Hey friends! On the fitness front this week, it started alllllll about the shoveling.
Who else has been counting “shovel ALL the snow” as their main form of fitness lately?! Saturday, Sunday, and Monday were filled with shoveling. It is a serious workout!
Yesterday I ditched the shoveling, made it back downtown to my coshared office, and treated myself to a lunchtime yoga class. The class was packed – everyone else had the same idea! Stretching out was necessary and felt great.
As for this morning, I gave the Winter Shape Up week 1 workout a try! I did 3 rounds of just the strength portion and then counted my snowy walk to the metro as my cardio. Whew – it was legit! Quick and sweaty. Have you tried it yet? Don’t forget to check in over on the week 1 workout and week 1 meal plan pages to be entered to win prizes from this week’s sponsors! Gina and I are loving your updates in the Winter Shape Up Facebook group, too – keep up the great work. 🙂
I refueled after the workout with some oatmeal – hit the spot. I made my Perfect Microwave Banana Oatmeal again, topped with pecans and blueberries. Nom!
As for lunches, a new product I’m loving lately is elevAte salads! elevAte is a brand new ready-to-eat salad line that is more than your usual pre-made salad – they are gluten free, non-GMO, have vegan and all-organic options, and include a ton of superfoods, too. As they have just launched, they sent me a bunch of their salads to try out for a sponsored review. Zara was as intrigued as I was. 🙂
elevAte currently has 8 salad options, which range from the more “hippie” to the more standard: blu-rugula, go-go-goji, kale caesar, nutty cranberry, sunny caesar, power grains, southwest, and spinach-pow.
Each salad comes packed up nicely in a little bowl (with a fork!) that you can eat right out of, with the ingredients all organized into compartments.
The salads arrived last week which was perfect timing before getting snowed in! I’ve had the opportunity to try all of them now and my two favorites are the kale caesar and the go-go-goji, pictured above. Not only do they taste awesome but they also have a great mix of fun textures and ingredients – very creative and wouldn’t be as quick/easy for me to make on my own.
All of the salads were really good, though – my only complaint was that I wish they were a bit bigger/more substantial. Most of the salads were between 250 and 300 calories, which is definitely not enough for me for a meal. That said, it was easy enough to throw some other things into the mix and I still enjoyed the salads as a quick and easy side option.
I had one over the weekend with leftover veggie-tastic minestrone soup:
And I’ve gotten three great packed lunches downtown out of the salads, too. Last week, I had the go-go-goji with a side of nut butter toast, some clementines, and half an avocado (which I threw on top of the salad before eating it).
And yesterday, I brought two of them downtown with me (one for yesterday’s lunch, one for today’s) along with some toppings to add to them to bulk them up – a leftover brown rice/couscous mix that I split in half, and a whole avocado, again which I split in half. Perfect! Plus some leftover string beans. 🙂
It ended up being a great, filling combo and was easy to throw together at the office just before eating!
elevAte is currently available at WalMart nationwide as well as some other retailers (see all the stores there are available in here), but I’m hoping they’ll be in Whole Foods or Mom’s Organic Market (the stores we shop at most often) soon because I’ll definitely buy them when I see them! Makes packing a healthy lunch a heck of a lot easier. 🙂 Thank you to elevAte for the opportunity to check them out – and be sure to enter the healthy new year giveaway on their site right now for your chance to win fitness gear, gym memberships, gift cards, and an Apple watch!
I’ll end this post with some Zara love, because I know many of you are big fans. 😉 She’s been fascinated by all the white stuff outside! Matt brought in a mini snowball the other day for her to bat around on the floor – she was so confused by it and how it was cold!
Have a great day, guys!
