How to survive a busy day!

Hello, hello friendly friends! I hope everyone is having a good day today, or a favourable, spanking, prime, superb, rad or any other positive word my thesaurus threw at me. :)

Whether your day is good, favourable, spanking.... yeh you got it, is it also a busy day? If so then this is the post for you! (If not then you will probably have a busy day in your life so this is also the post for you!)

Wednesday night I was just standing around, twiddling my thumbs, thinking about anything and everything, when I realised that Thursday (the day after Wednesday ;) was going to be a busy one.

To begin with, I wanted to fit in a run... and didn't want a rerun (pun not intended) of a few days ago. That meant no time to make breakfast/ lunch for school. I also had my first acrobatics class that night and wasn't sure how much homework I would receive at school (that Wednesday was crazy- every subject needed attention for some reason!) so I also wanted to make dinner too.

Yep, that Wednesday night I prepped Thursday Breakfast, lunch, dinner along with Wednesday's dinner- coz, you know, I needed dinner that night too :).

This is what resulted:

Roasted veggies for lunch (potato, sweet potato and parsnip), 2 small quiches for dinner and a big bowl of overnight protein oats for breakfast:

I love, love, love cold roasted veg (especially potatoes) and take them to school way too often!

Also, these quiches were amazing!!

Eggs, quinoa, veggies, garlic, ginger, yum, yum, yum :)

Into a bowl went chopped capsicum, tomato, zucchini, eggplant, celery, red onion, mixed quinoa, garlic, ginger and nutritional yeast:

Then 2 whisked eggs stirred in and added to two greased ramekins:

Baked in the oven (180 degrees celsius) for 20-30 mins, until the egg is set. Turned out of the ramekin, left to cool and then placed in a container in the fridge.

Too easy!
This is what lunch turned out to be:

The prepped cold roasted veg with some kumara bean ball thingoes (frozen at the grocery store- good ingredient list!), kale and spinach... then I thought it needed some hommus to top it off:

This is what breakfast turned out to be:

The protein overnight oats- muesli, yoghurt, chia seeds, cinnamon, vanilla protein powder and almond milk- topped with a sliced banana and almond butter:

So good- perfect after a run!

Spoon shot:

And dinner was just so quick handy and easy!!

I always feel at ease when all my meals are sorted and I don't have to think... though I love cooking all of my meals. Therefore I love this solution for busy days!

What about you?
Do you prep meals at the beginning of the week/ day before a busy week?
What is your go to make-in-advance meals?
Favourite overnight oats recipe?

That's it for today folks! Hope you have a lovely weekend (I definitely need a rest from this busy week!) See ya later! :D

The real-life RD has a point

Hey there friendly friends! How's everyone going today?

I've had something that has been on my mind for a while now. When something's on my mind it stays there. So my solution is to learn more about that something, read more, investigate further, get my mind around it. And still it's stuck there on my brain... so my only option is to do a brain spew of everything I've been thinking on this topic.

What I'm talking about is a lesson I learned from The Real Life RD, a fantastic blog written thoughtfully by the amazing blogger Robyn. The lesson her entire blog teaches. The lesson of eating!

Yes, I was confused too, but as I continued reading through her many well-written posts on the topic of restoring a slow metabolism etc. I began to understand. It made sense.

If you've ever read a diet magazine or seen an advertisement for a dieting program/ eating plan or heard about a certain celebrities healthy way of eating... you know that there is a lot of info out there on what's considered healthy. This can mean one of two things.

1. There is so much information and complex things to learn in order to be healthy.
2. Or two, no one truly knows the perfect way to be healthy- no one has the true answer.

So, just like all those diet advertisements and newest research proclaiming some ancient unheard of fruit to be the healthiest food on the planet, my thoughts are just thoughts too- not the answer!

 The biggest thing I take away from Robyn's posts is her urgency at informing readers that eating a diet of 1200 calories (typical weight loss diet) is no where near enough to sustain a healthy life. It is ridiculously low in calories. It isn't healthy. 

She goes on to say that neither 1400, 1600, or even 1800 calories is enough to sustain oneself properly.

'The majority of women need 1,300 to 1,500 calories per day to just maintain LIFE.'

 That's not even taking into account any extra exercising, moving, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning etc. That's just breathing, making sure your heart is beating and your kidneys are working. Yet for some reason we need to eat 1200 calories a day to lose weight? I feel as though these numbers aren't adding up.

If things don't add up then problems start to occur. Your body isn't in taking enough and it comes as no surprise that what food is does get it stores. Metabolism is slowed. Burning energy doesn't happen as it should. Weight loss becomes very difficult. 

 You know that one girl at school who ate everything and everyone was so jealous because she was still thin? Her metabolism was normal. Everything she was eating her body was using as fuel, not freaking out and storing it as fat because it doesn't know when it will be fed again.

I guess, to all of my friends I am that girl. I come to school with huge lunches (albeit filled with lots of delicious veg, wholegrains, legumes and other good stuff) the one who always packs a snack wherever we go and never misses a meal. And yet the most common solution teenage girls (and I'm sure any other aged girls/ even guys) is not to mimic the behaviour they're seeing right in front of their eyes- oh no, that would be ludicrous! It's to cut down on their already deficient daily caloric intake. 

                                  Typical Steph sandwich- try getting your mouth around that!

 The worst part- they will see results and quickly too! The question is- are these the results they really want. By not feeding your body adequately it still feeds. It feeds on whatever is in your body. Food becomes unavailable? Your muscle because the next best option for your bodies protein needs. Losing wight in the form of muscle mass is not OK.

  After these quick results, your body jumps into action. It's such a smart machine and so to keep you and your vital internal organs surviving, it's got to slow down on the quick, healthy burning of energy. Any food that is consumed is safely stored away and then slowly broken down into energy to make sure it lasts, to make sure you last. 

Results start to slow, you're always tired, you don't have enough energy, your hair is brittle, you don't look healthy and you are lacking in many vital minerals and nutrients all in the name of being thin like that friend of yours who eats everything. It's almost comical that the solution to the problem at hand is to eat. Fuel your body with the nutrients it needs- and a lot of them too, because our bodies are energy burning machines! We're supposed to have healthy metabolisms that burn all the energy we give to our bodies. 

It's time we all developed a trusting relationship with our bodies. To trust that our hunger signals are justified and we should honour them. To trust that our body knows what it's doing and if it's sending you signals (tiredness, fatigue, hunger pangs) we should listen. To trust that our body needs fuel and a lot of it.

It's no coincidence that as the diet and media industry continues to grow and grow, so does the number of over weight people and other food-related diseases. It's time to get back to the time when food was just food, there was no target amount of calories you should/ shouldn't be eating, back to the time when we didn't over think our eating and in turn didn't create even more problems than we started with.

Wow, I've rambled on, haven't I? It just goes to show that this is a topic I am passionate about and if you want to learn more and hear all of this from someone who knows much more about it than me, please head over to The Real Life RD and read about what Robyn has to say because it makes sense. It's so much easier than we think.

This is me just Thinking Out Loud- if you want to see what everyone else is thinking about this week head on over To Running with Spoons for Amanda's awesome link-up!

Any thoughts are definitely encouraged!

Bye for now friendly friends! Have a great day! :D

WIAW # 42 First day back!

Hi everyone! Once again Happy Wednesday!! Geez these weeks fly by!
I'm back to school now so I thought for this WIAW I would share with you the entirety of my meals from Monday (The first day back at school and also my birthday ;)

Breakfast:
So I got up nice and early, did some nice Purely Twin's workouts, had a nice little breakfast creation in the kitchen and then realised I also had to make lunch- oops! So I started scrambling around like a headless chicken trying to throw something together that was quick and would fill me!

 After randomly chopping veggies and draining beans like a mad thing I got to enjoy my loveley (and extremely filling!!) breakfast.

 Raw cacao muesli balls with a creamy banana mango green smoothie :)

 This awesome jar I got for my birthday is pink, which is why the awesomely fluoro colour of my smoothie looks kinda strange... but it was good stuff! (I especially love how the jar has a handle!) Follow my creamy green smoothie if you want a cup/jar/bucket of this for brekky too!

 The choc muesli balls were similar to these except I used coconut butter in place of the almond butter.

 Oooh look, I did take a picture of the vibrant green-ness that was my smoothie!

 Seriously I was still full from this meal at around 4pm that day.

 Snack: Unpictured Peas!
My morning snack was a small pot of peas, I wasn't too hungry but I need to be able to concentrate through my classes- year 11 is getting tough guys! (Which reminds me- I have home work I should be doing!!)

Lunch:

My quick throw-together lunch was this salad thing that had chopped carrot, beetroot, cucumber, cannelini beans, spinach, capsicum, celery and sweet potato noodles (yep sweet potato noodles! Tasted almost exactly the same as rice noodles but hey, I like rice noodles!))

So I wasn't too hungry again, but I love veggies so much that I enjoyed every last bite :)

And I really just loved eating the sweet potato noodles ;)

Snack:
For a snack when I got home (and got stuck into more work) I had some watermelon, (so good!) a cut up apple and some soy milk:

Seriously watermelon, why do you taste so good?

Dinner: 
The hunger had returned slightly for dinner so I whipped up a delicious plate of veggies and carbs and... deliciousness!

A toasted wrap with a side of the leftover filling:

In the wrap was some oven roasted veg (tomato, eggplant, zucchini, asparagus, mushrooms- all sauteed in some olive oil and garlic, and some steamed pumpkin, fresh spinach, hommus and chili tofu- wrapped up in a wholemeal wrap and toasted in a sandwich press= yummy!

Finished off the day with a small handful of raw mixed nuts. Happy days.


Your turn:
What did/ do you pack for lunch when you were/ are at school? Primary school lunches for me were Vegemite sandwiches and a muffin/ cookie- times have changed!
Do you ever have really filling breakfasts? I kind of don't like not being hungry at meal times!
Ever tried sweet potato noodles? Or- favourite type of noodles?

Thanks to Peas and Crayons for this awesome link-up and definitely go over and check out what everyone else has been eating on this fine Wednesday!

If there's a jar lying around...

Hi there friends! Having a good day? Hopefully you are, if not stay tuned for a weird breakfast of mine! Nothing new there though!

I woke up on this particular morning pretty hungry. I also had an almost empty jar of cacao hazelnut butter and a craving for overnight oats. Except I had not prepared some oats to soak overnight. So I placed some oats in a cup, spooned on a lot of greek yoghurt and some oat milk and let sit for a grand total of 30 minutes:

Ta-da!!
So what did I fill my almost empty jar with??

Any guesses??

Banana ice cream! Because everyone knows bananas and chocolate and ice cream and chocolate are best buddies- and I just rolled all three into one! You can literally fill a jar with anything and it will be awesome (when I say anything, you know I'm lying. Do not, I repeat do not put melted cheese, cinnamon and licorice in an almost empty jar) I usually rotate between oats, ice cream, overnight oats and... nope that's it. I should try some new jar fillers.

Pretty purple and yellow spoons to nom with. (Purple and yellow make a pretty good combo actually!)

Yeh, so the oats weren't as creamy or 'cooked like texture' as regualr overnight oats, but they were still pretty good!!

Ice cream and chocolate hazelnut butter:

With some cheesecake-y flavoured oats- that's like seven desserts in one!

Now, if you don't have a jar lying around, bowls work fine too:

Smoothie bowls for the win!
This particular smoothie was 1 frozen banana + 1 handful red grapes + 3 big scoops greek yoghurt + 1 handful of kale + 1 handful of spinach + sprinkle of chia seeds+ 1/2 cup almond milk- whazzed up until smooth.

Topped off with some almond butter granola:

Deee-lish!

Oh breakfast, how I love you so!

Yes, I may have over-filled this particular smoothie bowl and yes I may have spilled it a little bit.... but it was awesome, so I don't care!

We are not even going to talk about today's breakfast.

Ok, we are, because I need to vent. Or simply tell someone ;)

See I headed out for my run at around 6:10am thinking 'that's plenty of time before school!' then I realised I now run for like an hour and a half (see, I don't track my time I just come home when I'm tired) so I raced in the door, saw that I only had 20 minutes before we had to leave for school, jumped around trying to make lunch, and shower and stretch and gulp water and wash my hair and get in my uniform... so breakfast was some very quickly prepared oats with peanut butter that I scoffed down in 5 minutes! I hate eating rushed meals!! I was super hungry too!! Must plan that better... maybe overnight oats. Yep definitely overnight oats!

How about you?
What do you typically fill your almost empty jars with?
Do you like/ have you ever tried banana ice cream?
Ever have simply no time for breakfast? What do you eat when you're short on time?

Have a fabulous day friends! Bye! :D