I got a text from Dream Fitness the other day, saying that my access card has arrived. They had such a busy January that they run out of them, so I had to wait for my baby for a while! I mean I had access to the gym without it as the door has been open because of the shortage, but just having it makes me feel all giddy! The plan is to get started next Wednesday, my hip is starting to feel like its usual self now (about time!). Just need to start slow and listen to my body, I've had enough injuries to know better than to go all out instantly.

And I have a feeling I'll get my fair share of exercise over the weekend, walking around Ikea for hoooours on Sunday and then moving all our stuff into our flat, I have a feeling I'm going to have sore arms on Monday!


I also went for a little shopping trip when I was in town getting my card. I went through all my shoes and bags last night, and ended up throwing away quite a few pairs of shoes. I can be quite cheap when it comes to buying shoes, so I actually ended up with two pairs of shoes with holes in them! In this weather they're absolutely horrible, as the cold gets in and it's never completely dry where I walk so the amount of times I've had a wet sock is ridiculous. :D

And I also bought a load of black tights for myself, as I always seem to tear them one way or another. I've had this leather skirt for ages now, but the lack of black tights has made it impossible to wear them (it's so short that I really don't feel like stepping out of the house without tights). But that issue has finally been fixed, I get to wear my cute twirly skirt now!


I will probably be a bit less active blog wise over the weekend and over the next few weeks, we have to wait til 13th Feb to get our internet running at the flat. Hopefully I'll get a chance to post some updates from uni or the in-laws, though. :)

I bumped into something so cute and handy at work yesterday - versatile lunch boxes! Sistema has a range called To Go, a very colourful range of BPA free plastics (includes soup mugs, sandwich boxes etc.)! Just the thought of it being BPA free made me want it, but the size and flexibility of it sold it to me. And obviously can't argue with the awesome colour. ;)



Now that I'm actually making lunch to go on a regular basis, I want the box to be quite 'high end' in a way. Until now I couldn't use any salad dressings, as I'd have to pour it straight onto the salad and keep it in the box for hours, but Sistema actually has come up with a clever idea of including a small dressing pot! It also has a separate compartment for keeping whatever snacks you want to take with you, keeping it separate from the main lunch. On top of it all it comes with a fork and knife! Can't love this enough.




Anyways, let's not make this post all about me being a geek over a lunch box! I realised that I haven't really posted any progress pictures for a while again. My posting pace in general has been a bit slower again as well, but I'm blaming moving house on that! Finally started boxing stuff up last night, so many boxes full already and I feel like I haven't even started!


It's weird how I still don't see that figure when I look in the mirror. I know it's there, but I just don't see it or feel like it's there. All I think about is how I've still got so much weight to drop and it's getting a bit stressful now. Especially now that I've had to be careful with my hip, my nerves are just getting tighter about it! I was going to go to the gym today as well, but feeling like I've got far too much to do right now to be able to go. Argh!

The dogs stalking me in those pictures is quite amusing, though.

After a very long soak in the bath earlier tonight I'm feeling human enough to write! It's been a very long day today, but more about that in a bit.

I'm still (getting just a bit annoying now!) recovering from my hip injury, but just couldn't resist going for a walk yesterday. In a way a bad idea as I did feel a bit of a sting every now and then, but on the upside I felt absolutely amazing afterwards. I've really been careful with my hip for weeks now and it was driving me nuts, I just need my exercise to stay happy and alert.

We've had quite a few storm warnings across the country again, and oh my god it really was windy again! I wanted to sit down at the beach for a while and just take the fresh air in, but it was actually so windy that I got cold after a few minutes! Not fair I say.

I've been pretty active with writing articles since being invited to join the Answers.com team, and my third one has been published! This time I wanted to have a bit of a rant about all the weight loss information that's available to us online and in books, you can read the full article here! Time for a creative break now I feel, I'm trying to come up with some unique ideas to write about and it's not easy!

We spent most of today in Brighton to get some footage for our uni projects. I was expecting it to be quite chilly but chilly was an understatement! The wind was so freezing and standing still for ages really made us all freeze up completely. To make things worse, I only slept for roughly three hours last night due to some rather upsetting stuff going through my head. I was far from awake all afternoon and we didn't even stop for lunch during the day. We only had a chance to eat after getting back to uni around 6pm, by that time I was so hungry I probably would've started eating my own fingers if I had to wait for much longer.


And my plan for the rest of the night includes Revenge, Breaking Bad and bed. Had a long soak in the bath as I mentioned, my back really didn't agree with the cold so I've been quite achy since we left Brighton. The warm water really helped my muscles relax, feeling just a bit more human again. :)

My second Answers.com article has been published today, enjoy!

It's been a fun few days! We got to mess around with film cameras at uni yesterday (I felt like Chris looked hilarious with it as he's so tiny) and create short intros. The task was to drop something from a height and film it from two angles at the same time, then mash it all up into one seamless intro. The guys actually ended up climbing on a big container and dropping a brick all the way down to the pavement. :D Despite it being freezing outside, it was good fun and it's nice to get the practical work in this early in the project. Gives you freedom and experience with the equipment (even though I don't think I'll end up using video in mine).


As our move in- date gets closer, I'm starting my nesting phase! I've made a long shopping list and I was just going through it last night, making little notes and planning what to get. I was pretty much glued to the Ikea website, as I was trying to find plates and pots I like. I'm even considering getting myself a set of enamel cookware, as I do cook a lot and I think that enamel is far better than any other cookware material out there. And my favourite Italian Gino D'Acampo has released a small set of enamel pots and pans for a very reasonable price, would be silly not to! Before I've only seen Rachael Ray's set that was well over £150 and for my current budget that's just far too much, but Gino's set is a very affordable £40. :)


My blog makes it quite obvious, that I like to cook simple. Unless I've got a lot of time to spare and it's a special occasion, my cooking is very basic. But then again, even simple food can be delicious! Today's lunch consisted of pasta, salmon, peas & sweet corn mix, a dollop of creme fraiche and sweet chilli sauce. It's one of my go to- dishes if I'm out of ideas, just need to replace the white pasta to whole wheat and it'll be completely guilt free. ;)

I will hopefully start posting more recipes in the near future, as I am finally going to invest in a digital food scale! This way I can include all the nutritional information in the recipe, making it easier for all you nutrition conscious people to plan your meals!


So far my clean eating plan is going quite smoothly. I told Chris off for wanting McDonalds yesterday after uni (even though I was absolutely starving and would've loved to have a burger!), and so far I've resisted the chocolates! We've got this massive bowl of chocolates in the kitchen that were left over from Christmas (and mum brought some Geisha chocolates over from Finland), and it's screaming my name every time I'm down there! I actually picked one up after lunch and was about to unwrap it, but didn't give into the temptation and put it back in the bowl.


I may have been a bit too hasty, when I said that I'd be writing two articles a month for Answers.com. I've got a lot to say and I couldn't help writing another article! It should be published very shortly, I will of course share the link with you guys again! :)

Well, that was quicker than I thought! Here's my very first article on Answers.com, happy reading!

So far 2014 has really given me some incredibly exciting stuff to deal with! While physically I haven't been able to do what I want (hip injury still reminding me of its existence every now and then), other areas of my life are going full speed ahead!

The biggest thing by far is us moving house, but I've rambled on about that enough (For now! Just wait til moving day, hah!) so I'm just going to jump over this one.

I managed to get down to my new gym tonight after work to sign my membership forms and I'm all good to go now! I was going to wait until February but I just can't stay away any longer, my target date is haunting me in my sleep!


After a quick tour around the gym, I am more than pleased! A compact gym with everything you need really, with each section of the gym divided with a bit of common sense. I'm really burning to get started over there, I just need to wait for my hip to heal properly first. There's simply no sense in starting to train with an injury, it'll never heal if I keep putting pressure on it. 

On top of all this I was contacted by the Answers.com team last night! They invited me to be a guest writer for their weight loss section, and I obviously said yes! I really enjoy helping others and sharing my knowledge about exercise, weight loss and healthy living, so being offered such an incredible opportunity is such an honour! A massive thank you to the Answers.com team, I can't wait to have my first article published on the website! I decided to write about exercising with a bad back, it felt like a really appropriate way to start our journey together. I will share every article I write on my blog of course, I wouldn't want you guys to miss out! My blog will stay the same as it is, I'm aiming to write two Answers.com articles a month to start with and see how it goes.


It's easy to smile when life is going your way. :)

As I mentioned yesterday, we are moving house soon. Well, it's official now! :) We are looking into moving into the new place by the start of February. This is so very exciting, our first flat together! This does of course mean a tedious trip to Ikea in the near future - I'm really not looking forward to hours of trodding through the maze that is Ikea.

I actually spent a good while listing all the things we need and I was surprised how many bits and pieces we need for our kitchen. I love cooking and having a lot of different equipment and gadgets does make my life so much easier. Being creative with food does require a bit of assistance at times. :)


So what does this mean fitness wise? Well, me being able to go to the gym whenever I want really! No need to rely on buses anymore, I can just do a quick warmup in the form of walking ten minutes to the gym and get started! Very excited to be so close to a gym, I have a feeling it'll be my second home from now on! And as the gym is open 24/7 I can aim for the quiet periods whenever I can.

I've been trying to figure out what kind of a routine to follow at the gym, and I've settled for a modified version of Stronglifts 5x5. I will probably start with lighter weights than it says on the program, as I am still a bit worried about my back playing up if I start too heavy. I'm in no massive rush to hit the heavy weights as I am mainly looking to tone up instead of bulking up.

This blog will start to lean towards a lot of working out again, hooray!

I've kind of had an idea of when I want to reach my target weight by. Ever since I started I had the magical time frame of one and a half years in mind and with my current pace I'm sticking to that target pretty well. Originally I thought that it'd be nice to be done with losing weight by end of June, but now I've got a new date in mind!

A huge chunk of my closest friends live in different countries so I only get to see them once or twice a year when we gather up in either Holland or London. Our latest meetup was last October for my birthday, so it's been a while now! One of my friends messaged me earlier today about wanting to have everyone over for her birthday in May so that's my new target! Looking to fly over on 16th May, so until then I'm going to work my butt off and eat as clean as I possible can. I also placed a bet with my other half because he doesn't think I can stay away from curries for so long - if I don't have any takeaway for seventeen weeks he will give me £20! :D That'll pay for one hell of a takeaway haha!


Oh and things are getting rather exciting in our lives now, as we are looking to move house! The one we have in mind right now is really close to town, which would mean incredibly easy access to my new gym (hopefully I'll manage to arrange a meeting with the gym owner for Wendesday so I can get started) and a swimming pool as well! Was thinking of doing three weight training days and one day of cardio (either at the gym or swimming pool), maybe throw in a few walks as well depending on my schedule.

But yeah, it's all exciting at the moment!

I've had quite a few people ask me how I got to the point where I am today. On top of that I see a constant flow of new threads on my regular forum about how to lose weight / get back in shape and what's a good diet for you. A lot of people seem to think that starving yourself is the way to go, but you couldn't be more wrong!! Losing weight is so incredibly simple in the end.


The very first thing I did was drop out the majority of junk food and started drinking more water. That alone flushed out 2.6kg worth of water and all sorts of gunk that had built up in my system over the years (eating high sodium foods leaves your body craving for water and retains fluids). After the first week the speed of weight loss does slow down dramatically as your body is now burning fat instead of getting rid of the water! I know it has discouraged a lot of people as you expect to lose fat at the same rate as the Biggest Loser contestants, but stick to it!


There's really no harm in reading a lot of articles and books about healthy living, nutrition and exercise. It will help you make better choices with your food and understand how everything in your body works. For example, you don't necessarily need exercise to lose weight. It is obviously recommended as you get stronger and you have increased rest burn when your muscles grow, but it's not something you should worry about when you start. Your body has a certain rest burn rate (your body needs a certain amount of energy to keep your body functioning) and simply eating to that limit will make you drop the weight.


My main form of exercise has been walking. I did also do Jillian Michaels' Body Revolution for a few months, but eventually the intensity of her workouts got far too much for my back and I had to stop. I keep thinking about starting BR again (and I don't even want to think about how many times I've mentioned it over here!) as right now it seems like the most cost efficient form of exercise for me, being a student and all. I had a look at my weight loss rate when I was working out with the program and it really did work, just proves that you don't need to get a gym membership to get started.

And the very last thing you need is a bit of self discipline and determination. I do still have my occasional takeaways and treats, but my overall diet is the way it should be so the occasional cheat meal won't ruin my progress (short term sure, as the amount of sodium in takeaways is usually really high). I absolutely love cooking healthy food and it does give me great satisfaction to know that I am giving my body a good source of energy. Cooking healthy food is far from bland and expensive (a great page about junk food vs fresh produce) so it shouldn't be an excuse to go for the ready meals or takeaways.

Believe in yourself. Just by getting up and doing something makes you a better person than you were yesterday.

I was contacted by the Weight Loss Resources team earlier this week and I was introduced to a wonderful new website that offers fad-free weight loss support to everyone. I had a good look around for a few days and had a go with most of the features offered by the site, and I can most definitely recommend WLR for anyone who needs the structured support and community to aid with their weight loss! I've picked four of the site's features to go through in this review, but there's a lot more to Weight Loss Resolutions than that! I highly recommend having a look at their website to see what they offer.

WLR is a very affordable £9.95 a month and you get discounts for signing up for longer contracts at a time. They are also the only provider offering a free trial! You get 24 hours to have a look around before committing to a payment scheme and you are not required to enter any credit card details during your trial.


The website offers motivating success stories from current members and a big forum community to inspire their members to keep going. Losing weight can definitely be a bumpy ride at times, so it is nice to be able to get the peer support and get your spark back.

For someone who's tried Weight Watchers online before, I can be quite picky. I did like the amount of features WW offered and I've been struggling to find anything similar. The main feature I loved with WW was the recipe finder and now I can happily say that this void has been filled! The thing I really liked the most about the WLR recipe search is that you can actually search by macros! Just how cool is that? You can also filter recipes by calories and fibre amount or look up specific meals if you're stuck for ideas.


The food diary is something out of this world for me. It's clear, it shows you how your macros have divided throughout the day and even tells you exactly how much you should be eating and what your maintenance calories are. It just couldn't get any more simpler than that. I think people are a bit scared about counting calories as it can be quite a tricky thing to do, but WLR really covers that for you. All you need to do is search for the food you've just had, tell the counter how much you had and that's it! There's no need to scan any nutrition labels to try and figure it out, making it a lot easier for the member.


I would've liked to test the website for a good few weeks to give this progress graph a really good go, but in all fairness I was just a bit too excited to let you all know about this diamond that I got a bit impatient! Anyways, the progress graph lets you see all the key data in one glance and it's just brilliant. I'm used to tracking my progress on a spreadsheet, which can be quite confusing as all I see is numbers! WLR has really gone out of their way to ensure that the member gets all the important information about their progress on one clear page. You also have the choice of entering extra measurements into the system, such as thigh, chest, waist, hips and so on. It'll just give you a more detailed reading of how well you are doing and it's a feature I strongly recommend using!


Weight Loss Resolutions has so many different features that I could go on all day, but I'd just be taking away from the amazing experience you could have as well! Currently WLR doesn't seem to have a mobile version of their site or an app you can use on the go, but I'm sure that's on the team's to do- list. :)

I've had an insane craving for pancakes for a few days now and I finally caved in! We didn't have any eggs and I kept forgetting to get some but now that problem is resolved. There's a lot of eggless recipes out there but I don't trust them, for me it has to be the traditional Finnish recipe or not at all!


This recipe is really easy to convert into a healthier version, I just went with the recipe as I was missing the healthier substitutes. I'm no good at converting these measures to cups or ounces as I don't quite know how to round them up so apologies to people not using the metric system! This recipe is meant for thin crepes, not the thick American style pancakes. This recipe makes about 4-5 pancakes so remember to multiply the ingredients when cooking for a larger group of people!


Crepes
400ml (4dl) milk
130g (2dl) flour
teaspoon sugar
teaspoon salt
1 egg
2 tablespoons oil or melted butter (/margarine)

You simply mix all the ingredients together and let the batter rest for about half an hour. You can get really creative with the recipe - add cinnamon or vanilla extract, grate some apple into the mix, chop up spinach or anything you come up with! Even adding berries is a great idea, as the berries start bleeding into the batter once you pour it on the pan, giving the pancakes amazing colour.


Just remember to heat the pan for a good five minutes before pouring any batter on it - it will make the batter set quicker and makes flipping the pancake considerably easier. To make sure you avoid tearing it up when flipping it, cook the pancake long enough so it's loose on the pan when you shake it. It's good to wait for the surface to set completely as well, it makes the half cooked pancake a bit sturdier!


When changing the recipe to a healthier version, you can quite simply use skimmed milk, whole wheat flour and sweetener instead. For a protein filled version you can even replace some of the flour with protein powder, just make sure the brand is suitable for heating before trying it out! Protein powder comes in various different flavours so it's a great way of mixing it up a bit if you're getting bored with the normal recipe.

To start off my week I managed to injure my hip somehow! I've got absolutely no clue of how I managed that but since Monday my hip has been incredibly sore and walking causes very nasty stinging pain all across my left hip. Hooray for feeling old and fragile.

And I think I managed to make it worse yesterday. I didn't feel any kind of pain so I thought that I'll go for a walk for the first time all week. Baaaad idea. I came back home with a bucketful of pain and I'm back to limping again.

This has really pushed me back as I was hoping to be really active this week to make up for the lack of exercise and eating out last weekend. And in a way Christmas is still haunting me, this is not the start to the year I was after!

On another note, I've been keeping an eye on my muscle growth recently. Walking / running is still my main form of exercise and it's really started to show recently. I've always struggled finding boots that actually fit me but now it's starting to get near impossible! My tibialis anterior muscle (or in common terms, the muscle on top of your shin bone) has grown so much that it's insanely visible when I tense my leg now. In a way I'm really happy that my progress is so visible, but then again I really don't need the extra challenge with shoes! I've also been considering buying a pair of skinny jeans but how on earth am I meant to fit these legs into skinnies?



Now that my hip isn't feeling great, I'm getting quite lazy with things. I usually spend 10ish minutes with my makeup but the thought of standing up for that long really isn't appealing right now. Off to uni with a natural look it is!


Oh and I found this on my other half's phone a while back, this was taken at a Volbeat gig in late 2011. Scary, isn't it?

Looking for a review of Noom Pro? Click here!

Apologies for the delay in starting my fitness app series, but better late than never!


Noom was the very first fitness app I ever downloaded last year. Since then the app has developed leaps and bounds and I feel like my old review really doesn't do it any justice!

There's no escaping the fact that I'm a graphic designer and I want my apps to be aesthetically pleasing. On top of that something that stands out from the crowd makes me feel very tingly, and Noom really has succeeded with that. The vibrant green and purple colour theme is fresh and bright without it being too overbearing on the eyes.


The setup is very simple, the app asks you some basic health related questions and does all the nutritional and activity calculations based on it. It also gives you a BMI reading for your target weight, so do make sure you give the app accurate measurements!



The thing that bothered me the most with the app a year ago was the fact that it didn't have an accurate calorie tracker. You could only pick approximate sizes (tennis ball, soft ball, golf ball, handful..) when adding your meals in and it really made me feel like I'm eating too much or way too little. On top of that it's quite hard to try and imagine the sizes when you're looking at your meal - and in my cases I'd usually track my meal after I finished eating so trying to guess it all was a bit difficult.

And it was such a nice surprise to find a good and accurate tracker! You can still swap to the simple tracker if you want to but I do strongly recommend this one. They currently only list UK, US and Australian supermarket foods in their tracker but it's a good start! You also get to pick exactly how much food you had, making it easier to stay on track of everything you've had during the day.

The tracker also has a barcode scanner!


On top of just being a food tracker, Noom gives you interesting articles to read and tasks to complete during the day. They are a bit limited, as some of the articles are premium features you can subscribe to. I never tried the pro- feature but I was really tempted. The only thing that stopped me from trying it out was the fact that I was poor back then, hah!

The articles are really useful for people who are only starting on their weight loss journey. It can be very overwhelming trying to browse through hundreds of internet articles in order to try and find some information about nutrition and exercise, but Noom does it all for you. I think it's good for beginners to focus their source of information in one place, as different studies and professionals have completely opposite views of what's good and what's bad exercise and diet wise. Noom provides the user with the very staple information about healthy living and as the user gets more comfortable with it all they can expand their knowledge as they go on.

Noom has plenty of different features to keep you going. The most important thing for me by far is the logbook - it gives you the vital details of your progress on one handy page. For peer support you also have access to Noom's forums through the app so you really get the feeling that you're not alone on your journey.


On top of being a calorie tracker Noom also lets you fill in your workouts. You can simply use it to track your workouts as you go or actually plan it all ahead with reminders. I believe that planning your workouts in advance will really help you stick to them and with the app actually reminding you to get on with it will give you that extra boost of motivation. 


Since first reviewing the app I am positively surprised about all the changes. The app has more features and looks far more pleasing to the eye than it did a year ago. I'm still very curious about all the premium features Noom offers, but as I've still got nine apps to test I better not go too mad. ;)

Noom is available for iPhone and Android.