Cookfest

7 days into the new year and I have lost 2 pounds!  Woohoo! Not sure how I achieved that because I fell off the wagon rather a lot in the second half of the week when I found a huge bag of Christmas spiced biscuits in the cupboard that were too delicious not to eat and of course once the bag was open it had to be finished off before the biscuits went soggy, right? And I kind of accidentally ate a few other things that were a bit naughty too BUT overall there was a lot less junk than I have been inhaling the last few months, so YAY.  I actually did pretty well with meals and MOST of what I ate was healthy food from the Happy Herbivore plan.

Today I spent a lot of time cooking. 5 hours cooking! I think I racked up a week's worth of Fitbit steps just walking between the cooker and the fridge. It wouldn't normally take so long (the HH recipes are generally quick and easy) but I was being good and inputting every ingredient and weight into MyFitnessPal which made it take quite a lot longer, but it's OK. It kept me off social media at least ;-p

I cooked up 12 meals, 6 lunches and 6 dinners. I also ate one of them - 'Oh My Greens! noodles' and had it with a cup of Lady Grey tea.

Maybe I'm just being a bit British but the only thing I don't like about the HH meals is the overly amusing names.  I'm sure it's probably necessary as a selling point to make things more fun but ugh. The food is usually decent and tasty but I like a name to describe what I'm eating, not make me laugh. Mr O asks me what I'm eating and when I say 'Bodacious Butteritos' or 'Broccoli Poppers' I just get laughed at and asked 'yeah but what the hell is that?') Anyway, I digress. Amusing name aside,The noodle soup was massively filling and tasted really nice. So filling, I didn't want my dinner until really late in the evening: Taco Poppers.

They're meant to be eaten with Queso Sauce, which I don't like - not any fault of the recipe, but it's basically a type of vegan cheese sauce, and I never liked cheese sauce even when I did eat cheese. So I made vegan ranch dressing instead. There's not much food that doesn't taste better with a drizzle of some sort of cool yoghurty thing on top.

In other news: the No Buy continues. I have been very good with money the last 7 days and not spent anything I didn't absolutely have to spend. I kept in budget for the weekly grocery shop for the first time in a bazillion years. And I somehow resisted buying anything in the January sales even when people all around me are squealing about how they bought some shoes for £4 or some such amazing price. 7 days down, 93 to go...

New Year's Resolutions: Update 1

So as part of my new year's resolutions this year, I resolved to try and lose somewhere between a stone and a stone and a half. So far I have been doing pretty well!

I've been eating 1200 calories a day (and recording it with the aid of myfitnesspal.com's fantastic online calorie counter (and the equally brilliant phone app, which even has a barcode scanner so you can just zap whatever you're about to eat and up pops all the nutritional info you'll ever need).

I also took up jogging; I have a treadmill at home and, instead of hanging clothes on it, I've actually been using the thing. I've done half an hour a day of fast walking - and some jogging, a little more each day as I get used to it - most days since the 2nd January. This has been a mixed blessing, since I am definitely getting fitter - I can now jog for 15 minutes; when I started I couldn't even manage 5 - but it has also slowed my weight loss. I'm told that this is because I'm building muscle, and also because muscles that aren't used to regular exercise will try and hold on to glycogen and water (so I'm retaining water now?? OH JOY). So every day that I exercise, the scales creep up a bit, and every day that I don't, they go back down. I've been reassured that this is just temporary, though, and that it will stabilise after a bit; plus since I am definitely burning more calories than I am eating, there is no way it's fat, so I'm persevering.

When I weighed in on Sunday I'd lost about 3 pounds, which is an average of 1.5 per week and apparently this is a healthy rate at which to lose. I forgot to take starting measurements, but the podgy bits around my belly and hips already feel smaller - I suspect I've actually lost more than 3 pounds in fat, and the muscle-y -water-y thing is just hiding the rest :-p

Monday night was where it all started to go a bit wrong, though. I came down with the stomach flu!! Norovirus has been going round the area and I guess it was my turn. Between Monday night and Friday morning I ate hardly anything at all. This morning I weighed myself and I'd lost another 5 pounds in only 3 days: rather an extreme way to diet!!! I expect most of it was dehydration so probably a lot of it will come back soon, but hopefully a bit of it will stay away!

How are you doing with your new year's resolutions, if you've made any?

Happy New Year!

So it's a new year and I thought I'd start off with one of those new year's resolution type posts that people seem to do about this time. Let's see what 2013 brings!

1. Blogging

I've been a bad blogger in recent times. Life just got in the way, plus lack of equipment, time, motivation and all that blah. But I got some awesome new lighting for Christmas, which fixes the equipment problem (yay) and that in turn helps my motivation since the main reason I never felt like blogging was because my pictures always needed so much work to make them even halfway useful. So I can finally get back to blogging and I am excited!!
Things are going to be a little different around here. My main focus will still be on nails but there are going to be more non-nail related posts too. Most of them will still be beauty-focused, but there might just be the occasional other subject popping up here and there (like this one!)

2. Health and fitness/weight loss

Like a zillion other people, it's no surprise that one of my resolutions is to lose a few pounds this year. While I am no means a heffalump, I have recently become dissatisfied with my body for the simple fact I haven't been looking after it the right way. I am still within what the GP would say is a healthy weight range for my age and height, but only just. I weigh at least a stone more than my 'comfortable weight', more like a stone and a half, and my clothes don't fit so nicely as they used to. This year I'm going to focus on taking care of myself better. No, I won't look like the girl in the picture above (miracles take longer) but hopefully this time next year I will have lost the extra pounds I've packed on over the last 12 months or so!

3. Food

Closely linked to health and fitness, but important enough in its own right to deserve a separate mention on the list, is my diet. Due in part to stress and a busy lifestyle, I have slipped into appalling habits with food. Chocolate bars, crisps, and other convenient junk food have been WAY too high on the list, while anything that takes more than about 5 seconds to prepare has fallen by the wayside. And what happens when I eat rubbish? I feel like rubbish. And I look like rubbish. I can't be healthy on a diet like this. This has to stop. There will be vegetables!!

4. FLYing.

I've always been a terrible hoarder, clutter magnet and generally fail at being neat and tidy. I've tried again and again to do something about this and the only thing that has ever really helped was the FLYLady program. You can learn all about it at www.flylady.net , but in brief, FLY stands for 'Finally Loving Yourself'. The program (which is aimed at Americans, but can be easily adapted for us non US types) is about learning to get rid of all the clutter and junk that you don't need, but not beating yourself up or getting overwhelmed along the way. I've been FLYing on and off for years now and it's made an amazing difference to my life, but sadly since having my son I have mostly fallen off the FLYing wagon and gone back to my old habits. Earlier this year I started FLYing again and it has already started to make a difference, so my fourth resolution this year is to continue FLYing!

So there you are, my four main resolutions for 2013. There's a few more minor ones, like making more effort with my skincare routine, and making more effort with my clothes instead of living in the same few old uninspiring outfits again and again, but that'll do for now... don't want to have a list so long it's impossible to achieve!

What are your resolutions for 2013? Will you be making any changes this year?