Happy Friday everyone! This Friday comes with an extra bit of happiness for me as I am now on holiday for a week, bring it on! I am pretty ready for the weekend after being ill mid week. Luckily I’m feeling much better but poor James also caught whatever it was so he’s been ill too. Here’s a look at my workouts for the week:

• Sunday – 30 minute treadmill run, 15 minute bike, Kettle bell Class
• Monday – Yoga class 1 hour 30
• Tuesday – Unexpected rest day – ill :-(
• Wednesday – AM gym workout – 5 min warm up cross trainer, strength from Female Body Breakthrough ‘Dial It In’ phase, 20 min HIITs on bike
• Thursday – AM – Yoga for Runners podcast, PM Gym – 321 workout
• Friday - AM gym workout – 5 min warm up cross trainer, strength from Female Body Breakthrough ‘Dial It In’ phase, 20 min HIITs on step machine

Thanks for all your comments about the yoga class. I’ve been looking at what other yoga is being offered in my area and it all seems to be Hatha style yoga which I understand to be pretty slow paced. I don’t mind doing one class like that a week but I couldn’t do two! With that in mind I’m probably going to experiment with a couple of different classes at the gym and some DVD’s and podcasts and then re jig my workout week.

Luckily I’m back to my normal self now but mid week I had very little appetite due to that mystery illness, however chocolate and peanut butter makes everything better:

This was one of the only things I managed to eat on Tuesday, it contained spring greens, banana, lots and lots of peanut butter, water and ice then topped with peanut flour sauce and dark chocolate chips. Also accompanied by several spoons of peanut butter straight up with dark chocolate chips stuck on. Speaking of nut butter and spoons…

My order of Justin’s Chocolate Hazelnut Butter arrived from iHerb! I did just about manage to eat some of this ;-)

I’ve also continued to enjoy my current favourite snack of almonds and raisins:

These were some extra special almonds that I’d soaked overnight then coated in shoyu and ‘roasted’ in the dehydrator to make raw salted almonds. They are gorgeous, I can’t get enough of the sweet and salty combo! I just had to add some on top of a butternut squash smoothie too:

I decided to get one of these in while I still craved it. This was roast butternut, kara coconut milk, vanilla sun warrior protein powder, ginger, cinnamon and ice topped with maple syrup and those almonds all chopped up. Heaven!

I also made a pretty awesome dinner that I had a couple of nights in a row – baked tempeh with stir fried purple sprouting broccoli and greens in a ginger coconut sauce:

I marinaded the tempeh in a mix of shoyu, honey, ground ginger and garlic powder then baked. For the veggies I just stir fried them in a little coconut oil then once they were tender I added about 3/4 cup of full fat coconut milk, fresh minced ginger, shoyu sauce and 1/2 tbsp of coconut flour (to add thickness) then cooked off for a couple of minutes to thicken up even more before serving. I haven’t had full fat coconut milk in ages and it was so good. I was even more surprised when the leftover milk that had been left in the fridge turned into a very thick cream. I had a sudden moment of inspiration and decided to use it to top a gooey baked sweet potato for my lunch today:

I also added some peanut flour sauce for a bit of protein. You can’t tell me that doesn’t look amazing right? I’m a full fat convert now!

Other meals that have helped me get my appetite back include:

Big salad with romaine, red onion, yellow pepper, cucumber, black beans and avocado

Green smoothie with spinach, persimmons x 3, 1/2 banana, vanilla sun warrior protein powder, water, ice, maca powder, ground flax topped with Dorset Cereal’s fabulous ‘Simply’ muesli and more sliced persimmon

My obsession continues… four fresh figs topped with tahini (watered down a bit for more pourability), black strap molasses and thyme honey. Can not get enough!

I’ve been loving my fats this week. I used to always go for the low fat versions of everything such as hummus, light coconut milk and yoghurt (when I was eating that). I know that when you are seeking to lose weight reducing fat can be a good strategy, however fats are essential in our diets for so many things including the absorption of some fat soluble vitamins and good skin, hair and nails. I know there are ‘good’ fats (poly unsaturated and mono unsaturated fats) and ‘bad’ fats (saturated and trans fats) but for me I don’t worry too much about that and enjoy plant sources of fats even though coconut milk, butter and oil contains some saturated fat. There is some evidence that the medium chain fatty acids (MCFA’s) present in coconut milk are processed by the body in a different way to saturated fat from other sources and that they can provide energy and help to maintain weight by increasing satiety. As long as its not the nasty trans fats, and that the fat in whatever form is coming from whole unprocessed foods, I’m happy! Are you a low fat or full fat person? I definitely think there’s a balance to be had between the two.

Have you got anything exciting planned for the weekend? Tonight I’m doing something I’ve wanted to do for ages, if it works out ok I’ll share on Sunday! Other than that I think its going to be a pretty chilled weekend just catching up with friends and family, a bit of gym time and of course getting set to travel down to Brighton next week. Hope whatever your up to you have fun, and manage to stay warm!

Hello everyone, hope you are well! I’ve had a funny old couple of days to report on. Yesterday I was hit with a mystery tummy bug so I feel like I’ve been playing catch up with myself since then! Monday had actually got off to a good start with pancakes for breakfast:

Strawberry and Coconut Grain Free Pancakes (vegan, serves 1)

• 1/2 cup of gram / chickpea flour
• 1 tbsp of coconut flour (optional)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 cup of non dairy milk (I used kara coconut milk)
• 1/4 cup of water (don’t add this if you are not using the coconut flour)
• 1/2 tsp of coconut extract or 1 tbsp of desiccated coconut
• Oil for frying (I used coconut oil)
• 1 punnet of strawberries
• 1 tbsp of softened coconut butter
• 1 tbsp of syrup – maple / agave etc (I used coconut nectar)

Begin by mixing the flours and baking powder together in a bowl. Add the coconut milk, 1/4 cup of water if using and the extract / desiccated coconut and combine well. Heat a frying pan to medium high, add the oil for frying then pour out the batter to your desired pancake size. While the pancake is frying you can add a few chopped strawberries into the batter before flipping. Keep the pancakes under the grill to keep warm as you use all the remaining batter. Plate up the pancakes spread with coconut butter and top with chopped fresh strawberries. Pour over your syrup and dig in!

These were delicious, the subtle coconut flavour pairs so well with the sweet strawberries and the pancakes themselves are lovely and spongy with an almost custardy taste from the gram flour, yum!

We decided to have a trip into town for a coffee, it was chucking it down again! Outfit of the Day:

Trench: Debenhams, coral tee: Topshop, turquoise and gold necklace: Forever 21, tan leather belt: Topshop, tan leather bag: Mango, turquoise ring: Forever 21, skinny jeans: H&M, tan leather boots: ASOS.

I got the trench out again, hope this weather improves soon!

Lunch was leftover roasted veggies with a baked sweet potato, hummus and salad. It was delicious, I’m not sure if this is what made me ill but 2 hours after eating this I started feeling very poorly indeed :-(

However I am lucky as whenever I tend to get a poorly tummy it never seems to last much longer than a few hours. By 7pm I was craving peanut butter so I knew I was on the mend. I decided to make myself a Cure All Green Smoothie:

This contained romaine, spring cabbage, frozen banana, frozen mango, ridiculous amounts of crunchy peanut butter, coconut water (for rehydration), spirulina, ground ginger (can help combat nausea). I then topped it with chopped crystallised ginger (again, for the nausea) plus freeze dried berries and chocolate covered sunflower seeds, cause a girl needs some form of chocy when she’s feeling sorry for herself! This was perfect though, it really settled my poor tummy. After I ate this I started feeling so much better, I was actually ravenous so had a bowl of granola with apple and coconut milk too.

This morning I felt almost back to my usual self so started the day with Yoga For Runners. I followed that with a green juice containing cucumber, celery, lemon and ginger. A little later I had this wonderful bowl of muesli:

Two chopped apples, my home mix muesli, brown rice puffs and kara coconut milk. I love how the chia seeds and oats in the muesli absorb the milk!

This evening I headed to the gym and did 30 minutes of cardio intervals on the usual machines before heading to my body pump class, unfortunately the instructor didn’t show up! I was gutted as I had been really looking forward to the class. I ended up just doing a few squats, lunges, rows etc with the bars on my own instead.

Dinner was whole wheat spaghetti with spiralised courgettes and a lentil, tomato and mushroom sauce topped with fresh basil and olives:

Such a great meal! Dessert was a pumped up version of my raw cacao coconut frappe in a bowl as I used a scoop of chocolate sun warrior protein powder instead of the cacao for the added protein post workout:

So good!

I know that for a lot of people dry toast is all they can stomach when they are ill but that green smoothie really did the trick for me! What is your cure all meal when you’ve been ill?

Well I have not had a very good 24hrs blog friends, it seems that I have picked up some tummy bug. I didn't get a wink of sleep last night I just felt so ill. I spent most of the night lying on the bathroom floor desperately trying to get some sleep. So I've taken a sick day and a rest day from exercise (except a bit of gentle yoga) to try and pull myself together. I hate being ill, I hate missing work through illness and I hate missing a workout! Ok, I'll try not to make this post too whiney from now!

When I eventually felt able to eat something there was only one thing on my mind - a green monster in a bowl (spinach, frozen banana, coconut milk, maca powder) topped with a few grape nuts for crunch.

I ate this very slowly, and luckily my poor tummy didn't mind it.

I then spent most of the morning in bed trying to sleep (which I couldn't) and trying to drink as much water as possible to rehydrate myself and try and shift my crazy headache (which I also couldn't). Eventually I decided to just get up, get showered and try and pull myself together. I ate some gala melon mid morning.

Then for lunch I decided to eat something a bit bigger, so I tried half a baked sweet potato with some home made salsa (I'll post the recipe tomorrow as this was quite yummy) and some red kidney beans.

I wanted to try and stretch my muscles a little and get the blood moving round my body a bit so I did 15 mins of Yoga Stretch from Davina's total fit DVD. This really made me feel better for a few hours.

Mid afternoon I had a chopped apple with greek yoghurt with agave and some Bear Apple Crunch Granola Nibbles.

I thought I should try and eat something for Dinner as well so I made a small an omlette with 1 egg and 1 egg white, some red onion, courgette and organic mature cheddar cheese with a small side salad of cos lettuce, cucumber and carrot.

I'm also planning on eating this bowl of Mint Chocolate Tofu Pudding a bit later. I would have to be really ill to not want to eat this!

Drinks - water, green tea, decaf tea

How do you deal with things when you're poorly? Do you have a 'go to' meal that always makes you feel better? I used to be a dry toast girl before I was aware of green monsters. At least with green monsters your getting plenty of vitamins into your system. I'm also the kind of person that avoids taking pills and tablets unless I'm really bad. I ended up trying Rennies and Windeez last night and I really don't think they did me any favours at all. I've also just popped a couple of Nurofen to try and help with my headache.

So I'm not going to hang about tonight, I'm still trying to catch up with Lost then its straight off to bed, I just hope I can get some sleep! Catch you tomorrow x

Hi everyone, hope you are having a good week! If you’re in the UK, how lovely has this warm weather been? Gorgeous! Unfortunately I’ve been fighting a bit of a cold / flu type thing that decided to creep up on me, I hate summer viruses!

These are my eats and goings on from yesterday. I didn’t actually feel so bad when I woke up. I had the usual warm water with lemon juice and since I was working from home I decided to treat myself to a nice breakfast. I made a two egg omelette with my local free range eggs and spread some almond butter and sugar free strawberry jam in the middle. I had that with a peach:

I know that combo sounds odd but try it, so delicious! I also had some spinach that needed using up so I made a green smoothie with the spinach blended with a scoop of vanilla sun warrior protein powder, water, ice and stevia:

There was also black coffee :-)

I needed to pop out briefly and thought I would try and make a bit of an effort as that usually makes me feel much better, OOTD:

Collar necklace: Topshop, stripy dress: Tu @ Sainsbury’s, wooden and metal bangles: various, tan leather sandals: New Look

After that came home and started operation kick this colds ass, starting with some fresh ginger tea, manuka honey and Ibuprofen for the headache:

I also added a squeeze of lemon juice to that tea as well. A bit later on I decided to make myself another smoothie and my word this was awesome!

Magical Cold Blaster Smoothie (vegan, serves 1 very generously)

• 1 orange
• 200g of mixed frozen berries (or fresh berries)
• 1 slice of fresh ginger (finely chop it if you don’t have a high speed blender)
• 1/4 tsp of cayenne pepper
• 1 tbsp of cocoa powder (I used cococardio for an extra kick)
• Ice and water to blend
• Optional add ins – matcha green tea powder, honey, any greens you have lying about – I used some spinach

Blend everything together adding some stevia or agave for sweetness if needed:

This was fantastic! You are getting vitamin C and antioxidants from the orange and berries, the great immune boosting properties of ginger and cayenne pepper and more antioxidants from the cocoa powder. Adding the matcha gives it an extra nutritional kick, and the greens provide more nutrition and are extra hydrating. Honestly, this really did make me feel so much better, it has a serious kick!

A bit later I started to fancy some lunch. I’d already made this thinking I’d be at work otherwise I might have gone with another smoothie! It was good though:

Salad with cos lettuce, cucumber, yellow pepper, chickpeas, olives, avocado and a balsamic hemp oil dressing.

Mid afternoon I snacked on a small pink lady apple with some peanut butter:

There was also lots and lots of this ginger tea brewed alongside a green tea bag in my pot:

Love this tea!

I was feeling so much better by late afternoon I decided to go to the gym for Body Pump. This may or may not have been the right thing to do, but I actually felt really good in the class and great afterwards. For my body at least, some exercise when fighting a cold seems to help. Perhaps its getting the blood circulating that does the trick? 

For dinner I had a baked sweet potato topped with black beans, red onion and vegan cheese:

All served on top of spinach. I love this meal, even though I’m moving away from processed stuff like vegan cheese, it does the trick as comfort food!

After dinner I was craving some fatty goodness so raided my new bag of macadamia nuts:

These are definitely one of my favourite ever nuts, so creamy and delicious! I first got into these when I worked at Millies Cookies during my time at university. They did a white chocolate and macadamia nut cookie that was incredible. Perhaps I need to try and recreate a healthier version? I’d also love to try making these into a nut milk!

Then there was more ginger tea and later, my evening smoothie in a bowl:

I blended up frozen cherries, chocolate sun warrior, water and ice. Perfect on a hot evening!

I’m glad that I don’t tend to get ill very often as I try and keep my immune system as healthy as possible through eating a good diet. When I do get poorly I tend to try and fight it as naturally as possible and take it as a sign that I need to slow down a bit and let my body heal, although I have to admit I’m not great at this! I only take medication like Ibuprofen as a last resort when I’m really feeling like crap. Although I still went to the gym, I have tried to relax a bit by taking a few things off my to do list and allowing myself more time to cabbage on the sofa :-)

Even though I’m feeling much better I’m definitely going to be making that smoothie a few times over the next couple of days, so glad that I bought a big piece of fresh ginger at the weekend!

How do you tackle illness? Are you very good at slowing down when illness strikes? Do you use natural remedies? What are your immune boosting tips?

Well it looks like I have a full blown head cold! I had a rubbish nights sleep and feel really groggy. Luckily I tend to be able to shake these things off quite quickly by making sure that I drink plenty of hot fluids, lemon and ginger tea or fresh lemon with ginger and honey being my favourite, get some rest and eat lots of fresh fruit and veggies. I always have my pack of tissues with me, as well as my wonder product - Elizabeth Arden 8 hour cream, which I use on my dry lips and the end of my nose to prevent the skin getting dry and cracking.

This morning I had my hot lemon water and then decided that I would still do my DVD workout. I usually find that some light exercise makes me feel better rather than worse when I have a head cold. I took it easy, but did level 2 and 3 of the 30 Day Shred back to back, I just did low impact versions of moves but I was really chuffed as I managed to do one of the plank exercises with the dumbbell row and leg raise in the full plank position rather than on my knees!

After sweating it out I made breakie. I had a yoghurt mess containing - a pot of greek yoghurt mixed with a scoop of vanilla whey, 2 chopped plums, brown rice puffs and grape nuts.

Work was a real drag today, I just kept going and getting myself cups of green tea and lemon and ginger tea. I had thought I'd be ok to stick it out all day but I ended up giving in and coming home mid afternoon. Mid morning my lovely work mate went to the chemist and bought some effervescent Vit C tablets so I had one with my bottle of water.

Lunch was a bowl of my home made Brocolli, Pea and Mint Soup which I'd defrosted from my frozen soup stash.

Followed by an orange (for more Vit C) and a small apple with cinnamon and maca.

I was so glad I chose to have soup for lunch today, it was good to have something lovely and hot. I must make some more soups up when I get back from my holidays as my supplies are starting to run low!

I finished work at 2.30 and headed home via the shops to pick up more lemons! When I got back I made a chocolate berry protein smoothie. I blended a scoop of chocolate whey with some mixed frozen berries, ice cubes and water. It blended up really thick so I couldn't resist eating it from the bowl.

This big bowl full can't have been more than 150 cals and it was de-lish!

I then ran myself a lovely hot bath and soaked in it for half and hour while sipping hot lemon with ginger and honey. My little tea making kit -

For dinner I made a big stir fry with chicken, red pepper, spring onion, spinach, carrot, savoy cabbage and a few left over sugar snap peas. I made a sauce using plenty of garlic, ginger and chilli as these are all good for the immune system along with a sprinkle of chinese 5 spice and some soy sauce.

I needed those lovely strong spicy flavours just so I could taste something! For desert I tried out something new. I have seen the Fitnessista make egg white puffs a few times so I thought I would try out making a sweet egg white puff.

Sweet Egg White Puff

2 egg whites
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon of mixed spice
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
2 tablespoons of agave syrup

Mix together the egg whites, vanilla and spices in a bowl. Microwave for 2 minutes (or until done, it will start to pop, just keep checking all the liquid has gone). Serve topped with agave syrup.

This was suprisingly tasty, it certainly filled me up as it contains so much protein. It could perhaps have done with being more sweet, I guess if you had sweetener like Stevia that would work really well.

Drinks - water, green tea, lemon and ginger tea

I'm due my weigh in tomorrow but I'm not expecting great things. The snackies have really had me the last couple of days and although the only time I've gone over my planned eating has been 3 small bowls of muesli and an orange and two plums I 'feel' a bit heavier. Probably due to impending TOTM, we shall see what the scales say tomorrow.

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow night as me and my friend will be attending the NewcastleGateshead EAT Festival Launch Party. I can't wait, we get to sample loads of tasty food including cocktails and local beers and other lovely tasty goodies. I'm so looking forward to it! Have you ever been to a food festival?What was it like? Well I'm going to call it a day, I think I need an early night, I'm hoping to wake up revived tomorrow! x