Hey All –

Wow, I am so excited that tomorrow is Friday!  I got up at 6:30 again this morning and I did make stove top oats. I can officially say this was the best bowl of oats I’ve ever made! Here is what the oat combo was:

3/8 cup dry rolled oats

1/8 oat bran

1/2 cup skim milk

1/2 cup water

Once the oats were almost done cooking, I mixed in a teaspoon of ground flax. In the bowl I stirred in half a scoop of protein powder. The toppings for today’s oats are as follows: a sprinkle of granola (more on this soon – Mix My Granola and my mix has dried blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and blackberries and Chai seeds!), a smidge of brown sugar, a spoon of Teddie peanut butter.

I enjoyed the oats with a mug of coffee with skim milk.

Breakfast did a great job of holding me over until after my lunch time walk. At 12 o’clock two of my colleagues and I braved the WINDY April day for a walk. Walking by the water was so windy that we took a short cut through UMass campus to get back to our offices. During this short cut we happened to discover that Starbucks was giving out free coffee today! We particularly enjoyed having our coffee on the walk back to the office:

Lunch was on the small side today because I was not thinking very creatively this morning.  However, the lunch was amazing and really satisfying.  I mixed the granola into my Chobani yogurt and the banana was perfectly ripe – so good! 🙂

The Granola, by Mix My Granola:

I must say that I love my Sugar & Spice Granola that I custom designed and ordered on Monday… and I could not believe that it was at my door on Wednesday! So far everything I have added my granola to has been even better than usual – the sign of a great add in!  If you are a fan of granola, I totally recommend checking out their website and taking a moment to design and order your own custom mix!

At 4:15 this afternoon I had my PM snack (I love the fact that I made it until 4:15 – who would have thought my lunch would have kept me going for that long?) For my snack I tried another new bar…  a Clif Nectar bar.

This bar was very good and I liked that it was lower in calories compared to the Larabar and Pure Bar… but if I’m going for over all taste, etc. I think I would pick Pure Bar first. All three of these bars are wonderful though – the ingredients are fantastic and the bars will keep you going for a long time. I did not have another snack until 7:45 tonight!

After getting home from work, I went out on a 2.6 mile run.  I changed my route a little bit today and it was nice to run on streets with less of an incline. 🙂 I did do most of Heartbreak Hill in the middle of the run, but because it was the only hill it was not that bad – considering I was only running 2.6 miles!

About an hour after the run (and re-hydrating) I enjoyed a salad and two pieces of pizza (!) dinner was very good. No post dinner snacks needed!

The salad had mixed greens (mostly green lettuce) with red peppers, carrots and tomato – croutons were also added! The dressing was balsamic vinegar drizzled over the salad.

I love cheese pizza from our neighborhood guys at Newtonville Pizza.  I added red pepper flakes and garlic powder to the top of the pizza. It was great!

Ok, I am signing off for now. At the moment I am sipping on coffee with honey, trying to get this soar throat to go away once and for all! I feel like I could be paying the price for walking in the wind and cold this week! Boo.

See ya’ll tomorrow – have a great Friday!