I survived!

I survived my first proper spin class last night, whoop!

I did end up going into Exeter during the day yesterday, and bought lots of new sports clothes from Sports Direct - 3 tops, 2 sports bras, a pair of padded cycle shorts and some trainer socks for less than £50 thanks to them having a sale on. I also need to buy another pair of capri pants but I didn't like any of the ones in Sports Direct and Debenhams didn't have any of the ones I usually buy in my size so I'll have to order online. Now I'm doing 3/4 classes a week (ha, go me!!) my one pair of decent trousers plus one pair I don't really like isn't enough!

After shopping we went for lunch at Herbies - a vegetarian restaurant in Exeter. The food is delicious but the portion sizes are huge! Each main course comes with either a trio of salads or potato wedges, so we got one of each but then took all the potato wedges home for Liam to take into work today...too much food. The trio of salads were delicious though - they are specials that change regularly and yesterday the salads were raw root salad, potato salad with cashews (which was much lighter than regular potato salad - loved it!) and green salad which had some kind of tasty dressing on it:

That's just half the salad - Mum had more on her plate too!

For my main, I had a filo pastry parcel with roasted veg, some kind of tomato sauce and feta cheese...

I also had some of Mum's spinach and mushroom lasagne but that has come out even more blurry than these ones! I took the photos on my phone and they did not come out well, but I wanted to share as the food was so delicious! Luckily the most important photo came out slightly better - even though Mum and I were both full, we really wanted to have a pudding. Something we've never managed to do before as the portion sizes are so huge. We decided to push are tummies to the limit though and get one dessert to share, and I'm so glad we did!

This was a ginger biscuit base topped with lemon and lime curd, served with natural yoghurt, but you could have also had clotted cream, ice cream or non-dairy yoghurt. This was one of the best desserts I've ever had in a restaurant. The base was divine but it was the topping that was really special - citrussy and sweet at the same time and super sticky...yum!!

After this we were more than full, so after a couple more shops we headed home to pick up Izzy from school. I then had a spin class at 7pm and, as usual, was worrying about if/what to eat. I wasn't hungry, indeed I was still full from lunch, but I seem to have this paranoia that I'm going to suddenly get overcome whilst exercising and not be able to continue! A little bit ridiculous considering the fact that I eat plenty every day, but still, I ended up having half a banana (leftover from Toby eating half that morning) smeared with some honey peanut butter at 5pm.

I chickened out of wearing just padded shorts to spin...sorry Lara! ;) I did wear them, but under my usual capris. Luckily they didn't show too much unless you were looking for them. I was walking to the gym so just felt more comfortable like this, plus being my first class I didn't know what to expect. There were a couple of people wearing just the padded shorts though so maybe next week. Either way I'm very glad I was wearing them - at one point we did some kind of pyramid sequence where we'd do 2 counts hovering then 2 counts seated, 4 hovering, 4 seated etc and at the end we just repeated lots of 2s so we were constantly bouncing on and off the seat again! The class went ok though. I didn't love it in the same way I do Body Pump, but as far as cardio goes it was alright - the class went relatively quickly which was a good thing in my book! My legs were super sore immediately afterwards, but are fine today, although I may not be saying that by the time I finish boot camp tonight!

I have woken up feeling really really tired today. I suppose, even though by most people's standards I'm not exercising a huge amount, I have gone from just Body Pump on Mondays (and not last week because of the bank holiday) and occasionally Boot Camp on Thursdays (but this will be my first class in about 3-4 weeks) to this week doing:

Monday: Taster Spin, then Body Pump
Tuesday: off
Wednesday: Spin (45 mins)
Thursday: Boot Camp

After tonight I haven't got any more exercise planned until next Monday Body Pump though so I'll be glad of the rest! I might fit in a daytime exercise into my week next week as I want to take Toby back to creche again, but that will either be swimming or possibly Body Balance if my friend wants to go, so it won't be as tiring as spin hopefully. I like not exercising at the weekends as we always have so much on anyway, but it does mean that I do end up doing quite a lot of classes during the week if I want to make the most of my membership. I don't know how some of you manage exercising most days, I'm exhausted!!

Today has been a nice easy day though - lots of coffee including a trip to Costa with my friend for lattes and toasted teacakes. We also went to the toy shop that has a ball pool in the back. Toby has been wanting to go there all week and dived straight in!!

I've also had another of the bars that Maria sent me...

It tasted like a sticky, slightly less sweet, Bounty bar. I really enjoyed it, will keep a look out to buy one of these again!

On the school run this afternoon it was slightly drizzling, so Izzy requested hot chocolates. Oh go on then...! ;)

Using the hot chocolate powder from my foodie penpal parcel, delicious. And of course the whipped cream on top is very important. I always eat it first with a spoon, but I resisted adding a 2nd helping of it today!

Despite eating the hot chocolate plus a handful of dried apricots at 4pm, my "I'm going to get hungry during exercise" paranoia kicked in just now so, just before my 5pm "deadline", I had a peach (my 2nd of the day, love them!) with some cashew butter...

Could not get a decent photo of these, ha, took photos in about 5 different areas of the kitchen!!

I love the combo of fresh fruit with nut butter, so tasty and it seems like the perfect, not too heavy but still slightly substantial, pre-exercise snack. Although, deep down I do know that the hot chocolate and apricots would have been enough "fuel", I guess I just like the extra excuse to eat! ;)

How many times do you exercise a week? And what is your favourite pre-exercise snack/meal? Part of me thinks I should be eating more of a meal before exercise, as when I come home I tend to eat something quick and easy for "dinner" (scrambled eggs on toast last night for example). I definitely need to add in some more vegetables - dinner on non-exercise tends to be when I eat most of my veg so I have definitely been lacking in greens this week.