Holland & Barrett goodies

Yesterday I went to go get my eyebrows done - aren't they fab? ;)

(My hair is all kinds of cray in this photo. That's what studying does to people) 
...and on the way back I decided to drop into Holland & Barrett and take a look around. 

If you're not familiar with it, Holland & Barrett is a chain of health food stores - it's the same company as Nature's Way stores, which I think may now all be H&B anyway. I've been buying my protein bars there for a while, and have bought other bits and pieces, but have never really taken the time to go all the way round the store and look at everything they sell. So I had a bit of free time today and decided to spend it in there, and I bought a couple of fun things. 

Sculptress Diet protein bars (2)

 These are the protein bars I've been eating for ages - we have a HealthyVend in my gym and it stocks these. I got one ages ago out of curiosity and was hooked. They taste great and are 16.9g of protein per bar. But, they look so bad! Does anyone else think they look like actual diet bars á la Slimfast or something? They look so diet-plan-y that I'm almost embarrassed to eat them when people can see them, even though I've gone through the ingredients and nutrition carefully and they're just a regular old protein bar (although there's a couple of not-so-great bits in them too, but overall they're okay). So I decided to look into some new protein options.

PowerBar Protein Plus bar

 These make me feel hardcore. Silly but true ;) They've got 17g of protein, although they're not as good for carbs as the Sculptress bars. Also, there's a couple of not-so-nice ingredients (I counted three different kinds of artificial sugar crap - invert sugar syrup, fructose syrup and oligofructose syrup. Definitely definitely not good things to put in your body) but they're so far down the list I figure there can't be much. But still, I probably won't be buying another one unless it turns out to be amazing. 

Bounce Peanut Protein Blast Ball

This. Is. Amazing. I am not kidding. There's a whole ton of types of Bounce balls, from protein ones to energy boosters to detox ones, but this protein one looked amazing (plus peanuts are a big plus - I'm trying to up my healthy fats intake, plus they just taste so goooooood). This is seriously amazing though - completely 100% natural, with no artificial preservatives and it's gluten- and GM-free. And you've gotta love an ingredients list made up of real words that you actually know. The nutrition stats are great too - 14g of protein, 210 calories, 19g of carbs, and 8g of fat (only 1.5g of that is saturated fat, and these are completely free of trans fats too). I bought this, read the back, and literally thought, "If this tastes in any way decent I'll be eating them all the time." I ate this today after my workout, so there's a proper review coming up soon, but the verdict is basically yes yes yes. I'll be stocking up!

It's a stressful week (exams start next Tuesday, uh-oh) so I've been working out heaps as a stress-reliever. Look out for some new workout posts coming up soon!