trying to figure out how to live my life and maintain normal human tendencies.

For some odd reason my body still wakes itself up bright dark and early on the weekends so I've never been much of a sleep-er-inner when the two days of freedom roll round. Not complaining though because mornings are when I'm most productive so it's up and at em' from the get go!

This morning I did another set of weight training (see this post) and then moved from the weights to the FOOD! In typical Sunday fashion there were pancakes involved, but you'll have to wait til' tomorrow to see the awesome-ness that they were!

Here, I'll give you a whole bunch of awesome links from the week to keep you occupied until then. ;)

BRING ON THE LINKS!!

Health:

10 Reasons You Eat When You're Not Actually Hungry

Extreme Fatigue After Long Runs

Fitness:

Full body metabolism boosting home workout

 

These Athletes Prove You Can Do Incredible Things With Any Kind Of Body

Can You Relate to These 21 Runner Girl Problems?

Are You in a Cardio Rut? Break Free!

Food:

Vegan pizza with pesto, courgette and tomatoes

Vegan ‘Meatless’ Lentil Balls

Raw Cherry Tahini Thumbprint Cookies

Spicy Brazilian Burrito Bowls

Healthy No Bake Ferrero Rocher Bites

Those are just a snap-shot of the awesome posts I've seen flying around the web lately. I think it's amazing how much info and advice and support you can gain from other bloggers and writers and am so grateful to be a part of this wonderful community!

Seen any awesome links from the past week that you've loved? Share it in the comments- I'd love to check it out!

Alrighty folks, that's all from me today, I hope you all have a fabulous Sunday, rest, recover and get ready for the week! Bye!! :D

Weight training?

Hey there everyone! It's Saturday (insert happy dance)!!

I have an interesting topic to discuss today and it all came about as a result of a bit of an achy hip. (yep, I know, I'm a grandma.)

In all seriousness though, I knew that something just wasn't quite right with my hip and my every-second-day running did not seem to be helping.

I felt a little dis-heartened at first because I (like I'm sure many other people can relate) suffer from the inability to truly listen and honour my body when it comes to exercising. Food, not a problem- if I'm hungry I will fill the tank! If my leg hurts and it's run day... chances are I'll still try to run.

However I've come a long way in this aspect of my life which is why I only felt a little bit disheartened when the pain just wasn't budging (warning sign for an on-coming injury people!). The majority of me started to feel a little tug of...excitement?

Strange, you may say? Well let me just back track a little. I'd always admired those blogs with women who did crazy bad-ass stunts in their cross-fit training, or lifted heavy weights with ease. To me they were strong and powerful and fierce. So when I woke up Tuesday morning of last week, I brought up a website with some weight lifting instructions, exercises and repetitions and gave it a go!

All up I think I spent around 30-40 mins with 4.6kg dumbbells doing bicep curls, shoulder presses, bench presses, kneeling one arm row, squats etc. By the third round of 8-10 reps of each, my arms were jelly!

It felt awesome though!

The day after my muscles did ache but I felt good (and so did my hip!) and I can't wait to add another weights day into my routine soon!

Something else I noticed from this adventure? My hunger was in full swing for the rest of that day and also the following days to come. I don't know if it was simply a coincidence or the weight exercises, but I was hungry and needed to add an extra scoop of nut butter/ hommus/ veggie here and there to tame the beast!

2 days later and this was my gigantor breakfast to try and quieten the hanger:

A big bowl of blueberry cheesecake rolled oats topped (and swirled throughout) with crunchy peanut butter with WATER! (I generally seem to wake up ridiculously thirsty)

I'm not gonna lie to you. When I finished this bowl I was still hungry.

I decided to let my stomach settle though, as I had inhaled the bowl, and after a while it seemed pretty content. :)

This morning my legs were feeling pretty good, so I hopped on the treadmill with my trusty blogger friends blog posts for entertainment (read: not dying of boredom on the treadmill) and ran my little heart out for 30mins until I was nice and sweaty and smelly and gorgeous. You can read more about the glamorous-ness that is running in this post- hilarious!

Following this... well you guessed it- I was STARVING! I was also in the mood for something smooth, creamy, refreshing and yet also some crunch.

You know what I'm talking about.

Tropical green smoothie:

Frozen mango + frozen pineapple + spinach + greek yoghurt + water

Topped with granola:

 

 = Smoothie bowl!

Y.U.M

And that's pretty much been life a la exercise and food!

Your turn:
Do you do weight training?
If so, do you also include running in the mix?
Favourite foods to eat when hangry? Mine has to be full of healthy fats and delicious, or else it will not satisfy!

I hope you all have a fabulous day, enjoy your weekend and hopefully free time, relax, eat something delicious and SMILE! bye for now friends!! :D

Thinking Out Loud- bad bread, toasted sandwiches and papples!

Hello there lovely lovelies!

It is finally here! Yipeeeeee!

What is finally here you ask? Half yearly break!! My brain is fried, my body is exhausted and I am ready for rejuvenation.

Weeelll, not quite. I feel like I've got a little left in the noggin for some Thinking Out Loud Thursday! Thanks as always to the wonderful Spoons for hosting this awesome weekly link-up where the ramblings of the bloggers can be read by other bloggers and people to  determine your sanity (or lack thereof ;)

What an interesting intro Steph, pat on the back for you! (I really need a holiday, huh?)

1. The last time I went to the bread shop I got two big bags of spelt bread flour, one spelt/ rye mix (that I've loved before- it's the usual) and one wholemeal spelt mix that I hadn't ever tried before. After a few weeks of my beloved spelt/ rye, I inevitably ran out and moved on to the new spelt mix.

3 hours later and....
I was left with a teeny little heavy rock.
It hadn't risen at all and was literally a solid block of rock hard... flour.

First thought was the yeast. I hadn't bought fresh yeast in a while, so maybe the one I was using is losing it's yeasty-powers.

New yeast + bread mix =

Little rock of unhappiness.

Ok, not the yeast. I also ruled out the water and oil. Bread mix, I'm looking at you.

So I purchased another bread mix (a seeded spelt mix) and voila!

 It puffed up.. so much so it seems it was trying to make up for the other two disasters. It was soooo tall! I'm not complaining though, the bigger the better!

And just check out that fluffy seedy goodness:

2. Because, on that note, the bigger the sandwich the more stuff you can fill it with!

 Especially when it comes to my favourite breakfast toasted sandwich!

All the more peanut butter and banana for me... as well as delicious mango fro-yo (frozen mango and greek yoghurt whazzed together in a food processor)

 3. And of course, whenever I bake bread I have to make my favourite savoury toasted sandwich (gotta balance out the savoury and the sweet)

 Hommus, grilled pumpkin, eggplant, zucchini, mushroom, capsicum, veggie burger, spinach and breeaadd!

 Grilled in a sandwich press until golden and toasty.

 And this is why bread exists.

4. I also am back in a stage where I want all the veggies. Ever.

 Last night's stir-fry with ginger, garlic, olive oil, capsicum, corn, cherry tomatoes, broccoli, brussels sprouts, mushrooms, sauteed up for a few minutes until golden brown and delicious!

 Throw some brown rice in there with some spinach for around 30 seconds to mix up all the tasty-ness and you have one heck-of-a-lot  of awesome tasting veggies in one meal!

4. Completely random ending comment:

 This pear!

 Seriously though, it was a mix between a pear and an apple and might just have been one of the best fruits I have ever tried (I am both a huge apple and pear fan, so I guess that plays a part). It was sweet and yet so tangy and sort of sour and ahhhhh so good! Just had to let that be known to the world!

So that's what has been traveling around my head for the past week. Your welcome.

Your turn:
Do you bake your own bread? What type do you bake? It is time consuming but I feel like nothing compares to freshly baked bread!
Are you a fan of raw sandwiches (couldn't think of a better word) or toasted sandwiches? I think I lean more towards the toasted- the flavour!
Ever tried a papple (pear/ apple)?

If you want to check out what everyone else is thinking about this Thursday, head on over to Spoons!

Have yourself a brilliant day, do something you love and enjoy the little things- so often we simply let them fly past without acknowledging them! Bye for now friends! :D