Hi everyone, hope your having a great weekend! I’ve had a pretty good weekend so far, starting on Friday evening with this delicious meal:

I made a Lentil and Sweet Potato Thai Red Curry, it was super easy to make and tasted so good! I just fried some curry paste with extra fresh minced ginger then added a little tomato passata followed by 1/4 cup of red lentils and some hot water. I simmer that until the lentils were tender then added a cubed baked sweet potato. I served it with some steamed kale, it was spot on!

While chilling out watching TV I enjoyed my fave snack again, pretzels with strawberries and some peanut dip made with peanut flour:

Love this combo, I have a ‘thing’ for pretzels right now!

On Saturday we decided to have a pay day treat of breakfast in town so I though I’d make a bit of an effort for a change:

OOTD: jersey scarf: Topshop, heart necklace: Topshop, striped tee: Topshop, pink satchel: H&M, pink belt: taken off a dress from Warehouse, floral skirt: Dorothy Perkins, black tights: M&S, zip ankle boots: New Look

Breakfast was our usual order from Olive and Bean:

I had granary toast with peanut butter, a 3 berry smoothie and a soya latte and James had the continental platter. Both fab as always! That tasty breakfast set me up for a morning of shopping! I went to Waitrose, the health food shop and the speciality food shop for this lot:

I also got some tempeh but that went straight in the freezer! Very chuffed to have some red kabocha and a huge bag of Popchips too! I also paid a visit to Lush for shower gel and toner water:

I treated myself to a couple of new things for my wardrobe too:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3 skinny belts from Primark for only £2! I also got a plain black maxi skirt from Primark as well. Then from H&M I bought this stripy t-shirt dress and a purple long sleeved top for yoga. I did get some denim shorts but when I got home and tried them on they were more like hot pants (!) so I’ll be returning those.

After town I was going to see my friends so I thought I’d pick up something for lunch:

A hummus salad wrap from Pret and some blueberries and satsumas from the market. I had sworn that the wrap had vegan on the label for it at the fridge but it turned out it had a yoghurt dressing. Vegan fail :-( I think I was just so weighed down with bags and in a hurry I didn’t look properly. I’m not strictly vegan so I’m not that upset by it, just miffed at my mistake. It did taste good though ;-) I shared my giant satsumas with my friends kids, juice went every where :-)

I had a great afternoon with my friends then made my way home. I made myself a fantastic green juice with cucumber, celery and fresh mint:

Great mix of flavours in this! For dinner I really craved a big veggie packed salad so I raided the fridge and filled a bowl with romaine, cucumber, red pepper, and red onion then topped it with some baked tofu which I’d marinated in soy sauce, ground ginger and garlic granules then some red pepper hummus watered down a bit and some olives:

This met my craving perfectly! A bit later I was in snack mode so a had a few bowls of millet puffs mixed with coconut sauce (coconut flour mixed with water) and strawberries:

Eaten in bed watching TV, yum!

Its been lovely to have been paid and be able to treat myself to a couple of goodies. Restocking my kitchen cupboard has been fun too, more on that later in the week!

Have you treated yourself to anything recently?

Happy Wednesday everyone! I’m having a lovely week off just spending a lot of time pottering around the flat getting caught up on the million things that have been adding to my to do list these last few months! These are my eats and goings on from yesterday (I haven’t started my healthy feast yet, that’s tomorrow), enjoy!

My Tuesday started with a lovely lie in – isn’t it great to wake up naturally without an alarm sometimes?  I did a quick Yoga for Runners podcast before making breakfast. I started with my usual mug of warm water with lemon juice before making a big smoothie:

This contained spinach, beet greens, frozen banana, cup of home made almond milk, hemp protein powder, mesquite, spirulina, midori greens powder, vanilla stevia, xanthan and guar gums, water and ice. I topped it with some pomegranate seeds, Alara in the garden muesli and a small spoonful of sunflower seed butter. I also had a gorgeous vanilla coffee with stevia and almond milk.

I drank green and rooibos tea all morning, then for lunch I made an amazing salad inspired by the lovely Ragnhild! She had left a comment on Sunday’s post with this amazing combo, and my word I have eaten some good salads recently but this was wonderful! This contained romaine lettuce, raw kale massaged with lemon juice and hemp oil, raw beetroot, a large chopped fresh fig, walnuts rolled in honey and sea salt plus more honey and sea salt on top:

I’m a huge fan of any sweet and salty combos and this was amazing! I’ll be enjoying honey and sea salt together a lot in future! I also had a very large sliced honey crunch apple:

As we were having a chill out day I thought I’d make some cookies! I made some Super Charge Me Cookies. I used some raisins, chocolate chips and crunchy peanut butter with flax in the recipe and subbed the maple syrup for brown rice syrup and a touch of water:

I made a few without raisins for James as he doesn’t like them, and a few bigger ones too. I ate one of the big ones as gym fuel along with a mug of Teapigs Popcorn tea and it was absolutely amazing, crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside!

I hit the gym and did 40 minutes of cardio on the gym machines followed by my Body Pump class. Unfortunately the instructor forgot her CD so we ended up doing the last release again but it was still a great class.

For dinner I had a really gorgeous plate of roasted sweet potato, brussels sprouts and broccoli with baked marinated tempeh and almond butter sauce:

This was just so delicious! I marinated the tempeh in mirin, shoyu, toasted sesame oil and ume vinegar then baked in the oven. These were my first brussel sprouts of the season and they were perfect roasted in the coconut oil. The almond butter sauce was just almond butter mixed with hot water and a splash of shoyu. Nom!

For dessert I had a big bowl of protein ice cream made with cookies and cream spiru-tein, a small handful of frozen strawberries, stevia, water, ice and xanthan and guar gums topped with cacao nibs and freeze dried berries:

One of the things I’ve been doing to try and curb the late night snackies is to eat dessert a bit later in the evening. I enjoyed this on the sofa while we watched the film Hanna, which was very good!

I actually had a pretty snack free day yesterday, Monday was a completely different story! I do think I’m finding a better balance at the moment than I have done recently, I really feel like I’ve turned a huge corner this last week. I’ve got loads to say around this but I’m saving it for yet another wordy post!

Blissful Bites Giveaway Winner

Congrats to Kate from What Kate is Cooking! Please email me with your address and I’ll get the book posted out! Thanks to everyone that took the time to enter!

Well I am off to do more baking this afternoon! What’s your favourite chill out activity? As well as baking and cooking we’ve been watching loads of movies and enjoying this Indian summer we are experiencing!

Have a great Wednesday and enjoy the rest of your week!

Oh what a week it has been! It kicked off with a busy day of working from home, then on Tuesday I delivered my first healthy eating workshop with young people and the rest of the week has been filled with work, meetings and workouts!

Love cheap veggies!

I did find some time to get to the green grocers to fill the fridge on the cheap. I got some great bargains from the reduced bins again – aubergine, red pepper, cauliflower, cucumber and a bag of brazil nuts. I also got two big boxes of strawberries for 99p each, a huge bag of pak choy, apples, ginger and some purple sprouting broccoli. I have some big plans for all of that this weekend so watch this space!

Eats this week have yet again been of the ‘use it up’ variety until payday gets here. With working a couple of later nights I’ve been making very simple meals, including the ultimate lazy late nighter (other than cereal I guess) porridge!

I had a bowl with mixed berries and peanut flour after the youth club, very tasty! I also had some porridge for breakfast yesterday:

I decided to treat myself and add a sachet of Dark Chocolate Dreams Peanut Butter along with a mashed banana and some freeze dried berries. This was insanely good!

Last night after yoga I made a random meal out of things that needed using up – spinach, a baked sweet potato and some of my tofu cottage cheese mixed with the last of my Zest pesto:

Sorry for the rubbish pic but this was so good! I’ll definitely be mixing pesto and tofu together again! I had the other serving of tofu cottage cheese as a snack with an apple and raisins:

I had the apple and raisin combo again for breakfast with leftover cooked rice and wheatberries and raw almond sunflower seed milk mixed with vanilla sun warrior and cinnamon:

I’ve really been enjoying eating leftover cooked grains for breakfast.

Yesterday I had the most delicious salad. I’d made a similar version a few weeks ago but this time I added some chickpeas:

It contained:

• cos lettuce
• cucumber
• half an avocado
• chickpeas
• dried cherries
• my raw tamari ‘roasted’ almonds
• balsamic vinegar

It was the best salad I’ve had for a long time and boy did it fill me up! I love the mix of the creamy avocado with the sweet cherries and salty almonds.

Of course there has also been some tasty green smoothies:

This was my strawberry and peanut butter smoothie but made a bit more substantial by using a scoop of good hemp strawberry fit shake in the smoothie itself and adding the peanut flour as a sauce on top, yum! Today I had another smoothie with spinach, mixed frozen berries, chocolate sun warrior, maca, ground flax, water and ice topped with lots of muesli:

Check out the giant brazils and hazelnuts! There was a lot more muesli added to this :-)

Workouts this week:

• Saturday – REST
• Sunday – approx 5.5 mile run (continuing without the garmin at the moment)
• Monday – AM 5 min cross trainer warm up, strength workout B from Dial it in phase of Female Body Breakthrough, 10 min HIIT step machine, 10 min HIIT bike
• Tuesday – Pop Pilates Total Body Bangin’ Workout from You Tube and Yoga for Runners podcast
• Wednesday – AM 5 min cross trainer warm up, strength workout A from Dial it in phase of Female Body Breakthrough, 10 min HIIT step machine, 10 min HIIT bike
• Thursday – PM yoga class 1hr 15 
• Friday – AM 5 min cross trainer warm up, strength workout B from Dial it in phase of Female Body Breakthrough, 10 min HIIT step machine, 10 min HIIT bike

I had been planning a short and relaxed run on Tuesday morning but the weather had other ideas! Unfortunately since my youth club is on a Tuesday evening I won’t be doing Body Pump or my other yoga class for a while so I’m going to play that day as a bit of an ‘anything goes’ day again and see what I can do on a morning.

On the weekend send off love list this week…

Most of the green smoothies had been drank by this point!

I delivered my first healthy eating workout with young people and it was brilliant! I worked with a group of boys aged 10 – 12. I didn’t know the group, or what facilities the kitchen had other than smoothie makers so smoothies it was. I bought some strawberries, bananas, mango, plain natural yoghurt, peanut butter, cocoa powder, apple juice and spinach. We also had some orange juice, tinned pineapple and peaches to use up. I started them off with a chocolate banana smoothie followed by a strawberry and peanut butter smoothie. After that I encouraged them to make their own recipes – with varying success! Finally I thought I’d see how far I could push it and make them a green smoothie! I made one with spinach, banana and orange juice and another with spinach, pineapple and mango. They surprised me by liking the green smoothies the most! Even the young people from the other groups and the parents at the end enjoyed the green smoothies, it was wonderful. Seeing them all drinking their green smoothies made me so happy, I just can’t explain it. I’m more determined than ever to find a way of being able to do this for a living! Also…

Finishing my End of Grant report for the project I’ve managed for the last 4 years // feeling excited about the future now said project is finished! // listening to mixes on 8tracks while I worked from home // painting my toe nails for the first time in weeks // Madonna’s MDNA on repeat in the car

How has your week been? What are you loving this week?

Hope you have a great weekend!

Hello everyone, hope your having a fantastic week! Mine got off to a bit of a wobbly start but I’m back on track today :-)

Yesterday I hit the gym for a quick 50 minute workout, I would usually have done a bit of a longer one but I had to get home and dressed so I could make the start of a training course I was on. For breakfast I downed the most disgusting looking green smoothie – luckily it actually tasted pretty good! It contained beet greens, spinach, frozen peaches, strawberry hemp, maca powder, spirulina, msm, ground flax, stevia, water and ice.

I was well impressed at the training – they had bowls of grapes, strawberries, roasted mixed nuts and raisins out to nibble on throughout the day. For my vegan lunch I got a lovely Indian salad platter with onion bhaji and mixed vegetable samosas:

This was delicious! After snacking on a huge amount of fruit and nuts all day long all I fancied for dinner was a simple salad:

This included cos lettuce, carrot, cucumber, yellow pepper, beetroot and a tahini miso dressing. For a little dessert I had two chopped apples and a couple of squares of Lindt 90% dark:

I adore that chocolate! Unfortunately a little later I ended up munching my way through the kitchen again eating bowls of granola, popcorn, chocolate chips and oat cake nut butter sandwiches resulting in going to bed with yet another food baby. I do feel like I’ve turned a corner today though (although I had thought that on Friday!) – I’m feeling much more at peace with the whole thing – I have a lot of thoughts on this but all for another post!

I wasn’t best pleased when I woke up at 3am with the wind banging the neighbours gas and electric meter cupboard door against the wall but when I couldn’t get back to sleep I spent several hours pondering my current situation and a few other things in my life that need some attention. When it was time to get up I did a bit of free style yoga (down dog, pigeon pose, seated twists and foam rolling for my IT bands) then spent 5 minutes writing some stuff down in my note book. It really helped me to re focus! Tonight I’ve been back at the gym for 30 minutes of cardio intervals followed by yet another awesome Body Pump class!

Breakfast was a wonderful bowl of stove top cooked oats sweetened with a little stevia, mixed with fresh strawberries and topped with some peanut butter with flax nut butter sauce:

I haven’t had porridge in ages and this was fab!

After my early morning pondering I’ve decided that I need to take some direct action with regards to my finances and spending. September is shaping up to be a very expensive month with having to redecorate the bedroom, get my car serviced and MOT and my cousins wedding party (need a new dress!) so I’m going to bring back the Big Budget Challenge!

For any of you who weren’t reading last year I set myself a Big Budget Challenge for three months. It went quite well so I’m going to set myself a new challenge for October and November, and this one is going to be even stricter! I’ll do a full post about it at the end of the month but this is going to be pretty hard core, at least for me! I’m really going to be focusing on reducing my grocery spending and eating a bit more simply – so lots of dried beans and grains!

I’ve kind of started my challenge a little early by trying to make home made versions of some of the expensive stuff I love. Example no 1 – these home made ‘Lara bars’!

Raw ‘chocolate chip cookie dough’ energy bars (makes 6 large bars, raw, vegan)

• 1 cup of almonds (or could use cashews or a mix of cashews and almonds)
• 1 cup of pitted medjool dates (I used fresh Iranian dates)
• 1/2 tsp of salt
• 2 tbsp of cacao nibs or dark chocolate chips (not raw)

Using a food processor, process the nuts until they are well chopped. I still like a few chunkier pieces in there. Add the dates and salt to the food processor and combine with the nuts until the mixture begins to clump together slightly. Add the cacao nibs and pulse to combine. Line a 9x9 square tin (or use a lunch box or whatever you have available – you could also roll into balls) with cling film and press the cookie dough mixture into the bottom of the tin. Add another layer of cling film and press down until flat. Pop in the freezer for 30 minutes to firm up then cut into 6 bars (or could make 9 smaller squares). Wrap in foil for handy snacks!

These should keep well in the fridge for a week and much longer in the freezer. You can add allsorts of flavourings to this basic recipe by changing the nuts and using different types of dried fruits, but I just love this simple mix!

Have you ever tried to make a cheaper home made version of something you love? Anyone else feeling the pinch at the moment?

Don’t forget you can still Ask Me Anything! Just leave a comment below, anonymous if you wish – as long as its nice ;-) or email me at laura@keepinghealthygettingstylish.com I’ve had some great emails from you so far, looking forward to doing the post soon!

Hi everyone, hope you’ve had a great week! I’m exceptionally pleased its Friday, I have a pretty much empty weekend ahead to fill as I wish and I can’t wait!

As I blogged about at the weekend I’ve recently been finding that I’ve been eating way more than usual, particularly on an evening. The snack monster has been out in full force and what was once the occasional snack fest has recently turned in to almost nightly occurrences. The main things I’m going for is anything sugary, chocolate and nut butters. This wouldn’t be a problem, however it is happening all of the time now and quite frankly I am sick of going to bed with a food baby, waking up with heart burn and feeling knackered because my body is having to work over time to digest it all. What has been worrying is that I lack the will to control it, which is what has resulted in me eating even when I am very physically full. I do feel that some of this behaviour is as a result of feeling rather stressed recently.

Yes, I adore these but I’m going to have to have a break from them for a while!

Last night I decided enough was enough! I have moved the sugary nut butters (PB&Co) and sugary chocolates into a box at the top of one of my cupboards hoping that out of site will mean out of mind. I also did a bit of a kitchen clear out, I had loads of random stuff that was out of date and items that I haven’t touched in months which I decided to just chuck. My cupboards are so much more spacious now!

So starting today I am giving myself a fresh start! I’m not going to go down the route of restriction or detox right now as I know my head isn’t in the right place and what my body really needs is care and kindness. So I’m opting for lots of my favourite green smoothies, salads and Buddha bowls – lots of simple but tasty and nourishing foods with plenty of herbal and green teas and water. I am going to lay off the nut butters and anything with refined sugars in them for a couple of days too.

I kicked off Fresh Start Friday with a workout at the gym doing my amended NRoL workout (with warm up on cross trainer and 3 sets instead of 2 on each move) then came home and made a very cleansing green smoothie:

This contained spinach, spring greens, cucumber, frozen banana, kiwi, pomegranate and acai coconut water, spirulina, maca, msm, hemp protein, ice, xanthan and guar gums and topped with freeze dried berries and hemp seeds.

Today we had our AGM at work and due to a mix up with our office and the caterer there was zero vegan options available. Luckily I was still feeling pretty full from the smoothie and had an apple and peach in my bag to keep me going but by the time it finished at 4pm I was a hungry beast! I popped to our closest shop – Aldi - and ended up buying a tub of hummus, bag of carrots, blueberries and apples:

A bit of a random mix but it was just what I was craving and it kept me going for a while longer! I have to say I was very surprised by how delicious the hummus was, and only 65p a tub!

For dinner tonight I made a big salad with cos lettuce, pea shoots, mixed leaves, red pepper, carrot, cucumber, mange tout and some gorgeous Tahini Miso dressing (1 tbsp of tahini, 1/2 – 1 tbsp of sweet white miso, water to desired consistency):

I really do love that simple dressing, so delicious! Again, this was pretty light but was just what I fancied!

So all I have planned so far this weekend is a quick trip into town and an attempted run (wish me luck!) which is lovely for a change. I’m hoping to be able to get caught up with all sorts of stuff as well as being able to enjoy some relaxation which is much needed at the moment. What do you have planned for the weekend?

I’m feel slightly weird asking this as I don’t really think of myself as being that interesting(!), but recently I’ve received a few emails from readers with various questions which made me think it might be helpful to do an Ask Me Anything post? So if you have anything you’d like to ask me about just leave a comment below, I don’t mind anonymous comments if you’d prefer as long as they are respectful, or you can email me laura@keepinghealthygettingstylish.com :-)

Oh and don’t forget – my GOOD Hemp giveaway is ending tonight – check it out!

When I woke up this morning all I could think about was eating my lovely breakfast of a green monster with a slice of my date, carrot and walnut loaf cake. I made up a standard green monster with loads of spinach, frozen banana, hazelnut and almond rice milk and a teaspoon of maca then decided to add some frozen mixed berries which turned it this awful colour. Never mind, it still tasted yummy! I added a thick layer of cashew butter to the loaf cake as well.

Mid morning I snacked on some carrot and cucumber with hummus. I just can't get enough of hummus at the moment, I'll probably be eating it again next week too!

For lunch I had what can only be described as a Salad Beast (lending that term from the Fitnessista!). It contained left overs from last nights dinner - feta, quinoa, kidney beans, chopped red pepper, beetroot, cucumber, red onion, mixed salad leaves and spinach.

I this was mega filling but so delicious I still ate the lot! I also had an apple.

Before I left work for the gym I had a mug of Earl Grey tea with a splash of milk for something a bit different and one of my home made fuel bars

I had a great session at the gym today, I did my usual intervals on the treadmill, step machine, cross trainer and bike for 15 mins each but I started to increase the time in my hard interval by an extra 10 seconds. I even blasted off two full minutes at 7.2 mph at the end of my session on the treadmill. I also did 3 sets of my abs exercises, the v ups nearly killed me but I managed them!

Dinner was another salad beast (I had a big bag of mixed salad leaves to use up as well as numerous veggies) I started by stir frying a sliced chicken breast in minced garlic and tomato puree then added some balsamic vingear to the pan and allowed it to reduce and coat the chicken in a lovely sweet sticky sauce. I then served it on some mixed salad leaves, spinach, cucumber, grated carrot, red onion and red pepper.

For desert I just had to make up another protein cake as I've been craving another one of these all week! I added a couple of drops of natural orange flavouring to it as well, totally lush!

Drinks - water, green tea, decaf tea, decaf coffee, Earl Grey

After those salads and all those raw veggies my body should be brimming with vitamins and antioxidants!

I was very excited this evening as me and the hubby took a trip to Argos to pick up a few bits and pieces we've been thinking of buying for a while. The hubby has been getting more into his health and fitness recently (yey!) and wanted to buy a rowing machine. He has very bad knees so can't run and we don't have the space to store a bike, so a rowing machine seemed like a good option. We found a fold away rowing machine which also doubles up as a gym and thought that could be ideal, plus I can use it too! I also got my wish with a new wooden kitchen trolley! We don't have loads of storage in our kitchen and this trolley will go nicely under one of our work tops to give us more space, I can't wait to sort all of my cupboards out now! We also picked up a new crockery set as all of our plates and bowls are chipped and starting to crack, plus a new iron. Luckily we have some spare cash in our joint account and decided that we would get these things with some money we've saved up. I'll post some pics once we have stuff set up, I'm just so excited for my kitchen trolley and new plates and bowls!

Thanks for all the comments to the GIVEAWAY post (don't forget you can still enter!), so many wonderful beauty tips, I'll definitely be making use of them! Its also been lovely to hear from some readers who haven't commented before too.

Well I'm off to go and play with my new toys! I also recieved a new cook book in the post that I'm dying to have a flick through. I'll report back tomorrow! Hope your all having a good one x