Hello everyone! Hope you are well and happy that the weekend is here! I’ve had a packed day and therefore have a packed post!

I had a bit of a bad time last night. After I’d posted and thought my snackiness was over I had a total binge fest. I ate Dark Chocolate Dreams straight from the jar, three small bowls of muesli, a frozen chocolate avocado cup, nakd raisins, I just couldn’t stop! I felt so guilty. Then to make matters worse I had my weigh in and unsurprisingly I haven’t lost a single pound of the 5 lbs I gained on my holiday (I’m now 10st 1 / 141lbs). To say I was in a bad mood this morning was an understatement!

I went to the gym and did 30 minutes of intervals followed by abs and upper body weights. While I was at the gym I gained a bit of perspective and started to feel a bit better, I’ve said that 10st is my ‘happy’ weight and I’m only 1 lb over that so it isn’t too bad really.

Breakfast was a bowl of berries and chopped apple with some We Are Bear Coca Cherry Pie Granola and fromage frais mixed with a scoop of Nutty Berry Spiru-tein.



This combo worked really well together, and I love the pink fromage frais!

Before we left for the wedding I had a snack of a chopped nectarine and clemintine with a few seeds on top.



I’ve just came home from the wedding (I’ll cover my eats further on in the post) and made myself this gorgeous green monster with loads of spinach, 1 frozen banana, soy milk, maca powder and cinnamon.



Just what I needed!

Outfit of the Day



This is my outfit for the wedding – Dress: Topshop, Black Peep Toe Shoes: Office, Black Satin Bag: Accessorize, Head Band: home made. I also wore a little black blazer.

I went for vintage style make up with black flicked eye liner and neutral eye shadow and my new MAC Russian Red lipstick. I went for a pearl white nail varnish rather than a dark or brighter colour on my nails as I though that might be too much with the red lips. I pined my hair back in a simple bun.

Eddie and Becca’s Wedding

I love weddings and this was a really lovely day. I actually welled up when she walked down the aisle and you could see Eddies face, they were so clearly in love with each other! Here’s a few snap shots from the day:









I decided to have some fun with the snap shots, I quite like the vintage / retro style of these pics!
Do you like weddings? Eddie and Becca make such a lovely couple, and the day was really good fun.

What do you have planned for the weekend? I have quite a busy one! I’m swapping my usual Saturday run to Sunday when I’m going to try and run from my house to my Parents (around 9 – 10 miles). Tomorrow I’ll be cleaning and tidying the flat, doing some cooking and baking and having a trip into town to get some groceries from the market. I can’t wait, I love my grocery shopping! Hope you have all had a great week x

Hi Everyone, hope your Mondays have been good! Mine hasn’t been too bad but it was so difficult to get up for work this morning! Even though I didn’t really sleep in much over my hols 6am felt way too early. I had a nice near empty jar of smooth peanut butter so breakie was Oats in a Jar. I filled it with porridge made with Scottish oats, chia seeds, a mashed banana and water. I topped it off with a few cacao nibs.



So amazing and so filling! I left my morning snack of fromage frais with blueberries and honey till later as I wasn’t hungry and that never happens!



Lunch was a bowl of Pea, Broccoli and Mint Soup.



Followed by a couple of peaches.



I also had an un-pictured little clemintine left from a work buffet. Before I left work to head to the gym I snacked on a small apple and a Raspberry We Are Bear Fruit YoYo.



The raspberry is probably my favourite flavour YoYo so far, these taste far too much like sweets to be healthy!

I had a tough gym workout. I warmed up for 5 minutes on the recumbent bike and then did a total of 60 minutes of high intensity intervals on the cross trainer, step machine and bike. I also did 3 sets of abs exercises including 3 x 40 second planks that were so hard my arms were shaking!

For dinner I made a really amazing salad inspired by the Marks and Spencer Whole Food Salad Shaker I’d ate last week (readers in the UK might have seen it on the new M&S advert):

Laura’s Whole Food Salad (makes two servings)

• Approximately half a cup of cooked quinoa (I cook mine in veg stock)
• Approximately half a cup of cooked brown rice
• A selection of roasted veggies – I used a small head of broccoli, 1 yellow pepper, half a courgette, a small carrot and a red onion
• 2 cups of spinach
• 2 tablespoons of sunflower and pumpkin seeds

For the lemon, garlic, tahini dressing:

• 1 tablespoon of garlic infused olive oil (or olive oil and a minced clove of garlic)
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 1 heaped teaspoon of tahini

Mix the quinoa, brown rice, roasted veggies and seeds together and divide into two portions. Make up the dressing my adding the dressing ingredients to an empty screw top jar and shake together. Pour out equal amounts of dressing for each portion and mix with the quinoa, rice and veggies. Serve this mix on top of a bed of spinach and top with a few more seeds. Enjoy!



This tasted so good and is so good for you! I love this mix of healthy grains, veggies, seeds and healthy fats from the dressing, perfect. I added a handful of chopped sugar snap peas to the salad as I have some in the fridge plus a few slices of cucumber. I made my salad up yesterday and kept it in the fridge so I ate mine cold but I think this would taste good warm too.

For desert I made myself a creamy protein shake with a scoop of cookies and cream spiru-tein, soy milk and a couple of ice cubes. I also had an apple.



Ok now I’m officially stuffed!

Today I came across another great post on (never home)maker about living a budget friendly life. Lots of good budgeting tips for my Big Budget Challenge! I think that even though my spending during my holiday was ‘allowed’ as part of the challenge I need to step things up a bit, luckily I have loads of ideas, especially around making things for the flat which should be fun to do as well!

Well I’m still sitting here thinking about how good that salad tasted! Have you ever been inspired by something you’ve eaten at a restaurant or from a supermarket and tried to make your own version? What was it, and was it as nice as the original? I often try and recreate things I’ve had before but with my own spin on it!

Hi Everyone, hope you’ve all had a great weekend! Back to the grind now though, I have lots on at work at the moment and thankfully I’m able to work from home tomorrow to get caught up!

As the kids are off school this week the traffic situation isn’t as crazy as usual which meant I had time to enjoy a more leisurely breakfast including a cup of delicious cinnamon and hazelnut coffee which I drank black and sweetened with agave. I also had a bowl of Dorset Cereal High Fibre muesli with added jumbo oats, ground flax and nut mix, a grated apple and soy milk.

I love grated apple with muesli it makes it so juicy!

Mid morning I snacked on a big russet apple and one of my pumpkin spice cake bars.

Lunch was a big salad of spinach, carrot, red onion, cucumber and almond sesame smoked tofu with a little green tomato chutney followed by two plums.

Afternoon pre gym fuel was a bag of bear fruit nibbles – mango and pineapple.

I did my usual Monday evening gym session of 30 minutes HIITs followed by 30 minute spin class and abs and core exercises. My abs and core work is really paying off, I can feel some serious abs under my belly! My workout was really excellent again tonight, it just didn’t feel too hard. I think I’m ready to ramp it up next month so I feel the burn again!

For dinner I decided to make up one of my high protein egg white and spelt wraps (1 tablespoon of spelt flour mixed with 3 egg whites and fried up like a pancake) and filled it with some leftover mashed roast butternut squash, some kidney beans, red onion and a slice of cheese then fold over and griddle to make a Butternut and Bean Quesadilla. I served it with some roasted broccoli.

 

My word this was delicious! Everything went together so well and the egg white spelt wrap went really crispy and pancake like. You could make a vegan version of this using a wholegrain wrap and leaving out the cheese or add chicken or turkey if your not a veggie. Just so yummy!

Desert was a smoothie in a bowl made using a scoop of cookies and cream spiru-tein powder, rice milk and ice cubes. I topped it with a few cacao nibs.

I’ve also just eaten another russet apple, I have an apple problem at the moment, just can’t get enough!

I mentioned yesterday that I have ordered The Kind Diet and another vegan cookbook La Dolce Vegan, I’m just feeling so inspired by vegetarian and vegan recipes at the moment. I checked over the blog and I’ve eaten completely vegetarian for a week and I haven't missed meat one bit. I think I may actually be ready to go fully veggie rather than ‘only freedom food / organic meat’ as I had planned to. I still don’t want to label myself as following any kind of particular diet at this stage but that’s certainly the direction I feel myself heading.

In terms of the blog obviously that’s going to mean veggie and vegan food and recipes. I hope that everyone is ok with that and sticks with me! :-)

As I have previously said, I certainly don’t judge others for their dietary preferences, this is just what I feel is right for me. When I post recipes or meal ideas I’ll include what meat / fish options I think would work well then you can decide which way to make them.

Anyway, on to some hair care products! Yesterday I noticed these in Sainsbury’s and decided to pick them up as after reading this post from Sarah I switched to hair care without parabens or silicone which has really worked well for me. My hair is in pretty good condition considering how long it is.

Has anyone came across ‘Happy Hair Days’ products before? I got the pomegranate and ginger moisturising shampoo and conditioner at £3.50 a bottle. I have to admit the main thing that made me buy these as well as being paraben free is the smell. They smell divine, I tried all of the range that was on the shelf and they all smelled amazing!

Talking of hair, I have a hair cut booked for Friday and I really fancy a change. Before I got married over 2 years ago my hair had always been in a bob, this is the longest its ever been. After all of this growing I’m reluctant to cut it all off although my hair does grow extremely fast (which I put down to all the healthy food I eat!) Not sure what to do!

How often do you change your hair style?

I’ve had another day working from home so have been beavering away with the odd twitter and blog break since 7.15. I was up early to do Level 3 of the 30 Day Shred then had a really gorgeous breakfast. I made a chocolate cherry green monster smoothie (spinach, frozen cherries, chocolate whey, soy milk, matcha green tea powder and maca powder) and topped it with one of Tam’s crumbled dark chocolate cherry cookies.

It was just perfect, the cookie went so well with the smoothie, out of this world delicious!

Mid morning I snacked on an un pictured russet apple. For lunch I had some Chickpea, sweet potato, aubergine and green bean curry from my frozen stash served with spinach followed by an orange.

 

The curry tasted amazing, much better than it did on the day I made it. I almost couldn’t believe I’d made it myself!

Mid afternoon I had a bowl of vanilla tofu with apple, raspberry, goji berry and cinnamon compote and some We are bear apple crumble granola.

Such a lovely filling snack!

I’m off to yoga tonight (and a trip to Starbucks hopefully, yey!) so I shall leave you with a bit of a (wordy) review!

Beet It Shot Review

A couple of months ago I was sent a pack of Beet It Shots from James White Drinks to test out and review.

The shots are basically small bottles of concentrated organic beetroot juice with a little lemon juice added.

Beetroots are naturally high in nitric oxide (NO). Here’s some info from the website:

So what does NO do?

• regulator of blood pressure;
• a gatekeeper of blood flow to certain organs;
• a stamina enhancer via oxygen usage efficiency;
• a weapon against infection;
• a signal molecule in the nervous system.

‘The Beet It shot version is an organic concentrated beetroot 7cl bottle that delivers a comparable dose of dietary nitrate as a 25cl Beet It organic beetroot juice. It is cut with lemon juice to  reduce the sweetness of the beetroot and actually does not taste of beetroot (unlike the Beet It juice). So it is a quick easy dose for people that do not like beetroot juice!  We have only just launched it but the UK elites sports teams (UK athletics team took them to the July European Championships and both the England and Welsh rugby teams have been trialling them) are very interested’

For more info on the research behind NO see here.

How I used it

I used the Beet It Shots as my pre work out snack so I would drink one about an hour before hitting the gym. Obviously this was not a proper research trial but I can’t say I noticed a huge difference between how well I worked out when using the Beet It Shots in comparison to other pre workout snacks such as dried fruit and nuts.

Pro’s

• These are a great way of getting in one of your 5 a day which is organic and fairly low calorie for a juice (71 cals for a shot).
• High quality, organic product made with British ingredients
• Convenient – handy little bottle which you can easily carry around with you.
• The shot didn’t cause me any digestive problems.
• The shot will also give you a great hit of antioxidants.
• These could be good if you work out first thing and can’t stomach food before working out. I found that they provided just enough of an energy boost to make a difference.
• Great health claims backed up by some convincing research.

Con’s

• Cost – these are not cheap. They are sold in Holland and Barratt for £1.79 a little bottle.
• Taste – I love beetroot and these still sometimes tasted a bit too sweet for me (although they don’t particularly taste of beetroot, weird I know).
• Although I didn’t have any digestive problems these did turn my pee pink, which personally I found a little disconcerting!

My overall verdict

Personally I wouldn’t purchase these again on a regular basis. If they were a little cheaper that would be better but I wouldn’t want to see any reduction in the quality of the product (i.e. British sourced beetroot and organic). I would perhaps buy them if I was feeling a bit under the weather and wanted a boost, as while taking these I did feel really healthy, but I can’t say that was just down to the shots! I would also consider buying these again if I was training for an event as I found them useful while training for the Great North Run and even downed one before the big race! If you are looking for a convenient liquid snack before working out or a handy way to increase your consumption of antioxidants and vegetables then these could be really good for you. If your training hard for an event or have a high blood pressure it could be worth trying these out for yourself as the research to support the shots around helping in these areas is very good.

James White Drinks also sell a full sized bottle of beetroot juice, as well as a great range of fresh veggie and fruit juices. As beetroots are often used to add sweetness in healthy chocolate cakes and brownies I would love to try it in a chocolate smoothie some time!

Have you tried Beet It Shots before? What was your opinion of the product? Is this something you would try?

I thought I'd better make it an early start this morning as I had loads I wanted to get done today, starting with my run. I had a hot water and lemon and this We Are Bear Peach Fruit Yoyo for a little bit of fuel before heading out. It was very tasty and reminded me of a sweet you would get in a mix up bag when you were a kid. Very retro!

I ran 5 miles and it was glorious! My knee is doing so well (I'm almost afraid to type that, I don't want to jinx it!) I did 5.03 miles in 49.04 with an average pace of 9.45, over a 10 second improvement since last week. It feels so good to be running again, bring on next weekend's 6 miles! I came home, stretched and used my wonderful foam roller then got to making breakfast.

I made a chocolate peanut butter smoothie (frozen banana, chocolate whey, teaspoon of cocoa powder, big tablespoon of smooth peanut butter and skim milk blended) then mixed in some oats and topped with a few grape nuts, cinnamon and a drizzle of maple syrup.

This was my 5 mile run celebration treat and it was oh so good!

I then spent the morning cleaning and tidying the flat, it was gross! Mid morning I snacked on an apple...

... then lunch was a tuna salad with mixed salad leaves, cucumber, red onion, sugar snap peas and balsamic dressing with a glass of fresh orange juice.

I also had a bowl of sweet strawberries.

I headed out to my best mates for a cuppa and a catch up and then on to my parents to say hi as well.

Mid afternoon I snacked on some veggies with salsa for dipping.

I had been planning on having a nakd bar or something but I'm proper craving veggies today!

For dinner I tried out my new spiralizer and made courgette 'pasta' with quorn mince in a tomato sauce with mushrooms, garlic and a side salad.

I'm over the moon with my spiralizer, I'm going to be using it for all sorts of things now!
Desert was something I've been dying to try out for ages - chocolate avocado pudding! I've never had avocado but I can safely say I'm now hooked. I had a try of it plain before making it into the pud and I'll definitely be using this in salads in the future. I used this recipe from Averie, but only used one avocado and didn't add the vanilla extract, to make it in to this beautiful bowl of chocolately heaven!

This tastes like, and has the texture of chocolate fudge cake icing, love it!

Other things I'm loving right now:

This cute necklace from Accessorize that I've had a while (don't worry I haven't been breaking my Big Budget Rules!) - I've been wearing it nearly everyday!

Flesh Tone by Kelis - I'm in love with this album at the moment and have been playing it constantly. Its also on my running playlist and really got me moving this morning!

Veggies - On my way home I popped into Lidl on the hunt for more bargains and picked up all these for £5.65

Mushrooms, brocolli, red, yellow and green peppers, red onion, spinach, italian salad, strawberries.

This Topshop make up cream blusher in Blush

My summer make up essential for making me look rosy!

...and Twitter!

I tend to fall in love with something - an album, song, piece of clothing, book or movie and then play, wear or watch it over and over! What are you loving right now?

- I'm still playing about with the design of the blog so the heading might change again! Should be sorted by Monday x