Vega Breakfast Challenge, Yoga, and a Relaxing Friday Afternoon

This morning, I got up early, meditated, had a vega packet for breakfast, and then headed out the door for an hour long yoga session at the gym.

I was sent four packets of the Whole Food Health Optimizer to try out from vega as part of their breakfast challenge. This morning, I had Vanilla Chai and I'll be reviewing the other three flavors over the next week.



I really liked how easy it was to mix with 8 oz. of water and then drink for breakfast.





In exchange for receiving four packets from vega, I was asked to compare something I would normally eat for breakfast (which I had as a snack today). I compared Kashi cereal to the Whole Food Health Optimizer.

Here are the stats:



Since I eat a mostly vegetarian diet, the fact that I was able to get so much protein from this packet was fabulous and so was the amount of iron I received from it! I also don't eat any fish, so that means the large amount of Omega-3s are a nice addition to my diet too.

According to the information I received from Vega:

What makes Whole Food Health Optimizer so special compared to other breakfasts? It’s 100% plant-based, it’s gluten-free, soy-free and dairy free...and it’s super low in calories. Only one single serving guarantees:

· 100% of your daily vitamins and minerals
· 60% daily intake of fiber
· Healthy weight loss
· Maintaining optimal health

I felt like I did have more energy than normal this morning and also throughout the day.





I caught these two hanging out this morning and got a pretty decent shot of them.



The one hour yoga session was exactly what I needed after the tough class I took yesterday. It felt good to stretch my hips and glutes, which did hurt a bit this morning. I was so happy to see that my favorite yoga teacher was teaching. He said he normally doesn't do morning yoga and he recently read somewhere that people are more apt to hurt their backs during a morning workout vs. afternoon one, so he would make sure we warmed up slowly. We definitely had a great warm up and that helped to make the rest of my practice go smoothly.

I was hungry when I got home from the gym, so I had a new cereal flavor from Kashi-Cinnamon Harvest. I really liked the taste of it. I would buy this again over Autumn Harvest.





Nutrition Facts for the cereal.



For lunch, I just had a small lunch of a piece of leftover pizza from dinner last night and a new to me flavor of Pop Chips: Chili Lime Potato. It had a similar taste to other Pop Chips and not as much flavor or spiciness as I expected.



Dessert was a small handful of Raisinets.



After a short nap with Karma, I got up and read some fall magazines.



Doesn't Karma look like his paw is flipping me off here?



I have a huge pile of magazines to get through and needed to start tackling it today! I'll keep reading them over the weekend too.



And after a streak of afternoon relaxation, tearing up while reading Farm City (the author was in a situation that was similar to a horrible one I almost found myself in while living in CA and the memories came rushing back to me), I decided to get out of the house. I browsed TJ Maxx, got my free birthday treat at Panera with their Panera Rewards card--a strawberries n' creme scone, and went to Sendik's grocery store. I couldn't resist buying some pumpkin beer while at Sendik's. You know what I am having with dinner tonight! :)

We don't have any weekend plans, which is actually kind of nice. I can keep enjoying my relaxing mini vacation! Do you have any big plans for the three day weekend?