If you’ve come here from my previous post about my journey then you’ll already know all about the Arbonne 30 Day Plan. If you haven’t then you might want to check out these posts first –
What is the Arbonne 30 Days to Healthy Living and Beyond Plan
Week One of my 30 Days to Healthy Living Journey
Week Two of my 30 Days to Healthy Living Journey
Week Three of my 30 Days to Healthy Living Journey
Following are my journal entries for week 4 of my 30 Days to Healthy Living and Beyond journey, if you have any questions about the journey or want to start your own then please contact me via my Facebook page or in the comments section below (they are not published until I approve them so if you leave your contact details I will NOT publish them, I’ll just contact you).
January 22nd 2018
Well I went for a walk this morning and then it was weigh in time – I put on 400g, although I wasn’t surprised as I didn’t feel like I lost anything this week. It was a bit disheartening but then I measured myself and I lost a total of 5.2 cm including 3 cm around my waist so that will help me through the final stretch!
Breakfast was a vanilla meal replacement shake made with a scoop of fibre and almond milk.
Morning tea was a boiled egg.
Lunch was a delicious chocolate protein shake made with water, greens balance, frozen strawberries & blackberries
Mid afternoon I had a fizz stick.
For dinner I had steak. I got hubby to cook my steak (he always cooks steak for some reason) and once it had rested I cut it in half and left half for a salad tomorrow. I had used my spiralizer to make sweet potato noodles although these were a different shape to the zucchini ones and I roasted them as suggested online. For my vegetables I sautéed off some garlic and then added chopped capsicum, spring onions and a medley of cherry tomatoes (halved and quartered). To this mix I threw in some bok choy to sweat down and mix in – a different way of having this veg which actually tasted really, really nice. Oh before I threw in the bok choy I had added some Italian herbs to the pan, I also added some Italian herbs, along with salt and pepper to the sweet potato.
January 23rd 2018
Breakfast this morning was a vanilla meal replacement made with almond milk, a scoop of fibre, handful of spinach and a few frozen strawberries.
I felt like I needed something to eat and realized it was lunch time so no morning snack for me today! Lunch consisted of a chocolate protein shake made with water, greens balance and a mix of frozen strawberries and frozen blackberries.
This afternoon I had a fizz stick and then another one about an hour later – I had suddenly felt like a frozen coke (no idea where that craving came from) so I had the second fizz stick instead and felt good.
Like a flash it was dinner time and no snack this afternoon either – obviously I’ve been too busy to think about eating!! Dinner was a beef salad bowl made up with the half a steak from last night thinly sliced, mixed salad leafs, cucumber, mixed capsicum, mixed tomatoes, roasted sweet potato and about 5 or 6 blueberries scattered in the bowl for a surprising pop of flavour!
I actually feel quite slim today and mum rang and commented on a photo that I had sent her saying that I was looking a lot slimmer so that made me feel good. My energy levels have been really high again so I really think the few days last week must’ve been the result of work stress or an anomaly.
January 24th 2018
This morning we took a different route with our walk as I’m still feeling a little unnerved after Monday’s walk, it really felt like someone was watching me as I walked through the bush trail. Roman and I stayed on the streets this morning and it felt good, I missed my walk yesterday.
Breakfast was a vanilla meal replacement shake made with almond milk, baby spinach, fresh strawberries and blueberries. It was a nice taste, but I think I prefer using frozen berries in the shake.
My tea was luke warm when I drank it this morning, but I still enjoyed it! I had a fizz stick mid-morning today – I think that’s the first time that I’ve had one in the morning, but I just felt like something as I was trying to figure something out on the computer that just wasn’t working like it was supposed to!!
My stomach suddenly growled and I realized it was half an hour later than I normally have lunch (and I haven’t even had a morning snack!), as my stomach was growling I made a snack to have with my shake. My shake was a chocolate protein made with water, greens balance and a mix of frozen blackberries and frozen strawberries. I also had half a dozen fresh strawberries with almond butter as well.
After getting my bolognaise simmering and just increasing it’s flavour and I had my vegan tomato pasta sauce simmering along nicely as well I decided that I needed something a little sweet (it is too hot to be cooking!) so I had a few blueberries. Looking forward to dinner though.
I was going to make zoodles for my bolognaise, but I really couldn’t be bothered after cooking pasta for the family so I had my bolognaise on some sweet potato that I had in the fridge – heated up in the microwave. It was a nice combination actually. I didn’t add any vegetables on the side because I had a lot of them in the bolognaise already.
January 25th 2018
The humidity at 5.30 was through the roof so no walk today! I had problems breathing just standing on the deck.
Breakfast was a vanilla meal replacement made with almond milk, fibre, baby spinach, frozen strawberries and a spoonful of almond butter – it was very nice. This was followed by my delicious Arbonne herbal tea.
Lumch was a chocolate protein shake made with water, greens balance, a mix of frozen blackberries and strawberries.
Afternoon snack was some really juicy blueberries, I love it when you buy a punnet of them and the taste just bursts in your mouth!
Also had a fizz stick.
Dinner was steak and veg – I meant to have rice as well, but I forgot to put it on to cook! To be honest I probably only had about three mouthfuls of the steak as it was too bloody for me (certainly not like my husband to stuff that up!). The veg were really nice and filled me up. So what veg? I was basically cleaning out my veggie bin, I sliced up some capsicum and a spring onion first, then I got out a small bunch of bok choy and pulled the leafs off – there was a little ‘stem’ at the bottom and a couple of really tiny leafs in the middle so I sliced them and added it to the capsicum and spring onion.
Next I grabbed a bag of mixed leaf salad and chopped it up (sometimes you have to be adventurous and cook your salad, it’s quite nice!). Next I quartered a selection of cherry tomatoes to ensure there were lots of different colors – who doesn’t want to eat a rainbow?
I sauteed the capsicum mix for a bit before throwing in the salad mix, stirring a bit and then the tomatoes followed along with a generous sprinkle of dried oregano. A little mix and sizzle and I popped the bok choy on top, then simply stirred it in until the leafs were wilted (the stems were still nice and crunchy). The combination may not be conventional, but take it from me it was very tasty!
January 26th 2018
It’s Australia Day so we have a day off! Well the husband and I do, our daughter has to work, poor thing. So what did we do with our day off? Defrosted the freezer! It was a really hot day so after moving it outside to let the heat defrost it (after we’d packed our monster esky that we borrowed) and cleaned the sides of both the fridge and freezer and the floor where it had been housed it was first fizz stick of the day time!
Let’s back up first … no walk this morning, but breakfast was a chocolate protein shake made with water and fibre – a nice change to have no berries.
After the morning activity and fizz stick it seemed like no time at all before it was lunch time! Lunch consisted of a vanilla meal replacement shake made with almond milk, greens balance and a spoonful of almond butter. This was a lovely change from berries, but I did eat a few blueberries for my afternoon snack, it also looked very much like a green smoothie!
Dinner was clean out the leftovers! I used up the black bean chips from my nachos last week (gotta love these clips that keep packets fresh once opened, we always use these on our corn chips), I heated up the leftover bolognaise from the other night – one layer of chips, layer of bolognaise, a scattering of chopped up salad leafs, another layer of chips, layer of bolognaise, scattering of chopped up salad leafs all topped off with a fresh tomato and spring onion salsa. It was delicious and probably the first time I’ve ever had bolognaise nachos!
January 27th 2018
I got up and went for a walk this morning even though it was humid, about halfway through I was tempted to cut it short, but instead I just slowed my pace down and kept going – very proud of myself!
Breakfast was a vanilla meal replacement made with almond milk, scoop of fibre, baby spinach and a few frozen strawberries.
This morning we had to go out so I grabbed an Arbonne Sea Salt & Chocolate Protein bar to eat along with some water.
Lunch was a chocolate protein shake made with water, scoop of greens balance and a combination of frozen strawberries and blackberries.
A fizzy in the afternoon.
Dinner was a dish I kind of made up as I went along based on tomatoes and cannellini beans using things that I had on hand and the result was an enjoyable meal that both my daughter and I enjoyed (we also froze some down for another day –
Lou’s Tomato & Leftover Vegetables Cannellini Beans
I had only half an onion left so I diced that up and sautéed it along with a clove of garlic (minced), once the onion was translucent I added a small grated carrot and stirred it all around. I added some smoked paprika (about a tablespoon), sprinkled some dried oregano (a tablespoon? I didn’t really measure it), a small amount of cayenne (maybe ½ a tsp as I didn’t want it too hot).
Next I threw in a tin of diced tomatoes and I filled the can up with water and added that to it as well, I also added about ½ cup of cooked brown rice which was left over from a previous meal)
I had finally diced up some zucchini so that was thrown into the pan next along with a few leaves of fresh basil (which I had chopped up).
I seasoned with salt and pepper and then added a can of cannellini beans (rinsing beforehand) and tasted the sauce.
I took a large handful of baby spinach, chopped it up and threw in the pan along with ½ chopped spring onion, another clove of minced garlic and a couple of pinches of mixed Italian herbs seasoning.
I let it simmer for about ¼ of an hour allowing the flavors to mingle together and have fun before I took about 350-400ml of the mixture out into a container and using my stick blender I whizzed it up and re-added it to the pan.
Once blended up the mix went very orange as opposed to the more dominant red and the addition of the rice in the mix gave it a creamy look. I mixed it all in thoroughly and let it simmer on a low heat for another 10 minutes before serving.
I think this would be perfect with a loaf of crusty bread, but as I couldn’t eat bread I popped something else on top of mine –
I basically took the other ½ of spring onion, a few cherry tomatoes (chopped up) and I also chopped up one brazil nut (to add crunch), mixed it all together and added it to my bowl as a topping!
January 28th 2018
My breakfast shake used up the final scoop of my chocolate meal replacement (from earlier in the month) with 2 scoops of vanilla meal replacement and this was made up with – almond milk, scoop of fibre, baby spinach & 2 tsp of almond butter. It was really nice, although a little on the sweet side.
This was obviously followed by a morning cup of Arbonne herbal tea. Now I believe I’ve said before that I usually get a second cup (and by cup I actually mean mug) of this tea out of a bag – do I have news for you. There was a nutrition workshop the other day and one of the presenters told us that you could get up to 4 cups of herbal tea from one tea bag, so I guess I’m not being quite so cheeky after all!
Late morning I had a green apple with almond butter.
Lunch was a chocolate protein shake made with water, greens balance and frozen strawberries.
This afternoon I was planning on making a vegan curry for dinner, but I had a bit of a stomach upset which really made me feel sick so I had a bit of a lie down and a lovely fizzy to help keep me hydrated. I really should get some of the phytosport hydrate as that would’ve been really good to have.
I did start to feel like eating about 5.30, but definitely NOT a curry! I decided to sautee some garlic and spring onion before throwing in a large handful of baby spinach to wilt, while that was wilting I reheated a few roasted sweet potatoes that my husband had made for me this morning. Once the spinach was practically wilted I took it off the heat, popped a lid in it so it would finish off wilting by itself while I fried an egg.
I put the sweet potato on the plate, topped it with the spinach and then a fried egg on top that still had a soft yolk to soak through everything.
It tasted really nice – I do enjoy an egg when I have an upset stomach and this actually didn’t make me miss having toast!
Still not feeling too good as the evening wears on though, I decided to have another fizz stick this evening as I thought the minerals would be a good idea in lieu of any electrolytes in the house.
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