So long SMF!

I have stopped posting overly filtered pictures of avocado and started blogging my way through my bucket list! Read more about my attempts at new hobbies & activities in London (plus my old SMF posts) on The Feckit List.

Happy reading!

x

Healthy Meal Inspiration

Since I joined Instagram (follow me here!), I have been using it mainly to get inspiration for my workouts and meals. And obviously to stalk celebrities…. I usually search through hashtags on a Sunday and find lots of meal ideas that I can use to make my lunches and dinners for the week. Without really noticing it my diet has changed a lot, I have been preparing meals at home a lot more and craving lots of fresh vegetables. Here are a few of my favourite meals that I’m eating at the moment.

Chocolate Temptation

As you might have seen in previous posts, my friends and I have a tradition of baking each other cakes for our birthday. It was Lynn’s birthday on Saturday so on Friday evening I dragged myself out of the house and went to Gabby’s house to bake the cake! We decided to go simple on the sponge and heavy on the decoration so I dug up an easy victoria sponge recipe I have made a million times before. Usually when I am baking I tend to eat the ingredients but this time I wasn’t allowed as they were all very sugar heavy! Gutted….

The cake rose well, but when it was time to take the sponge out of the tins we found that they were completely stuck to the tin. Disaster! We had greased them beforehand and they are apparently non-stick but we still ended up having to cut them free. What we were left with were two extremely crumbly sponges that had been hacked repeatedly with a knife – we had no choice but go VERY heavy with the decoration! Taking inspiration from this cake I made before, we set about covering every inch of the cake in different types of chocolate, and this was the end result!

I didn’t get to try it – but it got great reviews! My next challenge is to make a sugar-free version, so watch this space!

Oh and HAPPY BIRTHDAY LYNN!!

xxx

Mushroom & Rosemary Quinoa Risotto

I’m finally getting over this bug I had last week – yay! I was absolutely miserable by Friday. I was feeling awful, couldn’t go to work, or exercise, my appetite was non existent, and even going outside for a walk left me really tired. Feeling much better now, and back at work. Still not 100% but I feel pretty great in comparison to last week.

One think I like to do to pass the time is cook and bake, but since I didn’t have much of an appetite I cooked for BF instead. On Tuesday evening I made him quinoa mushroom risotto with rocket. I had seen something online previously about how adding a parmesan to Quinoa can be eaten as a healthy alternative to Macaroni & cheese, which I love. I tried it and thought it just tasted like risotto, so while it didn’t stop my craving for mac & cheese, it gave me an idea for a recipe.

Courgetti and Homemade Hummus

I really think I can do this sugar-free thing! I have been reading through the books I mentioned in yesterday’s post and finding out a lot more about sugar addiction and how to break it. It’s interesting to find out what sugar does to your body, and the benefits of living sugar free. For anyone thinking of giving up sugar I would recommend David Gillespie’s book ‘Sweet Poison..’. Although possibly in paperback rather than Kindle as it’s quite annoying flicking back and forth through the sections. It’s quite funny, factual, and his facts are backed up with references to the studies they are taken from.

I know it’s not going to be easy to break the bad habits I have and stay away from junk food but I figure if I gave up smoking, I can definitely give up sugar. There are comparisons made to quitting nicotine and quitting sugar in a lot of the books and blogs I have looked at, and I feel like this is positive news for me. Granted, I only managed to quit after reading Paul McKenna’s book ‘How to quit smoking’ but there must have been some willpower involved there too, right?

Last night I popped by my local health food shop to get some food for dinner. This was my first chance to see which of my favourite foods were secretly hoarding 50 teaspoons of sugar (I read far too many Daily Mail articles!).

Sugar Free Me!

One of my best friends was over visiting me from Ireland for the past few days and we spent most of her visit catching up over a drink…wine, cocktails, beer, tequila!Yesterday marked twelve days in a row where I drank at least one unit of alcohol.  As a result I feel pretty ropey right now. Sore throat, muggy head, sick stomach – and my skin….well thank god for Laura Mercier that’s all I’ll say. My diet is badly in need of a kick up the a**.

If you read food blogs or newspapers online you will have noticed that sugar is now enemy number 1 to a healthy diet and weight loss regime. There are many extreme opinions online about how sugar is ‘toxic’, causes anything from cancer to liver disease, and countless articles about how ‘sugar is the enemy’. Now I’m not a nutritionist so I can’t really comment on all of these but I do think that a balanced diet is both better for your overall health, and also more attainable long-term than cutting anything out completely. There is no doubt that eating too much sugar is bad for your health, but cutting it out completely does not seem, to me, like a healthy, or realistic goal to have.

I recently realised that I eat an extraordinarily large amount of sugar each day. I have logged my daily food intake and exercise on the website MyFitnessPal for the past 4-5 years – I’m quite goal oriented when it comes to food so having a calorie & exercise target each day gives me such a kick that it’s a bit sad. I usually just take note of the calorie/fat intake each day but recently I started paying attention to how  much sugar I have been eating.

Bangkok

18 hours after leaving Heathrow, we finally touched down in Bangkok, the first stop in our Christmas adventure! I must say, saving a couple of hundred quid on the flight was not worth the 7 extra hours travel time. Especially as I hate flying!! Our route took us from Heathrow to Incheon, Seoul (11 hours) then to Bangkok (6 hours). The flights weren’t too bad though. I pretty much slept for most of it, and read a new trashy book I bought on Amazon’s Kindle deal of the week. About a Tupperware saleswoman who found out her husband is a murderer. Perfect for a tired mind but not going to be nominated for the Booker price any time soon.

We got into Bangkok at 10.45pm local time and headed straight to our hotel on the Khao San road. A friend from work recommended we stay in Buddy Lodge as the hotel we had stayed at previously was booked out. It was right on Khao San road and was pretty nice! We got a 4 poster bed for two nights for just 3600 Thai Baht (about £60). This would still be considered expensive for Thai standards but Christmas is a busy time of year here and most places were full by the time we got around to booking. After checking in we freshened up and went straight out for a look around, a beer, and some food for Tim!

146..Blue Cheese Steak

I went home to Cork last weekend for a quick 25 hour trip to see my family and my dog/obsession Dexter. Was so good to see everyone! I barely had enough time to fit everyone in so I need to plan another longer trip home soon! If only Dexter could come to visit…

I still can’t quite believe how much alcohol I managed to fit into those 25 hours…when I got home, it was back to work and back to attempting a healthy diet. For breakfast I had porridge with agave nectar, banana and fruit for breakfast. I’m drinking Dr. Stuart’s ‘slim plus‘ tea which is really just fennel tea but tastes really good. I think you can buy it in most branches of Holland & Barrett.

145…Exploration

It was my housemate Lynn’s birthday on Friday night so we decided to go out for a few drinks to celebrate. Well when I say a few, I mean a lot..needless to say we woke up the next morning with quite bad hangovers and a craving for breakfast at our local cafe. Nothing soothes a hangover more than scrambled eggs on toast with some tea.

When we were feeling a little bit more human, BF and I decided that we would take advantage of the good weather and spend the day exploring London. We tend to do this a lot during the summer months but it has just been too cold recently!

144..Homemade Guacamole

After a lovely 10 week absence I have started going back to the gym. The company I previously worked for had a gym in the building which made it very easy to pop down for classes or a quick run to break up the day. Since I moved to my new role I have being trying (albeit not very hard) to find a new gym to join, as well as trying to find the motivation to go. It’s funny how quickly you can get out of habits, I used to gym a lot and really enjoy it. On the run up to my Christmas holidays with BF I would happily go twice in one day. Now I honestly can’t think of anything worse than hopping on a treadmill. I have lost the will to gym. Still though, if I want to stay in my skinny jeans I’ll need to incorporate at least a few hours of exercise into my week.

After looking online and asking around work I decided to join Fitness First as it’s closeby and a co-worker recommended it to me which means I have a gym buddy. Unfortunately FF is not as swank as my old company gym but I couldn’t justify paying £100+ per month just to exercise. I eased myself in with a Body Pump class on Tuesday and then did a pretty hardcore Pilates class on Wednesday. It’s now Friday and I still can’t stand up without wincing! Not only have I lost the gym mentality, my body has become used to not really doing that much. I’m hoping that I won’t feel so sore tomorrow and can go to another Body Pump class but it’s not looking very likely.