Thighs of Thunder #3 - Yummy Treat (92 Cals)

Hey ladies, hope you're all enjoying the bank holiday.

I've just had a lovely lunch for my Dad's 65th birthday. He chose Nandos. I think he went once about ten years ago and decided it needed a revisit. Not that I minded, that mushroom and halloumi pitta ( I'm a veggie :)) is THE dog's. If only I could have had carrot cake... Sigh.

Having just finished week 7 of the Biggest Loser Online Club, and being 1st 3lb's down, I'm starting to crave a cheeky treat here and there. Not to carrot cake level quite yet, but I've been lusting. So when I was munching on my brekkie the other day, cereal I'd robbed off my brother - shhhh, I had an idea. Pauses for gasps of shock. I came up with the simplest recipe ever to get the 'yum factor' and some additional health benefits. Even for those of you not trying to lose weight, having a few beneficial ingredients in your snacks is a good thing. You can just eat two, right? ;)

This isn't a 'healthy snack', just to warn you. And (needless to say) I'm not a nutritionist. All I'm saying is it doesn't have a scale tipping quantity of calories and it's also got extra protein and fibre as a bonus :)

'Shhhhomebody Choc Me' (Little refernce from The Mask). 92 Calories per cake case.

The three ingredients in these are:

Crunchy peanut butter, Fruit 'n (not 'and' Fibre and some chocolate ;)

The recipe:

1. Melt 25g of chocolate (Dairy Milk if you know what's best, if you prefer Galaxy I'm ashamed, but go ahead ;)). I do it in the microwave on a low heat. If you aren't a pro at this you can do it in a glass bowl over simmering water on the hob. I say this because berfore I was a pro, I did infact melt chocolate and a plastic pot in to our Uni microwave. It did NOT smell good.

2. Add one teaspoon of crunchy peanut butter.

3. Add 25g of Fruit 'n Fibre to the mixture and crush it in with your spoon.
4. Spread mixture evenly in to 3 cake cases (you can double the recipe if you want to make 6 etc. etc.)
5. Lick the spoon and bowl clean (optional).
6. Allow to cool and then place in fridge to set.

And there you have it, a tastey 92 calorie treat. Or if you eat all three it's 276 calories... Don't blame yourself ;) If you're thinking 'Liv you're meant to be eating healthy, why are you making these?' - bore off ;) Haha, no. Basically, I thought as a veggie extra protein is always a win (peanut butter), fibre's good for everyone and chocolate tastes like heaven in my mouth.

Do you like recipe posts? Have they got your tastebuds tingling? Let me know if you make some! They've got a slight Snickers feel about them. If you aren't watching what you eat, add more peanut butter. I bet that tastes good! Ha.

Until next time,

Livvy xo

Chocolate and Trainers: The Battle of Lust and Necessity.

Hey gang, hope you're smashing (wondering how many words I can find for 'good', I'm up for the challenge of finding out ;))

I'm in a rush today as my birthday's on Monday and I basically don't plan on stopping celebrating from now until next Sunday... I'm definitely a Princess when it comes to my birthday, everyone has to know about it! (Hey, I'm single, let me enjoy the annual attention ;)) As I type I should be cooking dinner for my friend who's coming for stomach lining pre-drinking. I'm making risotto which is my signature dish, i.e. the one of few things I can cook without a recipe book. It's just vegetables and rice so nice and healthy, although you do get rice belly before you go out which is not too sexy fine. Off topic quite a bit there, what I meant was that I love finding lovely healthy recipes so let me know if you have any/want to know any of mine? (I'm veggie btw :))

On to the actual subject of the title... Today I had one of the daily dilemmas someone trying to be healthy struggles with. My new trainers had arrived yesterday from Reebok.

Reebok Runtone Ready. I'll give a proper review on these when I've used them a fair bit. Apologies for having walked about before photographing them, I'm still new to this blogging business ;)

I was meeting my Dad for lunch (more specifically getting the money off him for the trainers, he's obsessed with buying anything health related. He tried to buy me an exercise and it took me AND my brother to point out to him that we live in a second story flat and didn't want to fall through someone's ceiling sweating/make someone think there was an earthquake beneath them). My plan was to go for a walk after lunch (I had a tomato and avacado salad and dough balls, not saintly but by no means the pizza I had to physically restrain myself from ordering. Pizza = Number 1 weakness). However, my ankle was playing up a bit and my Dad had just given me cash for my trainers. Hideous move for a shopaholic - I ended up in Primark. I also ended up with this...

Temptation in all it's melting, sweet scented, creamy, cocoa-ey goodness. Or badness.

So suddenly I was at home, ankle hurting, trainers walked in for about an hour and eating a massive bar of chocolate. It's not like I was hungry. I think 2 things lead me here 1) Habit; if you're used to getting chocolate you'll get it. Equally if you're not used to getting it you'll only notice you don't have it when you walk up to a chocolate fountain and give it a great sniff. Really want some chocolate now, which leads me to 2) Desire; we all WANT things. People reading this who are in to beauty and make-up for example are used to WANTing things. I want Chanel nail varnish and NARS foundation, but I don't buy it because I know I can't afford it and don't need it. Everyone has a different vice. The trick is to remember it's a WANT NOT A NEED. You'll also find once you change your lifestyle about your wants change, you learn to love you Bourjois foundation and your bank account suddenly doesn't want to punch you. You learn to want to exercise because even though you pant and sweat your way through it, you feel amazing afterwards (after a shower too that is, me and my housemates at Uni used to exercise together. The last person to the shower often looked like the endorphins had warn off a little. No one likes sitting in their own sweat, however much hard work it shows).

I've just reminded myself I think, how I felt after I exercised. Maybe this blogging about a healthy lifestyle is a good plan. Hopefully you can all appreciate I'm coming at this from a genuine angle, after all I've done it before and so I CAN do it again. And if you need to healthy up a bit you can do it with me :) Next time I think I'll choose the trainers over the chocolate.

If you're not interested in health blogs don't panic, I've got a post on my criminally large mascara collection soon. If you are interested in the health side of things please let me know what sort of posts you'd like to read about; my previous experiences, exercise tips, ways to make the gym bareable, at home exercise, what foods to eat, when to eat? Etc.

Ta for reading. If you're interested in health and beauty posts please follow and comment :)
I'll be reviewing this book as soon as I've finished it...

I'm LOVING this no nonsense, motivational book!

Looks like dinner's going to be late, eek ;)

Livvy xo

Life is Like a Box of Chocolates.

This year I've not made a list of New Years Resolutions. Not because I have nothing to resolve, far from it. Last year had some great ups and some rather gargantuan downs, so I'm starting off this year a bit all over the shop. I haven't got a routine of any sorts, or a purpose really. This has lead to a lot of down time, in both senses of the word. However it has really got me thinking about what I want to get out of life. I worry so much about what I'm not doing that it takes up all my time, and I end up doing nothing at all anyway. On one of my deep and meaningless day-dreams which seem to fill my days, I thought about Forest Gump's famous quote;
          "Life is like a box of chocolates."

My first thought was, I can relate to that. It's not as stupid as it sounds. As one of my many permenant over-hanging resolutions I try not to eat too much crap (permenant because 'try' is the key word there). It got me thinking, life is like a box of chocolates. If you just rush through it and don't live in the moment it's gone, booom. Bye bye. But if you savour each peice, each moment, you can be genuinely happy.

Another little thought is that as humans, or maybe just Brits ;) we dwell on the bad bits. I opened a tin of Celebrations at Christmas and immediately thought 'Grim, there are a LOT of Bountys in here'. Instead of focusing on that, and trying to power through the bad moments to get to the good ones, I should have thought 'Ahh lush there's a good few Maltesers in here'. (I could have just bought a bag of Maltesers, but I find it's those little moments of surprise at finding what we love that make us smile/salivate :)). I'd have been better off offering the Bountys to somebody else, after all one girl's punch in the gag reflex is another's treasure (or something to that effect ;)).

What I need to learn this year is not to linger in unpleasant moments and to strive towards better things. I need to dig around my metaphorical tub of chocolates to find what makes me happy. Hopefully by next Christmas that might be something bigger than a Malteser. :)

Livvy xo