Happy New Year, blog readers! I hope you all had a wonderful first day of the year. For me the day started off with a real treat – a breakfast of Kodiak Cakes (we have the mix with extra protein and the SC made the flapjacks with milk and an egg which adds more protein!), turkey bacon (always reduced sodium and nitrate free) garnished with fresh blueberries (I ate an additional handful of these!) and a little bit of maple syrup. In my opinion this was the best way to start the new year!

Sometimes when I eat pancakes I get hungry in an hour or so. But with the additional protein of this meal, I was all set for several hours after eating! SC and I made sure to get our exercise on during this first day of the new year. We went for a half hour walk (which got my fitbit steps up to 6,000!) and then immediately after we were home I got on the treadmill for an additional 36 minutes. I found a great video to watch thanks to the Ginger Runner’s you tube station and it really kept me going. Sometimes I will watch a movie or a tv show while running, sometimes I’ll just listen to music. I really love finding training runs or races from other runners on You Tube and watching them while I run – they are really inspirational!

After my walk and run, I stretched with the foam roller and took a quick shower and then went into the kitchen to make my lunch. It had been four or five hours since breakfast so I was hungry. Thankfully I had a lot of healthy food to choose from in the refrigerator (the joys of having the last few days off – lots of time to prep food!) I decided on another roll up of sorts. This one had refried beans, brown rice (about 1/3 cup of each) romaine lettuce, salsa, a sprinkle of shredded cheese and hot sauce. It was not a big lunch – but it was late, and I did not want to eat too much. This hit the spot!

It felt really good to eat this meal and to sit down and read my book for a while after the exercise. With my run I had surpassed my 10,000 step goal and I was very pleased.

At 6pm I started dinner which was a turkey chili. We make a lot of turkey chili during the winter. This one was exceptional (at least in my book!) Because we had both eaten a late lunch I was able to let the chili cook on the stove for over an hour which I think is nice to get the flavors mingling together. It was a really hearty meal, along with some corn bread that I baked.

I used a small bowl for my chili tonight and I went back for another half bowl – it was really good and comforting as it was cold and we were experiencing a few snowsqualls outside – it felt like the perfect meal.

As we were enjoying the turkey chili, we watched the movie The Martian. If you have not seen it yet, I highly recommend it. We both loved it!

All in all, it was a great start to the New Year! I wish all of us a peaceful, healthy and happy 2016!