WIAW - Gardening and Swimming

Hello! Happy What I Ate Wednesday! :)


Jenn has been doing WIAW for 70 weeks now, wow, that's a lot of food that we've all enjoyed seeing...thanks Jenn!

I've decided to do a double WIAW this week as I couldn't decide between Monday or Tuesday - both great days!

First up, Monday. It started with oats in a jar for the first time in ages! Mashed banana oats in a chocolate chip peanut butter jar...simple but delicious!

As you can see, I like a little bit of porridge with my peanut butter! ;)

After the school run I had a quick coffee to wake me up a bit...

Had to fight Toby for it, but I won!!

...and then spent a couple of hours playing with the boy before he went for a nap about 11.30am. I then had a raspberry iced tea to give me a sugar boost...

...before spending a couple of hours tackling the garden. There's a reason I never normally show photos further than the decking! Before:

After:

Not perfect, but a lot better than it was. The garden is a bit of a nightmare as there is netting under all the gravel, but weeds constantly grow up through it and then are really hard to pull out. Urgh. My legs were shaking after 2 hours so I thought I better stop as I had important plans for my legs later that day!!! ;)

I had a cider ice lolly mid-way through gardening...

And then after gardening I popped some meat-free burgers in the oven whilst I had a shower. I only came back downstairs just as the oven was beeping, so I didn't have time to come up with anything creative to have with the burgers (!) so I just topped them with smoked cheese, ketchup and munchy seeds...

Doing the gardening over lunchtime threw off my timings a bit. I was planning to add more things to my lunch, but then I realised it was already 2.30pm and I needed to have an early dinner on Monday too, not ideal! I ended up just having an orange before the school run...

which was a good thing as on the way home Izzy asked really sweetly "Mummy, why can't we go for ice cream?" and I couldn't resist! Izzy and Toby both had butterscotch ice cream:

but I chose to have a tropical "Yoggie", which inevitably they both preferred!!

This was made of frozen pineapple, kiwi, mango & melon, orange juice and frozen yoghurt...so tasty!

Finally, just before 6pm I had a random snack plate of smoked tofu, smoked cheese, dried pineapple and dried pear...

before getting my exercise gear on and heading out a little while later... The reason my eating was off on Monday is because at 8pm I had a Body Pump class to go to! :-D My eating for the class still wasn't right, but the class itself was brilliant, sooo much better than last week!! :) I am happy to report that my legs have been slightly painful for the last 2 days (yey!), but I haven't had any pain in my arms so I think I need to up my weights for those tracks next week! It might hurt, but I love it!

After Body Pump I came home for my "proper" dinner...Liam and I ended up eating French toast at 10pm!

With banana, chocolate chips, cocoa powder and agave...delicious but more than a little too late to be eating! Next Monday I will have to make sure to be organised enough to eat lunch early and then proper dinner early too.

Moving on to yesterday, I started the day with a smoothie for me and the children. I am trying to eat up as much food in the cupboard so this had frozen mango, tinned pineapple (incl the juice), milk and coconut...

This was delicious, and made loads, so I put the rest in the fridge to drink throughout the day...

After the school run, Toby and I went straight down to the pool before I chickened out to go swimming. Toby is not the biggest fan of swimming (understatement) so we don't take him as often as we should at the weekends - he usually lasts about 15 minutes in the pool, whinging the whole time, which tends to ruin the experience for Izzy. So I have decided to take him during the week instead. It doesn't cost anything as swimming is included in my gym membership and Toby is under 3, so it doesn't matter hugely if he doesn't last long. I hadn't even imagined it would be as bad as not getting in the pool at all though! He had me worried at the beginning - I managed to get him changed, but then he crouched in the corner of the changing room refusing to move!!! I eventually persuaded him to at least come see the pool, and after sitting on the edge for a while, he eventually, thanks to some pool toys, decided to come in the water. Once he was in he loved it! It helped that the water seemed warmer than it usually is, but we ended up staying in for 45 minutes which is definitely a record for him! At first we stuck near the edge, but by the end we were in the middle of the pool with Toby splashing about. Yey! Between Body Pump on Monday night, and then swimming Tuesday morning, I had the biggest grin on my face for most of Tuesday!! :-D

Success!

After swimming, we headed home for lunch of raw carrots, houmous and more smoothie...

And for dinner I made a delicious stir fry with sesame tofu, pak choi and spring onions straight from the veg box, noodles, soy sauce and agave nectar:

This was a perfect dinner. Simple, quick to cook, fresh ingredients, and really tasty too! I'm sure I must've eaten other snacks yesterday, but my camera isn't showing them so no idea what!

What are your favourite "chores" to do outside? & what is your favourite type of exercise? I have so many housework chores that I should be doing ahead of the house move, but with the weather being so gorgeous I just want to be outside! Gardening was a good one, but today I have been mostly stuck inside sorting paperwork, boo! I did take the children outside to meet friends for a couple of hours after school this afternoon though, which was lovely, and not too hot by 4-5pm so ideal for the children to have a good run around.
As for exercise, body pump/weights all the way! My sister finds it really funny (& good!) that I say I love Body Pump, but as I pointed out to her, that is the only exercise I can really say that about - cardio, not so much! I quite like swimming, but if I could just do weights and never bother with cardio, except for walking everywhere that is, I would be much happier!