Gnu Goodness

Last night after work I may or may not have had a couple of these babies at El Mariachi.

The delicious pomegranate margarita. Sometimes a girl just needs one after a long Monday. Of course, the company of good friends always helps too!

Anyway, onto today! I started out my Tuesday morning with a delcious Chocolate Cherry+Blueberry Bomb. Can I make up names for my smoothies?

In the smoothie:

• 1/2 cup of almond milk
• Small handful of frozen organic cherries (didn’t have much left!)
• 1/2 cup of fresh blueberries (to make up for lack of cherries!)
• 1 scoop of brown rice protein powder
• 1/2 tsp of maca powder
• 2 tbsp of raw oats

I realized I’m developing a taste for my protein powder. After searching high and low for another kind to try, I just decided to re-order the kind I’ve been using. At first I thought it tasted like dirt, but I’m starting to enjoy it now! I like the earthy flavor. And it makes me feel great.

My morning snack this morning was a Gnu Bar.

Gnu Foods recently sent me a sample of their fiber bars to try out! Here’s what I love about this company: they use all natural ingredients in their food, they do not use high fructose corn syrup, and the bars are vegan! Each bar contains 12 grams of fiber, which is 50% of your daily fiber needs. The bars are also 130-140 calories each, which I love since I try to limit my calories on snack bars like this (I try not to eat bars that have more than 140 calories.) The fiber bars that I usually find in stores that have this amount of calories usually have tons of additives and ingredients I cannot pronounce, so Gnu fiber bars were just what I was looking for.

I tried the chocolate brownie flavor first, and I thought it tasted really good! It wasn’t really what I was expecting. It reminded me of a breakfast cookie! I love that it didn’t taste too sweet, but still tasted really chocolatey. I would recommend this flavor if you’re trying to get your chocolate fix, but still want to eat something healthy.

The orange cranberry was delicious as well. It tasted like real orange, actually. I’ve never had a packaged food that tasted exactly like it said it was supposed to, so it was a real treat. I also enjoyed the banana bread, and oatmeal raisin, both of which tasted great.

The lemon ginger flavor was also a huge surprise! I had never tasted a fiber bar with such an interesting flavor; it was such a good combo.

Today I tried the Espresso Chip bar.

I normally don’t drink coffee, but I still love the taste of it, so the bar was a nice substitute for the real thing, (and maybe it will wake me up?) And plus I’m getting half of my daily fiber for the day. So far I’m a big fan of Gnu Bars!

So, I have a 10K coming up on Saturday, so I really needed to get another 5+ mile run in before then. After work I ran five miles outside in the humidity. I knew I had to get it done, so I did it.

The breakdown

Total Miles – 4.96
Total Elapsed Time – 51 minutes and 31 seconds
Average Pace – 10:22/mi
Average Speed – 5.8 mph

Mile 1 – 10:16
Mile 2 – 10:07
Mile 3 – 9:49
Mile 4 – 10:15
Mile 5 – 11:02 (dying much?)

For some reason, no matter what I eat or how much water I drink, running after work is brutally hard for me. My stomach starts to hurt after about 3-4 miles, and I just feel crappy in general. Although, I don’t have as hard a time running on the treadmill, for some reason. I always found it much harder to run outside on the road then on the treadmill.

My dinner tonight was pretty random, I had a bowl of cold cereal. 🙂 I think my body was just craving something nice and cold after my run. And it was easy to prepare. 😉

In my bowl of goodness:

• A generous serving of Kashi H2H warm cinnamon
• Special K Protein Plus
• Almond milk
• 1 Tbsp of maple peanut butter
• 1 tsp of unsweetened reduced fat coconut
• a sprinkle of mini morsels

Yum!!! I may also have consumed a leftover enchilada from El Mariachi, but I destroyed the evidence. 😉

Okay, I’m off to lounge around and watch some more True Blood! I have to finish Season One! I’m addicted!!!