What I Ate Wednesday

I finally get to participate in the What I Ate Wednesday blog trend. Since I was on the juice cleanse last month, I figured it would be completely boring to see the five juices I drank. I try my best not bore my followers to death, so I avoided too many juice pics. Anyhow, now that all of that is in the past, I figured it would be prime time to take a day in the life of Brittany, food style. 

I start every morning with lemon+apple cider vinegar+warm water & a tiny teatox tea. After about a half hour, I ate my breakfast. My go to breakfast lately has been green tea and grapefruit. In the past I used to drown my grapefruit in sugar. yikes! Recently, I've been using coconut nectar and let me say yum! I would totally recommend switching your sweetener to raw coconut nectar. It's not overly sweet, which is really nice. 

Can we all take a moment of silence for my favorite pink mug shown in the above photo. It is a sad day for all, and it breaks my heart to let you all know my poor pink mug was smashed very shortly after this picture was taken. My dad will be facing the consequences for such actions later. Anyhow, I spent the afternoon at Whole Foods, which every normal girl does right? Seriously, I love going to the grocery store! I slowly browse each isle, finding all kinds of good finds. I took my mom with me and we both had salads for lunch. I have absolutely no portion control when it comes buffets, so needless to say I filled my bowel to the rim. I used the quinoa salad which had a light lemon/olive oil dressing as an overall dressing for the salad. I loved the falafel, which was my first time trying it. I also loved the sweet potatoes and marinated mushrooms. Yummy in my tummy!! I had a black chia kombucha to drink. They were on sale so I stocked up. I love those!!

 Dinner, which sorry about the horrible picture, but let's face it, it's winter and all natural light has been gone since 4pm. So bare with me. My mom bought the vegetable lasagna from Whole Foods and some parmesan bread. The lasagna was absolutely delicious, but super rich and filling. I only ate half of it. The bread, which was only 99 cents for the whole loaf was amazing. It was a splurge, because I really do try to avoid wheat.

No dessert tonight, wah! Seriously, though, I was so full I don't think I could even eat a chocolate chip. Ok, kidding, there is always room for chocolate. After the adventure at Whole Foods my mom and I stopped at Target. The clearance racks were insane and I impulsively bought three new tops and the cutest bag ever. Luckily, we had to pick my dad up from work, so we weren't able to shop around too much/spent all my money. The rest of the day I got caught up reading some of my favorite blogs. I love having lazy days off.
I hope everyone has a good Wednesday. For those that work a normal schedule it's humpday, and the work week is half over. For me, I'm extremely lucky to only have to work tomorrow and have a four day weekend. It's a little crazy and not really planned, so we will see what trouble I get into. Maybe I'll be a good girl and pick up some shifts at work, but probably not. Who likes work anyhow?!

**disclosure: if you purchase anything I link to you via Amazon I make a small percentage out of it at no cost to you! So it's a win, win!

Valentine's Day Giveaway!

We are officially into February and that means it's cupid's birthday. Just kidding, that baby who shoots people with magical arrows obviously doesn't age, so in other words Valentine's Day is just around the corner. Don't worry, if your a single lady like me there is no reason to avoid this day by sitting in your sweats, drinking wine, eating ice cream and crying your eyes out while watching the notebook. Us single ladies can indulge in all the v-day hype like buying ourselves chocolates and lots of them. Maybe send yourself flowers, oh hey, why not even send them to your work with an anonymous note. Ok, maybe don't that would look very desperate if anyone ever found that little secret out. So let's go the safer route and go shopping!! Does anyone else ever think about the movie White Chicks when they say this?! I always do. What better way to go shopping than with a $200.00 gift card?! Yes you read that right! The lovely Bella at Dateless in Dallas is hosting an amazing giveaway I so greatly got to be part of with a bunch of other fabulous ladies. The gift card is for Stella & Dot, which is also where my next paycheck is going to. They have the most glamorous jewelry, plus they also carry handbags, wallets and scarves. This is an awesome gift, so make sure you enter!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

TERMS AND CONDITIONS:
1. Winner will be notified on February 8th.
2. Winner will be verified. If the winner cannot be verified, a new one will be selected.
3. The winner has 48 hours to claim their prize after the notifying email has been sent out.
If they do not respond to the email within the 48 hours a new winner will be selected.

Good luck ladies! This is so exciting, I almost wish I could enter myself. I guess I will just have to live through you all. 

Monday Morning Mantra

I thought I would try something new and start each week with a new mantra to instill positive thinking into my life. It's so amazing the amount of negative self talk we do. We would never treat our friends or family the way we treat our own selves at times. I'm one of the worst at it. I've always been more introverted so self dialog is very natural, but can easily go in the wrong direction. "Why did you just do that?" "I'm such a mess up" "I don't even care anymore" are just some of the negative self talk I do on a daily basis.

Not only do I abuse myself verbally, but my greatest fault of all is food. I use to abuse my body every single night when I came home from work. It would be late at night, I would be extremely stressed out and tired, yet I would sit in the kitchen for hours eating peanut butter toast like nobodies business. I would tell myself I deserved it, I had a rough day and all. The the spiral would continue and I would feel worse from ruining all the healthy food and exercise choices I had made earlier in the day. The worst part... I deserved it, I would tell myself. I knew what I really deserved was to better myself. If I really respected and loved myself I would not trash it every night with unhealthy bingeing. I realized every night how much I really must hate myself, that I could not overcome the urge to constantly hurt my body. "You can do better tomorrow" a slight glimmer of hope would tell myself every night as I lay feeling sick, although, tomorrow usually wasn't better.

During the juice cleanse I resisted any evening snacking, but since going back to "normal" food again I find myself going back to my old ways. To really love ourselves we respect every part of our being. That means no abuse in any form whether that be self-talk, cutting, starving, bingeing, etc. That's why I thought I should start every morning with a mantra. A mantra is basically just repeated words or phrases. In my case something positive. The more you say something the more you start to believe it. When I graduated nursing school I had post-its around the house saying "You will pass the NCLEX the first time" and you bet I did. I intend to use the same theory to change my inner voice. Change my self-talk to positivity and self love.

Feel free to join me. I intend to use the same mantra for a week, putting the mantra on my bathroom or vanity mirror so I see it every morning and repeat it to myself. This mantra I created is intended to aid my self awareness and create a better love of my body to avoid destructive behaviors such as bingeing.

Do you use mantras to self-empower? What mantras do you repeat to yourself? Hope everyone has a wonderful Monday and a great week.