The other night I posted on my Facebook wall, saying that I've really picked the wrong thing to study. Then one of my friends asked what I really want to do with my life, it really didn't take me that long to answer. I'd really love to be a PT. This then raised a question about my back and how a year ago I had ruled out everything that included anything physical. It was such a fair question and it is something even I thought about when I was figuring out what to do with my life. What if my back gets worse again? What if I do have to go for the spinal fusion in the end? Can I ever do a physical job?

If someone told me a year ago that I'd be healthy enough to seriously consider a job in fitness, I really would've laughed. A year ago I was in agonising pain every day, even standing up for 15 minutes was painful. I could do very little house work (hoovering was completely out of the question for example), I was miserable and just saw no light at the end of the tunnel.

At that stage I was trying to go for something that wouldn't involve heavy lifting and would allow me to sit down for most of the day. Because I have a really long history with graphics and computers (+ sitting on a computer 90% of the time), that really felt like the way to go for me. But even back in college I really didn't enjoy it that much. Now that I'm studying graphics in uni, it's even more obvious that it's not what I want to do. In a way I feel like I chose this course for the very wrong reasons. But then again, I had no idea that I would actually be this healthy.

Back in 2009, when my spondylolisthesis was diagnosed. It's a shame I don't have a copy of the scans I had done last year.

It's odd how it's such a chain reaction, when things actually start changing for the better. As I started dropping the weight last year, I noticed that I could do more and more every month. I started with 30 minute walks, slowly got into doing various exercise DVDs at home, and once I had built up enough core strength I joined a gym for the first time ever. All this combined made it possible for me to cancel the spinal fusion surgery I was scheduled in for last November. 

I mean, this doesn't mean that I'm going to go straight for a PT course after I finish this year of uni. You don't get a qualification like that for free, I will probably end up working for at least another year to be able to fund it all properly. And I want to make sure that my back will actually be able to handle more physical workouts before signing up for anything. I still have a bad spine, and I always will. I have roughly a 50% slip in my lower spine, with the discs on both sides being pretty much non existent because of it. I will always get achy days. It's just about how bad the pain will be, when my core is as strong as it can be. It is by far one of my biggest goals in this whole thing, I want to have a strong enough core to support my spine through everything I decide to put it through.

I'm hoping you're all enjoying the new layout I installed (and sorry for anyone who got caught in the middle of it, when I was still tweaking things around)! I felt like I needed a complete change to the feel of the blog after the name change, and this is definitely a breath of fresh air! All the different follow- buttons are in one handy place now. And did you notice, you can also find me on Twitter now!


Thursday, upper body day! I actually really loved the set I planned last week, so apart from one change I ended up going for the same workout. I was going to plan a new one, but when I actually realised I didn't plan one it was already late and I just couldn't be bothered.

While my muscle mass hasn't grown that much since the start of this month, I just wanted to have a look at how I'm doing. You can actually see the player of fat slowly making it's way out of my body! My arms are starting to slim down quite nicely, and that makes me so happy! Still got a little remain of a bingo wing right by my armpit but I'll make sure it won't hang around for too long.



I'm feeling really confident about being beach ready by end of May! I might not actually hit the magical 64kg if I carry on the way I have been at the gym, but that really doesn't bother me at this point. :) I can see my body change for the better on a daily basis, and as long as those inches melt away I'll be more than pleased.

Routines bring me a certain kind of comfort. I do like to know that I've got the same things happening on a daily / weekly basis, and I even plan exactly what to do at the gym on certain days every week (cardio on Wednesday, upper body on Thursday and lower body on Friday). Having to mix things around just doesn't play well and it feels like that it'll have a knock on effect on the following week and so on!

Following the Body By Vi challenge does definitely give me some routines as well. I start my morning with a shake and a cup of coffee, then I have another shake for lunch. Having something liquid for breakfast is such a brilliant idea for me, as I never eat breakfast normally. Maybe it's something I'll carry on doing even when I'm done with the challenge.

Do you have any routines you can't 'live without'? Does it throw your entire day off track if some of your routines don't happen?

Oh and by the way, I lost a massive 700g during my first week on the challenge!

Morning routine - Body By Vi shake, a cup of coffee and lots of water.

Wednesday is my cardio day at the gym, but I decided against going for a run indoors, when the weather was so nice! Who'd miss out on a bit of sunshine?! It's feeling like spring already, the sun feels really warm on your skin when it's not windy and a lot of bushes and trees are starting to sprout leaves already! I'm so ready for the warm weather again after such a miserable winter!

It's funny actually, when it started getting cold last autumn I was saying exactly the opposite - I was so fed up with the boiling hot summer we had last year. Just never happy, eh. :) 

Clear skies, sunshine and low tide. Perfection.

Now that I'm only eating one big meal a day, I really seem to be putting so much more effort into cooking every night. It's like my dinner is my most precious posession and I need to make sure it gets the most attention it can, hah.

Tonight I made sausages, green pepper & onion gravy and sweet potato mash. As I've probably mentioned before, I'm not a fan of pork. The texture and taste of it just doesn't appeal to me in the slightest. The only exception to this is sausages, but then again sausages are all the leftover bits of the animal, not just a straight cut of meat. And they really do like to flavour sausages over here with all kinds of things! The most bizarre mix I've seen so far is dark chocolate & red chilli.

Anyways. To me it's so important to cook as fresh as possible. With the exception of baked beans, everything I used was fresh produce. It makes me happy to know, that I'm providing my body with all the good stuff without a load of added chemicals and preservatives. Yum.

Do you guys ever have days, when you just feel so euphoric and happy? My incredible mood was fully down to to going to the gym in the morning, but oh my god how good I felt afterwards! More on that in a bit. ;)

I found a nice recipe for non-bake brownies (Finnish only) a while back, and I've been dying to try them ever since! I finally got most of the ingredients last night, so decided to give it a go! I forgot to get some honey and because I didn't look properly, bought two lots of chocolate instead of chocolate and cocoa powder (because you know, I figured that the stuff in the tube would've been cocoa powder but guess I was wrong). Also forgot to get honey so used a tablespoon of sugar, plus didn't get any Kalahari salt because I have no clue where to get any. The chocolate used in the original recipe is "raw" chocolate as well, I just used roughly 50g of normal chocolate meant for baking and a tablespoon of sugar.

Anyways! Here's the original recipe shown in the blog (1dl equals roughly half a cup):
2dl walnuts
1dl cashews
1dl almonds (pre soaked)
10 dates
1dl coconut flakes
1tsp Kalahari salt
30g cocoa butter, 30g cocoa mass and 1tsp honey melted together

These amounts are rough estimates, but it seemed to work for my trial batch. 

 
You really don't need to be a genius to figure this one out. You get a food processor, grind up all the nuts and then throw in the dates (I left the nuts a bit chunky, but you could literally just grind the entire thing to a paste). After you've melted the chocolate, you simply mix the nuts and chocolate together and spread the mix onto a baking tray. Stick it in the freezer to set for a while and you're done!

I was definitely missing the sweetness you'd get from honey and the coconut flakes. Now it's pretty much just nut mix with some chocolate. :D They were really good, though! A great little post-workout snack. My first lot really looked nothing like the stuff I saw on the blog, but nevermind! It'll go down the same way. And I've got enough nuts and dates for at least one more go, maybe I'll fine tune the recipe a bit and see what happens.


But yeah, back to feeling amazing! I had a bit of a lay in today, and once I managed to drag myself out of bed I headed straight for the gym to get the workout out of the way I had planned for last Friday. It's really odd how addicted to working out I'm getting now, maybe it's my Body By Vi shakes providing an incredible side effect or something!

Speaking of Body By Vi, I'm really seeing results already! Maybe it's just the decrease in carbs I'm eating over the day, but my tummy has gone down slightly! Even if it's just water and general bloating leaving my system, I'm not complaining! I'm quite looking forward to my weigh in next Sunday, see how well I've done so far! :)


As I was feeling so great, I figured that I'll slip into my fabulously pink jeans before heading out for a family dinner. These jeans are by far my favourites, but they really need a day when I'm feeling super positive and confident or I'll feel really awkward. I mean, they're not the most discreet pair of jeans around, are they? :D

Being able to wear these jeans is such an achievement for me both physically and mentally. I'm the lightest I have been since I was 17, and that is giving me such a confidence boost. And I look far better than I did back then, I'm actually in the process of toning up instead of slowly gaining weight.


It's the last day of my half term today. In a way I'm glad I'm heading back to uni, as I've really felt isolated this week. Apart from my other half and people at work I've barely spent any time with people or even spoken to anyone properly. Felt a bit like an outsider this week.

I've been feeling really under the weather all day. Some kind of a bug has made it's way into my system, and that's just put a stop to everything today. I've felt really rotten, weak and achy, so my workout had to be pushed to the weekend. Really annoyed about that, I have such a nice workout planned and I wanted to go and do it today! Nevermind, I'll probably do it Sunday morning.

Yesterday.

I really got into a nice rhythm at the gym yesterday, and I'm still quite hyped up about it. I planned a very simple lower body workout for myself, but I'm still feeling it when I sit down haha! Like I said I would, I bumped up the weight on the leg press by 10kg (went for 52-52-61). While it felt a lot harder than last time, I reckon I could increase the weight to 70ish next week. Just to think that I'm going to be able to press my own bodyweight soon - so proud of myself!

It's really great to see progress every single week. Even if I don't increase weights, I see the definition in my muscles more and more. While it's not quite flex worthy yet, my quads are really starting to "stick out" from underneath my skin (and I'm loving it!). My other half constantly tells me to stop admiring myself, hah! My muscles are really getting to the stage I'm happy with, all I need now is to lose the fat covering them up! 

Made the mistake of buying normal yoghurt and then had some - my stomach wasn't best pleased yesterday..

As I've been feeling ill today, my day really hasn't been that productive. I've rediscovered my love for League of Legends, and happily spent my day playing and messing around. This actually got me thinking about the stereotypes attached to gaming. We can all probably agree on the stereotypical gamer - overweight, neglects personal hygiene, lives with their mum til late 20s and so on. But over the years I've played online games I've noticed that the majority of the people I know are not like this at all. And even if some people are, does it matter? Sure, it worries me if people literally spend all day sitting down and eating junk, but it's not my place to judge people and tell them what to do. I almost got to that stage myself a few years back when I isolated myself from the world, but I'm just glad my mum always cooked healthy meals and we didn't really have anything that unhealthy around the house. Thanks mum. ♥


I've really started taking advantage of leftovers. We had some nice chicken in a tomato & basil sauce with rice yesterday, and I just ended up heating up the leftover chicken with roast potatoes and red onions for dinner today. I try not to leave the leftovers in the fridge for too long, so it doesn't go bad and end up in the bin. It's easy to save money when you think ahead with cooking. Luckily the supermarket industry over in England is so competetive, that you get food really cheap in any shop you go to. In comparison Finland only really has two different chains and food is really expensive in both of them. Lidl has pushed it's way in but I don't think it's really doing that well over there.

Chicken in a tomato & garlic sauce with roast potatoes and red onions (they're not burn, I promise! :D).

Hope you all have a great weekend! Mine will be filled with work and a family dinner on Sunday, can't wait!

I'm so in love with the fact, that it only takes me 5ish minutes to get to the gym now. Just the thought of getting out of bed in the morning, finding my gym kit and walking to the gym is pure gold! ♥ I love going to the gym enough as it is, and actually having it so close is making me go a bit nuts!

As it's Wednesday, it was my cardio day. 25 minutes on the treadmill followed by a few core exercises and 15 minutes on the elliptical. I really should try rowing and cycling as well, but I'm just a bit worried that they'll put too much pressure on my back and I'll end up getting injured again. Better to play it safe for now and see how things evolve in the next few months.


My stomach really didn't react well to half a litre of milk yesterday, so popped into the shop on my way home from the gym and got some soya milk. I did mention my potential lactose intolerance not so long ago, but never got around to getting myself tested and all the symptoms vanished for a while so I forgot about it. But now that I'm actively drinking milk again, all the symptoms came back and I figured that it's better to give soya milk a go and see how my stomach handles it.

I've gotta say, the soya has really helped! On top of making my stomach calm down, the shake mix doesn't taste quite as sickly sweet as it did with milk. Think this is my choice of milk from now on! I can't really even taste the difference between normal milk and the soya version, so in the long run it doesn't even matter that much. The soya milk is obviously more expensive, but I think I'd rather pay a bit extra for it than suffer with stomach pains every day for the next three months.


My lunch today was literally a chocolate explosion! I decided to try the chocolate flavouring with my shake and also grabbed one of the chocolate chip cookies haha! The chocolate flavouring isn't as strong as the strawberry one, and my shake didn't really taste that different to the normal version.


I've actually got a massive craving for brownies right now, and I'd have the perfect healthy recipe for them. Just not quite sure if Tesco Express stocks the ingredients I need to make them. Hmm. Worth walking down the road to check? My cravings are saying hell yes, but my legs are sore from earlier!

Some of you guys might have noticed it already, but the blog has changed it's name! I've wanted to rename my blog for such a long time now, and originally I was going to wait until I'm done with losing weight. I just got rather impatient and went ahead with it already, so welcome to RiaFit! :) You can access the blog through riafit.co.uk now, but the original Blogger address will work just fine as well.

I know it's the first day of my challenge, but I'm feeling great! My energy levels have been stable throughout the day and I'm really enjoying the shakes as well. The basic shake mix tastes exactly like Fox's Golden Crunch biscuits, which is absolutely amazing to say the least! The shake is quite sweet, and for someone who really doesn't have that much sugar, it's going to take some getting used to. I don't really mind it, it'll settle my sweet tooth for sure.


On top of my two shakes, I've had one of the cookies that came with the kit, a vanilla crown, a few cups of coffee, dinner and a 10kcal pot of jelly. I did feel a bit hungry in the morning between the shakes, but having the two snacks settled my tummy enough to last til the next meal.

Gotta say, the peanut butter cookies didn't quite convince me. To me a cookie has to be sweet, so the salty taste of peanuts did ruin it a bit for me. Don't get me wrong, it was still really nice and the crunchy & chewy texture was scrummy, but don't think that I'll be stocking my shelves with peanut butter cookies anytime soon! ;)

On top of the two supplements I'm still taking my biotin every day - that makes it three pills to take in the morning (+ another fish oil after dinner)! The fish oil is absolutely enormous - I'm really not a big fan of taking any pills, so it does kinda make me feel a bit nervous. I'm just scared of the fact that it might get stuck in my throat, hah!


And just to track my progress during the challenge, some pics! My weight this morning was 71,5kg, I'm really hoping to get as close to the 64kg mark as possible during the next three months. Fingers crossed! I'm looking to stick to my three gym days a week and chilled walks when I feel like it. I do quite a bit of walking around and heavy lifting at work, so all of this combined should give me a nice balance.


We've been quite busy cleaning up at the flat today. We had a massive pile of cardboard boxes and general rubbish in the lounge, and I was pretty desperate to get rid of it. The entire flat just looks more homely without it all in the way, you know? And now I won't feel bad about inviting friends over, I won't feel like we are living in the boxes!

Outfit of the day.

Last night's dinner: sweet potato, chickpeaas, ground beef, tomatoes and salad.

Spicy chicken pizza and lots of salad on the side - yum!

Ready for the challenge? You can join me by heading over to the Body By Vi website!

Oh I'm so excited! My Body By Vi challenge kit arrived today and I can't wait to get started with it! I went for the transformation kit, which is the biggest kit Body By Vi has. I wanted to go for this one, as it offers some supplements and snacks on top of the meal replacement shakes. I think it's absolutely brilliant that the kit comes with supplements, as you can easily become deficient in vitamins and minerals when you're swapping meals for the shakes.


In general I'm really sceptical about all these meal replacement diets, as they're usually so low in calories that it's not a viable option in the long run (and once you start eating normally again, you're very likely to gain the weight back). They're not designed to be something that you can just carry on using once you've hit your goal weight, either.

And that's why the Vi-Shape shakes are so different! You mix them into semi-skimmed milk and you also have one hot meal + snacks every day alongside the shakes, meaning that you can still easily have about 1500 calories a day (one shake has 233 calories and 21g of protein).


There's limitless options with the shakes as well - you can create your own shakes just like with any protein powder out on the market really. That's a really easy way of bumping up your calories during the day as well, so there's no need to worry that you won't hit your budget every day (you should always make sure that you're getting enough energy out of your diet, or you can plateau). I'm really looking forward to creating my own recipes and trying all the different ones in the challenge's recipe library.

The kit also came with some strawberry and chocolate flavoured pouches, so if I get fed up with the sweet cream flavour of the basic shake, I've got something to throw in there for no extra calories.


I think I'm actually mainly looking forward to eating the cookies! There's fourteen servings of chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies to have as snacks during the day, with one cookie having 185kcal/10g of protein (peanut butter) or 170kcal/9g of protein (chocolate chip). They've also been enriched with some calcium, ensuring that you get the required amount per day.


Now, the supplements! The first one is used to maintain normal blood glucose levels. Basically it prevents your blood sugar from spiking one way or the other during the day, and that should reduce any sudden cravings (sugar or carb related). The contents of the sachet can be mixed into the meal replacement shakes, water, juice or any other drink you fancy.

I'm quite looking forward to seeing how this affects me cravings wise. I do sometimes just eat out of pure boredom, so we'll just have to wait and see how this actually changes that (if at all).


The metab-awake supplement is taken to support normal metabolic functions. This is genuinely the first time I have ever heard of such supplements, so can't really reflect on any previous experiences or anything I've read before. But no matter, I'm heading for this challenge with an open mind!

The omega essentials tablet is just like any regular fish oil supplement as far as I'm aware. I think this is a brilliant addition to the kit, as it's easy to miss out on all the fatty fish you should be including in your diet when you're taking the shakes. I've taken some fish oil tablets before, but we'll see how this one compares!


I'm going to post my before pictures tomorrow, as I officially start the challenge then. I like to start it on a fresh day, so now all I need to do is sit here feeling like a child on Christmas!

Ready for the challenge? You can join me by heading over to the Body By Vi website!

Hope you all had a nice Valentine's Day! Here's a little peek to our evening. :) The food was really delicious, and my guess about the Prosecco was right - I only had a glass of it and that was with some black currant liqueour mixed into it, just not quite to my taste!


As we didn't do anything for Valentine's Day, my other half decided to treat me to a day in Portsmouth today. The weather was really on our side today - it was so needed after all the storms we've been having lately! I've been dying to use this dress again, I can't even remember the last time I've worn it! Starting to feel confident enough to wear dresses and skirts when I go out, making me a very happy girl. :) 



I've actually never been to the Portsmouth pier before! I've been to the city several times, but somehow I've always missed the pier! The views were absolutely stunning, with the sea defence towers coming out from the sea and Isle of Wight just in front of us. So many people were jogging or cycling along the seafront, made me feel like I'm missing out! 


We went to the Blue Reef aquarium, and I absolutely loved it! I really like fish, especially all the tropical and colourful ones! I'd really love to go diving somewhere to actually see all the different fish in their own enviroment, instead of looking at them through a thick piece of glass.

On top of just looking at pretty colours all day, I always learn something really cool about our planet, when I go to an aquarium or a zoo. I love educating myself about our nature, and even though I don't have the brain capacity to understand the maths of physics or chemistry, I still really enjoy getting into it all (as long as it's explained in common terms, hah!).

Anyways! I really should've taken my camera with me today, I would've had a lot more good quality pictures than this. I am quite proud of my phone though, the quality isn't as bad as I thought! 

Rays are so freaky.

The most miserable fish I have ever seen!

Ever since getting home, we've been busy moving all our stuff to our new flat. I'm so happy to finally be here, we can start settling in and building our own little nest. :)