Happy Halloween! Hope you are all doing well and enjoying your day. I love Halloween but don’t really have much opportunity to celebrate it, we don’t even get trick or treaters where we live! :-(

Last night I made a delicious autumnal vegan dinner:

Vegan Lentil and Swede Cottage Pie (serves 1):

• 1/2 cup of brown lentils, rinsed
• 1 carrot, chopped
• 1/2 onion, finely diced
• Vegetable stock
• 1/2 large swede, diced
• 1 tsp of pure sunflower spread
• 1 tablespoon of soy milk

Begin by frying the onion and carrot in a little oil in a small pan. When the onion becomes transparent and the carrot has softened a little add the lentils and enough vegetable stock to cover everything. Simmer, topping up the pan with more stock as required until the lentils are cooked (about 20 minutes). While the lentils are simmering steam the swede until tender then mash together with the pure spread and soy milk until creamy. In an individual sized oven dish pour the lentils in and then top with the swede mash. Bake in a 200c oven for around 10 minutes until warmed through. Serve with steamed greens.

 

This was so delicious! I made the hubby a traditional version with beef mince and potato mash and I think mine was far more flavourful. This was extremely filling too, especially as I piled on the swede! I served mine with some steamed red russian kale and broccoli.

Desert was some RAW zesty orange chocolate and an unpictured russet apple.

This morning I made a quick smoothie in a bowl using some frozen fruit salad mix, soy milk, agave syrup and ground flax and nut mix topped with granola.

I headed to the gym and ran 10k on the treadmill – the first 5k I ran 0.5 mile speed intervals between 6 – 7.5 mph then for the second 5k I did 0.5 mile hill intervals with a 2% incline. Great workout! I finished off with 10 minutes on the step machine.

When I got back I had a slice of toasted soda bread with peanut butter and black cherry fruit sweetened jam.

I also had two unpictured russet apples. Lunch was another bowl of roast tomato and red pepper soup, same as yesterday along with a satsuma.

For dinner I made a Roast Butternut, Radicchio and Goats Cheese Salad. Basically some romaine lettuce, one head of chopped radicchio, about a cup of roast butternut squash topped with organic goats cheese, balsamic vinegar and some toasted seeds.

Very seasonal and very delicious!

I had been hoping on making a pumpkin pie for Halloween but the Graham Cracker pie crust I bought a couple of weeks ago had crumbled in its packaging. Instead I made a Pumpkin Pie Smoothie based on Mama Peas recipe (without the nutmeg or garam masala) – poured it into a bowl and topped with the Graham Cracker crumbs, maple syrup and some mixed seeds.

Yum!

October Review

October has been one hell of a month for me! I feel like I’ve really being under going a lot of change – from my new vegetarian diet to getting all my hair cut off!

This month I have:

• Kept up with my weekly spinning and yoga classes
• Ran 15k each week (split between a 5k during the week and 10k on a weekend)
• Lost 4lbs and half an inch off my hips

Just the same as last month, the weight loss has really surprised me. I have lost a startling 9lbs since I did the Great North Run in the middle of September. I certainly don’t feel like I need to lose any more weight and I’m completely happy with my body and feel that I’m eating enough. I never feel starving and I haven’t had a bingeing episode in a long time. I guess that may be why I have lost weight. At the moment I’m really happy with what I’m eating although I plan to include more whole grains so this may help to balance things out for next month. I’m also happy with how I’m exercising so I’m going to just continue weighting myself once a month and see how things continue. If I’m still at a low weight (for me) after Christmas I will have to think about trying to gain (can not believe I just typed that!) I like to have a few curves! Ultra slim would just not suit me.

I’m very happy that I have achieved everything I wanted to this month. I’m also doing well trying to focus on being healthy rather than slim. I used to beat myself up if I ate an extra snack – but now as long as its something that’s going to nourish my body I let that guilt go.

Goals for November:

• Continue with spinning and yoga classes
• Continue to run at least 15k a week
• Increase some of my resistance levels / change up my HIIT sessions a bit so they are more challenging
• In line with my thoughts in this post, continue to try and eat a varied plant based vegetarian diet including more whole grains and organic foods and reducing diary products
• Continue with my basic training plan structure but change DVD to Davina McCall Davina Fit DVD - Top fit and Bottom fit workouts (both on a Tuesday, Top fit on a Thursday)

Current stats:

• Weight 9st 5lbs
• Waist: 27 inches
• Bust: 35.5 inches
• Hips: 34.5 inches

What have you achieved this month? Do you have any goals for November?

I can’t believe its the 1st November already, only a few weeks to Christmas!

I haven’t forgotten about organising the bloggers Secret Santa, I’m just waiting until after Bonfire Night (5th November for those not in the UK) as I refuse to do anything particularly Christmassy until after that date. Then I’m a full on Christmas fan!

Breakfast this morning was my first try of the Bob Red Mills 10 Grain Hot Cereal I ordered from iHerb. I used 1/4 cup of cereal with 1/4 cup of soy milk and half a cup of water. When cooked I added some frozen blueberries, chopped walnuts and a little brown rice syrup then topped my bowl with more walnuts and some maple syrup.

So lovely and filling. I’m also loving the brown rice syrup, it has a much more mellow flavour than agave or maple syrup. I can see this becoming my regular sweetener of choice.

Mid morning I snacked on some pumpkin yoghurt.

I should have mentioned last night that I had opened my first tin of Libby’s to make my pumpkin smoothie. I mixed what was left with some 2% greek yoghurt. The tinned stuff is amazing, such a lovely intense sweet pumpkin flavour, delicious!

Lunch was a repeat of last nights amazing Roast Butternut Squash and Radcchio Salad with Goats Cheese and Seeds followed by two plums. I also snacked on some orange nakd raisins before going to the gym.

In line with my refreshed training plan for this month I changed up my HIITs from my usual 1 minute medium intensity : 1 minute hard intensity to 30 seconds medium, 30 seconds hard, 30 seconds feel like I’m going to die. This certainly achieved my goal of making my HIIT session more challenging! I did 15 minutes of this on the cross trainer and 15 minutes on the step machine plus some abs and core exercises before heading into my 30 minute spin class. I was wrecked after all of that!

One of my goals for this month is to try and eat more whole grains. The Kind Diet really places whole grains at the centre of healthy eating and I recognised that I don’t really include as many grains in my diet as I could. To try and remedy this I will be having a Grain of the week. Each Sunday I will make up a batch of grain to sit in the fridge and be used within meals for a couple of days. This week I used a bag of mixed grains I had picked up in Tesco a few months ago.

This mix includes spelt, barley, whole thaibonnet rice, kamut wheat and oats. The grains are pre cooked so they only needed to be boiled for 10 minutes.

I used them to make a fried grain dish by frying some leek, mushrooms and carrots  in a little garlic olive oil then mixing in the grain. I also steamed a big bunch of russian red kale and added some shoyu (Japanese soy sauce – another Kind Diet ingredient that I found in Sainsbury’s) and Ume vinegar plus some toasted mixed seeds.

This made an incredibly simple, healthy and tasty dish! For desert I blended a scoop of Fruit-ein powder with some soy milk, ice cubes, xanthan gum and guar gum to make a delicious bowl of protein ice cream. I topped it off with a few goji berries.

So good, the Fruit-ein reminds me of bubblegum flavoured sweets! I also ate a lovely little russet apple.

Do you include whole grains in your diet? 

Whole grains are packed with nutrients including protein, fibre, B vitamins, antioxidants, and trace minerals (iron, zinc, copper, and magnesium). A diet rich in whole grains has been shown to reduce the risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and some forms of cancer. Wholegrain diets also improve bowel health by helping to maintain regular bowel movements and promote growth of healthy bacteria in the colon. To reap all these benefits its important to go for the unrefined grains – as close to their natural state as possible – so go for brown rice instead of white etc.

I’m looking forward to experimenting with more of these grains including brown and wild rice, quinoa, pearl barley, millet and bulgur. I’m also going to try and sneak some into my hubby’s meals too! What’s your favourite grain?