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

Sleek Pout Polish Perfect Plum

It's been a while since I've done a lipstick post (previously my Lipstick Monday's series which can be found here) my last post was the gorgeous Kate Moss for Rimmel lipstick in shade 20 which is a bright pink. I'm loving bright pink shades on my lips and find myself grabbing these over others a lot. But as winter seems to be quickly approaching us (except today where it's lush and sunny) and soon I can grab for the vampy burgundy reds again soon I thought I'd share one of my favourite A/W shades with you.

This is the Sleek Pout Polish in Perfect Plum. They are available from Superdrug or the Sleek website and cost £4.29. I think it's a good price as you get a lot of product. The packaging is a round pot with a screw on lid. Perfect for the handbag as the lid isn't going to come off.

The product is a sort of glossy coloured balm. It's a lovely soft texture. Due to being a cross with a balm and a lipgloss obviously lasting power isn't something that is expected with this product. I love the perfect plum colour. It's a sort of deep reddy plum a darker version of lip tone in my opinion. The downside to his product is it's in a pot and you dip your finger in which is something I don't like.

A bonus with this is if you forget blusher it can double up as a cream blusher but is very pigmented so only the smallest amount is needed. It also contains SPF 15 so it's a great product for summer to protect the lips as well.

I can't wait to pick up more of these in other shades as I love the texture and finish. A great cheap lip colour and one that keeps your lips moisturised.

Have you got any of these pout polishes? Do you have any products that are like a gloss in a tub? I'm really liking sleek make up at the moment.

Love M

xxx

Review: Origins Super Spot Remover

After waking up last Thursday with the biggest spot ever on my face. It had developed into painfulness from a few days earlier and was now an Angry mess. I decided enough was enough I had to try this product everyone was raving about.

WARNING the offending spot

 It doesn't look as bad here, but trust me it was huge. I'm sure you've guessed by now both L and I are huge Origins fans. What's not to love about a brand that make there products without so many badies such as parabens , animal ingredients and synthetic colours or fragrances.

I'd heard so many positive reviews about this little wonder product I had to try it myself. It's a clear gel easily dispensed from the bottle without getting to much out. This will definitely last a long time and for £13 you get 10ml. Worth it if you suffer nasty spots you want gone quickly.

You just need to cleanse the skin and apply a small amount directly to the spot up to 3 times a day. I was warned to avoid getting it on the skin surrounding the spot as it can dry that out but I found mind was ok. When I woke up the morning after applying it my spot was less sore, less red and a lot less noticeable.

After two days it had gone down and the redness left after a spot healed up a lot quicker than it normally does for me so this was a pleasant bonus.

It contains ingredients such as alcohol to dry the spot up, salicylic acid to treat it and witch hazel to ensure it doesn't get infected. These work so well together.

I will be using this again and again when they pop up and it will definitely be repurchased when it eventually runs out. 

Do you own this? What do you use to fight spots?

Love M

xxx

Selfridge's Beauty Box Part 2

As I'm sure you know by now as we've mentioned a lot (we are both just excited to give this away to someone as we were excited when we received ours) we are giving away one of the much spoke about Selfridge's beauty boxes. (here)

As we decided to split them I ended up with four of the products. Today I'll be talking about 3 of them as I haven't used the fourth as I had two serums and wanted to use one for as long as possible so I could give a better review on it.

First up is the BioEffect EGF Serum. This is a cellular activating serum. That is meant to restore, rehydrate and rejuvenate skin. This was the product I was most excited about trying. I'm like L and my spots have been leaving nasty red marks on my face that take ages to fade. I've also been keen to add a serum to my skin care system for a while.

BioEffect serum is great it only includes 9 ingredients which I love. It's great to see such a sort list of ingredients. One thing I'm confused about is on the box it says apply to clean cleansed skin at night yet on the boots website it says apply morning and night. I've been using it only at night.

So far I've really enjoyed it. I've used it every night for the past 9 days. I cleanse my face and apply four drops of it. It's a clear bottle with a cute dropper pipette. I prefer this style of bottle for serums as I think it's easier. It's quite a liquid serum so a little goes a long way. So far I've had no breakouts my skin is well conditioned and it hasn't made my skin feel over oily. I tend to apply this an hour before bed then apply a night cream and eye cream just before bed.

The 5ml sample size costs a huge £49.00 in boots so isn't something I'll be buying anytime soon but I do love it and was glad to get it in my box.

Next up is the Estelle and Thild organic lipbalm. This came in the flavour raspberry.

First up how cute is the packaging. I love all the pretty flowers on it. Secondly I love that it's in a tube. I hate lip balms you dip your finger in. Hence why I don't use Vaseline. Thirdly raspberry is a flavour I love. Finally it's a certified organic product containing great moisturising ingredients such as beeswax , jojoba oil, shea butter and olive oil. This is another product that only contains a total of 8 ingredients!

This is a very thick moisturising lipbalm that I love. The fragrance is subtle and not at all over powering. I love that I put it on at night and can still feel the after effects when I wake up in the morning.

It's colourless so great for putting over lipstick during the day. The lip balm costs £16 from here. This site offers free shipping and they have it in different colours. I really like this product and would pay the extra for it those months that I could afford to splurge.

Lastly for me is the Omorovicza mask. I was so excited to try this product but to be honest was a little disappointed with it.

In my opinion 5ml isn't a big enough sample of mask to try. To get a decent layer on your skin you need to use the whole pot and before commiting to spending £57 on the 50ml pot (available from House of Fraser) I'd like to have been able to try it more than once.

It does feel really soft on the skin and left my skin feeling very smooth and soft and there was no tightness or stinging which you can sometimes feel with a face mask.

But only being able to try it once means I won't be splashing out for this product as I feel the lush face masks do the same job at the moment. If I'd had enough to try it a little more maybe I'd have been convinced.

Are you hoping to win the giveaway to try any of these items? Do you already own any of them?

Love M

xxx