Things I love - Week 4

I totally missed Things I love yesterday. Sorry people! I had a rough day and kind of just crashed when I got home from spinning and got caught up on Greys.

So here are the things I'm loving this week!

1. Cascade Fresh yogurt - I have long loved this stuff, but I have been off yogurt for a while because I've been eating cereal every day for breakfast. Well NO more folks! I bought three containers this weekend for snacks this week - peach, key lime and apricot/mango. I had one for a snack yesterday and I can't wait to have another today for a snack! This yogurt is the most perfect snack (well almost). It's sweet, filling (thank you protein!) and easy to eat in a hurry. I always buy the fat free kind because it's 110 calories for a container (perfect size for part of my daily snack). I wish that it had fat though :( I'm always super low on fat throughout my days and if this had a few grams of fat (for the same calories? Yeah, I'm dreamin').. it would be absolutely perfect! But for now, I'll call it perfect! These yogurts come in a ton of different fruit flavors and have all natural ingrediants as well as real fruit as the sweetener!

2. Emergen-C. I LOVE Emergen-C and I used to drink one every day. I stopped doing that because now that I'm exercising so much, honestly my body doesn't need the pick me up. Lately though - EVERYONE in the state of Texas is sick (um except me! yay!), so I've been loading up on this every day this week. This is a vitamin c supplement that you drop in a little water, stir and chug. It's nice because since it's mixed with liquid, the vitamin C gets in your system immediately as opposed to letting a pill dissolve in your stomach. Vitamins and my stomach don't like each other, so this baby is perfect for me. My flavor of choice is raspberry, but seriously any flavor takes getting used to. You want like 4 ounces of water and make sure you stir, then chug! And you'll feel great right after! One packet has 25 calories and is FULL of other vitamins and minerals.

3. Immaculate Baking cookies - Stef turned me on to these and I bought them for the first time last weekend. THEY ARE SO GOOD. My favorite cookie is sugar, but I never ever buy them because no one else likes them. Okay and also, I don't typically buy cookie dough. Too many nasty ingredients and way too tempting to have around the house. But these cookies are made with all natural ingredients (that you actually recognize) and only have 70 calories per little cookie! They are pre-portioned, which is perfect because I can't take a spoon to the container. AND they dont' taste fantastic when they are raw (yes I tried) since they don't have chocolate, so I'm not tempted to eat them that way! The cookies bake up in about 10 minutes and are fabulous. I'm going to stick the rest of the container in the freezer and only get one or two cookies out when I want one. Love it!

4. Personal Bill of Rights - so much of the journey to a healthy lifestyle is to improve ALL aspects of your health, mental included. A lot of people gain weight because of emotional distress that is left untreated or unrecognized. Coping with and facing those issues becomes one of the big struggles we all face when we try to start losing weight. Being an emotional eater, obviously this is something that I struggle with a lot! I was turned on to this bill of rights yesterday and I absolutely love it. I'll admit, some of the rights are very very hard to take in and also very hard to realize that you violate other's rights pretty often. So I want to share this with you today and hope that you can use it a little for yourself. If there are a few that you have a hard time with, take some time this week and work on them. One of the hardest ones for me is #5 "I have the right to make mistakes and not be perfect." I'm a perfectionist and over-achiever and so this right is very hard for me to internalize. I'll be working a little on this one this week and I hope you all can find one to work on as well. Good luck!

Check out the rest of the Things I Love series in case you missed them!