Hi friends, so glad its Friday! It feels like its been a long week. Started the day off with my gym workout – 20 minutes of cardio intervals followed by my upper body weights routine from my new training plan. I really enjoyed doing my weights and I can really see some definition in my arms – great motivation for when I start feeling the burn!
Breakfast was some fromage frais mixed with some cookie dough whey powder, strawberries, blueberries, jumbo oats, brown rice puffs, grape nuts, hazelnuts, desiccated coconut and cacao nibs.
This was fab, I loved the cookie dough flavoured yoghurt for a change!
I had a bit of an exciting morning as I had a live interview on BBC Radio Tees for work. I had to talk about my organisation and volunteering, I think I did an ok job, I didn’t seem to mess it up thank goodness!
Lunch was a big salad with little gem lettuce, spinach, carrot, cucumber, spring onion, cottage cheese and some roasted soya nuts.
This was tasty but I wish I’d remembered to add some nutritional yeast for a bit of extra flavour! I also had two little peaches and a little nectarine.
Mid afternoon I had some hummus and green pepper for dipping.
As I have another long run scheduled for the morning I thought my dinner should contain some carbs. Great excuse to eat some pasta! I made a small portion of spelt pasta with some spiralised courgette and mixed it with some tomato pasta sauce which had been cooked up with some red pepper and extra garlic. I served it all on a bed of spinach and lettuce.
For desert I made up a fabulous smoothie in a bowl which turned out more like a beautiful sorbet with fresh pineapple, frozen blueberries, a dash of soy milk and a little grated ginger inspired by a recipe from the Innocent Smoothie Recipe Book. I also added extra pineapple on the top as its just so gorgeous and sweet.
I’ve also just snacked on an apple!
Readers Request – Healthy Snack Ideas
A couple of days ago lovely blog reader Parisa requested a post on healthy mid morning and mid afternoon snacks. I am such a believer in healthy snacking, there’s no way I could just eat just three meals a day!
I do have a method to my snacking which seems to work for me. This is simply considering the carbohydrate, protein and fat content of the snack.
If I’m after a snack to keep me feeling full and to hold me over then I try and go for something with a lot of protein or a mix of all three macro nutrients such as hummus and veggie sticks (fat, protein and carbs from the hummus plus a little carbs from the veggies) or greek yoghurt with nuts (lots of protein). If I’m snacking to make sure that I have fuel for a workout then I will go for a snack with fast / medium release sugars such as some raisins (the sugars in the dried fruit will convert to energy fairly quickly to fuel my body).
If I get really desperate for a snack I try to go for an apple as they are full of fibre which slows the release of sugar into the blood to help avoid the carb sugar high / low problem plus they are low in calories.
Laura’s top 10 healthy snacks
- Hummus (or another dip) and veggie sticks
- Yoghurt (0% fat Greek for preference as it contains lots of protein) and fruit / nuts
- Natural snack / energy bar such as Nakd or 9 Bar
- Apple (especially nice sliced and sprinkled with cinnamon which has been shown to help balance blood sugar or with nut butter for dipping)
- Protein shake made with water or milk
- Babybel light cheese and fruit
- Whole grain rice cakes with cottage cheese, hummus or nut butter
- Cottage cheese with dried fruit and nuts
- Home made fuel bar or balls / home made protein muffin
Hope that’s been a little helpful! What’s your favourite mid morning / afternoon snack? So what do you all have planned for the weekend? I have another long run planned for the morning then my Mam is hosting a little tea party for my Birthday. My friends are coming round and were going to have some lunch followed by cake! I called in to Marks and Spencer Food (love!) earlier to get a couple of things including some little salad pots, nice bread, strawberries and some yummy cupcakes! So excited! Hope you all have a wonderful weekend whatever your up to :-)
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
I tried my first 9 bar the other day, then turned over the pack and saw that there’s 5grams of saturated fat per bar – that’s a hell of a lot for one snack! Have you noticed this before? I checked out the ingredients and the only thing I can think of that would bump up the sat fat is the vegetable fat/oil.
Surely a healthy bar should have no need for this ingredient? I much prefer the Nakd bars in taste anyways, which is just as well, as they are much lower in sat fat and contain fewer ingredients :-)
What do you reckon about it?
x
Love your blog!! :)
These meals and snacks look sooo delicious. I definitely need to try some of these recipes. Sometimes its hard for me to get excited about healthy food because I simply don’t know of any good recipes. So I was really pleased to see this blog. It’s very creative!
My favorite snack is hummus with carrot sticks. Mmmm…
Thank you so so much for this post! If you only knew how much I value your blog, I get SO much inspiration on healthy meals for the evening, sometimes I refer to your blog several times a day! So thank you, and I wish you all the success in your weight loss journey :) xx
I’m not a big fan of the bars we have here, I might actually like them if they were something like Lärabars :) but I usually snack mid-morning on quark (flavoured and usually really low on fat) or yogurt or an apple.
I love your pasta dish!
My snacks are almost ALWAYS fruit (fresh or dried)+peanut butter, or fruit and a handful of nuts. Lovelovelove.
Your breakfast looks sinful! And I mean that in the most positive way possible :)Great snack ideas…carrots/cucumbers w/ hummus is my go-to in the summer!
Gotta love 9 bars, to the previous commenter there is a lot of fat in seeds, but its good fats and goods fats help your body lose excess body fat and help your brain function, so especially considering Laura’s mostly fruit and veg filled diet its not going to cause a problem, if you eat lots of junk and ate loads of 9 bars then I guess that would be when it would become a problem. Oh and the fact that they are bloody delicous! Mmm I could do an infomercial on how much I love 9 bars!
Hi Joolz, I have to admit I hadn’t noticed that, I have a terrible habit of just looking at the calories, which are still quite high in the 9 Bars and hence why I mainly eat them as fuel for my long runs when I know I’m going to burn it off! The high amount of sat fat doesn’t worry me too much as I know I don’t eat loads of sat fat from other sources, plus the rest of the fat in the bars are good fats. I guess its down to choice, I love the nakd bars and they do have a more desirable ingredients list than 9 bars but a totally different taste and texture. I’ll definitely be highlighting this when I do my review so thanks for mentioning it!
Hi Jennifer thanks for stopping by the blog! So glad your enjoying it and finding it useful. I love carrots and hummus too! mmm!
Hi Parisa – your comments made my day! So glad that you find the blog helpful, thats just wonderful! x
Hi Anne, I love quark too, great for snacking and using in deserts
Hi Ilana, I love fruit and peanut butter together, I could live off that! I have to try and watch myself with nut butters as I could easily over indulge big time!
Hi Ellen, thanks for stopping by the blog! My breakfast was great, I have a bit of a habit of eating breakies that look more like deserts but i love it!
Hi Sarah, I know what your saying about 9 bars, I think your right, if your diet is already pretty health then the bit of sat fat shouldn’t be a problem but if not then its not going to do you any favours! I guess its down to personal preference and in what way you eat them. I do love the huge amount of healthy fats they contain to help keep my skin, hair and nails in good condition, but I probably wouldn’t eat a whole one more than once a week. They do taste lush though!
Wow, that is one mighty tasty looking bowl of yoghurt – so many flavours!!
All of your snacks look perfect and are definitely ones that I would go for.
Congrats on the interview!!! SO exciting, Laura.
Love those healthy snack ideas, too! I love sprinkling apples with cinnamon/cayenne/maca.
Great post! My favorite website for healthy snack ideas is http://www.snack-girl.com/