I'm so grateful about having two days off in a row instead of two completely random ones scattered around. It's really given me time to recharge my batteries, and today I only got out of bed around half past ten!

I think being so tired really affected my mood last night at the team meal. I just couldn't follow any conversation going and instead I just sat there, lost in my thoughts most of the evening. I even made my friend so worried and he wouldn't believe me when I said I'm fine. Bless him. :) <3

When I got out of bed it was so clear to me that I just didn't want to rush today. I didn't even do a workout, I just wanted to recharge and enjoy myself. I was going to go for a walk in the morning but it was raining so much that I decided to pass on it. I'm not bothered about a bit of rain, but this was a bit too much! It actually started thundering at one point and that just cheered me up so much - I love thunder!


As the weather wasn't that pleasant, I decided to settle down with the new Healthy magazine and a protein bar I bought from Holland&Barrett yesterday. I didn't actually get a lot of reading done, as I downloaded Hayday on my tablet the other day and my cows needed looking after.. :D Such an addictive little game.

I'm still trying out different protein bars, and so far I'm not too impressed with these Pro Bars. They're so tough and chewy that just trying to bite a chunk off is a workout on its own! My jaw isn't brilliant anyways (keeps popping and locking), so having to work that hard just to eat something isn't making me that impressed. But oh well, live and learn! At least I know not to buy these ones anymore.


I've also really had the time to sit down and enjoy my food today! No late night dinner and then a mad rush to get ready to go to bed or a boxed lunch in the office at work. Just me and a plate full of food and the company of my other half. And again unfortunately can't really share much about these recipes as I am under the program contract (although it's not really rocket science to figure them out), but for the meatballs I can tell that I used this recipe (minus the sweet potato)!

For some reason I've really been put off by tomatoes recently, but I made the brave decision of buying a few packs of them last time we went shopping. And they are so delicious again! So happy I bought them, I'm really enjoying the fresh taste of them right now.



Can you really tell I've enjoyed today? And just because that's not enough, I also submitted my first Noom article last night (it'll be published next week so stay tuned!) and I also got a request for an interview! This large international company approached me, their Finnish branch is writing an article about Finnish bloggers writing from abroad, and wanted to include me in it! I will link the finished article over here once it's published, really excited about seeing the finished piece! Eek!

So, let's get the exciting bit out of the way first - my first week of the FitFarm program ended with an insane result of -3,4kg! I actually bought two pairs of jeans a while ago (think they arrived a week before I started the program) and I could barely button them up. Tried them on yesterday morning and they fit almost perfectly! I've had to modify the program a little bit, I just simply don't have the time to do a workout four times a week so I've done half of that. So the biggest factor in all this is my diet! I've been taking my own lunches with me to work for a week instead of buying some ready meals from the shop, and oh my what a difference it makes. :) Only a few kilos away from where I left off now, feeling quite proud!

And tonight I've got the first big challenge I'm having to face during this six week program - team meal! We are going to this American diner, and as you can probably guess the menu is full of burgers and hot dogs. I did manage to have a look at the menu beforehand the other day, and thankfully they have a few salads that sound amazing. Hoping that they'll have steak on the menu as well, could do with a proper filling meal instead of a few leaves! A nice medium rare steak with a fresh side salad, oh yum.


Just a few of the snack bars I've bought this week to stop cravings, might need one of these tonight before I head out! ;)

The meal is paid for by my boss, so I know that people are going to go absolutely nuts with food and drinks. I know I will have a drink or two, but I just need to have enough discipline to go for the diet soda and spirit option instead of high sugar ciders. If I can get through this meal without a huge slip, I'm sure I can get through everything haha! Thankfully I've also told one of my friends from work about my worries and I'm sure he will tell me off if I order something bad! :D


The past week has been quite taxing in general, work has been quite hectic and I even managed to hurt my back when we were closing up on Friday. Our desk is really not designed well, we use heavy shutter type doors to cover up all our screens and they are simply far too heavy for us girls to pull up. Even with two of us trying we couldn't lift them and in the process I pulled quite a few muscles around my spine, resulting in a very sore back and a grumpy me (just because being tired after a long day at work wasn't enough!). The pain was actually far worse on Saturday, and had to give in and ask for a massage from my partner. On top of that he was so wonderful and ran me a hot bath and made the bathroom an absolute sanctuary by lighting candles. All I had to do was climb in, roll up a tea towel to use as a pillow and get my tablet to read Game of Thrones. Perfect.

Hope you're all having a great Monday!

Second day of the FitFarm program is nearly behind me! I'm just sipping on my evening smoothie as I'm writing this. It's been surprisingly easy to adapt to this new diet, overall it's pretty similar to what I'd normally eat but the portions are just a bit smaller and the amount of veg is insane!

Yesterday was definitely the trial and error day. Trying to figure out how to deal with all the igredient lists, how to combine them and so on. One of the biggest trials was trying to blend my smoothies in the food processor - faaar too much cleaning up to do afterwards!! I actually ended up marching over to Argos and bought an actual smoothie blender! This little baby is from James Martin, the easiest bit of kitchen kit I've ever used!



If you can't work this blender, you truly have not been given the brains to get through life. You simply screw the blender head on the cup, flip it all upside down, plant it on the motor bit and twist. And then you just watch everything get blended to a delicious smoothie. Yummy. Unfortunately I can't share the recipe of my meals and smoothies as it'd break the program terms, so all you guys get to do is look at the pretty pictures.


It really surprised me how much veg and berries actually goes into the meal plans. I had to go and stock up today as I was running low on pretty much everything I like to eat! :D There's a huge list of veg to choose from so I'm pretty confident that I won't get bored of my meals for the next six weeks. And there's no restrictions to what you make out of the ingredients you are given for each meal - as long as you follow the amounts, you can get pretty creative.

And the one thing I'm quite happy about with this program is that I'm allowed to drink calorie free juice and soda. This will come so handy especially at work, where I might not be able to eat for a very long time at a time. Having a bottle of Diet Coke by our desk is definitely going to help, as I find the fizzyness of Coke quite filling.

 
When I had a look at the diet plan for the first time last week, I really thought that it's going to be one of those diets where you have to starve to get results. The thought of very little carbs and lots of veg is not going to keep me filled up at all - but oh man how wrong I was! It's going to take me a while to get used to this massive amount of food, but I'm sure I'll manage. ;) At least I get to eat, and eating must be one of my favourite things to do haha!

I actually counted the calories I'm going to be consuming based on the diet plan, and it's only around the 1200 mark. It really surprised me based on the amount of food I'm eating, it feels like a lot more than that! I'm really looking forward to seeing the results of this, the workouts are quite brutal at this stage and me walking a lot at work is bound to give me a good boost to my weight loss!


Overall things haven't changed that much for me, apart from trying to include all the workouts somewhere in my day. I've already planned the next three weeks exercise wise, and I'm pretty confident I'll be able to stick to the new routine. The only tricky day is going to be Thursday, as I'm working really late (past 9pm) and will have to find the energy to do a workout after I get home. Luckily I've also found a nice gap to go swimming once a week! Really can't wait to get started with that.

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. ;)

Back home! This is going to be a very long post haha. A highly enjoyable weekend with family, it's lovely to get out of the house every now and then.

We left quite late on Friday, it was probably around 8pm. As we have been looking after the dogs for the past few weeks, we had to manage to fit all three in a van. It turned out to be a lot simpler than we thought. A cage in the back on top of a bench so we could put two furry ones in there and the third one was in the foot space at the front. 

I'm never good with long travel, though. I always start feeling very sleepy after about an hour, and this time was no exception. Constant yawning and incredibly heavy eyelids kept me company for most of the way there. It's a two hour drive over to the other half's brother's house.

As it was pretty late when we arrived, we didn't really do much. We fired up the Wii and did some Wii Party. Wii is probably the most entertaining console you can have when playing with more than two people. And as it turns out, I am amazing at the game in the picture. It's about chopping vegetables as quickly as possible. You wiggle the Wii remote up and down, I guess all the punching bags I've done with Jillian have made my arm muscles good. :D





Dinners are always the unhealthy ones when we go over. KFC, curry, McDonalds, pizza... You name it, we've most likely had it for dinner before. :D I was so happy to find out that KFC does salads with some of their popular chicken options. I always used to go for the spicy Zinger burger and was so happy to be able to pick the Zinger salad. :) That with a diet Pepsi and a small bag of chips, not too bad in my opinion! Could've dine without the chips but there was an extra portion of chips in the bag so went for it anyways.

Now, it's not a secret that I love mojitos. Tesco actually sells these mock mojitos (non alcoholic). Two of those after dinner while we were playing Wii. Yum! In all fairness it was just empty calories but you've got to live a little every now and then. 






I actually got rather bored at some point and started looking into my phone's camera a bit better. I've actually had this phone for over a year now and I've only just realised that it actually has proper settings. Well done me. From now on all the pictures in this blog will be a bit more vibrant in colour, hooray! I've used a pretty similar setup with my camera, it's nice to get rid of the slightly washed out pictures I've had to put up here.





Our puppy stuck to me like white on rice the entire weekend. Every time I'd sit down she would jump up on my lap and snuggle up. Maybe she just was a bit confused and unsure about the new surroundings, but it was lovely. Coco is such a beautiful little puppy, can't wait for her to be old enough to have puppies.

And we had curry for dinner! I went for chicken tikka masala, wasn't the best curry I've had in all fairness. I like my curries with a lot of sauce so I can dip the naan bread and just drown the rice in it, it's just the way to do it. Wasn't the best tasting tikka masala I've had either. I mean don't get me wrong, it was still lovely! Just doesn't compare to the one I usually order. :)



The way home was incredible. The views on the way were just so breathtaking. I've seen these views tens of times by now but it always amazes me. It's just such an unique country. The pictures don't really do it justice, though. You really need to be there to appreciate it.



As much as I loved this weekend, it's so clear that my stomach can't handle this much bad food in one go. It has been aching like mad since earlier tonight. I love it how our bodies tell us when we are stuffing ourselves with something we really shouldn't. Back to healthy eating tomorrow, I'm sorry tummy. <3

I read a gaming forum daily, and the health & fitness forums over there never stop to amaze me with the amount of dribbling idiots post there. Now, I'm not saying I'm an expert with all this stuff but there's two things that constantly come up.

"Don't ask for advice here, go to a professional website."
I mean what? Just because it's a gaming forum, it doesn't mean that people don't know what they're talking about. This is just stereotyping, not every gamer in the world is an overweight nolife who lives in their mum's basement. You get as many idiots on any website you go to, posting on a bodybuilding forum doesn't make you an expert.


"It's all or nothing."
There was this thread about Coke Zero and if you should drink it or not. A lot of people seem to have the all or nothing mindset, where you must always drink water and eat salad and never have anything that's considered bad for you. Being healthy is a lifestyle, you are allowed to treat yourself every now and then. It's not about banning all the delicious foods you love and never even looking at them again. Unless you go absolutely mad and stuff your face with 5000 calories, you'll be absolutely fine. And seriously, out of all the sodas you could drink, Coke Zero has to be one of the best options out there...


And just to ramble about my own issues for a bit! :D For the past few days I've really struggled to hit my calories. I want to stay above 1200 every day but I've cut down on so many calorie dense foods and drinks that I'm not hitting my targets anymore! I know how incredibly important it is to eat enough when working out so I'm just a bit annoyed. I just can't help it, I'm feeling constantly full so eating extras outside lunch and dinner are a real challenge at the moment.

I let out quite a few of manly roars during my workout today. :D First day of Phase 2 and it definitely was a lot harder than it looked like. Oh, and typing this is really hurting my arms!

As you might think a step up in level also means a step up in difficulty. You are asked to use heavier weights, to rely on your balance more while doing difficult exercises (one leg squats with a dumbell and so on), to push more out of yourself. The resistance cable is also present in every workout apart from the cardio. It is difficult. Crescent or a deep lunge is very very hard to hold for 30 seconds while squeezing the juices out of your arms.

I also want to be more strict with myself with food from now on. No more cheeky nibbles between meals. I allowed myself to slip a little during the first month to see what it'd actually do to my progress, and seeing how little I lost in the end made me decide that it's time to leave the crisps alone for good. Also looking into buying my lunches so I can just stick a bowl of soup in the microwave instead of having to cook something every day. I've noticed that my laziness makes me grab the bag of crisps every time. Plenty of food in the house and lots of different options but it takes time. When I'm hungry, I want food that second, not in 20 minutes. Having for example Weight Watchers soups and prepared meals in the house would probably fix that and help me lose that tiny bit more weight every week.

I'm actually still feeling really full from lunch. Had leftover roast chicken (no skin!) with couscous, peas and red peppers + seasoning and spices. There was a tub of Weight Watchers creme fraiche in the fridge so a few dollops of that went in too to make everything stick together. Very yummy and light on calories. There's some ready prepared chicken and fish in the freezer so might just have something like that for dinner with a ton of salad. Nom!

Half way through phase one! Thought that I'd write a little something about the past two weeks in one handy post.

The only thing that really hit me during the first workouts was the cardio - even after two weeks my calfs are screaming me to stop bouncing around like a bunny rabbit. It is so intense for calfs alone, other body parts are pretty much left in peace during this.

So, the first crosstraining workouts aren't quite as tough as you'd think. The moves you are doing are stuff that most of us probably learns during P.E. classes in school. And having done some of 30 Day Shred made it easier for me, as a lot of the moves were really familiar to me when doing BR. I really recommend doing 30DS first (or at least some of it, I did two weeks of Jillian's workouts before starting) if you are thinking of ordering BR, it'll make the first two weeks so much easier and more enjoyable.

For me the biggest failure was the kickstart. Like I've said so so many times before, the cardio killed me after the first workout. I just couldn't do the cardio workout every day on top of my crosstraining. I barely got out of bed after two days. And the diet itself didn't last for the entire week, I just craved carbs so bad and I was really hungry despite still eating about 1200 calories.

Looking forward to the next two weeks! Gonna watch the workouts either tonight or tomorrow to get familiar with the moves beforehand. I find that really handy because then I won't have to spend half of my workout staring at Jillian doing all these moves and then trying to catch up.

For someone who's used to having snowy winters, English winters are miserable. It's always so dark and damp and it rains a lot. I've been waiting for today for so long! It's been snowing all day and it should carry on til evening, yay! The amount of light you get when there's snow on the ground is just amazing. I feel so much happier today!

On the downside I've caught a cold. Which really really sucks. I'm meant to start Body Revolution on Monday and I really don't want to be ill. To mend my cold I made a nice lot of spinach soup and couldn't resist throwing a few croutons (mediterranean flavour, yum!) in there as well. Maybe not the best option considering I shouldn't eat 'empty' carbs, but I need my comfort food!

First of all, sorry for the awful quality of the pic. I'm just too lazy to get my camera out so I take pictures with my phone. :D

Anyhoo! I enjoy a nice, filling lunch. And I tend to lean towards the simple and fast options (before I started my weight loss journey it'd be chips with something I can just stick in the oven and forget about it), and today's lunch was definitely not an exception!

I was starving after my walk so I just wanted to eat - and fast! All the crisps and cakes in our cupboards were shouting my name, the temptation was awful! I'd quite like to call this dish a warm salad, but don't think it'll quite go as one. I fried a small chicken breast in a drop of olive oil, seasoned it (my usual spices for chicken are paprika, chilli powder and turmeric) and added half a tin of choppes tomatoes. To this I then added a small amount of couscous (I rarely measure it, I just go by eye) and a splash of water. I forgot to add sugar to the tomatoes (takes away the bitter taste) so instead I used half a teaspoon of sour cream to make the dish a bit creamier. After the couscous had soaked up all the liquid from the tomatoes and water, I threw in some peas to give it some colour. Oh and to give it a bit more kick, sweet chilli sauce.

I love colourful food. Just look at all those colours. Oh and, Noom only estimated my lunch at 250kcal. Not too bad. :) I'm taking the calorie counter of this app with a pinch of salt though, it's not designed to count calories to the millionth.

So I've gone down to eating about 1200-1400 calories a day. I've stopped eating crisps, cookies and cakes (oh and believe me, it's so difficult with my other half munching them like there's no tomorrow!) and that alone has dropped my calorie intake by tons. I'm very proud of myself for having self discipline for once.

I found this weight loss app called Noom last week. I wanted to find a nice alternative for Weightwatchers because I simply can't afford the subscription of it at the moment, and based on all the reviews Noom seemed like a good option. It's free to use but you can unlock extra features by going pro on it. Think it's like £20 for a year to unlock all the cool extras, but I'm sure I'll manage with the free version for now.

Thanks to Noom I'm very careful with what I eat every day. The app gives me a calorie budget for each day which changes depending on my activity (and I'm guessing my weight as well). At the moment it's giving me such a motivation boost, I'm very OCD when it comes to stuff like this so keeping to my budget is a fun challenge. It's really made me think what I should put in my mouth and what to leave in the cupboards.

But one downside to all this weight loss business. I'm getting insane headaches in the evenings! I know it's simply because my body is trying to get adjusted to the new diet plan with less fat and salt, but my goodness it's so irritating. I had the same problem when I did WW last year so I know it'll pass eventually. Hopefully by next week.

I've decided to post progress pics every month or so. So at the start of Feb I need to gather up my courage to post my 'before' pics and then post comparison ones. I think this is what I failed on with WW, I only measured myself every week but never took any pictures to see the changes, when I looked in the mirror after losing 10 kilos I honestly couldn't tell the difference and it was quite depressing! Everyone kept telling me that I've lost weight but I just couldn't see it.