It's amazing how your system just gets so confused after eating badly for a while. Your brain just clicks back into that junk mode and it's so incredibly difficult to get out of it again. I mean I haven't been an absolute saint with my diet since January, but I've managed to stick to a healthy diet overall. My birthday weekend just really threw me off the wagon and my brain must've just gone straight back into old habits.

Friday night was seriously horrible. I was craving McDonalds so badly (out of all the takeaways, why did I have to crave the worst one of em all?!) and when I got home I just decided that I need to distract myself somehow. And my solution was to make homemade, healthy burgers. Completely homemade, even put the effort in to make the buns from scratch.

Oh and for people wondering what on earth the jar is in the picture, it's this amazing Nordic condiment called cucumber salad ('kurkkusalaatti' in Finnish). It's pretty much gherkins, mustard seeds and red peppers and it is amazing. My other half always looks at me funny when I talk about it, and in all fairness so does everyone else who isn't from northern Europe. :D


And my other half decided to cook me dinner again on Saturday! It was a very delicious stilton & apple salad with grilled chicken, and just because I had a long day at work I wanted to treat myself to a glass of wine. I don't usually drink wine and when I do, I usually have a bit of Creme de Cassis (blackcurrant liqueur) with it to make it taste sweeter. I just prefer sweet drinks and dishes, exactly why I always go for a very sweet curry (chom chom or nababi) when we go for Indian.

.... I want a curry now. Balls.


It's my half term week so I get to work all week! I spent most of my Monday scanning cards up in our stock room as we missed some over the weekend. We are doing our Christmas layout at the store and it means that all of our everyday cards are being condensed to make room for the Christmas stuff. Well, people tend to put things back where they feel like instead of putting it back where they put it from, so we ended up missing a ton of cards so I had to go through about ten big boxes of cards. All the stacks were completely messed up so I pretty much had to flick through every single card individually to make sure that there wasn't any odd cards between stacks.

I'm so used to standing up at work all day and my back definitely is used to it by now. Sitting on a table with all my cards in front of me sounded like a brilliant idea and I did the scanning like that for about two hours, but my back started aching so much that I just had to hop down and finish the scanning standing up. Not that I mind of course, bigger calorie burn. ;)


I had a day off today and I definitely got the most out of it. I didn't have a single day off last week so this was so needed! The dogs did make sure I didn't get to sleep for long, but nevermind that. Like I mentioned in the previous post, my friend went shopping with me today. I did feel a bit bad for him though, I only ended up buying two dresses and a hoodie. I did plan on buying a lot more but it's just one of those days when I hate the majority of clothes in every single shop. I wish I'd just like things for once, but NO, I just have to be so ridiculously picky with clothes.

The hoodie was by far the best thing I have bought in ages! I turned a corner and it was just staring at me on the rail. A PANDA HOODIE!! With proper ears and everything! I couldn't leave it there, it's just so cute!


I also got the chance to use my Pizza Express voucher today. I have actually never been to one before, I've had the frozen stuff plenty of time but never actually gone in and had a meal there. My friend even said that I've lost my Pizza Express virginity today! :D Another fond memory in the books.

My pizza looks like quite a mess in the picture, but I promise it was delicious! I had Il Padrino, a chicken pizza with roasted tomatoes, chargrilled vegetables on a tomato and pesto base. The veg seemed to be aubergine and yellow & red peppers, could've probably done with a few more veg on it to make it a bit more interesting though. Was also missing a bit more seasoning on the chicken, but it was delicious the way it is.


And to kill a bit of time tonight I will probably browse some online shops and order more clothes. ;)

I'm not happy. Sure, still a loss, but I'm just not satisfied with the way I've been eating and not exercising at all lately. I know I can do this without the same amount of exercise I used to do, but my diet has been all over the place ever since my birthday.

I need to fix this.

It's been quite a packed week again. But nevermind, Thursday mornings are perfect for a bit of writing. ;)

After such a tiny loss this week I really felt like doing something about it straight away. Sunday being my day off again last week I just thought that I might as well go for a long walk to de-stress and clear my head for the week ahead. My plan was all good, but a few minutes after stepping outside it started raining. I just thought that I'll suck it up, it wasn't raining that hard and I've walked in worse weather before. And it was fine until about the last 20 minutes of my walk. It really started pouring down and I walked against the wind for a while so I just got completely soaked!! My hoodie, trousers, trainers and socks were completely wet and everything else at least partially wet. When I got back my other half just said "Did you go for a swim?!" when he saw me! :D He hadn't even realised that it had rained.


What's your excuse for not exercising? I didn't even let the awful weather stop me.

As you'd expect, we've got a student tutor at uni. He's there to listen to any concerns - both personal and uni related - and we had a really nice long chat on Tuesday. He was just asking about how things are going and so on and we sort of got on the subject of career choices. Ever since I moved to England I've started putting everyone else before myself (my background really influences this as I know how awful it feels to be alone and have nobody to talk to). If someone needs help with anything, 90% of the time I will drop my own things just so I can help a friend get through something. My tutor did suggest careers similar to a personal assistant on graphics related course and I also mentioned councelling. My other half keeps saying that I should look into it as I have helped quite a few friends through all kinds of mental issues. I've just really turned into someone who wants to help. I suppose it's simply because I didn't get the help I was after years ago and I just want to make sure others do.


On a slightly lighter note, my other half surprised me last night when I was leaving work! He cooks very rarely so when he called me to ask how to make a glaze I use on salmon I just couldn't wait to get home. :) It's just so nice to come home and not have to worry about cooking something every now and then. I mean I really love cooking and I happily do it every single night, but little treats like this make me so happy.

This is the glaze I use and it's divine. Really simple to make, tastes amazing and you can serve pretty much anything you want with it. We had it with lemon couscous, peas & sweetcorn and grilled peppers. I let my other half be in charge of plating it all up as well, he's so adorable.


I went through my wardrobe again last night. I've just got so many clothes I haven't worn for ages because they're either too big for me or I just don't simply like them. I did the same probably six months ago and now I've got two plastic bags full of clothes just sitting there, waiting for me to take them to a clothes bank so they'll be handed out to people who really need them. I just need someone to drive me to one, I'm not dragging two heavy bin bags full of clothes all the way to the closest one!


What I noticed after my little "cleansing ritual" was that it was mainly black and white again. I spoke about this subject a while ago and it's really starting to be obvious that my clothes are directly linked to my confidence. For years I wore dark colours and baggy clothes so I could just hide away. Apart from a pink dress and a green top all these clothes are just a part of the old me and I want to get rid of them.

Now I've just got to be brave and go shopping for new stuff. I can't say it enough, I hate shopping! I'd prefer to do it all online but I've got a gift card and a money off voucher that can only be used in store. Thankfully my friend offered to go with me so at least he will keep my sanity levels relatively normal when I do manage to drag myself to New Look again.

It's been an oddly active weekend for me! I really don't do much in the evenings, I'm just one of those people who likes to stay at home and watch TV or play games most of the time. More about that in a bit though. :)

I really love Fridays at uni as it's our photography day. We look into different graphic designers and photographers, what their work is like and think about the relevance of their work to our own project. This week we got to create a graffiti wall to use in our magazines and it was so much fun! Just going nuts with a bit of paint, spray cans, stencils, tape and photos to create something like this was just brilliant.

This was really a team work exercise as well, as there was five of us working on this. :) I really love my group, the guys are amazing! I think that's a really good thing about having such a small group, you just get to know each other a lot faster than you would if there was 20+ of us.

So yeah, just lost the water weight from last week. Not much else to say about it really. :p

Or well, I'm just happy that I did lose this week after going out last night. Alcohol + a late night snack after we got home could've looked very awful on the scales this morning.

Hooray, after a week of waiting my jeans are finally here! I ordered one pair of jeans and then these very old school corduroy trousers (I do kinda call them jeans though, no clue why). The trousers are just a tiny bit too small for me at the moment but that's fine, just something else to work towards. ;) The jeans are lovely though, I really like the quality of the fabric H&M produces.


I said this like six months ago, but I'm going to say it again. Why the hell are my feet so pale?! They're blending in with our carpets, seriously... :D I look like I've got no feet in the picture on the right. Wonder if I should get spray tan just for my feet haha!

We had an employability / business event today instead of a normal uni day. In a way a bit annoying as we had to be in by 8.45 instead of our usual 13.15 start on Thursdays. I was really expecting it to be a very specific graphics oriented event, but turned out that it was for the entire higher education group (probably 10 or so different groups?). While I was really annoyed that it wasn't really focused on what we are doing, it was quite a nice opportunity to get to know new people. :)

We had to come up with a solution to a modern day problem, try and sell it to potential customers and then do a presentation around the idea. My group came up with Text-a-lyser, a phone app that stops you from drunk texting / calling. We did actually win with our idea, got £10 each for it and all! :D And with that money I got dinner for me and a friend, hah.


And yay outfit pictures! I've had this dress for yeaaaars! It's just always been one of those things that I haven't really been able to wear as it's quite skin hugging, just never really had the figure for it (and I don't really think I do now either, but had a little help from my tights to suck it all in! :D). Think I've worn it about three or four times since I bought it.

It's the same with my coat really, love it to death but I just go too big for it at some point and had to abandon it. It actually got to the point where the buttons kept falling off and I had to replace all of them eventually! Just happy to be able to wear old clothes again, makes all the hard work worth it. :)

I'm not usually the one to say anything about the cold weather (being from northern Europe and all, where we actually have cold winters), but today and yesterday I've just been freezing my bits off! :D We don't have our heating on during the days yet as we are trying to save money on heating and electric bills, so it's time to just suck it up and find millions of layers of clothes when I'm at home during the day.

And that's pretty much what I did! :D T-shirt, hoodie (birthday present from my lovely friend Nils by the way! ♥), slacks and two pairs of socks. And those stripy woolen socks are hand made by my mum! I wish I had the patience and time to relearn how to knit socks and mittens, I'd be sorted for life! I can make hats and scarves but that's it, when it gets more difficult than that I'm just completely lost.


I'm finding it very awkward to go for a walk right now. Not in the sense that I don't have the time or I don't want to, but the weather! It's too cold to go out in just a top or a t-shirt, but wearing a long sleeved shirt on top of it is a bit too much. Noticed that today as well, I really wanted to take my hoodie off halfway through my walk but figured that I'd just catch a cold if I did. And don't really have that much spare money to actually do more shopping right now. First world problems. :p

And I also should go get my eyes checked, I'm really starting to struggle. I've had glasses since I was quite young, I started needing them for reading, looking at a computer screen and so on. My last eye check was 6-7 years ago and it's really starting to be clear that I need to get them checked again. I don't really use my current glasses for that very reason, my eyesight has actually changed so much since then that they don't really help. I'm just finding it very difficult to actually read anything on our white board at uni, I need to go sit close to the screen to be able to read the text.

I actually had a little trial run with my glasses last night. They didn't help. At all. I was only able to wear them for about 10 minutes and just had to take them off, my eyes felt so weird as they were trying to adjust to the lenses. Oh well, something to get sorted out when I finally get my student finance come through. :p

As we live quite close to each other, he gives me a lift to and from uni quite frequently. As a thanks I offered to make him lunch today and ended up making pancakes. I should've taken a few pictures but you know, you just get caught up with the conversation sometimes!

So I guess all I want to say is - thank you Chris. :) ♥

I also use music to process everything in my head. It doesn't matter if it's a happy or a sad thing, I do usually associate songs to those events and when I listen to the songs later on I pretty much always go back to those moments and think about them. For example meeting my WoW friends is very tied into Blame It on the Boogie, as it was one of the songs played during our very first meetup and we all learned the little dance you do with the chorus. :D It's not a good meeting without a bit of MJ!

And here's a few songs I've listenend to a lot the past few days. Not going to go into it too much, some songs might only have a very loose connection to everything and some songs have been there just to cheer me up. Enjoy. :)

Surprisingly hard to find the proper version of that song on Youtube.. All I get is "This and that has blocked this video in your country" and it's annoying! All I get is covers of people doing this song and quite frankly that's not good enough! :D

Anyways. The forecast is telling me it's gonna rain all day today and I'm bit annoyed about that as it's my only day off this week. Really could've done with a long walk along the seafront, it's just been way too long since I've had the chance to do that. I think I'd actually just suck it up and go if I had a waterproof jacket, but that's still something I need to invest in.


I keep telling myself that I should restart Body Revolution, but I just keep putting it off. The DVD box just keeps staring at me on the dresser and I feel so guilty for constantly postponing it. Now that our time is cut really short and we simply don't have the time to go to the gym, I think I really should get back into it to keep myself fit (don't want to lose all the muscle definition I've worked hard for now do I?) and make sure my weight loss doesn't stall.

To keep myself occupied today I've been doing a ton of uni work. We have sketchbooks for all our hard copies of our work and we are required to keep them up to date all the time, so I've just been taping stuff in, finishing half finished tasks, printing it out, rinse and repeat. I'd really prefer to have a blog for it all instead of wasting paper (and ink..) but what can you do.

The top picture is just some old stuff I have in there to show you lot what it's all about, bottom one is some ridiculous moodboards we had to create this week. For the blue one I actually stapled my boyfriend's £80 jumper on a bit of paper.. :D He did give me permission to do it so it's all good!



And to the important bit of this post, progress pictures! I really should measure myself way more than I do now (five places), as I really seem to get the most progress in the spots I don't measure! I've really lost a ton of fat since September, holy hell seriously!



I actually compared the pictures from today to my starting pictures, and oh my god I've come so far in ten months. It's just incredible what a bit of willpower can achieve; 11kg (25lb) difference is really huge. I know I'm aiming to drop another 11kg, but just looking at my progress now I don't think I should go quite that far. I have a feeling that just another 5kg will get me to the figure I want. I'm starting to be really happy with my body (the first time I can say that in six or seven years..), but I'm a perfectionist so I'm not quite done yet. ;)

Not bothered about the gain, I've had such a horrible week food wise. :D Two takeaways, chocolate (and way too much of it...), sweets... It's been hard to switch off from last weekend for sure. I'm also really struggling to find the time to exercise at the moment, really need to just put half an hour aside for that every day and stick to it, no matter how busy I am.

Anyways, measurements! Will ramble more later today or tomorrow + pics. :)

Arms: 30cm (31cm)
Bust: 101m (101cm)
Waist: 73,5cm (74cm)
Belly: 91cm (92cm)
Thighs: 57,5cm (57,5cm)
Weight: 72,6kg (73,8kg)

Oh my god! Remember how in July I was talking about my target jeans? And how I want to fit them by mid November?

Well screw you fat, I fit in them already! I was actually ordering jeans from H&M last night when I realised that they're in the wardrobe just waiting for me to be thin enough to fit in them. Couldn't resist trying them on and I was just so chuffed that I'm small enough to fit in jeans I wore in '09 (I was 17)! Just the thought of being back to those measurements is just so amazing.


And just looking at that post I made in July, oh my god how thin I am compared to then! I mean obviously, since July's progress check I've lost roughly 3,5 kilos, but I just don't see the progress in the mirror (still!). So glad I take pictures of myself so often.

I was meant to post yesterday but eh, too lazy!

You may also have noticed that I never posted my weigh in either. I did it on Friday morning for obvious reasons, it was a 100g gain but not overly worried about something like that. :p Having a weigh in a few days early is always a bit iffy, but I rather do it before a weekend away than after.. :D I haven't even checked the damage from the weekend, but I think I'm just going to focus on burning it all off.


We stayed in Harrow pretty much the entire weekend (apart from a bit of shopping in London on Sunday). We all arrived quite late so the first thing we all wanted to do was eat something. A few of us gathered up at a pub and the first thing I was given was a double vodka lemonade, which wasn't the best idea seeing I hadn't eaten a thing since 11am that morning. :D Should've bought a snack before I got on the train, but oh well.

We were going to go for curry / Chinese food, but then bumped into this amazing Mediterranean restaurant called Lazeza. They had a huge range of different dishes; salads, steak, mixed grills, pasta, pizza... I'm so obsessed with pesto lately that I went for a yummy chicken pesto pasta, very delicious and proud of myself for not going for the burger (on my friend's plate on the right in the pic!) straight away.


We had some time to kill on Saturday morning as we were waiting for some people to arrive. We had the option of either going to London to do all sorts of touristy stuff there or stay in Harrow to have a look at the old town bit on Harrow's hill. And well, staying away from the huge masses of people sounded like a brilliant idea so we went for the old town. We were warned about a hill but oh my god, that was one hell of a hill! Took us a good 10 minutes just to walk all the way up, but it was definitely worth the climb. The place was absolutely stunning and couldn't ask for a better view of the city! We did trespass on private property for a bit to get a good picture of London but oh well, I was more than happy to get told off to get this picture. :D

My friend was really into the thought of walking through the old graveyard as we started going down the hill again. It was really pretty in all fairness, my photographer instincts started ticking away and I could've pretty happily spent hours in there, just looking for things to photograph. Old gravestones, moss, vines... You could get some really cool material in there.


In a way the lives of me and my friend revolve around coffee. We had a little gap between us coming down from the hill and my other half arriving to London so our instant thought seemed to be "Costa!" .. :D It was such a warm day that I was kinda leaning towards something cold this time instead of a hot cup of coffee, so decided to try this mango & passionfruit cooler they have. It was like.. blitzed fruit in a cup. Very sweet, really yummy and gave me a brain freeze..


As Lazeza was such an amazing place, we didn't need to think long about where to have lunch on Saturday. I struggled a bit this time as I didn't want to have pasta again and nothing really shouted out to me as such, in the end I went for a simple chicken pizza. Not the healthiest thing I could've had but oh well. And I got pressured into having cake as well, hah! I mean sure it was my birthday weekend and I was going to have some kind of cake, but why oh why do they always have chocolate fudge cake on the menus?! Chocolate is my doom, seriously. The cake was incredible but I just kept thinking "oh god this must have over 800 calories...". Sometimes it would be nice to be able to switch off from the losing weight mentality so I could really enjoy good food.


Saturday night was the 'big party night', and time for us girls to dress up! I've got to admit, I felt really self conscious all night. I've just never worn a skin tight dress, I was stressing out over it at our hotel but as I didn't exactly have a backup plan I just had to suck it up and go for it. A few drinks later I did just stop caring though!

It was an evening full of karaoke, food, drinks and generally spending time with some of my dearest friends. It really was just nice to get away from my usual life, just stop worrying about uni and work for a change and just relax!


Oh and I must recommend a pub in London, it's called The Green Man inn @ Edgware Road. Their Juicy Bastard Burger Kitchen makes by far the best burger I have ever eaten! I definitely want to go there again, the portion was perfect and didn't make me feel like I was in a food coma afterwards. Everyone else around the table agreed about it, I have a feeling we will be going there again!


As much as I do love London and spending time with my friends, I was really glad to be heading home on Sunday night. I was just so shattered, this kind of stuff just drains you. It was definitely a good weekend though, thank you all for coming. <3 Can't wait to see these guys again.

"People say I look slim, but I don't. I look slim-mer and trim-mer, which is a very different thing! But I'm trying and I'm feeling a lot better!"
- James Corden

While I'm not a massive celeb fangirl, I really felt like this quote is something I relate to so much right now. James Corden as a person means pretty much nothing to me, but as I was browsing through last week's Fabulous magazine his interview just caught my eye (mainly because it had "weight loss" written all over it).

People can definitely see the change in me and think I look great, and yeah in a way I think I look great right now. But it's not quite enough for me, all these people only see me with my clothes on. I am the one who needs to put up with the mirror image of myself without the clothes on and the cover they give. While I'm really happy with the way my figure is, I still hide quite a bit of the fat under the waistband of my jeans or under baggy tops. I am not far off from losing all that and I'm proud about that, but it's not quite enough for me yet. When I mention it I just get people gasping for air and thinking that I will just turn into a skeleton (I won't, trust me!), but I think they'd see it differently if they actually saw me the way I do.

I'm sure my past insecurities affect my self-image as well in a way despite my past being, well, the past. I do feel a million times more confident about myself than I used to, I know it's not all weight loss related and it's been a long process that's taken me years. It's small things like feeling "brave" enough to go out without any makeup on, not being afraid to show people who you really are. I've learned to think about it from the point of view that if people are so shallow that they can't look past things like lack of makeup, I don't even want to know them. What good would people like that contribute to my life, if all they could think about is something so superficial?


And to change the subject to something a bit lighter now! I am so excited about this weekend! It's my birthday on Monday and I'm going up to London to celebrate with a small group of friends. I've gotten to know all these people through World of Warcraft, I've known them all for years and they really are some of the best company I could think of. Unfortunately not everyone could make it and I really wanted to include a few people from my uni course as well but it would've been too short notice to ask them to join me. :( Oh well, I just need to organise something separate with those guys next week! Still debating with myself if I should head back early enough on Monday to catch my afternoon lessons at uni, I don't like missing uni!


I am a bit worried about it food wise though. I know I'm not going to drink tons because I've never been a big drinker in general and the thought of it hindering my progress just puts me off a bit. But the food! It's definitely my weak link when we do stuff like this, my brain just seems to switch off when I get handed a menu at a restaurant! Thankfully one of my friends is really into working out now as well so hopefully she will keep me in check all weekend! And just to prepare for it all, I'm trying to eat as healthy as possible until then. My lunch today was just a simple salmon "salad" with a bit of cottage cheese on the side. Yummy. :)

Time to head out and do a bit of last minute shopping before work, all my clothes are really starting to be waaay too baggy and it bothers me so much. Badly fitting clothes really make me look bigger than I am and especially underwear can really feel uncomfortable if it doesn't fit right. I feel like this will be an expensive shopping trip.. :p