I am writing with a little sense of accomplishment tonight. I have had a successful Monday! After feeling under the weather most of the weekend, I started my work week off on the right foot! I guess all of the sleep and rest over the weekend might have payed off. (Fingers crossed – here’s hoping this is not just a one day fluke!)

My morning started early. I was awake even before my alarm went off. That is always a mixed bag for me. My alarm goes off so early that I really hate being awake before it goes off. But at the same time, it is nice to not be woke up from a deep sleep by a really disturbing alarm. Anyhow. So, at 5:30 AM I was up and getting ready for work. My day at work was productive. My food choices were healthy. It started with breakfast. A bowl of oatmeal, 1/2 a tablespoon of peanut butter (I decided to cut back on nut butter today!) and a banana. I almost got through until lunch without snacking – but at 11:15 I did have a handful of roasted chickpeas (I just love these babies from Nature Box!)

My lunch was pretty healthy – left overs from last night. Spaghetti squash, homemade tomato sauce, and three lean turkey meatballs. I had two little pieces of a baguette and a light laughing cow piece of cheese:

So, I didn’t really need the bread – but I felt like it really completed the meal. I think the cheese (with the protein and calcium – I’m always struggling to get enough calcium in my diet) helped tide me over for most of the afternoon.

I had a protein shake on my way to the gym on Monday afternoon. This really kept me going while I was on the elliptical machine, and shopping through Whole Foods for healthy dinner ingredients after my trip to the gym.

I was really doing a good job of talking myself out of going to the gym during my work day – I was so glad that my friends encouraged me to get over not wanting to go and just get to the gym. Woo! I felt so much better after going. I have taken over 16,500 steps on my Fitbit today!

Dinner tonight was a really great salad full of vegetables and grilled chicken (thanks to Whole Foods):

This was a fantastic salad and I had been excited to eat it most of the day. Really – yes, I am that person that thinks about the amazing salad I am going to make for dinner and how good it is going to be. I’m just weird – I admit it.

The highlight of the evening was my new obsession, aka “dessert”. This is what I enjoyed while watching Rachel Maddow:

OK, first of all – this is a very small bowl. To give you an idea of portion control, the bowl is sitting on a normally sized coaster. These are the bowls I used to use for ice cream – but I’m trying not to eat ice cream much these days as I am trying to shed the extra pounds. So what is in this bowl that looks sort of (super!) delicious, you ask? 3 tablespoons of truwhip, 3 strawberries and a sprinkle of Trader Joe’s dark chocolate chunks (think chips). I just loved that this dessert was rather healthy (strawberries) and just tasted so good. I could have done with more berries – but I saved some for tomorrow night 🙂 Oddly enough, this entire dessert was exactly 100 calories (thanks to My Fitness Pal I did the calculations…) How perfect! It really hit the spot.

So, I’m going to sign off. I am going to try and keep up a good routine of getting enough sleep this week so I can stay healthy. Happy Monday evening, everyone! Hope your week is off to a good start so far.