Healthy Balance and Fitness Challenge – Day 2

Today is day 2 of my 1 month challenge and I’m doing quite alright.

Exercise: My leg muscles are a bit sore from the squats, but it’s rather moderate considering that I didn’t do any exercise for about a year! Of course muscles need time to recover as well which is why I decided to exercise every second day. Therefore I didn’t exercise today, apart from a 20 min walk which I currently do every day due to my living situation.

5 a day: Today I had 1 cantaloupe melon for breakfast, a banana and 2 mandarins sometime later and pasta with a delicious avocado, tomato, prawn sauce (scroll down for the recipe). That covers 5 a day

Meditation: I usually meditate before going to bed, which is sometimes hard, because I might be very tired. I haven’t meditated yet for today, but yesterdays meditation was good, even though I had problems to concentrate in the end. Currently I meditate for 100 breathing cycles.

Bad habits: The only thing that didn’t really go well today. I won’t specify what exactly my bad habit is, but I usually fall into it when I’m either nervous or distracted. I wasn’t really distracted today, but certainly nervous. I seem to be like that lately and I don’t really know the reason. Maybe it is due to my research project that is getting closer to completion now. I wouldn’t like it to fail so I’m double checking everything and probably I’m being a bit too perfectionist here. Today I was a little worried, which probably led to the bad habit kicking in big time. Tomorrow will go better I hope! I’m hoping for 7 days without.

Pasta with prawn avocado tomato sauce

(for 2 portions)

• 250g of spaghetti or linguine
• a handful of prawns (can be substituted by 3 rashers of smoked bacon or left out)
• 1 soft avocado
• 2 big or 3 medium tomatoes
• olive oil
• freshly ground pepper
• Optional: white balsamico vinegar
• Optional: soya cream substitute

1. Half avocado to remove the stone and remove skin (you can use a spoon to get the flesh out of the skin). Then chop the avocado into smaller chunks. Chop tomatoes into chunks of approx the same size (you can remove the skin if you like, I don’t mind it in the sauce).
2. Cook some pasta (Spaghetti, Linguine) to go with the sauce.
3. Fry the prawns in a little olive oil. When done, add the avocado and tomatoes, some pepper and about 100ml water into the pan (If you like it vegetarian you should add some salt). The avocado should make a nice creamy sauce together with the tomatoes. How long you leave it on the hob depends how “chunky” you like your sauces.
4. Optional: You can add a sprinkle of cream to make the avocado a little less dominant
5. Optional: Just before draining the pasta, turn the hob off and add some white balsamico vinegar (about a spoonful) to give it a bit of a tangy flavour. Don’t cook the balsamico for too long or else you won’t taste it at all and you just waste the vinegar on the sauce!

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