I want to start off by saying HAPPY MONDAY! I love Mondays – I hope you do too JEvery day when I wake up and after I shower, I make myself a cup of coffee and prepare my meals for the day while I’m at work. I don’t like eating breakfast at home in the morning because if I eat my breakfast at work I get to sleep longer (haha, I’m not joking.). Sometimes it takes a large amount of creativity because sometimes I run out of foods that I think I still have, so plans need to be adjusted at the last minute. This morning though, I was super pumped because the fridge was stocked full of deliciousness from grocery shopping yesterday. I’m only going to talk about breakfast today because it was a little different than normal.Usually for breakfast I either have a small steak, or a chicken breast, or sausage along with carrots and brussel sprouts, or raw veggies, or squash or sweet potato. I know – weird right? There’s some science behind it and honestly it fills me right up until around 1pm (I eat around 9) and I don’t feel hungry all morning. I will talk more about why I eat like that another day, I just wanted to make a point of saying I didn’t eat remotely close to this way this morning. This morning I had vanilla yogurt made from almond milk (dairy free) with fresh blueberries, raspberries and blackberries. I felt like I wanted to add something else to my breakfast. I thought about grinding up some organic flax seed but I was already running a little behind and didn’t want to bust out my Magic Bullet because in my head it was going to take forever.I was digging through the pantry and remembered what I had bought at the Asian market a couple of weeks ago. It was the totally perfect thing to add to my yogurt… dried goji berries!
I had heard about goji berries before and how healthy they are but I hadn’t really read much about them, mostly because I had never ate them or bought them. So, of course, I Googled them and I wanted to share my cool findings with you!Goji berries are also known as Wolfberries, and it’s native to southeastern Europe and Asia. Since the 21st century they have grown in popularity due to their nutrient and antioxidant content, they’ve also been termed a superfruit which also caused its popularity. Dried wolfberries are typically cooked before consumption but dried goji berries are typically added to rice congee and almond jelly, as well as in Chinese tonic soups in combination with chicken or pork, vegetables, and other herbs such as wild yam and licorice root. The berries can also be boiled as a herbal tea, they are used in wine!
The nutritional content of goji is amazing! Check it out:- 11 essential and 22 trace dietary mineral- 18 amino acids- 6 essential vitamins- 8 polysaccharides and 6 monosaccharides- 5 unsaturated fatty acids, including the essential fatty-acid linoleic and alpha-linoleic acid, beta-sitosterol, and other phytosterols- 5 carotenoids including beta-carotene, zeaxanthin, lutein, lycopene and cryptoxanthin- Numerous phenolic pigments associated with antioxidant properitiesThe following is based on 100g of goji berries:- 112mg of calcium, 8-10% of the DRI (dietary reference intake)- 1132mg of potassium, about 24% of DRI- 9mg of iron, 100% of DRI- 2mg of zinc, 18% RDI- 50mcg of selenium, 91% DRI- 1.3mg of riboflavin, 100% DRI- Anywhere from 29mg to 148mg of vitamin C depending on the source of the berry which is 32% - 168% DRI (source)So basically goji berries have some serious health benefits however you should always be conscious about the pesticide use and how much you’re consuming! Have you ever had goji berries? I do enjoy them now that I’ve tried them! If you’re curious about where to purchase goji berries, I got a small amount of dried goji berries (small because I didn’t know if I could like them) from the Asian supermarket near me!Today I was back in the gym, even though my ankle was still tender from running yesterday, Jenny and I did a really good workout focusing on back, biceps and triceps. It felt really good and instead of having each of us share one machine, we switched it up so we weren’t ever waiting for the other one to finish a set and we would alternate between two exercises that we were both doing at the same time. I’m going to try and remember what we did (we forgot our tracking sheets.. darn!):Lat PulldownSeated Row
Reverse Pec Deck Machine
Plank on hands
Reverse Cross-Body Duel Cable Pull
Cable Seated Row
Dumbbell Bicep Curl
Tricep dips on bench
Assisted pull-ups
Assisted dips
Ab bench
Back extension bench
Cable bicep curl
Cable tricep pressI think that’s it! Whew! I then proceeded to down a protein shake made with raw Sun Warrior vanilla protein, a small piece of steak, raw cherry tomatoes and raw cucumber! What did you do today to get your sweat on?Tonight when making dinner I’m going to try and take some really good pictures of my food to practice because I want to start posting quality photos on here, and not just ones I’ve taken with Instagram. Wish me luck, tonight is kale chips (obviously) and salmon! Wish me luck, if they turn out I'll post them tomorrow for your opinion!Don’t forget about our last week of the Frosty Fitness Challenge and link up your eat clean recipes here! I really want you all to put your clean recipes either in the Link-Up or leave the recipe in the comments section! How cool would it be to share all your recipes for people to try, and for you to be able to try other people’s recipes? Let’s do this! Stay healthy,
xoxo
