Cherry Coconut Chocolate Chip Dough Balls

Those sound good don’t they?

They are and we’ll get to them in a second but first, guess who got back on the strength training bandwagon today? Me, me, me!

After 2 weeks off, I felt my back was recovered enough to finally give stage 2 of NROLFW a go and it felt great during the workout. I made sure to focus on keeping my abs tight with each move to stabilize my back. Let me tell you though, it’s a lot more work to have to focus intently on doing that with every.single.rep. but obviously, it’s worth it to avoid re-injury and probably what I should be doing anyway. I also toned down the starting weights. While I knew I could go a little heavier on some of the moves, I want to be smart about getting back into lifting and not strain myself from day 1. I’d rather be able to lift lower weights than hurt myself and be sidelined again.

So far I like stage 2 and the new exercises. The dreaded step-up is one of the two moves that carried over from stage 1 though, go figure. The last move in the workout is the horizontal cable wood chop. I don’t have a cable system that is mid-chest at home so the home gym version says to lay on your back with knees bent and feet flat on the floor and just simulate the movement with a dumbbell or kettle ball. Well, I tried that and I definitely don’t think I’m doing it right because I don’t feel any sort of “burn.” Can anyone out there describe this move better?  I also definitely have a new favorite for this stage, the one point dumbbell row.

It feels like warrior 3 in yoga but with a strength element, I love it.

Stage 2 is 8 workouts long so hopefully in about 3 weeks I’ll have an update on progress. Fingers crossed for good health until then!

Now, on to the good stuff.

I took Averie’s method and created my own raw dough ball flavor.

Cherry + coconut + chocolate chips.

Larabar needs to come up with this cherry + chocolate chip flavor. These taste almost like a combination of their cherry pie + chocolate chip brownie bars except less “datey” and more “doughy.”

They are perfect for popping a couple after dinner and calling it dessert. They’re also perfect for quick fuel pre-workout. I used them as both yesterday.

This made 15 balls. My mission is to eat them all before leaving for a 36 hour trip to Seattle on Wednesday. For some reason I don’t think it will be a problem.