Face of Thunder and Thighs of Thunder.

The most 90's greeting just crossed my mind and I have the greatest urge to type 'Waaaazzuuuuup?'
Okay. Out my system.

Right so if anyone has read my previous posts, you'll have seen my indecision over what sort of blog I want this to be, and whether I want to blog at all.

The answer to the latter is, yes I do. I just needed a direction. So I've come up with a plan to do regular posts about my two greatest life consumers. 'Face of Thunder', the beauty and make-up obsession I am still fully in the grips of and 'Thighs of Thunder', my desperado attempt to lose weight/be healthy.

The plan of action is to do FoT posts on Saturdays and Wednesdays, because I have a WHOLE crap heap of tales to tell and products to review. That also includes FOTD's, hair tips, possibly a tiny bit of curvy girl (and I use the term curvy sparingly, lol) fashion. That should be fun because my friends and family just don't appreciate why anyone would need 50 nail polishes. Then on Sundays and Thursdays I'll still be posting from this blog, but they'll just have 'Thighs of Thunder' in the title to show it's a diet/health/exercise post. On Sundays I'll do a weekly update and on Thursday a variety of whinging/exercise tips/diet tips/whinging and sweat based whinging. ;)

What do you think? Do you like the idea of beauty and diet/health posts? I'm an expert in neither but a tryer of both ;) So hopefully I'll be able to give person opinions, rather than informed ones. :)

It's Tuesday today so I'll catch up with you tomorrow for a beauty chinwag.

Livvy xo

Guess Who's Back? - The Slimming Shady

Yes, let's all be embarrassed for the title. I couldn't resist ;)

If anyone is actually reading this, hellooooo. I hope you're all keeping well. I realise it's been about 3 months since I last posted, but I have had a request from the lovely @VanzTheMachine on Twitter. And even though I did say I might not post again, I thought 'hey, why not?' Plus I could do with the whole group support thing, as today I'll be discussing (if you hadn't guessed from my genuinely shameful title)...

Healthy eating and exercise. YAY! Everyone's fav ;)

To quickly catch everyone up to speed, about 2/3 years ago I lost 4 stone. 'Oh' you're thinking 'we've got ourselves an expert, a veteran even'. No, no you don't. Well in terms of weightloss, yep... Wasn't so good at keeping it off though. Maybe I'll explain why one day, but today is not then.

So here I am for round 2 (and by 2 I mean 2 succesful rounds, out of about 9000 non-succesful ones). In the last 5 weeks I have lost 12lbs, which even I gave myself a little pat on the back for.

In this post I'm just going to give 5 simple tips to get you started. If it's popular, I'd love to do a whole little series on it :) And if that's popular I might re-ignite the beauty blogger in me, goodness only knows she's begging to be unleashed.

Rambling.

Sorry. Let me just quickly add that I'm not a nutritionist or health expert, these are literally just my opinions and experiences. So without further ado...

My Top 5 Healthy Weight Loss Tips:

1. Water - I know, you've heard a trillion times how much water you should drink. Believe me, I was a squash drinker, even dabbling in the occasional diet coke. And alcohol is just a whole other level. I'm not saying completely cut them out, but they should all be rare treats. I've taken to carrying a water bottle around with me everywhere (note; don't bother taking them to concerts, you'll just end up yelling at doormen when they take it off you). Sipping water consistently throughout the day keeps you hydrated, flushes out toxins and gives you something to put in your mouth that isn't food. I won't say it fills you up, personally I think that only lasts for half an hour before you're chomping at the bit if you're actually hungry. But, it does actually make your skin clearer. I thought that was an urban myth egged on by Hollywood's crazy raw food eating, yoga ladies. Turns out it's actually true, so get yourself a bottle and start sipping.

2. Calorie Counting - I can literally feel the disgust in your faces. Calorie counting is certainly NOT essential for weight loss. I didn't do it last time and still did really well. I also hasten to add that becoming obsessed with calories makes you a massive bore and quite frankly life's too short. However, I've been doing the Biggest Loser online club (the UK version, I'm sure other countries have their own) and that's had me eating 1200 calories a day and inputting what I eat in to an online diary. It does sound a little crazy, and if you're just trying to be healthier it's probably not for you, but let me just get it out there that I LOVE IT! For education alone, it's been invaluable. For example there was me thinking, 'I'll just chuck a tablespoon of olive oil on my salad, it's good for you'. I don't doubt that it is, but now I know there's approximately 121 calories in that, I think twice. It had never crossed my mind before. So instead of calorie counting as such, which I personally think is a little soul destroying, I think calorie awareness is essential. Once you are familiar with calories you can make healthy choices without whacking your calculator out at dinner like a compulsive, mathmatically challenged weirdo.

3. Exercise - Ladies, it's time to purchase a sports bra. Get out your baggy band t-shirts and trakkie b's previously reserved for days of watching 'Man V Food' and 'Britain's Got Talent', don't even try and tell me you haven't. The fact of the matter is that weightloss is like maths, unfortunately, you have to burn off more than you intake to lose weight. Your body needs those 1200 calories to function, any less than that your body will store food when you eat again. So to shift the excess pounds you've got to shift your arses. You're going to have to trust me that a good quantity of my brain is saying 'lay down, have a Dominos', but you've got to get your inner ninja to beat that thought away. There are a LOT of forms of really great exercises, my rule is basically if you're panting and sweating then you're winning. Dvd's like 'Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred' and Davina McCall's exercise vids are immense. There's no better compromise for the lazy community than exercising in your living room, staring the sofa in the eye while sweat's pouring in to it and thinking 'this is not a food sweat'. Plus you can do some serious exercise in half an hour, you've just got to be commited. Other exercies I personally enjoy are swimming (no one likes the 'shamu walk of shame', but nobody's looking and if they are accidentally kick them as you swim past), the rowing machine, the stepper, etc. My current weapon of choice is the Davina McCall foldable exercise bike which was like £100 from Argos, folds up, is relatively quiet and parks nicely in front of the telly... 'Man V Food' won't watch itself. I've also taken to walking with my friends which leads me to points 4 and 5...

4. Do it with someone else and 5. Set yourself a challenge - Okay I'm cheating by grouping points, but I don't want Guiness in touch saying I have the record for the longest blog post ever. However, the reason I've taken to walking with friends is that we've signed up to do a 13 mile charity walk in the summer. I mentioned before I'm not good at maths, but let me assure you that is a LONG way. Half a marathon in fact. So as well as getting healthy together we're raising money. More winning ;) Also in terms of having a partner in crime, it's amazing to have someone to whinge to and who understands what you're doing. Me and my best friend have a little healthy competition. If she says she's lost a bit of weight it spurs me on to do the same. Plus if I needed any more motivation, I have a holiday booked for the summer. Nothing says 'start sweating' like the thought of having to be semi-naked on a beach near 5 of your ridiculously good looking friends.

Let me just re-iterate that I'm no expert and these are just my personal tips. If you're planning a drastic change go and see a professional so that you can't sue me. ;)

And one final thing, I'm no super-motivated robot! Post-Lent where I gave up chocolate, crisps, sweets and pizza I'm suffering a slight (cough*huge*) chocolate addicition. I've been swapping out food cals for chocolate, NOT good. Any tips anyone can give me to beat the chocolate craving? What do you guys struggle with? Let's be a team :)
Please comment if you're interested in this sort of post, not of such mammoth content of course.

Good luck if you're getting healthy too.

Til next time,

Livvy.

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

Weight Loss/Gain Posts?

Hey gang, hope you're all good :)

I've been seeing a few blog posts recently about weight loss and such like. You know January fitness regimes, healthy eating resolutions etc. I mentioned yesterday that I am of the "squidgy" body type. Let's just say I need my arse safely secured on to the weight loss band wagon.

To cut to the chase, I lost 4 stone about 3 years ago, over a period of around 18 months. I was still a chubster but healthy and happy. More curvy than lardy. I still felt inadequate and massive. Anyway I put a LOT of weight on last year as I've previously mentioned it was a terrible year, again I won't go in to that here.

Me pre and post weight loss (pre-weight gain) :(

So I'm obviously just baby stepping back in to the world of health. Given my previous experience I'm hoping I've got some good tips and tricks to keep me motivated/help me be successful. I was just wondering, does anyone want to read about my journey or some good exercise/weight loss tips? Just to be clear my actual weight loss and healthy lifestyle was very successful. I just turned to food when times got rough, which is another thing that needs to be dealt with. But hey ho, 1 thing at a time :)

I just thought I'd see if anyone was interested in that sort of post because I know I love reading them. And ultimately I think being healthy is definitely in the interest of everyone interested in beauty. :)

Let me know what you think,

Livvy xo

P.s. Sorry for the short post, I'm still feeling uncomfortable talking about it all.