This week is off to a good start for me as I hope it is for each of you.  This morning my alarm went off at an unspeakable hour and I looked at my phone before getting out of bed (I was gaging my desire to get up and run) when I saw it.  It was a message from an old friend.  She contacted me to let me know she had read my blog and wanted to give me some encouragement, which happened exactly when I needed it the most.  It was very impacting.  I got right out of bed with a smile on my face and ran my shorter route (just shy of two miles) and more importantly, I enjoyed it!  I was not concerned about the cold air or worried about my hip…I just ran free, like I used to.  Similarly to old habits, I took an epsom salt bath, used icy hot, and plan on running tomorrow- the short route again.

That is what I hope this blog can do for each of us.  We are hopefully all striving for better dietary health and fitness.  It is a challenge to match our behavior to our intentions or motivations, but with support or guidance from those around us, it becomes feasible.    

As for this week’s strategy…I am going with a larger lunch and smaller dinner approach.  It works temporarily and kind of gets me in gear for transitioning into smaller evening proportions.  How am I going to do this?  I am going to have a smoothie for dinner.  It is just enough to give me good nutrients and fill me for a couple hours, just in time to go to bed feeling lighter than the day started.  Eventually, I always go back to dinner with my family because a) I love dinner food, b) my children like it better when I sit with them and eat what they are eating, and c) a moderate dinner portion is my goal and in order to master that, I must practice instead of avoid it all together.  However, for coming off of a weekend of food, smoothie dinners will get me back in the saddle for now.

The good news about smoothie dinners are lunch.  Today I enjoyed a full veggie sandwich.  I love veggie sandwiches!  After having a child in 2015, a veggie sandwich was my post event meal of choice- as well as after running a half marathon.  Yumm!  The bad news is that I should have refrained on the peanuts.  Holy frijoles, there are a ton of calories in peanuts.  Because I had 1/3 cup of peanuts, I overshot my 800-ish calorie goal for today, but they are still under 1100, which is the best I have done in a few days, so I will take it and move on tomorrow a little wiser to my friend Mr. Peanut. My calroies were about 1091:

Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Smoothie (like the one featured last week)- 276 calories	Full Veggie Sandwich- 220 Cucumber, tomato, & celery w/ hummus- 80 1/3 cup peanuts- 214	Smoothie- 276 calories

Before I conclude for the day, I want to share a couple pics of the pancakes from this weekend.  I used Scott Jurek’s 8 grain Strawberry Pancake recipe, but I am short on a couple of the grains, so I did the best I can by doubling a few of the grains to compensate for the ones I was missing.  Also, I switched to blueberries.  Flax seed are a great binder, though I intend on trying this recipe with chia seeds versus flax sometime soon.  Scott lists either as an option in the book Eat & Run…a personal favorite of mine.  And YES- pancakes without eggs can be amazing!  That is why I wanted to share. Here they are, thick, fluffy, and delicious
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