Through the postbox

It's been a while since my last through the postbox, so I've accumulated a lot of stuff to share with you today. If you haven't read one of my through the postbox posts before, basically I write about all the stuff I have received through my postbox that relates to fitness somehow. I personally love this style of posts because it always gives me ideas of new stuff to buy, although thats not necessarily a good thing...

First up we have some Jimmy's Iced Coffee. They were lovely enough to send me out a few cartons after I reviewed them on my blog, they know the skinny one is my favourite!
This iced coffee is so good, Starbucks quality at home and I can't recommend them enough.

 Oh gosh I didn't realise how blurry this photo was, I'm sorry! Hopefully you can see how awesome these leggings are though. For Christmas I received a lot of money so I decide to splurge and get a pair of super nice leggings. I went for the diamond cut pair from Gymluxe and it was definitely the right choice. I love how they look, they perform really well and they are so comfortable. Beth Tweedle is currently sporting them in her training videos on Dancing on Ice!

 As you probably know by now, I pole dance, but I am so inflexible so my moves don't look as nice as they should do. Alethea Austin is one of my favourite pole dancers, she just oozes sex appeal and her flexibility is amazing. I read a lot of reviews for her DVD, she also has a pure splits DVD which I was tempted to get because I'm desperately trying to get my splits, but I went for her Stretching For Pole instead because she has a lot of back flexibility training in there too, and surprise surprise, my back is stiff as a ironing board!

 Go Nutrition offered to send me a product from their range and I went for the Go Whey Protein 80 in vanilla ice cream. I always use whey protein because I find it goes down quite easily and the nutritional values for this protein are pretty spot on for what I look for in protein. They have some amazing sounding flavours, I would've loved the maple pancake flavour but I went for vanilla because I can use it easily in baking.

My friend Emma posted a picture of her neon pink Smart Shake protein shaker and I instantly knew I had to get one. My current shaker is awful, it doesn't blend well and it leaks everywhere but Smart Shake's have great reviews, and it's bright pink, so the fact I got new protein meant I had to get a new shaker right? I also got some bright pink Kinesiology tape. This has been recommend to me by other runners to help with the pains I get in my IT band, I need to practise my taping technique but hopefully this will help me avoid too much pain at the Brighton half marathon.

And lastly we have some race numbers! The top one is my Brighton half number which I was so excited to receive, the fact that I'm in the pink group makes me so happy! Pink just means I'm aiming to finish in the 2:15-2:30 mark. Getting my race number definitely makes things feel a lot more real!
The second number I got was my Race for Life number. I am running this with my mum and it's not until July, but I'm very excited to be number 8!

That is everything I think, and hopefully I won't be doing another one of these posts for a while because I am meant to be saving for Japan! Although I'm sure there will be a few hiccups...

Strawberry and Banana Oatmeal Casserole

Breakfast is such a important meal, but I don't always have the most time in the mornings and I was getting a bit sick of eating the same thing every day so after a bit of research into recipes with oats and a bit of experimenting I finally ended up with this recipe. It's great because it tastes a bit cakey and I can cook a batch on Sunday and it will see me through most of the week and I can stick a portion in the microwave for 40 second and have a nice warm breakfast!

Just a quick note, in this recipe I use agave nectar, you can substitute this with honey but I've used agave because it's slightly sweeter and it's runnier which makes it easier to mix with the milk and eggs. I got mine from Sainsbury's!

Ingredients 

1 egg
1 cup skimmed milk (or whatever milk you prefer)
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp agave nectar
1 cup of oats
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup of walnut pieces
2 ripe bananas chopped into slices
1/2 cup strawberries chopped in half
1/8 cup of chocolate chips (optional)

To Make

1. Preheat the oven to 180
2. Layer a ceramic cooking dish with the bananas, cinnamon, half the strawberries and a tbsp of agave nectar. Cover with silver foil and put in the over for 15 minutes.
3. Whilst the bananas bake, in a bowl combine the oats, walnuts and baking powder.
4. In a separate bowl whisk the milk, egg, vanilla extract and 2 tbsp of agave nectar.
5. Remove the bananas and strawberries from the over and sprinkle the oat mixture on top as evenly as you can then pour the milk mixture over the top, once again trying to get a nice even layer.
6. Sprinkle the remaining walnuts, strawberries and the chocolate chips evening over the top.
7. Put back in the oven and bake for about 30 minutes.













Makes 6 servings.

Per serving:

216 calories | Carbs: 29g | Fat: 5g | Protein: 5g | 5 Weight Watcher Pro Points

Trying out silks

Another week another class to try out, this time in the form of silks, you know those long strips of fabric you see hanging from the ceiling in circus's that the performers elegantly tumble down? Well that's what I attempted, but not quite so elegently.

The class took place in the gym where I also do pole dancing and aerial hoop and was a one off taster that my instructor offers. She only does these about once every four months, so I jumped at the chance to try the silks out after having recently seen Cirque Du Soleil and deciding that I want to run away and join the circus.

It was a very small class, only 6 of with 3 sets of silks so we partnered up. There was 2 instructors on hand so everyone got a lot of attention.

We were taught the basics, such as how to climb the silks, wrapping the silks around the ankles, some basic inverts (going upside down) and even wrapping the silks around the hips and doing a small drop into a pose.

Silks is a lot more technical than pole and hoop because you have to remember which way to wrap the silks around your body and at times it felt like the silks had a mind of their own and would just end up in a massive tangle around my legs. Even something simple like climbing the silks requires a lot of effort as you have to make sure you are sliding the silk up your foot with you, or else you will just end up wasting a lot of energy to end up being back where you started, it sounds a lot easier than it is!

Silks require a lot of upper body strength and core strength, both things I have built up through my other activities but I still really struggled with silks, the whole class agreed they are blooming hard! I think silks are the only workout I have ever tried that I wouldn't recommend for a complete beginner. With pole and hoop it's easy to build up your strength quickly, with crossfit the workout is scalable to your level and with running you can take things at your own pace, however with silks if you haven't got the upper body strength doing even the most basic moves will be incredibly difficult/impossible which can be quite demoralising.

Despite all this I have to admit I really like the challenge of silks and want to keep it up, especially seeing as it looks so elegant on stage and I would recommend everyone to give it a go. I paid £10 for an hours taster class and I think it was worth every penny. If you are looking for a slightly more accessible aerial class I would recommend aerial hoop as it is a lot easier at the start you build up strength quickly. For anyone interested I go to Krunch gym in Waltham Abbey.

Fit Tip - Savage Salads

Salads are a great food to eat, especially if you are on a calorie restricted diet to lose weight, and contrary to popular belief they don’t all taste like rabbit food. There is however a couple of things to bear in mind when making or buying a salad:

1. Just because it has the word salad in it doesn’t make it low calorie or good for yuo. Pasta salad for example are often very high in calories, don’t have particularly great nutritional values and like to pass themselves off as being the healthier option, they aren’t.

2. Lettuce as a base isn’t always the best. Lettuce is the typical ingredient we think of when thinking about salads, but not only does it taste pretty bland, it’s also a nutritionally week vegetable. Try a different base such as spinach (my fave), peppers, mixed leaves or even branching into quinoa based salads (although make sure to weigh out your quinoa as the calories can build up).

3. You may have picked out a lovely low calorie salad, but don’t forget that the calories shown are often just for the salad and doesn’t include for the calories of the dressing you are drowning your food in. Lots of salad dressings are oil or cream based which can add the calories onto a meal quickly, if you are in a restaurant I always recommend asking for the dressing on the side so you can control how much is put on, or if you can skip the dressing altogether.

4. Be wary of certain ingredients, I’ve seen salads with croutons, tacos and fried chicken in them. Adding anything fried to a salad that you have probably chosen as the healthy option is making that healthy option a bit redundant.

5. Fruit goes great in salad. I haven’t experimented much myself, but Pret in the summer had a fantastic hoisin duck salad that was served on mixed leaves, red onion, cucumber, red peppers and pomegranate, it was delicious. My friend also says she makes a mean peach and rocket salad and I’ve heard strawberries go great with balsamic vinegar. Get creative and make beautiful colourful salads, I find the more colourful and fun your food looks, the more you will enjoy it.

To try and round off this rambley post, here are a couple of my go to salad recipes that are very quick and easy:

Chicken Salad

½ a poached chicken breast
Spinach
Chopped raw mushroom
Gherkins
About 5 olives
Reduced fat mozzarella (Tesco and Sainsbury’s both sell small bags of this, I normally have 1/3 a pack)
Teaspoon of balsamic vinegar for dressing

Tuna Salad

½ tin of tuna (I really like using the sachets of the John West pre seasoned tuna)
Cherry tomatoes, halved
Cucumber
Olives
Spinach
A boiled Egg

Load up on as much veg as you want, but I would recommend not being too generous on the olives!

What’s your favourite salad?

Coffee Review - Starbucks Vanilla Spice Latte

With Christmas gone so have my beloved Starbucks eggnog latte and Costa salted caramel latte, but to help us get over the loss of our favourite Christmas coffees, Starbucks have released a seasonal special, the vanilla spice latte.

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I was quite looking forward to trying this coffee, I pictured something sweet and creamy with a hint of spice to mix things up a bit, the reality was very different from what I imagined.

Instead of adding sweetness to this coffee, the vanilla just helps mellow out the coffee flavour so it goes down very easily. The spice is the main star in this latte, with a strong taste of cardamon, luckily this doesn't completely overwhelm the coffee flavour and they work well to complement each other.

This is more what I expected the gingerbread latte to be like (if you read my review you will know that the gingerbread latte was a massive let down and pretty horrible), a nice spiced coffee that isn't too overpowering. Unfortunatly, like the gingerbread latte they insist on sprinkling the spices on top as well which I wasn't aware of. Nothing worse than getting to the end of a coffee to choke on random bits of spice, or to have to chew throughout your drink.

Spice flakes aside, this is a good tasting coffee and the flavours are a lot more balanced then they where in the gingerbread latte, however this drink just isn't sweet enough for me so if you have a sweet tooth probably give this one a miss. Next up on my list to try is the caramel macchiato after a reader recommended it to me, this sounds like it will definitely satisfy the sweet tooth and I can't believe i haven't tried it before!

Courgette Fritters

I have been raving about courgette fritters all over twitter, I've recently discovered them and they have only furthered my love of courgettes. I've tweaked the recipe a bit to my liking, here it is.

Ingredients

5 courgette
2 teaspoons of salt
1/4 cup coconut flour
1 large egg
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 garlic clove (I use Very Easy garlic sachets because I'm lazy)

To Make

1. Grate the courgettes into a bowl.
2. Sprinkle with the salt and leave to rest for 10 minutes.
3. Drain the courgettes by grabbing handfuls and squeezing the moisture out of them. This will take a while. Put the drained courgettes in a clean bowl.
4. Add the coconut flour, cayenne pepper and garlic. Beat the egg and add that too.
5. Heat a frying pan up. To cook the courgettes you can either use some coconut oil to keep this recipe paleo, I just used some Fri Lite though, the 1 calorie cooking spray.
6. Using the 1/4 cup, fill it up with the courgette mixture, tip the cup over on the frying pan, this way you get nice round fritters, just be sure to pat them flat.
7. Cook each side for roughly 4 minutes, until brown on each side.
8. Once cooked transfer to a wire rack, or eat straight away!



You should get about eight fritters from the mix. I like these as a side to chicken or steak and have two fritters. If I am eating the fritters alone I will have three with a bit of greek yoghurt mixed with chives.

Per serving (2 fritters a serving):

81 calories | Carbs: 8g | Fat: 3g | Protein: 5g | 2 Weight Watchers Pro Points

Facebook & A New Blog Series

Just a very quick blog post to say I’ve finally got round to making a Facebook page for my blog! You can find it here. I’ll be posting pictures and updates of things that I don’t blog about, like photos from my aerial hoop class and maybe quick updates on how badly my run was.
It’s also the best place to ask me any questions you may have, and I’m going to try and get some discussions going on over there but we will see how that goes!

The other thing I wanted to mention is that I am looking to do a new series of blog posts, just really quick tips on things that helped me with my weight loss and I was hoping someone could help me come up with a decent title for the series, I was thinking like Kelsey’s Quickies, but I thought that could sound a bit rude and I’m trying to avoid the word diet because I think that gives out the wrong impression. Any suggestions welcome on a postcard please!

How I lost 60 pounds

It's the start of a new year and I know a lot of people have goals to lose weight. Losing weight was my goal last year, I set myself a goal of four stone (56 pounds) and actually ended up going over that a bit to lose a total of 60 pounds. I thought I would share some tips with you on what I did, hopefully it will help.

Settle in, it's going to be a long ride. It took me 10 months to get to where I want to be. 10 months is a long time but I never felt deprived of anything or that I was really struggling or hungry at all. When I first started trying to lose weight at the start of the year a lot of my friends tried too, many of them with things like the Dukan diet or even Cambridge diet, I was often very jealous of them losing 4 pounds a week constantly whilst I was plodding along at one. Their motivation quickly petered out because those sorts of diets are very difficult to maintain. Keep at the healthy eating and you will get their eventually.

Eat at a calorie deficit. Originally I started with Weight Watchers, which allowed me to eat pretty much anything I wanted as long as I kept to my points allowance. As I went in throughout the year I educated myself on what foods where good for me and I learnt to cook delicious meals. It was definitely a learning process and now I eat exactly what I did on my 'diet', just more of it. This is going to be a lifestyle change, not just a diet. As long as you are eating less calories than you burn you will lose weight.

Track everything you eat. As I mentioned at the start I used Weight Watchers point system to track my food, now I use MyFitnessPal. If you are serious about losing weight track everything you put in your mouth. I know on previous attempts to lose weight I wasn't as successful, it was because I was often lying to myself, reasoning that one cookie won't hurt, it all adds up and will hinder your weight loss. Also consider what you are cooking your food in, the sauces you use and what you drink. Make sure to weigh your food too to make sure your portions are right, you would be surprised how many calories are in that pasta!

I eat constantly, I even bring a lunchbox full of food with me wherever I go. Eating little and often seems to work really well for me, I know I am someone who will eat through boredom, especially at work so rather than change the way I eat I just changed what I eat. I have 3 main meals and 4 snacks a day. Shop for a cute packed lunch box and tupperware, new stuff always helps keep me motivated and by bringing in my own snacks and lunch to work I am less likely to go to the sweet shop and buy cakes or make bad choices for lunch.

Cook everything yourself. As someone who works full time, ready meals used to be a staple in my diet, not anymore. There is so much hidden nasties in packaged food, when you cook for yourself you can control just how much of everything goes in, it also means you can cater to your tastes. Learning how to make myself delicious nutritious food has been one of my favourite things from my weight loss journey, and I'm not going to lie, when you Instagram a completely awesome looking meal and get lots of likes you will feel lovely and smug.

Planning your meals will help save you time and money. On a Sunday I sit and make a timetable of the meals I am going to eat and go food shopping. I try to do consecutive days with the same ingredients to save me from having to buy lots of different ingredients which saves me money. I also do a lot of my food prep on a Sunday, like create my cauliflower mash or courgette fritters which saves me a bit of time during the week. If you know what you are going to be cooking and have the food ready for it you are less likely to come home from work and order a take away.

Find a exercise you enjoy. Joining a gym and using the treadmill for 20 minutes won't really help. Whilst you can lose weight through diet alone (it's about 80% diet, 10% exercise and 10% genetics), finding a exercise you love will help things a lot. Finding pole dancing and aerial hoop really motivated me to lose weight and get stronger, the lighter you are the easier it is to do moves and the stronger you are the better and more elegant they look. I then discovered running and that really made me look into fuelling my body. Exercise is a great way to meet people or give yourself time to think and there is so many forms out there you are bound to find something you like, from rock climbing to fencing, lifting heavy to ballet, get out there and try them! Just to add, just because you have worked out doesn't mean you can treat yourself to a chocolate bar, chances are you haven't burnt as many calories as you think. You can't outrun your calories!

Give up drinking. You don't have to give up drinking, but this one definitely helped me. Drink is full of empty calories. You can easily factor in the calories of alcohol to treat yourself once in a while, but once I have one glass, I often don't stop there and one turns into five and a dirty kebab on the way home. It also leaves me feeling horrible the next day and I tend to eat greasy comfort food, completely undoing all my good work. The hangovers where getting worse as I got older too and I was just fed up of losing days by hiding under my duvet. Plus there will be a lot less embracing drunk pictures of yourself.  If you have more self control then me and can factor in your drinks, go ahead!

Everything in moderation. Don't completely cut the stuff you love from your diet, if you do you will just go crazy and end up bingeing. I still have cakes and chocolate, but nowhere near as much as I used to and I always make sure to factor it into my daily calories. The 80/20 rule is pretty good to follow, eat healthy 80% of the time with 20% for treats.

So now that I am not trying to lose weight, what do I do differently? Not a lot. I work out just as much because I love it and can't imagine my life without it now, I eat pretty much the same food because I know it tastes delicious and helps fuel my body but now I bulk it out a bit more with bigger portions and adding in things like sweet potato and I still plan and prepare my meals and love packed lunches, although I'm not so fussy about tracking everything anymore, I've managed to get myself to a good balance where I know what my body needs and my weight is pretty stable.

Good luck with your weight loss journey, it's a long process but you end up learning so many great things about yourself that it really is worth it.

Cheesy Garlic Cauliflower Mash

If you follow me on Instagram you probably would've seen me post photos of my cauliflower mash before, I like to make mine with cheese and garlic, but these are optional, you can use whatever you want to flavour your mash, such as oregano or black pepper.

Cauliflower mash is so easy to make, and definitely feels a lot naughtier to eat than it is!

Here is my recipe:

Ingredients

 

1 Cauliflower

1/3 Cup Unsweetened Almond Milk

1 Garlic Clove, crushed (optional)

1/4 Cup Low Fat Cheddar (optional)

Makes 3 portions.

To Make

 

1. Chop the stalks off the cauliflower heads.

2. Boil the cauliflower until it is soft, around 5 minutes.

3. Put the cauliflower in the food processor and add the almond milk, cheese and crushed garlic clove.

4. Blitz the ingredients until a smooth mash like consistency.

And that's it, you have cauliflower mash!

 Mine looks a tad watery, but thats because I accidentally added too much almond milk.

72 Calories | Carbs: 7g | Fat: 3g | Protein: 6g | Sugar: 2g | 2 Weight Watchers Pro Points

Let me know if you make this recipe, and if you would like to see more recipes.

Coffee Review - Jimmy's Iced Coffee

I think it's pretty obvious that I love my fancy coffee shop coffees, but what with Christmas opening hours and the shops not always being open over the holiday period I've had to find something that satisfies my coffee fix at home.

I've tried a few different instant coffees at home, and to be honest most of them taste like poop. I've also tried to make my own lattes before but I don't have a milk steamer and to be honest I just don't think I'm very good at making coffee.

When I saw Jimmy's Iced Coffee in my local Tesco's I was very excited. I have seen them mentioned a few times on Twitter and thought they could be the solution to my at home coffee problem because all I have to do is pour it into a glass, or in my case a ice filled Despicable Me plastic cup.

Jimmy's Iced Coffee comes in three different varieties, decaff, skinny and regular, not as much choice as Starbucks but still a good start! I opted for skinny because I always take my coffee with skimmed milk, it tastes just as good and I don't really need all those extra calories from the milk.

The coffee itself was great, I was very impressed. It was smooth and went down a treat. The coffee taste was strong, but not overpowering, the perfect amount for a latte in my opinion. A seriously enjoyable coffee that I think I even enjoyed a bit more than the Starbucks iced vanilla latte! Not more than my beloved Costa iced hazelnut latte though...

At 118 calories for the carton, it's perfect for me pre workout, which is good because I only treat myself to coffee when I am about to work out.

Jimmy's Iced Coffee is available from Waitrose, Tesco, Whole Foods Market, Ocado, WHSmiths and a few of those petrol welcome break type places. This won't replace my coffee shop treat coffee, but I will definitely have a few cartons of this stocked in the fridge for when I can't get to Costa.