February goals

Geez Louise, it's almost half way through February and I haven't even posted my goals for the month yet! Or even finished reviewing my January goals...timekeeping fail.

So let's quickly wrap up how I did with my last few goals for January.

Fear

- Throw away the scales. Check. And I haven't regretted it once. For me they're evil things, which lead to evil thoughts, which lead to evil behaviours. No thank you.

Work

- Maintain a positive attitude. Epic fail. I did well for about the first 3 days...and then it all fell apart. Get me a new job please!

All in all I felt like I gave a pretty good shot at my January goals :)

February goals

I probably say this every month, but I LOVE the feeling of getting to set new goals! (Spoiler alert: since I'm posting these late...I've already told you about ticking some of these off!)

Pleasure
For fun this month I've set 3 goals:
- Celebrate my boyfriend's birthday and make sure he has a special day
- Enjoy going to see Wicked, and soak in the atmosphere
- Suck it up and deal with Valentine's day. I might not like Valentine's day, but I do like candles, so I'm making sure I light it up this V day.

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Health
- Stop nighttime snacking. I'm eating just before I go to bed for no. good. reason. I'm not hungry, I don't need anything to eat...so why am I doing it!? There's lots of other times I pointlessly snack, but I'm focussing on curbing this one time for this month.
- Minimise refined sugar during weekdays. I'm packing the grams of sugar in at the moment and it needs to stop. I don't want to stop completely, so this goal is simply about minimising sugar during weekdays and then being more relaxed at weekends. I'll do this through simple swaps such as having salty rather than sweet popcorn.

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Fitness
- Run at least 1 other 10k after the London Winter Run. I love this distance, and I want to keep it up. Sometimes I get a bit daunted by doing anything longer thank half an hour so I want to just relax and enjoy these.
- Do one yoga session a week. Things were starting to get a bit busy and yoga was taking a bashing. I prefer to do a couple of yoga sessions a week, but sleep is more important. So if I can squeeze one in a week, just for the mental benefits, I'll be a happy bunny.

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Fear
- Run the London Winter Run. Events scare me. I don't know why. I've run for years, I know my limits, my pace, what I can do when I put my mind to it. Yet for some reason when you tell me I have to do it in a certain place, at a certain time, with other people I freak the heck out. And yet I know I love doing events - I love the sense of occasion and the atmosphere! (I know, my thoughts follow no logic!)...but guess what, I DID IT!

Work
- Update my CV
- Sign up for job alerts
Can you tell I want a new job? These are the first basic steps. I don't want to rush in to anything kicking and screaming, yelling "GET ME A JOB, I'LL TAKE ANYTHING, PLEASE EMPLOY ME!". I want to make sure if I move it's in to the right thing, and therefore I want to do this properly.


What are your goals for February?

E x

Seeing yourself in someone you didn't expect

Just wanted to drop in because this was playing on my mind.

Quite often I'll see a characteristic of myself in someone else...I think we all do. Sometimes it grates, and sometimes it makes us feel warmer to that person.

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But today I saw myself in someone I didn't expect to.

I'd had a rough morning of a bit of a binge and decided I needed to remove myself from my flat and get out to break the eating mindset. (Best idea: sunshine + gentle exercise + buying flowers = much less panicky, must-continue-binging Emma).

On my way home as I was trying not to beat myself up about the binging and calming myself down about the many extra calories I'd consumed I was approached by a man. He looked a bit rough and my automatic reaction was to take a step back since there was no one around and didn't want to get grabbed.

He was actually really polite and explained that he had alcohol problems and needed £10 to do his round trip to his therapist. I'm not going to lie, I'm always dubious about these stories and I never ever give cash. If someone is sat begging I'd much rather buy them food rather than give them cash. In this situation I would have apologised and walked away. But I paused.

If what he was saying was true then he wanted to get help and see a therapist. I think back to when I was desperately trying to organise to see a therapist and how lost and helpless I felt. And I always knew my parents were there to help financially, and I had a secure home life. He clearly didn't have this, and I felt so sorry for him.

I had no cash so even if I'd wanted to I couldn't have helped. In hindsight, I should have given him my Oyster card - he couldn't have bought alcohol or drugs with it, but if he'd needed to he could have got to his therapist.

It reminded me that sometimes we see people on the streets and we judge or we don't relate with them. Inside they're the same people as us, with more problems and more struggles. We could have been them in a very different life.

Anyway, random post, but I needed to get my thoughts down in writing.

Hope you've all had a good day.

E x

How to maintain balance

Happy New Year everyone! Hope we're all feeling fresh as daisies after last night's activities...!

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I spent a quiet one in with my better half, watching DVDs and drinking champagne. That's right, rock and roll...

I started the morning with a good old 5k and then tried out a new waffle maker I got my boyfriend for Christmas. I started off with his waffles which were a big flop, and by the time I actually made something edible for him I was not in the mood to make any wheat free ones for me! 

What was more of a success was my roasted almonds (170c for 10 minutes, then sprinkle with salt). I made them to go with my leftover Christmas chocolate which I bashed up and created a nutty almond mix. So good, and it means I'll be getting some protein every time I reach for a chocolate fix :)

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So yesterday I talked about how my goal this year was to maintain balance. I'm quite often an all or nothing person in what I do and one aspect of my life, whether it be running, work, or eating, completely takes over. 

For the last few months I've been setting monthly goals under different topics. The topics cover all areas of my life and help me make sure each area gets some attention. And so I get some balance! The areas I set goals in are:

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Pleasure - all the things we forget about as we're too busy cleaning, exercising, and working!

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Health - at the moment these are often eating related for me, but could be around mental health, getting a medical check up or simply paying more attention to how your body is feeling at regular intervals.

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Fitness - whether it's a new personal distance or time record, just exercising 3 times a week, or trying a new sport - anything counts!

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Fear - when I turned 26 I was feeling pretty crippled by anxiety (hurrah, don't we love anxiety). I was fed up with feeling out of control of my emotions, so I decided I would do more things to push my comfort zone. On my birthday I went up Tower Bridge to take on the glass walkway, and in December I took on a whole project at work which was beyond where I felt capable. This area of goals is important to me to make sure I don't just sit in my comfort zone for the rest of my life. 

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Work - (Yeah I wish my work desk looked like that!). For me work is normally the thing that takes over my life. I want to improve in my role and further my career, and giving myself one or two goals can help me feel less overwhelmed.

Note: there are NO calorie or weight loss related goals. This was a big thing for me as these used to be my only goals. I'm slowly shifting my thought patterns away from this being the be all and end all of life.

When setting goals, they should be:

- Achievable in a month.

- Few. It's silly to set a heap of goals as we just can't keep up. 

- Not designed to last longer than a month. Sure, I want to take what I've learned and carry it with me, but they're about setting good habits, not ruling my life with an iron fist.

- Based on where I am now. I know how I'm feeling at the beginning of the month and what I'm realistically likely to achieve.

- Revisited throughout the month. It's amazing how quickly we can forget what our goals were, and it gives us the opportunity to try a new tactic if we realise we're not getting anywhere with one.

- Never repeats from the month before. If I achieved it that month, great. Let's learn from that and take our new skills on with us. If I didn't achieve it last month, why not? If I don't change anything I'm not likely to achieve it this month, so let's break it down and create a goal that will help me overcome where I missed out. 

- Always reflected on at month end. We should give ourselves a pat on the back where we did well, and learn from where we didn't. 

Sure, I rarely tick of all of my goals at the end of the month but I never feel like I've failed as there are always some I'm achieved! And, in the aim of maintaining balance, at the end of the month it's a great visible way of seeing how you've progressed in all areas!

My January goals are:

Pleasure

- Book theatre tickets. My boyfriend and I got vouchers last Christmas (yikes!) and have never got round to booking anything. We know we want to go and see Wicked, we just need to book it!

- Make the most of our week off at the start of January. It's already flying by, and I've spent an embarrassing amount of it sleeping, so need to get on with this one!

- Make sure my boyfriend has a wonderful birthday at the end of the month

- Write an email to a friend I've lost contact with

- Write all the online recipes I use frequently into a recipe folder...it's such a pain having to boot my laptop up every time I want to cook!

(I always tend to have a few more pleasure goals, as they tend to be more one off to dos, rather than ongoing challenges).

Health

- Focus on stabilising my blood sugar. My meal plan is reminding me what it's like to eat well rounded meals and not be darting between sugar highs and sugar lows. I really want to focus on keeping a stable blood sugar to keep on with the great feeling I have from eating this way

- Keep as close to the meal plan when I'm back at work. When I'm back at work in a week I'm working away from home again without a kitchen. I can't follow my meal plan and am always tempted to go back to my routine of fewer calories and more snacking. I want to try and eat as normally as possible!

Fitness

- Run a 7k. This month I've been at the 6k level so want to step it up.

- Do 10 proper push ups. For ages I've been doing push ups on my knees, and it's about time I manned up!

Fear

- Throw away the scales. I haven't weighed myself for a very long time and the thought of weighing myself terrifies me as I know the number will over rule any logical thoughts about my weight. Still, I've been putting off throwing my scales away, you know, just in case... Well stuff that. Scales are not needed in my life right now, so I need to get rid.

Work

- Maintain a positive attitude. I'm going back to work on  a project I'm not a fan of. It has unrealistic time pressures, not the best working team ever, and is just generally difficult. I finished my last project feeling stronger in my role and enjoying work...I want to keep that optimism!

Anyway, I hope those tips help you get balance in your life just like it's helped me :)

E x

What are your goals this month or year?

We are mountains

Sometimes (actually, far more regularly than just “sometimes”) my therapist says something that makes me go “woah, YES”. She puts things into a way that I have never comprehended. For that second, life all fits together and I feel STRONG. I can overcome my problems.

There are two related things she’s said recently. The first was that thought patterns and behaviours are just habits, and habits can be changed. The second was that thoughts to us are what weather are to mountains (go with me on this one!).

She’s totally right!

How many of us think changing a bad habit is achievable? Most of us, right? Sure, it’s going to be hard, a long process, and a bit of a pain, but it’s possible! If our eating behaviours are just habits, then we can change these in exactly the same way. For some reason I’d never thought of all of my problems as habits. I saw them as cemented to me and my being, refusing to be moved without completely changing myself. That's so far from the truth.

Her second point about us being mountains and our thoughts being the weather started off with a visualisation exercise. I was told to visualise a mountain, strong, unmovable, rooted to the ground. The mountain stands there no matter what the weather throws at it: it's defiant and strong. I then was told to bring the mountain inside of myself, to feel rooted to the ground to see the weather changing around me, just like the thoughts that come and pass over us. Sometimes they’re dark like clouds; sometimes they beat us up like the wind; and sometimes they bring us happiness and warm our souls like the sun. But they always pass and throughout we are the strong, rooted person.

We have to remember that our brains are not static. We learn, we forget, we can change ourselves. We can learn not to think badly about ourselves, we can learn not to mess around with our eating, we can learn to have a good relationship with food. These are all good habits that we can learn and we will also unlearn our bad habits. If we were not capable of this we’d all still be wearing nappies, we'd never would say please and thank you, and we'd never would look before crossing the road.

And whilst we work to try and change our habits, we need to remember that thoughts are only a minor part of us. Our thoughts are fleeting and can go as quickly as they come. Yes they can be painful and cause us damage, but they can equally be uplifting and make us feel thankful to be alive. We have the control as to how much our thoughts affect us:  we can draw our awareness to them and simply watch as they pass on. We do not have to try and bury our thoughts, or dwell on them, or let them dictate our emotion.

We are mountains, and we are strong and unbreakable.

It turns out recovery is hard...

My feelings over the last couple of months have gone something like this:

"Oh my God life's freaking awesome and I'm eating and not thinking about calories and wow food and eating is amazing"

to

 

"Yeah so I'm not eating that healthily, and yeah, I'm not as toned as before, but heck, who cares - imperfections make us who we are"

 

to

 

 

"Woah, there nelly, I've got as much blubber as a walrus"

Photos were the catalyst of this last one. I knew I was piling on a bit of extra fat (well, duh, I'm eating more) but my Mum put some photos up on Facebook of some recent family events (just for the record, family events that I LOVED because I was able to join in, not care about eating or drinking, and for once be relaxed and enjoy the event). However the photos made me cry, shudder, and immediately contemplate fasting, juice cleansing, restricting, food group elimination, excessive exercising...the usual.

These were some of the photo culprits:

My initial thoughts on these photos:
Image on the left: Well hello there thunder thighs, and wow your arm's looking chunky
Image on the top right: Your hips are humongous and, erm, are you pregnant?!
Image on the bottom right: Are you hoarding food in those hamster cheeks? Oh, and by the way, your arm's obese.

Talk about some self-loathing.

Let's take another look. Firstly, I AM NOT OBESE. After the initial shock of looking so much bigger than I was, I realised I was not fat. Hell, I know some people work there backsides off to get down to this weight.

Image on the left: this is not a flattering photo. You did not know it was being taken. Those are your muscular runner's legs, those are your legs that can make you feel like you're flying. They're also in jeans that are now too small, and too tight clothes are never looking flattering. Maybe let's splash out on some new clothes to suit my curvier, healthier body yes? Oh, and how about looking at your other arm which is at a slightly less unflattering angle?
Image on the top right: again, that shadowing is not flattering. And yeah, you're tummy's a bit chunkier. But some of that is muscle from all those sit-ups you do. You also messed up your digestion from all that restrictive eating, so sometimes you get bloated. Eating more's the only way to cure this. (And look at that genuinely happy smile on your face - you're loving life right there).
Image on the bottom right: remember those push ups you do every day...that might have something to do with your arm size. Also remember how much you love feeling strong. As for your cheeks, unfortunately you weren't blessed with strong cheek bones and dimples - you're going to have to learn those cheeks.

And remember how happy you felt in each and every one of those photos. That's worth every extra inch of fat on your body in those photos.

So yeah, it turns out recovery is hard. But you've just got to remember to dig out that voice of self-love when it gets a bit dark. You're stronger than those negative thoughts.

Wearing a bikini and a new reality

So I did it. I wore a bikini. In front of other people.

I genuinely don't remember the last time I wore a bikini without covering it up with shorts and a t-shirt. Just the thought of showing off every inch of fat on my body filled me with dread. I thought people would scrutinise all the imperfect parts of my body - not just my weight, but my pale skin; my cellulite; my untoned stomach; my poorly done bikini wax; my varicose veins...the list goes on.

I felt like the moment I took off my clothes it was going to be like there a was a massive siren going off accompanied by a big flashing arrow, with everyone turning round to gawp in disgust. I thought my boyfriend would see me and automatically hate me for all of my imperfections. And none of this was because anyone had ever done these things - my boyfriend certainly not, he's amazingly supportive - but that didn't stop my disordered brain thinking disordered things.

I couldn't come on a beach holiday and sit covered up the whole time, so I locked myself in the bathroom for quite some time, gave myself a pep talk, and braved the beach. To my amazement, as I stripped off there was no flashing light or loud sound. Unsurprisingly noone was looking in my direction, nor cared one tiny bit that I was stripping off into my bikini. And, of course, my boyfriend didn't look at me like I was some ugly lump of fat. Which isn't surprising as, not only is it not something he's not seen before, but surely something every boyfriend wants is to spend time with their girlfriend in a bikini?!

So where did I pick up the courage from? After all, I have done zero exercise and eaten poorly for the past few weeks, am almost the heaviest I've been for years, amd am covered in bruises from carrying stuff round at the exhibition...so I'm not exactly in peak condition!

As I've mentioned in previous posts, the last few weeks I've had a new found relaxed attitude to eating. I've no idea where it's come from, but it's given me the head space to look at things in a new way. Before I would have been so caught up in my negative thoughts that I wouldn't have had any time to do anything other than panic. However being more relaxed has given me time to think about the situation I'm in and to look around me. At first I still found myself idolising people with tiny frames...and then once again realised that they were the bodies of teenagers. Which just made me angry with myself - adults are not supposed to look like children! Once I started looking around me at actual adults I saw women of all different shapes and sizes, all wearing bikinis and all looking amazing. No one was looking at them in a negative way at all.

One of the key reasons they looked so amazing was because they were all exuding confidence. I'm not going to pretend I know what was going through their heads (I'm sure they all have body hang-ups) but they were sat there acting like they were loving life, and wearing a bikini was neither here nor there for them. When I looked at them I didn't see their body type, I saw fantastically happy and confident women. And that's how I wanted to feel: happy, confident and carefree! Why should I be the woman sat on the beach covered up because of my own negative thoughts?!

And that's exactly it: we are our own worst enemies. We impose our own views on the world around us - if we think negatively about ourselves then we often think the world thinks the same about us. If we're judging ourselves on our bodies, then we assume everyone else is doing the same. In reality, people are often far too caught up in their own lives to notice other people. And even if they do, and they think something negatively about our bodies, so what? They may have a more toned stomach than you, or a more tanned complexion, but if they're judging us negatively based on our looks then their personality and good nature - the important things in life - don't even come close to yours.

The biggest favour we can do ourselves is to reevaluate the norms we've created for our own individual realities. Do they actually match the norms that really exist? I built myself a reality in which I thought everyone has the perfect bikini body, no one has cellulite, everyone has perfect skin, and everyone judges you based on your looks. In true reality the norms are that hardly anyone is so skinny you can see their ribs, that most women have cellulite and people don't spend their days judging you based on their looks.

I know this shouldn't have been such a revelation to me, but it was. As a result it gave me the confidence to sit on that beach, knowing I wasn't perfect, and not care. Being surrounded by women in bikinis, appreciating every woman for her own shape and size, made me realise how uptight and unrealistic I was being. And by being that way, not just in terms of wearing a bikini, but in every aspect of my life, from eating, to relationships, to work, I was denying myself the space to be truly happily and live my life to the fullest. Living your life terrified of other people's judgements, and your own self-judgements, is a half life. Recognise reality for what it is, and then be present in it - wear a bikini, eat chips, and smile :)

When you're too busy to worry about food

Oh how I’ve missed blog time. I’ve missed it so so much! Unfortunately, the last few weeks were absolutely crazy, and as my life and income didn’t depend on the blog, that was the one thing that had to take a back seat. There were so many times I wanted to just put some thoughts on a page though!

The last few months I’ve been organising my company’s involvement in a large conference, including running a fringe event and an exhibition stand…and last week it took place! It was pretty much non-stop 24/7 for that and the preceding week, and to top it all off I had a job interview to turn my graduate position into a permanent position in the same week. I was running a fringe event at 7am in the morning, packing up the exhibition and event until early afternoon and then quick-stepped it onto a train to Woking from the south coast to just make it to the interview on time. I was running on my last bit of adrenaline at this point.

But everything was so worth it – the conference was a success (albeit not up to my perfectionist standards!) and the interview went well enough for me to get one of the jobs J

I stupidly thought this week would be nice and relaxed as a result. How wrong I was! I ended up travelling from the South coast up to Manchester for a new project on Monday and then was commuting the 2 hours from my parents’ house up to the office for a couple of days. It’s always so exciting when you start a new project, but also equally exhausting as you try and learn everything you need. With that and trying to wrap up everything from the conference and get everything sorted out for when I was out of office I’m pretty sleep-deprived!

I was hoping to spend some quality time with my family whilst I’d been staying at home this week, but it just didn’t happen which I’m annoyed at myself for. It was one of the few times that me, my brothers and parents were all in the same place. I did take yesterday off for brother’s graduation – I was one super-duper proud sister (though I can’t believe he’s old enough to have gone through uni already!), but I really had such little energy to participate. Still, an amazing day that I was so grateful to be there to celebrate!

However, the two most remarkable things that have happened these last few weeks were body image-related.

The first is that I could barely tell you how many calories I’ve eaten each day (but it’s been a lot). And I’ve just not had the time to be concerned with what I’m eating – I’ve had to grab food when I can and it’s often been additive-ridden supermarket cheese sandwiches full of fat and sugar and calories. This isn’t a diet that I would advocate(!) but to be relaxed enough to allow myself to do this is quite an achievement. I’m not saying there wasn’t any guilt, and yes there were times when I thought about restricting to compensate, but I talked myself round and compared to normal it’s been a total transformation.

The second thing is that I have done basically no planned exercise. In the last 2 weeks I’ve been on one run and done about 10 minutes of yoga. Sleep just had to take priority. I definitely wouldn’t say I’ve enjoyed not being active, but it’s because I’ve missed the feeling of exercise, not because I’m panicking about weight gain.

Like I’ve said, this is not a lifestyle I advocate: exercise and eating well is fundamental to our wellbeing, but we shouldn’t be uptight about it. Why add extra stress into our lives? Sometimes we can’t eat perfectly and we just have to eat what we can in those circumstances, and a few weeks of fewer good eats is not going to kill us.

I’m off on holiday today to Singapore and then Bali (I was dreading a 12+ hour flight, but now I’m seeing it as an excellent opportunity to catch up with some sleep!) which I’m super excited about. There are things that fill me with dread: wearing a bikini (I don’t remember the last time I did that – even at my thinnest I was too self-conscious); eating out all the time; having a sudden outburst of all the disgust that I’ve so far avoided feeling from the last few weeks. I just want to maintain that relaxed attitude that I have for the last couple of weeks. I want to enjoy my holiday and relax and be a normal human being.

I’m hoping to do some blogging whilst I’m away so hopefully I’ll get some blog posts up over the next week and a half. I imagine there’ll be some thoughts to share on bikini wearing…

I’ll also be around on Twitter and Instagram for those of you who like a good photo or two…

Have a fabulous weekend…see you in Singapore!

Meals and gratitiude #20

Hi guys!

Am just dropping in for a really quick post whilst I eat my dinner and watch Wimbledon. I always feel there's a lack of womble presence at the tournament. I want more wombles.

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Meals today have been:

Breakfast: rye bread peanut butter sandwich and frozen raspberries which were super mushed and difficult to eat by the time I got to eating them on the train.

Lunch: I used an M&S santini tomato salad as a base and then added a bit of their spanish omelette and a good dose of houmous. Really wanted some olives to go with but they're coated in lots of crazy preservatives. Not. A. Fan.

 

Afternoon snack: Some antioxidant-rich blueberries. Nom nom nom. In fact I nommed them too quick to take a photo.

Dinner: My fave nutty wholegrain salad from M&S packed with lots of protein. Plus strawberries so I can pretend I'm physically at Wimbledon. I'm becoming ridiculously obsessed with strawberries, and it needs to stop...they're so much more expensive than the good old reliable apple!

Gratitude:

- I got a new laptop at work! My last one was ooooold: it took more than 30 minutes to boost up, constantly froze, was impossibly slow to do ANYTHING, sounded like it was about to take off, was always super overheating... This one whizzes along like noone's business and it's all brand new. And it felt good that the company was willing to invest in new technology for me :)

- THE WEATHER! I could have totally done with my factor 50 sun cream today. I sat outside at lunch for 5 minutes and my cheeks have gone pink. Not good.

- A dark and dismal hotel room. Yes, it's dark and dismal, but that means the sun hasn't been beating down on it all day so must be a hell of a lot cooler than the other rooms. That's not saying it's cool - my yoga session was practically done bikram styley...

- Meeting my colleagues wife. She's moved over from Burma, and I've heard a lot about her, so it was lovely to meet her and fully understand just how friendly and amazing she is

- Brothers dressed in matching outfits. Isn't that the cutest?!

- A food and drink festival on in the town centre. The food looks amazing (one day I will be comfortable enough to throw caution to the calorie wind and go grab something yummy from one of the stalls...) as does the things they're selling it from. Yes, that's a double decker bus.

Monday motivation #7

Hi guys!

This is going to be a long week for me. It starts off with the exam today, I have a heap of work to do, I've got not only my therapy appointment on Thursday but a dietician appointment this evening, and I have to do a job application for Friday to allow me to stay at my current company...

So my blog posts might be a bit on the light side this week - I apologise now. I'll try and keep up with my daily round-up, and will of course be on Twitter and Instagram!

However I still wanted to provide you guys with some motivation this Monday morning (and I sure need it too!)

I do indeed hope you have a nice day :)

When I saw this on pinterest this weekend it instantly made me think. We never see the negative things we say to ourselves as "nasty". But sometimes we can be ridiculously nasty to ourselves. How about we try and stop all that negativity and tell ourselves how fantastic we are?! Because we are ALL absolutely amazing and unique and each and every one of us can be a gift to this world if we realise this :)

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Pretty much 24/7 the air has been filled with the smells of BBQs this weekend. I'm not gonna lie, I LOVE the smell of BBQs. I know I shouldn't: as a veggie/almost vegan the smell of cooking meat should repulse me, but it really doesn't! I was going to post some amazing image of a vegan BBQ, but then I saw THIS! Healthy fruit can just look so darn pretty.

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How amazing is that?! If anyone has a go at recreating this then pleeeease send me photos - it looks so much fun :)

Hope that's left you feeling motivated for the week. Have a great Monday!

E x

Meals and gratitude #19

Hi everyone!

I'm writing this to you with the World Cup match on in the background. I'm normally really not a footie fan, but have always watched at least 1 England match during each World Cup over the years, so this is my token watching!

It's been a fairly good eating day today!

It started off with some 0% fat greek yoghurt and frozen strawberries (they're just not as good frozen!).

 At lunch I had a salad containing lettuce, olives, pepper, cucumber, tomatoes, courgette and yummy houmous. Love the houmous.

I also had an apple just after.

On my way to my therapy session this afternoon I used my Holland and Barrett voucher and picked up these crisps and YoYo fruit rolls.

 Houmous in form 2! I barely got chance to open these before my appointment (plus I always feel guilty for eating just before I go to the sessions, which I realise is crazy!) so I finished them off on my tube journey home. So good.

Because I'd just eaten these and I got back late I didn't want to do huge amouts of food prep so I had this 2 minute dinner.

I know it looks like mush in a bowl, but it's one of my favourite evening treats. Frozen berries warmed in the microwave with cocoa powder and agave. The cocoa and agave mix with the berry juices to form a sauce :) On the side was rye toast.

  

A bit over on sugar, but my carbs, protein, and fat ratio was almost spot on today!

Gratitude

- Yoga for runners - my legs and hips are so stiff it's unbelievable!

- Cutest little girl on the train into work waving at everybody :)

- Being at home

Do you watch the World Cup?

E x

Meals and gratitude #18

Geez Louise it's hot!

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I'm definitely missing my room that had air con from last week - I'm having some serious "moisture control" issues right now!

Thankfully it was much cooler when I went for my run this morning!

Eats today have been pretty good, bar one slip up at lunch.

Started my day with a delicious simple breakfast of strawberries and nuts.

 Why eat out of a bowl when you can eat out of a mug right?! (Plus I don't have a bowl...)

Lunch was a rainbow salad which had all kinds of goodness: couscous, seeds, salad, veg, pomegranate. Yum. I also had a cheese and onion roll (I couldn't find them on My Fitness Pal but they work out as about the same nutritional information). That's what happens when you go food shopping hungry. Was pretty annoyed with myself!

 I had the popcorn as an afternoon snack.

Dinner was a greek salad which is always such a great dinner when the weather's like this :) Also had some medjool dates, just because - felt bad about just randomly eating them.

The roll blew my fat out and the dates had a massive impact on the sugar! Far, far too much!

 

Still got a long way to go in terms of getting balanced.

Gratitude

- As always when the sun's out - the weather!

- Making new connections at work with really lovely people

- Seeing the seagulls this morning dropping closed shells on to the ground from where they were flying to crack them open for the goodies inside - I've never seen that before!

What made you smile today?

E x

Meals and gratitude #17

Happy Monday! This week's going to be awesome right!?

I've had lady hormone tears (sorry, too much information) to the max today. Yesterday my flatmate/landlady told me she's going to have her boyfriend move in to the flat and that therefore my lease will come to an end at the beginning of September. That's always been on the cards, and I've been expecting it for a while, however I was pretty gutted. It's the first place I've lived since moving down to London that has actually felt like home - the flat, its location, my flatmate, Coco the cat were all perfect - and the feeling of having roots somewhere and belonging is such an underrated feeling!

That, in my hormone-mess, just led to a whole cascade of feelings that I couldn't deal with life, everything was too much...what a doofus!

Source

Source

Yes I think what I have right now is perfect, but the push to change will help me to get to experience something new, meet new people, and live something I otherwise wouldn't have had the chance to live. That's a gift, surely?

I had an amazing breakfast this morning. Banana and peanut butter rye bread sandwich (which would be amazing in itself) plus strawberries plus THE most amazing plum! A few years ago I was on holiday with my family in Italy and we ate fresh plums of the trees there, and that plum took me straight back there. Super delicious.

Lunch was the usual nutty salad from M&S. Starting to get a bit bored of M&S salads since I eat them so often!

Had one too many roasted nuts as an afternoon snack - not helping my "rebalance carbs and fat" aim, but so good!

Dinner was a beetroot salad and some amazingly juicy blueberries. Plus the little hotel biscuits.

Woah there on the fiber! In the end I was at 44% carbs, 43% fat, and13% protein. Better than some days but I still want to up the carbs to 50% and reduce the fat to 30% and see if that makes me feel any better.

Gratitude
 
- Support from my line manager regarding a job application

- Getting to sit in first class on the train due to it being cheaper than second class

- Breakfast this morning!

How's your day been?

E x

Monday motivation #6

Time to start another week! Here's some motivation to make sure this one's a good one:

This song is another one off my current running playlist, and it is SO motivational. I sometimes just put it on at points in the day when I need to believe I'm more awesome than I'm currently thinking I am.

This is so true. We always seem to be so fearful of pain and hardship, but this is what makes us stronger, helps us appreciate the good times, and grow to become the best we can.

Source

Right now in this glorious, but rather hot, weather all I'm craving for breakfast are either smoothies or banana softserve. This is a basic recipe for banana softserve, but Ari's Menu has the AMAZING idea of adding whipped coconut milk on top, which looks divine :) It's full of potassium from the bananas and coconut, so a great post-exercise refuel.

Source

Hope your weeks get off to an amazing start!

What's getting you going this Monday?

E x

Weekend round-up: even Batman couldn't save me from revision

Hello hello hello!

Hope you've all had lovely weekends!

My weekend started on Friday with a big old salad with eggs. And a few zillion teaspoons of peanut butter.

Saturday was another relaxed today. We'd  planned on going to a Dragon Boat Race but it started chucking it down with rain. Instead I caught up on all the sleep I'd been missing the last few days and then headed into town for a coffee and to pick up an engagement card for my boyfriend's brother. We also got them a £1 Halfords gift card as a silly token gift...the guy on the cash desk said he'd never been asked for that before! What can I say, we're generous souls. I also saw Batman and the Batmobile!

I spent the rest of the day chillaxing at home by myself, nipping to the shops for food, and catching up on TV whilst writing a few blog posts.

Sunday got off to a bit of a false start. I set my alarm so I could get up for a long run. I got up, brushed my teeth, checked my emails...and then went back to bed. I just couldn't face it! An hour later and I was back up, in my running gear, and managed to push out a 5k. Wasn't perfect but better than nothing.

I refuelled with rye bread, egg, and strawberries. I'm consciously trying to have a better proportion of carbs, fats and protein, and this was bang on the money!

Unfortunately the rest of my eats today were rubbish. Whilst I did have a massive salad for lunch, some dates and peanut butter as snacks, and some berries, I also ate a ridiculous number of crisps. Like bags and bags worth. I honestly don't know what my problem is, and I feel awful. I've got to learn that I can't do portion control, and therefore buying larger sizes of items may make more economic sense, but I don't have the willpower to stop at one portion.

I'm going to become enormous.

Unfortunately spent most of the day revising for a project management exam I've got in just over a week, but the weather was a bit pants so I wasn't too bothered. Also caught up on some Celebrity Masterchef :)

What did you get up to this weekend?

E x