Thanks to everyone who entered my giveaway! I really enjoyed reading all of your favourite porridge toppings and I can’t wait to try some of them out. Here are the winners:

Emma, Jessica, Tam, Olivia, Becky and Roz. Congratulations everyone! Please email me at keepingslimgettingstylish@gmail.com with your address and I’ll post your sample packs of Rude Health Fruity Date Porridge straight out!

I’ve had another lovely chilled out time today. The hubby was working so I decided to walk to the gym in the snow. It was beautiful but unbelievably cold, even though I was dressed like a yeti. Before I left I ate an orange and some Bear strawberry fruit yoyo’s along with my every day mug of warm water and lemon juice.

At the gym I ran 3 miles of speed intervals then 2 miles at a steady speed and the last mile as fast as I could (total 6 miles). I didn’t hang about to do anymore cardio as I knew the walk in the snow would be tiring enough! From the gym I walked to the little out of town shopping centre near me and picked up some groceries, more Christmas gifts, and a couple of thick jumpers and a fair isle hat and scarf for me. The jumpers aren’t anything special – just practical, i.e. warm! I’ve recently realised I have very few warm clothes. The hat and scarf set is lovely – I’m sure they will be featuring in my next outfit of the day! The lovely Cait commented on my last post that I maybe a ‘committed self gifter’ I couldn’t agree more! That’s the trouble with Christmas shopping, you always see things for yourself. Luckily I have a little budget for things I need, plus Christmas money from my parents :-)

By the time I got home it was lunch time and I was starving! I made a big bowl of the most delicious Cherry Almond Porridge – 1/2 cup of power porridge oat mix, 1/2 cup of vanilla rice milk, 1/2 cup of water, 4 tablespoons of liquid egg whites, 1 teaspoon of brown rice syrup, 1 teaspoon of natural almond flavour, defrosted dark cherries and flaked almonds.

 

Am-az-ing. I also made a big pot of Amaretto tea which I had with some agave to sweeten and vanilla rice milk. Lush.

I spent the afternoon roasting up sugar pumpkin from my veg box and cooking up pearl barley for my ‘grain of the week’ – I have some really lovely ideas for healthy and tasty recipes with these two so check out next weeks posts! I also made a pot of Carrot, Ginger and Orange Soup – recipe to be shared later in the week too!

Mid afternoon I had a bowl of French Onion Soup (which had been in the freezer) along with two small sliced pears with cinnamon and ginger.

For dinner I had a Roast Root Veg Sunflower Seed Pattie with steamed greens and black kale, raw carrot sticks and ketchup and a little soy sauce.

I’d made the pattie by blending up my roast sweet potato, parsnip, beetroot and red onion from Friday nights roasted root veg with feta in my food processor then added some sunflower seeds and shaped the mixture into patties. I refrigerated the pattie so it would firm up then fried in coconut oil on both sides till browned and warmed through. It was really tasty, the coconut oil gave it a nice added flavour as well.

Desert was two chopped apples and some Green and Blacks 70% dark chocolate:

November review and December plans

As this is the last Sunday in the month, although not yet Dec, I’m going to do my monthly review.

This month I have:

• Kept up with my weekly spinning and yoga classes
• Ran 15k each week (split between a 5k during the week and 10k on a weekend) – even when I really wasn’t feeling it!
• Lost 3lbs and half an inch off my hips
• Changed up my HIIT sessions and increased the resistance levels on all gym equipment
• Included more whole grains in my diet by having a ‘grain of the week’. I’ve continued with my new vegetarian diet and have had quite a few days when I have eaten vegan
• Signed up for next years Great North Run!

Just like October and September I have continued to lose weight without really trying and without weight loss being a goal. Since September I’ve lost a whopping 12lbs! I have found that my binges have been under control and I’ve been able to eat more mindfully which combined with the new vegetarian diet could be why I’m continuing to lose weight. I know that I’ll gain a few pounds over Christmas so I’m happy that I have some wiggle room! I’m also finding that monthly rather than weekly weigh ins are much better although I have had a couple of sneaky weigh ins when I feel I’ve over eaten to see if I’ve gained. This needs to stop as it really doesn’t help me on my quest for finding some balance and being able to maintain a healthy weight. I’ve also gained half an inch on my waist but I think this may be down to a bit of bloating.

I’m also very happy that I’ve managed to stick with my running goals even when I really wasn’t up for it. I’m very happy with what I have achieved this month!

Decembers Goals

• Enjoy the festive season!
• Retain some healthy balance whilst still indulging
• Continue with regular exercise

I would usually plan a monthly workout schedule but this month things are going to be busy so I’m going to plan out my workouts on a weekly basis instead. I’d still like to try and workout 6 days out of 7 apart from Christmas week, do some form of running (without setting myself any mileage targets or challenging myself to run outdoors) and get some strength training in. My yoga class has now finished until the New Year but I’d still like to try and fit some in at least once a week as well as some spinning classes. I think having a flexible approach for a change is going to be refreshing and will enable me to be ready for getting down to business come January. I’m also really looking forward to a bit of detoxing come January too.

Current stats:

• Weight 9st 2lbs
• Waist: 27.5 inches
• Bust: 35.5 inches
• Hips: 34 inches

What have you achieved this month? Do you have any goals for December?

Happy Thanksgiving to all my US readers! I wish we celebrated Thanksgiving here in the UK, I always feel I have a lot to be thankful for :-)

Today has seen a big change in my plans due to the weather:

View from my living room this morning, so pretty and festive!

As the snow is pretty bad up in the North East I’m working from home today and won’t be able to make my last yoga class this evening :-( I know I could have travelled to work and Newcastle if I really needed to, but when I have the option of working from home instead of spending twice my normal time travelling I think that makes more sense. Its a shame we don’t handle bad weather here very well, everything seems to come to a stand still! Anyway, as I had a little more time this morning I decided to warm myself up with this wonderful bowl of creamy porridge:

Orange, Cranberry and Macadamia Creamy Porridge

I started thinking about what I use to make my perfect porridge. At the moment the ingredients I tend to use for my basic porridge mix are:

• 1/2 cup of oats or porridge mix like Rude Health Fruity Date Porridge
• 1/2 cup of non dairy milk or fruit juice
• 1/2 cup of water
• 1 tablespoon of oat bran
• 4 tablespoons of liquid egg whites

All cooked on the stove top with the egg white mixed in at the end. A big dollop of yoghurt stirred in also adds extra creaminess! You can then get really creative with flavours, fixings and add ins. Here’s some of my favourite porridge flavours:

Chocolate berry porridge with raw cacao nibs (frozen berries, cocoa powder, brown rice syrup)

  Chocolate Pear and Hazelnut (cocoa powder or chocolate flavour protein powder with hazelnuts and chopped pears)

 Apple, Cinnamon and Almond Butter

 Matcha Green Tea with Berries (1/2 teaspoon of matcha green tea powder with defrosted frozen berries)

  Plum, Dried Fig and Cinnamon

Pumpkin with cinnamon and coconut

I’m getting hungry just looking at these! Of course one of my favourite porridge mixes is Rude Health Fruity Date Porridge – see my review here. So when the lovely Neen asked me if I would host a little giveaway on her behalf while she’s busy getting hitched I was more than happy to do so!

I have 6 sample size boxes of Rude Health Fruity Date Porridge to giveaway:

All you need to do to enter is leave a comment to this post with your favourite porridge topping / add in / flavour combos. I’ll pick winners at random. Deadline to enter is 12am GMT Saturday 27th November, good luck!

This weekend I quite fancy creating a Chocolate Cherry Almond Porridge, yum! I can’t wait to see what ideas you give me too :-)

Well I’m off to check out some Wellington Boots online – apparently this weather is here to last so I need to get myself properly prepared!

I’ve been feeling super festive this weekend, I can’t wait for the rest of the week to come! My weekend started with a bowl of Clemintine and Cranberry Porridge.

I used 1/2 cup of powder porridge, some oat bran, soy milk, water and the juice of two clemintines all cooked up on the stove. I added some dried cranberries, 1 clemintine broken into segments and some flaked almonds, delish!

I did a big grocery shop as soon as the shops opened. We haven’t had the bad snow here yet, but my motto for the next few weeks is going to be prepare for the worst. I don’t want to find myself snowed in on Christmas eve with no ingredients to make mulled wine. Yes, that is how I organise my priorities! ;-)

Since I had some time and some new magazines to read I decided to pop to the gym for a relaxed hour of cardio on the cross trainer, step machine and bike.

Lunch was a bowl of very tasty soup that I had made last week to use up some veggies from my organic box and others that were on their way out. I made up a big pan then froze in portions:

Spiced Leek, Sweet Potato and Coconut Soup (makes 4 servings)

• Olive oil for frying
• 4 small leeks – chopped and sliced
• 2 medium sweet potatoes, chopped into small squares, skin on
• Hot veg stock
• 2 green chillies, seeds removed and finely chopped (or more or less to taste)
• 1/2 teaspoon of ground coriander
• 200mls of reduced fat coconut milk

Begin by heating the oil in a large pan on a medium heat. Fry the leeks until tender then add the chopped sweet potatoes and cover with veg stock. Simmer until the sweet potato is tender. Take off the heat then blend the soup until creamy using a hand blender. Add the chillies, ground coriander and coconut milk then blend again. Serve immediately or portion up and freeze for quick and tasty lunches!

I love how seemingly random combos of veggies that need to be used up can create something really special, this was truly inspired! This soup has a great spicy kick to it which is perfect for this weather. Delicious, creamy and healthy.

I had a mine topped with some seeds and a side of chopped apples.

Mid afternoon I had a decaf Butterscotch Latte with a couple of small apples. I had a lovely time wrapping gifts while watching Elf! I also needed to use up a couple of ripe avocados and there’s only one thing I wanted to make with those:

Chocolate avocado cups! I froze these babies for yummy deserts come January when I’m detoxing but still need a chocolate hit – I used raw cacao powder instead of regular cocoa powder for that purpose.

For dinner I roasted up my lovely Kabocha squash and made a version of my Butternut and Quinoa Risotto minus the peas, spinach and greek yoghurt and using soy milk instead. This was lovely and creamy and so full of flavour. I had a side of steamed cavolo nero with shoyu too.

Desert was some Rachel’s Organic low fat Strawberry yoghurt along with some defrosted frozen cherries and some flaked almonds.

I was very impressed with the yoghurt, considering that its low fat it was surprisingly creamy. The hubby really liked this too, he ate the rest of the pot and has asked me to start buying it on a regular basis!

This morning I was up bright and early to head to the gym. I ate a pack of nakd lemon raisins and then did and hour and a half of cardio: 30 minutes on the treadmill running between 6 – 7mph then 20 minutes on the step machine, cross trainer and bike. I was in need of a big breakfast after all of that so I made a pumped up green monster. I blended cavolo nero, spinach, 1 frozen banana, soy milk, several ice cubes, water, frozen mango, 2 very large tablespoons of smooth peanut butter, cinnamon, maca, ground flax, agave and xanthan and guar gums. This smoothie was huge!

I topped it with some rude health granola, goji berries and flaked almonds. Yum.

Mid morning I made a very tasty but super healthy cake! More on that tomorrow…

Lunch was some roast tomato, red pepper and chilli soup plus three clemintines:

Dinner was a tofu stir fry made with a mushroom stir fry veggie mix plus added cavolo nero and carrot noodles. I added lots of soy sauce and fresh ginger too:

Desert was two small sliced apples and some Rachel’s Organic Coconut Greek Style yoghurt:

This yoghurt tasted amazing, so creamy with a lovely coconut flavour. It also has pieces of coconut in the yoghurt which gives it a nice texture.

I’m so excited about the rest of the week, I may be at work for a few days but its nice and relaxed as the office is officially shut. I also have lots of cooking and baking to look forward to, Christmas movies to watch and fingers crossed if this snow doesn’t get too bad I’ll be out to the shops, getting my organic veg box delivery and then out on Christmas Eve, love it! Do you still get excited for Christmas?

Before I go I’ll leave you with a few amazing images from the blog What Katie Ate. After looking through her e-zine of Christmas recipes and photos I’m completely in love. If your a fan of lifestyle and food photography or graphic design you must check this out. I have gained lots of festive food inspiration from this blog. Where have you gained some food inspiration from recently? I want to go out and spend ££££ on a decent camera just so I can attempt to create images like these. Enjoy :-)

:-)

I started the day with just under an hour of squats, lunges, bicep curls and star jumps courtesy of my bottom and top fit DVD workouts from Davina. I’m actually starting to enjoy the bottom fit workout after three weeks of doing it, I still get DOMS after it too!

Breakfast was a bowl of this Power Porridge (another item I’ve been sent to review on behalf of the lovely Neen while she’s in full wedding mode)

I used half a cup of this mix which along with oats contains various other grains and seeds, with 1 cup of water and cooked it on the stove top adding frozen blueberries, vanilla sun warrior protein powder and a splash of kara coconut milk. For toppings I went with mixed seeds, goji berries and some coconut.

Such a delicious mix! The porridge tasted good too, without all the add ins it would definitely have required some sweetening up though.

Lunch was a really super salad. I had downloaded a random app for my phone the other day called Vegan 21 Day Kickstart that include a recipe for a Confetti Quinoa Salad and knew I had to come up with a similar version!

Laura’s Confetti Quinoa Salad (makes 2 large servings):

• 1 cup of quinoa, rinsed
• 2 cups of vegetable stock
• 1/2 red cabbage
• 6 spring onions
• 1 large carrot
• 1 red pepper
• fresh parsley
• 4 dried apricots (I used some un sulphured apricots)
• 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
• 3 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar
• Lettuce leaves to serve (I used little gem)

Simmer the quinoa in the veg stock until all the stock has been absorbed and the quinoa is tender. Leave the quinoa to cool. Finely chop all the veggies, the parsley and the apricots and mix together with the cooled quinoa. To make the dressing mix the oil and vinegar together in a screw top jar, shake to combine, then pour over the quinoa and mix through. Serve the quinoa on top of some green leaves and enjoy!

 

This was a seriously good salad! Extra filling and really tasty – all of the ingredients go together so well and the addition of the apricots adds a hint of sweetness that is delicious. I also enjoyed a couple of un pictured satsumas.

Mid afternoon I snacked on a little tub of mixed dried fruit and nuts from the luxury fruit and nut bag I’d bought at Tesco a couple of weeks ago.

Last night I had decided to use up some tofu for tonight's dinner. I drained the tofu and wrapped it in kitchen roll then pressed it to remove some excess water. I then left it to marinade in a mix inspired by my Fresh Asian Salad and the following recipe was born!

Sweet Ginger Sesame Tofu Stir Fry (stated portions make 1 large serving)

• 1/2 block of firm tofu, drained and pressed

Tofu marinade:

• 2 tablespoons of soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon of toasted sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon of sweet chilli sauce
• 1/2 inch piece of fresh ginger minced (or 1 teaspoon of minced ginger from a tube)

For the stir fry:

Selection of veggies of your choice. I used:

• diakon / mooli root
• cauliflower
• leek
• mushroom
• savoy cabbage
• red cabbage

To serve:

• 1 teaspoon of sesame seeds, lightly toasted
• 1 tablespoon of soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon of sweet chilli sauce
• 1/4 inch piece of minced ginger (or 1/2 teaspoon of the lazy kind)

Cube the tofu and marinade in the soy, sesame oil, sweet chilli and ginger for at least 2 hours, preferably overnight. Begin by lightly toasting your sesame seeds in a dry pan until they are slightly browned. Set to one side. Then stir fry the tofu, reserving any marinade, on a high heat in a little oil (I used my favourite coconut oil). Once the tofu is nicely browned set to one side. Chop and shred the veggies as desired and stir fry until tender. Add the tofu back to the pan followed by any remaining marinade and the additional soy, sweet chilli and ginger. Transfer to a plate and top with the toasted sesame seeds. Enjoy!

 

Desert was two organic apples chopped, microwaved for a couple of minutes then topped with one of my pumpkin spice cake bars and some cinnamon.

Yum!

Today I emailed everyone taking part in Secret Santa so check your inboxes!

I’ve decided to keep the boots I got yesterday, I wore them for work today and I really like them, I enjoy the extra height, loving that wedge heel!

I also discovered the Forever 21 UK website today. The prices look pretty reasonable and I love some of the pieces especially these:

Wrap Dress (£24.80)

 

Polka Dot Dress (£21.80)

Cable Knit Sweater (£15.80)

I’m in need of a simple party dress as I like to add some of my vast collection of sparkly accessories to more simple clothing over for Christmas style. I’m also in serious need of some more knit wear. I’m really feeling the cold temperatures at the moment and need extra layers – a chunky knit would be perfect over some slim trousers with my new boots!

What clothes are you in need of (or want of!) at the moment? Has anyone bought anything from Forever 21?