Bribing Myself to Get out of Bed

Hey everyone, it's almost Friday!  What are you up to this weekend?  I've got a pretty busy day and weekend ahead of me, including some gym time, errands, phone calls (blah), school work, and some fun things mixed in there, too. 

This week I didn't have any classes in the morning, so I was able to go to the gym before school every day.  In order to motivate myself to actually get out of bed instead of sleeping in since I didn't *need* to be anywhere in the morning, it was really helpful to have breakfast already made!  I like to make breakfast cookies, and I also tried out a new recipe in my slow cooker:  apple cinnamon steel-cut oatmeal. 

What I woke up to in the morning!

I followed this recipe, using almond milk instead of fat-free milk, and I left the skin on the apples since that's where a lot of the nutrients are!  Since it cooked all night, the skin was very soft and I didn't mind having it in there at all.  If I make this again (which I'm sure I will) I will probably increase the amount of ground flax seed since flax seed is full of omega-3 essential fatty acids and has tons of health benefits - it's thought to reduce the risk of heart disease and breast cancer, among many other things.  (I buy whole flax seeds and grind them in my coffee grinder because whole flax seeds cannot be absorbed by our bodies.  You can also buy already-ground flax seeds.)

I would also increase the amount of cinnamon, because you can really never have enough cinnamon, in my opinion.  (Cinnamon also boasts a lot of health benefits, including having antiviral properties and reducing inflammation.)  The recipe is pretty basic, so I think it would be easy to switch up the ingredients - you could use pears instead of apples, throw some bananas in there, add dried berries, nut butters, and more!  Maybe even some carob or cocoa powder... mmmmm.  Definitely going to have to experiment with that.

It's pretty nice to roll out of bed and have a hot breakfast waiting for me :)

The leftovers warm up really well, too (just add a splash of milk), so this is perfect to make at the beginning of the week and re-heat during the week.  I wanted to try steel-cut oatmeal, but it takes a long time to cook on the stove top.  I'm never patient enough to wait very long for breakfast, so using the slow cooker was a great option.

How do you bribe yourself to get out of bed in the morning?  Or are you already a morning person?  I would stay up until 3AM every night if I didn't need more sleep than that.  Even when I was really young I would be sneaky and stay up late to read by the light from the hall (I don't know how I could even see my book!) or I would lay on the floor of the hallway and read by the nightlight if my parents had already turned off the hall light and gone to bed.  Oh kids, they do the craziest things... Ha!

Song of the day:

"Louie" by Ida Maria - I really like her kind of rough, screamy voice.  This is another song on my current workout playlist.