Hanging at the Local Barre

Hey there! I hope your week is coming along nicely. It’s been a busy one in this neck of the woods so I’m definitely ready for Friday to be here!

The Eat Clean challenge is still going strong! I’ve had a few cheats here and there, but that’s to be expected and in the grand scheme of things my eats have been really good. Breakfast and lunch are easy peasey, just have to work on the after dinner snacking.

Big salads have always been my go-to lunch option and they seem to fit with the clean eating plan quite nicely. Here’s a little preview of yesterday’s delight:

Make Your Salad a Meal Salad

• 2 cups spring mix
• 1/2 baked sweet potato, chopped into chunks (smart carb)
• 1/3-1/2 cup edamame (lean protein)
• 1/2 avocado (healthy fat)
• mushrooms
• white onion
• cucumber
• 1 T raisins (something sweet for good measure)

Place all ingredients in a bowl and top with dressing of your choice. EAT!

I love the addition of baked sweet potato or butternut squash chunks in salads. If you haven’t tried it yet, I highly recommend it. My dressing of choice for the past few months has been this little gem from Whole Foods.

It’s their zesty tahini dressing from the Health Starts Here line and it’s amazing. I love the garlicky flavor and the ingredient list is super short – water, garlic, nutritional yeast, tahini, apple cider vinegar, lemon juice and liquid aminos. No funky processed stuff that is often in bottled dressings, no sugar, 3 grams of protein and only 44 calories for 2 Tablespoons!! It reminds me a lot of the dressing I use on my garlicky kale so I could probably easily make it at home. Although sometimes it’s easier just to pick this up. <– Scratch that – it’s always easier just to pick this up.

Isaac has also been helpful with the clean eating, for instance when I came home from work last night he had prepared an awesome dinner of baked rock fish with creole seasoning, balsamic bok choy, roasted parsnips and carrots.

He’s turning into a regular ol’ clean eating chef. A mighty fine one at that.

As for the no drinking, which is part of the challenge, I have been doing great and haven’t even had a mere sip of Isaac’s home brew or wine since 12:00AM on NYE. And, the only bar I’ve been hitting up lately has been the Local Barre, which is a studio here in Richmond that offers bar method classes. I recently bought a LivingSocial deal for 3 classes and I’ve been to their Core Barre class twice now – with my lady Stephanie.

The Core Barre class is a total body workout – it starts with a warm-up, free-weight exercises and push-ups and moves on to intense leg and seat work at the bar, then abdominal work at the bar and on mats. Every exercise is followed by additional stretching to elongate the muscles just worked. During the class we used light weights (1-3 lbs), a pilates ball, the bar and a mat. Although I didn’t think the class was super intense (as I’ve heard some bar classes are) Stephanie and I both really enjoyed it. We felt the burn even more the second time – perhaps it was because we used heavier weights or maybe because we focused more on our form the second time around. Either way I was feeling it in my glutes yesterday morning!

The style of the class reminded me a lot of the CORE Fusion DVDs I bought over a year ago and made me want to break them out again. <– This would be a good thing because I still need to review them.

Have you tried a bar method class before? What are your thoughts?

Lastly, thank you all much for the all the wedding tips and suggestions on my last post. I really enjoyed reading through the all the comments and checking out the sites you all recommended. Now I just need to channel my inner Young House Love.

Have a lovely Thursday!

Tagged as: Local Barre, rock fish, Salad as a meal, zesty tahini dressing