My journey with Noom has been a very long one - since starting my blog I have written two reviews  (1 & 2) for Noom and joined the guys at a launch event in London a while back! The app has had a bit of a makeover lately and the awesome people at Noom asked me to have a nosey around again. As Noom was the app that really got my weight loss journey started, I was more than excited about the opportunity!


The basic structure of the app has remained the same - complete daily tasks and track meals and exercise. This is the main frame for every fitness app around nowadays, but Noom does it with a great twist. The visual structure of the home screen gives you an instant glance of what you've been up to during the day, making everything hassle free and flowing. Pressing the do more- button also gives you an option to track your weight, start a workout or log your blood pressure or glucose levels (logging equipment not included). Keeping your health in check has never been so easy!


The major new update to Noom is the extra features you can purchase to aid you on your journey. Noom has scapped the original Pro- feature, and replaced it with live coaching by a small group of fully qualified coaches. When opting for one of the coaching programs you fill out a simple questionnaire about your goals and once matched to a coach, your coach will arrange a phone call (or Skype if outside the US!) to get everything going. Having the advise and support of a professional available when needed can be an absolute blessing to people who are still new to the whole healthy living business, and being able to chat to someone can mean the difference between a success story and giving up! 


While I didn't really take advantage of the coaching (sorry coach Pete!!), I think it's a fantastic resource from Noom. It is definitely something I haven't seen offered by any other weight loss app, giving Noom a certain edge over all the competition out on the market. I think the new features Noom has come up with are definitely worth a look, even if you're an old user looking to get reaquainted with the app after being away for a while!

The one downside to the revamp is that the database for food seems to be a bit restricted at the moment, especially on items only sold in the UK. While it is quite easy to add things into the database, it's so tempting to just skip tracking something in a rush instead of sitting down for a couple of minutes to write everything down from the ingredients list on the packaging. I'm sure it will fill up very rapidly with everyone adding their favourite go to- meals into the database!

Noom has definitely refreshed their look to their advantage, and highly recommend it to anyone looking for a nice and easy way to track their healthy living choices!

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 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!

This is a sponsored post.


Last week I got an email from a company called Pure Chimp. They specialise in all sorts of 100% natural skin care products and macha green tea. I was offered this amazing tea to review, and as green tea has amazing health benefits, I wanted to hop on board and try it out!

This is how the tea is described as on the Pure Chimp website:

It sounds really incredible, doesn't it? The tea comes in powder form, which really surprised me (in a good way!). The thing that usually bugs me with tea is that you have to wait for several minutes before it's actually good to drink, but this is literally just a matter of mixing it up with hot water (or a small dash of liquid for a super shot) and that's it.



I think my favourite part of this tea is the COLOUR! Oh my goodness, the colour of the powder is the most vivid green I have ever seen, it's so beautiful that I just kinda wanted to look at it for ages. It just shows how pure this stuff actually is, you just couldn't get that kind of colour out of something that was chemically enhanced.

As I'm pretty used to drinking green tea, the taste of the Super tea really didn't surprise me. It's a bit more earthy than most teas I've tried, but that's in no way a bad thing at all! I do load my tea and coffee with sweetener though, I'm guessing the taste would be somewhat bitter in it's "natural" state.


Overall this tea is insanely good! Beautiful, herby and woody taste and the colour just makes me want to stare into my mug every ten seconds. I had quite a bit of the powder in the bottom of my mug so it kinda worked as that super shot, and oh my it made me shiver! :D It really packs a punch, bound to wake you up in the morning..

You can purchase the tea from the Pure Chimp website, and right now it's on sale at £14.95 (usually £16.95).

I've kinda been putting this off for a while, because the reviews aren't quite that big on their own! I've been testing three products for the past few months now (with varying results), and I wanted to summarise them all in one handy post.


It Works! body wraps


There's loads of different body wraps out there, and I've always been very sceptical about these things. Me not following the rules as much as I should've probably had an impact on the results (I refused to give up caffeine for these things), but overall this wrap isn't amazing. I forgot to take any sort of measurements at the start of my testing so I can't give you guys accurate results, but the pictures can demonstrate the minimal change. Apart from the caffeine part I followed the instructions of the pack, and my results aren't quite the same as all these adverts on their website. ;)

This test was done during a period where I did pretty much no exercise, so the results were purely due to the wraps. I think this is more of a quick fix for an event than anything else really, just to nip in your waist and remove bloating from your belly.



RapidLash eyelash serum


I'm absolutely in love with this stuff! It has worked far better than I imagined it would. I've nearly finished the bottle now, and I started this test back in late April. While the look of my lashes without any mascara might not look too different, I've noticed them growing a lot stronger and longer than before. The tips of my lashes are still quite fair in colour, but with a bit of mascara they look really great - most days I actually only use mascara before heading out, hah!

My lashes also curl a lot more now, instead of just growing straight out. This was probably the biggest reason I wanted to give this serum a go, and it really didn't let me down. Especially my lower lashes have gained a new life completely, they must be as long as my top lashes were before starting this test!


So final verdict? Definitely worth it. Just buy it off Amazon or something, actually saw it at my local drug store for twice as much as I bought it for!

DermaOil skincare oil


I got DermaOil through a collaboration with ChemistDirect, and I was so chuffed about the opportunity to test something for them! Unfortunately this test barely got off the ground, as the oil actually made my stretch marks itch beyond belief! I had to stop using the oil as I was scared that constantly scratching my marks would actually make them worse.

Does this mean it's a bad product? No, probably not. My skin just couldn't handle the oil for whatever reason. It's a shame really, I've got a lot of stretch marks all over my body and I know this stuff works. You win some you lose some. :)

My review of Noom is probably the most popular article on my blog right now, and lately I've had the chance to have a look at the features Noom Pro offers - and so far I haven't been disappointed!


The biggest feature Pro offers is the chance to join a Noom group. The idea of these groups is to get the chance to share your progress with a small group of likeminded people - before you join a group you get to influence what kind of people you want to group up with, based on their age, location, sex and so on.


Over the few weeks I've been a part of my group I've really grown fond of the people I get to chat with! Most of the time I just hover in the background, but when I feel like I can really share my knowledge with everyone I just love being a part of it all. You can share anything you want - pictures of meals, workouts, thoughts about weight loss and most importantly, you get to ask weight loss related questions and get answers very quickly! My phone alerts me every time someone posts in the group, so the response time is really quick if everyone in the group is by their phones (and I most likely will be as my phone is always somewhere close, hah!).


Pro also gives you the opportunity to use the app's own database of recipes, which can be extremely useful for people just starting with their lifestyle change. It counts the calories for you and gives incredibly detailed instructions for every dish, there's just no way you can get the dish wrong with all this guidance! It will make cooking so accessible for even novice cooks. And even I find myself browsing the recipe database for inspiration when I don't know what to cook for dinner! I'm actually really dying to get a microwave to our office at work so I could make all those delicious soups and take them to work with me to have for lunch. Yum!

So to answer the question a lot of people are asking - is Noom Pro worth the sub? Yes, yes it is. Just put the price into perspective for a second - the sub for a month costs roughly the same as a takeaway dinner would. Cut down on one takeaway and you'll be able to afford Noom Pro.

I've had the UP band for nearly a year now, with long periods of not using it and then falling in love with it again. I figured that since I wrote an initial review and a quick check up after using the band for a week, I should write a full on review of the band now to wrap it all up nicely.


For an overview of the band, do check my other review. The app itself has stayed pretty much exactly the same with the exception of 'trends' not being there anymore, so I felt like it was unnecessary to cover that bit again.

The band has worked flawlessly ever since I got it out of the packaging. Even though Jawbone says that it's waterproof and you can still wear it when you take a shower, I've always taken it off for it. I just don't trust something like this to actually hold water out for too long. :) I've read a lot of negative comments about the band not working after a short while, and I have a feeling that it's linked to water getting into the delicate system.


UP has definitely shed a lot of light on my daily activity levels. It's great to be able to tell exactly how many calories I burn, how many steps I take and how much I sleep. I actually look forward to syncing my band every night, just to see if I've hit my ten thousand steps every day. It helps me plan my calorie budget and if I have a more active day, I know how to adjust. It's the little things that really make this band worth having. Now that I've used it for a while again, I barely even notice it. It's just like any other wrist band or bracelet people wear, it's just about getting used to it. Sure, it's not the most elegant looking thing and might look quite odd with some fancy dress, but small sacrifices for fitness are normal in our lives. ;)

I actually feel quite bad for forgetting to put the band back on if I take it off for whatever reason. I feel like I'm missing out on important data of my life if I don't wear it! It's kinda turned into a part of me, in a way it has stopped being this device that just collects data as I live my daily life. In a way it's like a companion, something that helps you and lets you know if you're doing something wrong.


Using the band has also confirmed how much sleep I need every night in order to feel refreshed when I wake up in the morning. It's a very fine line somewhere between seven and eight hours, if my sleep falls shorter than that I just feel really drowsy and awful in the morning. UP has really helped me figure out my sleeping pattern, and it's one of the most important features of the band for me. I've gone from going to bed at 2am to actually wanting to sleep by 11.30pm. The only downside to the band is that it can be a bit uncomfortable when settling down in bed for the night, as I use a memory foam pillow and it doesn't quite give way for the band like a normal pillow would.

In short, this band has really changed the way I think about my own daily life. I have started making better decisions sleep wise and keeping track of my steps with something as delicate as UP makes it effortless and I really don't have to think about it at all. I highly recommend this to anyone who doesn't want to mess about with clunky pedometers. I'm actually really surprised how I haven't actually seen any UP bands or similar (FitBit for example) around at all in the year I've owned this thing. Are they really not that popular over here?

I'm actually quite tempted to buy the new version of this band, but with the price tag being rather high in comparison to this one, I think it'll have to wait for a little while unfortunately. :)

Like I said in a post a while ago, I've teamed up with Chemist Direct to review some of their fantastic products. I picked a variety of things that were relevant to me, and out of these Chemist Direct sent me this wonderful bottle of DermaOil skincare oil (also worth checking out their other products)!


This is quite simply a first impression type of post about the oil, as I only started using it this morning. The recommended "dose" is twice a day on any desired areas (three times a day if you're pregnant). I've actually got a lot of stretch marks all over my body - inner thighs, both biceps, next to my left armpit (such a bizarre place!), on both sides / love handles and quite an odd one next to my belly button. To document how the oil works I'm going to track the effects of it on my left side. It's actually quite hard to take pictures of your stretch marks, they reflect light in such an odd way.


OK, so! The oil smells really nice and fresh, it's sort of a citrus type scent. A single drop of the oil goes really far, and I made the mistake of just squeezing the bottle quite hard at first! :D The oil does stay on your skin for a while, so I don't recommend sitting on anything too expensive until it's completely absorbed (and probably best to wear some clothes you don't mind getting oily)!

I'll keep checking back on this product every now and then, most likely when there's half a bottle left and when I eventually finish the oil. I'm quite optimistic about this product, the reviews on Chemist Direct's website have been quite positive so far!

I'm also testing It Works! Ultimate Body Applicator (this isn't through my partnership with Chemist Direct). I will give it a full review once I've used all four body wraps to get a good idea of the product and results. :)

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. :)

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.