I was given this product to test at no cost. All opinions are my own.

I was given the Shrinking Violet Shrinky Suit to test a few weeks ago and now that the product is officially out on the market I'll be sharing my experiences with it! When I was contacted by the Get Shrinking team, I had literally no clue of what the product might be and what it'll do.


The kit includes your shrinky suit (the funky looking space suit - honestly made me laugh out loud when I opened the kit!), a bottle of the solution you apply on your body, a little measuring cup to get the right amount of lotion each threatment, tracking cards and a tape measure. There's loads of solution to use, it'll last for a good 8-10 treatments!



The solution smells quite nice, I think the only way I could describe it is kind of a massage oil scent. All you need to do is rub it on the areas you want to target, put on the suit and do whatever you want for an hour. Probably best to stay indoors haha! You can just either sit down and watch TV or do light exercise - the point of the shrinky suit is to raise your body temperature by a few degrees to get the solution working.


I honestly wasn't expecting much to come out of this - maybe it's just my sceptical approach towards anything - but holy cow it really did work! This is my tracking card, before measurements taken literally moments before putting the suit on and after measurements were taken when I woke up the next morning. The little leaflets do say that the results do get better over time so it might be best to "sleep on it" and only measure the next day.

And just to clarify, the measurements are in centimeters, not inches! :)


I've only managed to do one treatment so far, but if the results stay similar I'm more than pleased! I'd like to remind everyone that this is not some magical cure for weight loss on its own. It should be used as a part of a healthy diet, you will not achieve permanent results if you don't keep active! :)

You can order your own kit straight from the Get Shrinking website. They also offer a 90 Day Challenge to take part in for the best results!

I've been challenged by ETB Fit to reveal my workout routine! And not just what reps I do and stuff, but how I actually prepare for it and how I manage the after care hours after exercising.

What foods do you eat pre workout?

This depends entirely on what I'm doing really! If I'm doing cardio I tend to load up on carbs more for the extra energy. A slice of rye bread with hummus or whole wheat with veg is an easy snack to have and doesn't take forever to make. If I'm doing weight training I try to get a more protein heavy snack in, such as yoghurt with berries or a simple protein shake. I try to keep my snacks pretty light, as I don't want to wait longer than 45 minutes before getting started.

Oh and coffee. I basically run on that stuff. 


What music do you listen to during your workout?

I don't specifically have a playlist for working out actually. I do go for the more upbeat songs to give myself that extra motivation when I feel like dying during the last reps, but other than that it's just the same music I listen to any other time. Some of my current favourites are:




How do you switch up certain routines daily/weekly to stay motivated?

I've got quite a few sources of finding new exercises and motivation in general. I have a health & fitness related board on Pinterest, I follow several workout related blogs and have lots of inspirational people and pages on my social media feeds. On top of that I use Workoutlabs quite often to mix up my routines when I feel like my beloved dead lifts and squats are getting boring. ;)

I do have quite a wide base of exercises from years of working out, though. I'm quite used to doing Jillian Michaels' workouts and she just finds the most amazing ways of combining just about ten different muscle groups in one exercise. Talk about being efficient!


What do you eat or do after your workout to make sure you get the most out of your workout?

Stretching and using a foam roller are my ways of cooling down after putting my muscles under a lot of stress. I thoroughly stretch all the muscles I've worked and especially after leg days I tend to use my foam roller for a good 10-15 minutes to really massage my legs (if I have the time I also use the roller to open up my muscles before working out). I'd really love to have a roller with those funny patterns, at the moment I'm just using a plain tube one - it does its job more than well, but I'm curious about the patterned ones! I can only imagine how deep they can dig when the basic version makes me want to cry sometimes!!

It's been four days now since I started my PT plan and I feel stuffed. So full up in fact that I've not been able to eat my evening snack at all. A huge bowl of yoghurt and berries just doesn't go down at all!

People keep thinking that losing weight means you need to starve yourself to the point of wanting to eat absolutely anything that crosses your eyes. It really doesn't have to go down to that. The day before I started I took a picture of my fridge (literally just after we'd been shopping for the week). The amount of food I'm actually allowed to eat is crazy, even my other half asked me if I'm reading all the recipes right as it seemed like way too much food to eat on a diet! :D

The fridge is missing 90% of the meat as well, all tucked away in the freezer haha! There's obviously some stuff in there that isn't a part of my diet, after all there is another person living in this flat who doesn't need to lose weight!


So far my dinners have included: rump steak with tomatoes and cucumber, salmon & cucumber casserole (pic on the right), salmon with veg and turkey chilli (pic on the left). I have pimped up some of the recipes to make up for lost calories elsewhere. For example I added a little bit of feta and sweet potato into the chili. The dinners are very low carb, I was worried it'd leave me really hungry but like I said, I can't fit everything in!!


For this week all my lunches are the same - chicken, rice and peppers. I've got to be honest, it's starting to get a little bit dull at this point of the week but I'm determined to carry on! It's only a week and then the lunch changes again, so should be fine.

Oh and I bought a yoga ball! It's been one of those awesome workout gadgets I've wanted for absolutely ages but it's just a bit difficult to fit anywhere.. And as my other half is taking part in the exercise bit of this diet plan, I had to get two of them! 50% off at Sports Direct, woohoo! It's getting towards the end of the month and about a week before payday so getting these bargains in is a life saver haha!


They're so much fun though. After filling them up we just spent ages messing around with them and my other half used them as a foot rest when watching TV. It'll be such a good addition to doing workouts at home, it'll let me get a bit more creative than before. And I will genuinely use it just to entartain myself when I feel bored.

I've been given a massive honour of being among some foodie superstars in a recent infografic by Rebatezone! All the links to the blogs can be found here! Lots and lots of foodie inspiration to be found, thanks Rebatezone!


Credit

What does the meal prep mean to you? Does it bring up images of some hardcore fitness person on their competition diet? Someone with OCD measuring out everything?


Well it doesn't necessarily have to be quite that extreme! ;) As I'm preparing for a six week PT plan I decided to give meal prep a go and spend a few hours of my day cooking and dividing my food into containers. It took me about two hours from start to finish, with a good 40 minutes of just chilling and doing anything else inbetween (cooking and cooling time).


I found the prep to be a little bit fiddly. The actual cooking was as simple as you'd expect but when it came to dividing everything and making sure everything is the correct amount, I nearly lost my marbles a few times. One grain of rice made all the difference a few times haha! The one thing that amazed me was how much rice actually expands when it's cooked! 60g of dry brown rice ended up being 155g when I was splitting it all up!


This PT plan is something I've been waiting for what feels like ages now. I ordered it a week before our London trip, planning on starting it the day we came back. But of course things don't go to plan and my tendonitis flared up again, so I've just been chilling and trying not to put too much stress on my poor ankles again. Thankfully it didn't get too bad and I feel like I'm ready to go back to exercising. So plan starts tomorrow, woohoo! I'm not going to go too much into it in the blog really, as it's something I've paid for and don't want to be giving it away for free. :) Obviously I'm sharing bits and pieces and how I'm feeling throughout the six weeks, sharing progress and food pics along the way. I'm really excited about this, I've kinda been drifting for absolutely forever again. I try to stick to healthy meals the best I can but sometimes when I'm in a rush at work I just grab a sandwich from Tesco and carry on working. This will definitely fix that issue!


I'm actually super happy with how it all looks! So colourful and delicious. The chicken I used is from Muscle Food, and oh my goodness how juicy it is! The entire pan was covered in the juices from the meat, mixed in with chilli powder and paprika. I was a bit naughty and drizzled it all over the rice but technically still sticking to the plan, as it's what was in the meat to begin with haha!

Why should you meal prep?

Even now you might be thinking that it's absolutely mad to go through all this effort. But there's several benefits to prepping your meals (even if it's just one of your daily meals):

1. Keeps track of your calorie consumption. When you know exactly what's in your food, you know exactly how much energy and nutrients you're consuming.

2. It saves loads of money! I've been spending roughly three pounds a day on my lunches at work, which does add up if you do it every single day! It'd mean that I'm spending 15-18 pounds extra on top of my weekly shop, eek!

3. It also saves time. If you're willing to spend a bit of extra time cooking food for the entire week, you can just take it easy later in the week and pop your food in the microwave / oven to heat up. Coming home from the gym / after a long day at work it couldn't be more convenient!

4. If you're losing weight or aiming towards a specific fitness goal (competitions, race etc), it'll really benefit you to do this. Just like with number 1, you know what you're putting in your body. You need to right kind of fuel to keep your body going and keeping you healthy. A bit of organising can mean the difference between reaching your goals and getting stuck.

When I do my everyday cooking, I'm constantly looking for easy options that won't demand me to sit by the stove for absolutely ages. I have a few staples in my cook book and good ol' spag bol is one of them. Over the years it's been tweaked and tinkered with, and now I wanted to publish the latest version with you all!


Easy & healthy spaghetti bolognese

Serves 3-4 people

400g lean beef mince (the one I'm using is 7% fat)
1 tin / carton chopped tomatoes
1 tomato
1-2 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon Greek yoghurt
1 teaspoon sugar
salt
pepper
basil
spaghetti or other pasta


Start boiling water in a big pan for the spaghetti. Once boiling, add spaghetti and leave on medium heat. Remember to add a teaspoon of salt into the cooking water! It won't all absorb into the spaghetti but it'll give it a bit more flavour. All pasta is quite bland by nature so a bit of salt will just bring the flavours out better.

To start the bolognese, heat a big pan as hot as possible. When burning hot, add mince (no oil) to the pan to begin cooking it and chop up the tomato into small cubes. Add the tomato to the pan and cook until the mince is completely brown. Add seasoning and garlic and mix well.

The little trick with spag bol (or any other tomato based dish) is to add a teaspoon of sugar into the chopped tomatoes before adding it to the pan. The sugar takes away the bitterness you usually get with tomatoes - don't worry, it won't taste awfully sweet or ruin your healthy diet! ;)

After mixing everything up for the sauce, just let it simmer for a few minutes. Check with the spaghetti every now and then to make sure that you're not overcooking it. Once the spaghetti is cooked, add a heaped teaspoon of Greek yoghurt into the bolognese sauce. This gives it a wonderful creamy taste and makes it just a little bit thicker.

Serve with a refreshing salad or simply crumble a bit of feta over the top.

Calories per serving without spaghetti:
295 calories
7.2g carbs
29.5g protein

Another amazing weekend in London behind me! Meeting up with my closest friends is always such a joy, I've known these people for so long that I know that I can just be myself without being judged or mocked. It's a safe feeling, you know?

It's safe to say that my Juice Plus plan was pretty much out the window for 90% of the time. :D I figured that I'll allow myself to just enjoy the weekend, have whatever I wanted and just get back on track once I got home. There's so little point depriving myself of all the goodies when something like this happens, it's just easier to let go a little bit and have fun.

Our Friday evening meet-up point was the wonderful Green Man Inn / Juicy Bastard Burger Kitchen at Edgware Road. It's been my favourite place to eat for years now, their burgers are just way too delicious to skip! You have no idea how nice it was to tuck into one of their delicious burgers after not eating much all day and running around in London for ages right after work!


Saturday is always our traditional double BBQ day. We all head out to Tesco to buy food and drink, help our wonderful BBQ master with all the prep and just chill in the sun! We always seem to get the incredible weather for these weekends, it's been really miserable for a good month now so a bit of sunshine was so welcome. I actually tanned a little bit!

One of my friends made this amazing bowl of salad for the meal, I think I actually inhaled a good half of the bowl just by myself... :D It had cucumber, red onion, tomatoes, feta, pine nuts, oregano, olive oil and salt & pepper in it. It'll probably be my go-to salad at home from now on, really simple to make and just tastes so delicious!

And I was actually quite sensible with the BBQ food! I had some chilli-mango chicken, new potatoes and loads of the salad.


And just because sitting still all day in the sun can get very exhausting, we booked a booth at a local karaoke bar to split the day up a bit. ;) We did karaoke a few years ago for my birthday and we all enjoyed it so much that we rebooked at the same place and it was just as brilliant as I remembered! It was so much fun, we picked some really cheesy songs and then personal favourites, it's actually our tradition to listen to Blame It on the Boogie every single meetup and now it's on our karaoke list as well! :D Five year tradition going strong, hah!

Our second round of BBQ was just as glorious as the first, only difference being that it was getting so dark outside that we had to improvise with our lighting.. :D We all just turned on the torches on our phones and put empty beer bottles on top, the result was actually really pretty! A potential DIY project for when I have a place with a garden.



Sunday is always Oxo Tower day. Very pricy cocktails, amazing view of London and the best company in the world is the perfect way to end a weekend. :) At £13 per cocktail I really should've stuck to one, but the curiosity in me took over and actually had three... :D Good old mojito, a Mad Hatter and a Singapore Sling. The last one was actually really yummy, couldn't really taste the alcohol in it so I kinda drank it waaay too quickly!




Since coming home I've actually been trying to recover from tendonitis in my ankles. Again. Thankfully it hasn't gotten as bad as it was last year, where I actually had to take a week off work and load myself with strong painkillers. Luckily I can sit down at work when I feel like it now so I'm not even giving it a chance to get too bad.

This is such a horrible timing, though. I ordered myself a six week PT plan a week ago but not been able to start it now because of my ankles. Hopefully by the weekend I'll be recovered enough to start, the folder just keeps staring at me on the desk every day!

I was given this product to test at no cost. All opinions are my own.


Since starting Juice Plus I've been trying to cut down on my caffeine consumption. It's been a constant thing in my life, I'd be on and off coffee for a while and then just go back to it. My other half keeps joking around that it's in my genes - Finnish people drink the most coffee per person in the world! :D

I then got contacted by Slimming Solutions and decided to give their teatox a go. I wasn't really expecting anything from it, I had never really heard of doing a teatox so it was quite an interesting one to test! I drank the teas for two weeks, and I've just finished the "course" a few days ago.


So the teatox comes in two different pouches - a daytime blend to drink right after waking up every day and an evening blend to drink before bed every other day. I've got to say, it was quite challenging trying to remember which days the evening blends were for.. :D

The benefits of having a teatox are actually quite amazing. It reduces bloating by flushing out toxins, increases energy levels and can aid with burning fat. I definitely feel so much better as a result of the teatox, but didn't notice any fat loss. Then again I've done next to no exercise the past few weeks so that probaby contributed to it - these products are in no way a magic potion to burn fat instantly! They should be paired up with a healthy lifestyle, they are not a meal substitute!


Taste wise the teas were actually really great. I decided to stick to a small spoonful of honey with the tea instead of just having it as it is, as I do have a massive sweet tooth and enjoy my coffee with loads of sweetener. Both blends had a very earthy taste to them, especially the evening blend as it didn't actually have tea leaves in them. The ingredient lists are as follows:

Daytime blend
Chinese Oolong tea (38%), Siberian Ginseng (20%), Fennel (10%), Lemongrass (10%), Nettle leaves (8%), Ginger root (5%), Dandelion leaf (5%), Ginseng root (2%), Salvia miltiorrhiza (2%). Naturally sugar free with no artificial additives.

Evening blend
Senna leaves (20%), Hawthorn leaves (20%), Lotus leaves (14%), Fenugreek seeds (12%), Burdock root (14%), Peppermint (8%), Psyllium seeds (8%), Valerian root (2%), Liquorice root (2%). Naturally sugar free with no artificial additives.

I do definitely recommend Slimming Solutions' teatox to everyone! It was such a refreshing way of cleansing my body, and will most likely do another cleanse soon. :)You can buy your own teatox kit from their website!

I was introduced to a meal replacement plan from Juice Plus roughly a month ago now. Before I decided it was a good choice I did so much research on it, compared it to other similar plans and went back and forth with the idea of trying it out, but now that I've been doing it for a month, I'm so happy I did!



In very simple terms, Juice Plus is either natural supplement capsules or meal replacement shakes (with caps). I'm on the shake + caps plan which only costs me just over 50 pounds a month - compared to the other plan I was giving a go a while back that would've been twice as much or so.

There's such a big list of benefits of the capsules and shakes, just a few of them to mention are: better nails & skin (my hair is actually growing again!!), improved skin condition and stable energy levels.



I'm not going to lie, I've not been following the guide 100%. I'm replacing one or two meals a day with the shakes and then just have a healthy meals like normal. The guide is very low carb, no gluten and dairy etc, but I've been munching away on brown pasta and lactose free milk haha!

There's so many variations to the shakes - the flavours you get out of the pack are vanilla and chocolate, but by mixing it up with fruit, berries, veg, milk alternatives and different extracts you can mix up all kinds of flavours! I've even seen a pina colada shake, but so far I've not ventured out quite that far! ;) I'm using different extracts and berries right now, keeps it interesting!


Weight wise I've not actually lost a thing. I'm about 1-2kg heavier than my starting weight a month ago, but that hasn't slowed me down! I mean sure it does bum me out a little to see the numbers get bigger than smaller, but I'm keeping track with pictures again to keep it interesting. :)

I pulled a very old progress comparison from 2013, that also demonstrates the change between June and July. That was just clean eating and walking, that's it. Right now I'm doing my shakes and a stand-up-all-day job, with very little exercise.


I'm actually so chuffed with the plan so far that I've decided to become a rep myself! I've created a separate info page for all the essentials, so if you're interested give it a read and get in touch! I'm really looking forward to the next three months of the plan, who knows how amazing I'll look when it's over! ;)

Since last April, I haven't really had a chance to go for a run. Stupid work hours and then becoming ill on and off for the rest of the year really dropped my activity levels down, and this included running.

I've never been a super serious runner / jogger, but I like it as a method of stress relief. I've mentioned it over and over again here how walking is my way of getting away from my daily life and just think. Not saying it's to think about stuff that bothers me - although that's happened quite a few times - but just to recap the day, go through some amazing memories and so on.

Recently I've had the chance to get back to running again! Thanks to summer I've got the opportunity to go out later in the evening without the fear of it turning pitch black outside while I'm still out.  B

But unfortunately my current trainers have started giving me blisters! My wonderful blue babies I've had for a very long time, the trainers that never gave me any kind of hassle.





I suppose they've just come to the end of their lifespan, and that doesn't really surprise me. The oldest picture I found of them was December 2013, and at one point I wore them pretty much every day.

I actually saw a very nice pair of trainers when I was at Gatwick airport a few weeks back (another trip back home with the other half, writing a separate post about that) but at the time I wanted to save my money for my holiday and didn't buy them. Desperately waiting for my payday to get them! I've never imagined paying 100 pounds on a pair of trainers before but I'm starting to understand the value of a quality pair of trainers finally.

So what am I getting? ON Women's Cloud trainers! I've not quite decided on the colour yet but at the moment the grey & neon pink and horizon & coral ones look the most appealing.

... although the olive & flame in the mens selection is to die for. Shame they don't have the same colours for both ranges!