The Peaceful Kitchen: High Protein Fresh Carrot Cake Juice for my Birthday

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME

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Yesterday was my birthday........no I'm not going to tell you how old I am......let's just say I am 29.95 + tax and shipping :-)

I committed one of the great weight loss mistakes yesterday.....confession time! I knew I would be going out to lunch and dinner and was worried that within my tiny little calorie requirements I would not be able to fit all that food in....so I decided to have a low/cal high nutrient breakfast and 'Save' my calories for later.

I did create an AMAZING Post-workout recipe, more on that later. But as I tried to 'save' my calories for later I found myself getting hungrier and hungrier as the morning wore on and by 10:30 I was REALLY hungry and so what happened, I broke down and ate some of the kids cereal, it started out as just a little cup of cereal which I proceeded to fill up three times! Ooops, so much for that calorie 'saving' idea.

I thought I was still hungry when I finished but within the hour my tummy grew more and more full and by noon I wasn't hungry at all! Luckily my sister was late for her lunch break and so we didn't end up eating lunch until close to 1:30 when I was starting to feel hungry. We made it to Noodles & Company where I had the Bankok Curry Noodles. I ordered the small and only ate about 2/3rds of it hoping to again 'save calories' for later.

Well, my mother is the ultimate 'make a party out of every situation and it must include dessert!' Decided to buy the ingredients for my Bakery style chocolate chip cookies and we baked them when we got back from shopping. I only ate 3/4 of a cookie but at almost 4pm again I felt full! This day was turning out to be a dieters worst nightmare :-(

Hubby got off work early and showed up at home at 4:45 excited to take me to my favorite vegan restaurant.

Sages Cafe

photos by Sage's Cafe

I LOVE Sage's, we have been going there since 2004 and I have absolutely LOVED everything I have had there. In the top picture you can see one of the amazing sandwiches featuring Seitan with their cheese sauce and in the bottom pic one of my favorite desserts......the Russian Tea Cake or {Mexican wedding cookie}

We also enjoyed the Brownie sundae...a delicious ultimate FUDGY experience topped with soy ice cream and smothered in a delicious Fudge sauce. Mmmmmmmmm.......that was fantastic.

I wasn't terribly hungry so I thought I would be good and order the simple meal of fruit and vegetable slices along with fresh baked bread and the carrot butter pate.

Hubby ordered the AMAZING Cassoulet which is a baked penne pasta in a red sauce, smothered in rice mozzerella, seitan sausage and veggies baked in a ceramic dish. SOOOOOO yummy!

I ended up tasting hubby's amazing dinner a few times, enjoyed some garlic bread and loved the carrot butter on the apple slices........even though I was feeling full off the small amount I ate, I dove into dessert with gusto! Try as I might that amazing fudgy brownie and ice cream kept tempting me to indulge a little more....by the end of the evening I was overly full.....my tastebuds were fully satisfied but my tummy was protesting from all the food I had eaten.

The evening ended with us visiting my in-laws so my mother in law could give me my Birthday present.........

Beautiful Handmade Crochet Doily {Doilie}

This is what I opened.......a beautiful handmade Doily!

Now this is my kind of present, something handmade! I love the idea of giving a gift of your talent, it is literally a piece of you.

This doily is absolutely STUNNING! I crochet but honestly I had never seen such a beautiful work of art! I LOVED IT! I felt so honored that my mother in law would take the time to hand make me such a beautiful treasure. It was a wonderful birthday and I was so grateful for the wonderful gift.

Later that evening at home.....I was sitting on the couch with a full heart and an uncomfortably full belly and realized that my 'calorie sparing' idea had completely failed me! I teach nutrition, I know in my heart that this doesn't work so why in the world do I do it?

The reasons behind my stupidity are many, but this morning I paid the price for my stupidity when I measured my waist to find it 1/4 inch bigger than yesterday and .8 extra pounds on the scale! My plan had failed and now I have to work for the next week to remove all the mess I had made. I know this because I have done it before, the extra pound gained after a binge usually takes about 5 days to get back off. I know they say a pound is 3500 calories but I am 100% convinced that is not the case! In theory outside the human body maybe but with all the intricacies of the human body and my personal experience I don't buy it. If I can overeat and gain a pound and it takes me almost a week to get it back off that wasn't 3500 calories!

Anyway, Learn from my mistakes, don't try to save calories! Instead, learn to savor the food without feeling that you have to eat it all! I know you don't want to waste food but I will tell you this: It WILL get wasted one way or another!

You can either waste the food in the trash can or you can waste it as extra, nasty, ugly FAT on your body but one way or another that extra food is GOING to get wasted!

That conservative, penny pinching nature of yours is going to force you to wear it if you don't get over it and find another way to put that extra food to use rather than stuffing your face with it in an effort to not be wasteful! It's still wasteful, just wasteful in a different and much more emotionally painful way~!

Okay, off the soap box :-)

High Protein Fresh Carrot Cake Juice

Ooooooo This was FANTASTIC!!!

I wouldn't recommend this as the only thing you eat for breakfast, it will burn very cleanly and will replenish your glycogen stores quickly but you'll need something of more substance within about an hour.

It is best to follow up a workout with a glycogen replenishing, electrolyte drink that contains about 3-4 carbohydrates per protein calorie. The body needs to replenish glycogen stores and of course muscles need to recover but carbohydrate is also necessary for muscle recovery and so this balance provide the necessary building blocks for complete recovery. Excess protein can actually inhibit recovery because the body CANNOT store protein and therefore it must be broken down and excreted. Long story......but this makes a great post-workout recovery drink that doesn't cost a fortune!

High Protein Carrot Cake Recovery Juice

*****I cannot guarantee the correct flavor with any other protein powder!!!!! This protein powder has an AMAZING sweet vanilla flavor without added sugars!