Guest Post - ENDED

Hey all, if you've seen twitter you may have seen I've been sent home from work. I'm not too well at the moment. I'm hoping more sleep will help. It's all I've done for the past two days.

Anyway a while ago Sophia from Bloggers Go Skinny asked if anyone would like to do a guest post on the black. It's Run by Sophia (From Tattoed Tea Lady) and Sandra (From The Black Pearl). Both L and I are trying to live healthier lifestyles and try and blog about it on here on Thursdays.

This post is our top tips for weight loss. Hope you find them helpful!

Love M

xxx 

Bloggers Unite to Lose Weight - America this

Hey All

My first proper post since my holiday. I had lots scheduled for when I was away so posts would still go up on my days off. My holiday was amazing. I think I will do a nosey photo post of it soon as I love looking at people's photos. 

This was the gorgeous view I was greeted with when I arrived at the hotel. I love the moody sky.

Breakfast Day 1 part 1

So the past two weeks I've been eating what I want. I'd said in previous posts I was going to restrict myself on holiday as it's a holiday and it's America. Full of naughty food treats and boy did I go all out on the food. Who can resist pancakes for breakfast. Especially American ones. I didn't spend much holiday laid down and spent 6 full days out of 7 at the parks so I did walk a lot and swim a bit too.

Day 1 part 2

While there I had 3 breakfasts like this

So the bad news. Over the past two weeks I've gained 4 and a half lbs. Not too bad could have been worse and I'm thinking positive that I've still lost 9lbs in 9 weeks. 

This had to happen Chilli Cheese Fries (best thing ever) and spicy chicken (I did eat the celery)

Diet wise now I'm back calorie counting starts again tomorrow (my food shop gets delivered tonight). I'm going to be upping my weekly calories to 1500 ish now during the week and sensible but what I want food at the week. I'm hoping this will give me the best of both worlds, with tasty meals, not feeling deprived and still losing a small amount like 1/2lb a week. I think this will more be easy to stick to.

The most beautiful steak I've ever had

I will be back to logging my food on MyFitnessPal (if you have it send me your name.) I love this app. It's brilliant and I don't think I'd have stuck so long at my weight loss with out it. It makes tracking what you eat so easy and there are lots of lovely people around for inspiration on bad days.

Roast beef, cheese and gravy Man V Food style sandwich

Exercise weight I'm unsure of at the moment. My knees are back hurting lately so a trip to the Doctors is needed when I get round to it. I really need to motivate myself to exercise in the flat. Especially as winter is drawing in and running when it's dark around by me isn't the safest.

The Last Day meal

Winter makes it hard but I'm thinking lots of tasty soups and warming meals from The Hairy Dieters book. I'm going to do a chilli, ginger and butternut squash  and a minestrone soup this week so I'll try and include those recipes next week aswell.

Washed down with a mint choc chip ice cream

I also need to be better at resisting the Starbucks at uni, not only is it a waste of money it's not great calorie wise even though I do go skinny. I also need to get my partner back out of his Domino's addiction. A low calorie pizza recipe would be appreciated if anyone has one.

My gorgeous hand luggage!! How cute is this. Just had to share it.

Hope you are all doing well. Sorry for the photos of my naughty food from holiday if your diets are going well. As you can see I fully went for it. What are your winter weight loss tips?

Love M

xxx

Bloggers Unite to Lose Weight

Today I'm doing this as a chatty post. I've not really got any photos to show.

First of all I'll start with the positives. I've lost 3lb this week. So I've now lost the stone I wanted to before my holiday (which is on saturday)

The rest of this post isn't a very positive one. As I'm sure most of you who have dieted will know it's full of ups and downs and this is a down week for me.

At the moment I'm feeling tired a lot and I'm feeling achy constantly. I'm not sure if I'm just really tired or whether it could be down to not eating enough. I try to eat 1200 calories or less at the moment. But I only do this Mon-Fri.

Exercise is non existant as I'm achy a lot of time. I also thought when I'd lost the stone I'd be happy to maintain. I'm not I still feel my bottom half is to big for the rest of my figure.

I go on holiday on Sunday. My plan is to eat what I want but at least swim daily in the morning and maybe take advantage of the gym.

I'm trying to decide where to go forward with my diet plan and tips would be appreciated. 1200 calories is enough for me. I'm not hungry during the week and don't feel like I'm depriving myself but I think after I get back I will up it to 1400 to see if it makes a difference to my energy levels.

My next struggle is I don't know where to add the calories on to. I don't want to get back into eating unhealthy meals. I'm thinking maybe more meat is needed.

I feel I'm losing a battle at the moment. I'm not hungry but think I really need to eat more. Any tips?

Bit of an all of over the place post from me today.

Don't forget to check out how

Fashion Floozy

and

Holly's Beauty Box

for their updates later :)

Love M

xxx

Bloggers Unite to Loose Weight No2

So 1 week has passed since my First post, found here if you fancy a read.

This week has been up and down for me if I'm honest. I seem to keep having busy weekends (not a bad thing) but I struggle to be good when I'm out with friends and celebrating.

This weekend was a huge one for me. One of my closest friends from home got engaged! I was so excited I spent Friday night making her a wedding planner so I skipped dinner and traded it for a peanut butter corenetto! It was amazing.

For me now I'm trying to be good during the week so at weekends I can let myself relax a bit. This seems to be working for me as I don't excessively over indulged at the weekend.

During the week if I crave something I have it.....But if it's bad for me I make sure I exercise enough to burn it off. On Tuesday I couldn't get fish and chips out of my head. So I went for a run with my debit card in hand and told myself unless I ran for 40 minutes I wasn't having it. I'm quite bad at bribing myself with things to exercise but it works for me.

Exercise

Exercise is now becoming a battle. I'm running further which I love but I'm now finding my hips are so painful it's stopping me going further rather than my fitness. I think a trip to the doctor is needed soon for a check up and maybe some new trainers. I was hoping I could last till Christmas without trainers but I'm not sure that's the case.

Food

Last week I picked up the hairy dieters cook book and for anyone dieting or trying to eat better I can not recommend it enough. It is full of amazing recipes. Most are pretty easy to cook too.

For me food wise the best thing I can do is eat as much food that I cook myself as possible. I tend to do a huge shop then cook a lot for a week and freeze a lot of meals so that when I'm lazy I'm not grabbing a frozen pizza or take away. I used to eat a lot of take away.

The hairy bikers have an amazing sweet and sour chicken meal which comes in around 450 calories with rice but today I wanted to share with you Chinese Yuk Sung. It's such an amazing dish and with the lettuce comes in at under 250 calories!! I've given this recipe to so many people and the hardest thing is chopping some veg. 

I'm finding Chinese a popular food choice to cook as their meals are reasonably low cal when cooked yourself.

Ingredients needed sorry for the blurry photo. I always use white wine vinegar for it as it's what I keep in the house.

To start with spray a non stick pan with fry light and crush the garlic into it. Add the grated ginger and finely chop the spring onions and add. 

Finely chop carrots (I tend to grate them as I like them small) celery and chop the water chestnuts in half.

Turn the heat to medium and gently fry the garlic, and spring onions for a few minutes. Then add the minced pork and cook until the pork is sealed.

Once the pork is sealed add the chopped carrots, celery and water chestnuts and cook for 4 - 5 minutes.

Next add the vinegar, soy sauce, oyster sauce, cornflour and Worcestershire sauce

Cook for a further two minutes until  vegetables are soft and meat is cooked (I forgot to add sweetener today and tasted no difference)

Spoon a quarter of the mixture onto a bed of iceberg lettuce or into little gem lettuce leafs.

Weight loss

This week even with a naughty weekend (yet again) I lost another 1lb. I'm happy with this as I'm still getting to enjoy my food while gradually losing weight and I'm hoping to adopt a healthier life style now more than a diet.

One thing I'm really noticing now is my jeans feeling baggy. I'm pretty sure that only started this week. So far I've found it frustrating that the scales were saying I'd lost the weight but I didn't feel it. Though I still look in the mirror and I'm not seeing much shred from my stomach and bum it's nice to have my jeans feel loser and it's pushing me more.

So that's this weeks update. Hope you liked the recipe in it. Would you like to see more healthy ones? How is your weight loss going if you're trying?

Love M

xxx

Don't forget to check out some of the other lovely bloggers doing this challenge

http://www.fashionfloozy.co.uk/

http://www.hollys-beauty-box.blogspot.co.uk/

Bloggers Unite to Loose Weight

After asking on twitter whether you would prefer a post on tan or my progress on my couch to 10k post I wrote a few weeks back (link) I was contacted by Holly from Holly's Beauty Box to see if I wanted to be included in her weekly  bloggers unite to loose weight  posts. I thought this was a great idea and I think being involved in a group and documenting your progress weekly helps you to achieve your goals. I find I feel more guilty if I do gain weight if I know others are following my progress.

These's are the Do's and Don'ts suggested by Holly and if any of you fancy joining this too you can get in touch with Holly via her blog (linked above) or twitter (@holly1986)

• DO's
• Do highlight your aims in terms of health, maintaining weight loss, losing weight, eating better, toning up. Whichever your aims are, highlight them. 
• Detail your plan - how you hope to achieve your target. 
• Detail your moods within each weekly vlog and blog entry.
• Do award yourself! theres bound to be something you really want, a dress or something, so detail what that will be and upon achieving your target  award yourself with your item of choice!
• Make sure youre completely honest, your vlogs are also helping other people and they need to see the highs and the lows!

DONT's

• The rules are, no-one states their start weight! 
• Dont fail to vlog on a weekly basis or its unlikely you'll stick to it
• Don't lie in your vlogs! youre only lying to yourself! 
• Don't make unrealistic goals.

My aims

I should mention I originally started trying to run back in June and get my fitness up but didn't match my diet with it. For the past 5 weeks I've matched a healthy eating plan and exercise and have so far lost 10lbs. L and I also send each other motivaional photos of gym quotes or bodies we want. Seeing amazing photos of Kelly Brook makes me want to put the chocolate down ha. I love her toned curvy shape.

So my aims are for regular exercise. I am for everyday, it's rare this will happen and usually I will exercise between 3 to 5 times a week. In the evenings sometimes I don't feel like it and if I really am tired I won't push myself. The exercise I am to do is a run or Jillian Michaels 30 day Shread. 

Food wise I use My Fitness Pal app which is an app I would recommend to everyone and anyone. It's so great to track what you eat and calorie count which is something I wouldn't do with out it and the support from others using it is great.

Exercise

As mentioned above I run. I find road running a great form of exercise to really burn fat. Back in June I struggled to run for a few minutes now I can run for at least 35 minutes solid or 3 15 minute runs. The key is to start slow. The couch to 10k app is another great one to follow. I followed solidly for 6 weeks then did my own thing. It's great for non runners as the first week is run for a minute walk for 90 seconds and you do that 8 times. sounds easy right? If you've never run it'll make you out of breath. As I said by week 6 I just wasn't feeling it. I didn't want to do solid 20 minutes of running and kept finding myself an excuse not to do it. I decided to then do my own thing. This started off doing 6 minute runs 2 minute walks and I just increased the run time as I felt ready and kept the walks in. Some days I now run 10 minute blocks some days I'll run for 35 minutes. With running do what you want. Have upbeat music, carry water and plan your route before hand. Once you start actually running what you think is a long distance doesn't actually turn out to be that long.

The other exercise I do is Jillian Michaels 30 day shred. I use this as my toning tool. It's a simple concept exercise daily for 20 minutes. 20 minutes is all it takes but my god it's harder than you'd think. I end up a sweaty mess. She works by doing 3 minutes of strength, 2 minutes of cardio and 1 minute of abs and this is repeated 3 times with a 1 minute warm up and cool down. This is great for if you are short of time and need inspiration to keep you going. All you need is weights (I picked them up from TK Maxx and a mat, I use a blanket) and the dvd is cheap on Amazon. I add extra sit ups to this work out now. On Tuesday I did the level two for the first time. Hello plank pain ha!!

Food

With the app I try to stick to 1200 calories before exercise and it's surprisingly easy to do.  My breakfast is either cereals or yoghurt and fruit and a black coffee. Lunch is green tea with salad, soup or left overs and Dinner is usually a slimming world recipe or one of The Hairy Dieters recipes. I fully recommend this cook book. I will include a recipe a week on here. Snacks I have more fruit or veg, humous, crispbreads, chocolate or a frozen muller light.

Freezing muller light kind of makes me feel like I'm having ice cream. I also keep a big bar of chocolate in the fridge and if I want it I'll have 4 squares a night. Diet coke is also only 1 calorie for a sweet treat.

Aims

I weigh once a week on Tuesday and don't peek at my weight before this. If I've had a bad week I'll still weigh as it's important to know where I am.

This week I will be going to celebrate a friends birthday. If I have an occasion like this I won't log my calories for the day but will pick healthy choices like having gin and tonics and will do extra exercise. For weekends if you want treats have them. For the rest of the week it'll be sticking to my food plan.

I also plan to run three times this week. I really want to up the exercise as my holiday is in 4 weeks and I aim for my thighs to not touch in the middle. Being pear shaped makes me feel really out of proportion and I'd just like a toned lower half and smaller arms.

On holiday I will be exercising still but not worrying about food. Long term I want to maintain healthy food and exercise to feel happy and confident with my body.

Hope you like this post and I'd be interested in reading yours if you are sticking to something like this for inspiration.

Love M

xxx