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. ;)

I'm not happy. Sure, still a loss, but I'm just not satisfied with the way I've been eating and not exercising at all lately. I know I can do this without the same amount of exercise I used to do, but my diet has been all over the place ever since my birthday.

I need to fix this.

It's been quite a packed week again. But nevermind, Thursday mornings are perfect for a bit of writing. ;)

After such a tiny loss this week I really felt like doing something about it straight away. Sunday being my day off again last week I just thought that I might as well go for a long walk to de-stress and clear my head for the week ahead. My plan was all good, but a few minutes after stepping outside it started raining. I just thought that I'll suck it up, it wasn't raining that hard and I've walked in worse weather before. And it was fine until about the last 20 minutes of my walk. It really started pouring down and I walked against the wind for a while so I just got completely soaked!! My hoodie, trousers, trainers and socks were completely wet and everything else at least partially wet. When I got back my other half just said "Did you go for a swim?!" when he saw me! :D He hadn't even realised that it had rained.


What's your excuse for not exercising? I didn't even let the awful weather stop me.

As you'd expect, we've got a student tutor at uni. He's there to listen to any concerns - both personal and uni related - and we had a really nice long chat on Tuesday. He was just asking about how things are going and so on and we sort of got on the subject of career choices. Ever since I moved to England I've started putting everyone else before myself (my background really influences this as I know how awful it feels to be alone and have nobody to talk to). If someone needs help with anything, 90% of the time I will drop my own things just so I can help a friend get through something. My tutor did suggest careers similar to a personal assistant on graphics related course and I also mentioned councelling. My other half keeps saying that I should look into it as I have helped quite a few friends through all kinds of mental issues. I've just really turned into someone who wants to help. I suppose it's simply because I didn't get the help I was after years ago and I just want to make sure others do.


On a slightly lighter note, my other half surprised me last night when I was leaving work! He cooks very rarely so when he called me to ask how to make a glaze I use on salmon I just couldn't wait to get home. :) It's just so nice to come home and not have to worry about cooking something every now and then. I mean I really love cooking and I happily do it every single night, but little treats like this make me so happy.

This is the glaze I use and it's divine. Really simple to make, tastes amazing and you can serve pretty much anything you want with it. We had it with lemon couscous, peas & sweetcorn and grilled peppers. I let my other half be in charge of plating it all up as well, he's so adorable.


I went through my wardrobe again last night. I've just got so many clothes I haven't worn for ages because they're either too big for me or I just don't simply like them. I did the same probably six months ago and now I've got two plastic bags full of clothes just sitting there, waiting for me to take them to a clothes bank so they'll be handed out to people who really need them. I just need someone to drive me to one, I'm not dragging two heavy bin bags full of clothes all the way to the closest one!


What I noticed after my little "cleansing ritual" was that it was mainly black and white again. I spoke about this subject a while ago and it's really starting to be obvious that my clothes are directly linked to my confidence. For years I wore dark colours and baggy clothes so I could just hide away. Apart from a pink dress and a green top all these clothes are just a part of the old me and I want to get rid of them.

Now I've just got to be brave and go shopping for new stuff. I can't say it enough, I hate shopping! I'd prefer to do it all online but I've got a gift card and a money off voucher that can only be used in store. Thankfully my friend offered to go with me so at least he will keep my sanity levels relatively normal when I do manage to drag myself to New Look again.

It's been an oddly active weekend for me! I really don't do much in the evenings, I'm just one of those people who likes to stay at home and watch TV or play games most of the time. More about that in a bit though. :)

I really love Fridays at uni as it's our photography day. We look into different graphic designers and photographers, what their work is like and think about the relevance of their work to our own project. This week we got to create a graffiti wall to use in our magazines and it was so much fun! Just going nuts with a bit of paint, spray cans, stencils, tape and photos to create something like this was just brilliant.

This was really a team work exercise as well, as there was five of us working on this. :) I really love my group, the guys are amazing! I think that's a really good thing about having such a small group, you just get to know each other a lot faster than you would if there was 20+ of us.

So yeah, just lost the water weight from last week. Not much else to say about it really. :p

Or well, I'm just happy that I did lose this week after going out last night. Alcohol + a late night snack after we got home could've looked very awful on the scales this morning.