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.