Remember Why!

Weight loss is not an easy journey, on occasion you hit the invisible brick wall. The stumbling block - it will trip you and attempt to bring you down. It may also come in the form of a friend shoving cupcakes in your face.

Anyway.

There will be a time when you walk up to the scales on weigh in day and you either remain the same of even 'worse' you have a gain.  There is always celebrations when you lose weight on the day of weigh in, however if you gain it's all very hush hush and whispering 'ooooo you've had a gain' cue sad face from the lady behind the scales. It's like a guilt trip.

But should you feel guilty?

No

Why!?

Because you my dear are a human and there is this thing we all lead and it's called LIFE!

Don't let the gain get you down.  If you are an emotional eater like myself, then this could trigger a post weigh in binge.  Don't let just a number get you down. A gain of a pound or two is not the end of the world, us wee humans are always having fluctuations with weight.

An important point to remember is where you were when you started.  Think about it for a moment will you 🙂  You have to look at the whole picture and not that ONE day. 

When I was on my recent holiday I enjoyed a few too many ice creams - I had fun.  When I returned to my weigh in the week after I'd had a gain of 2lbs.  Realistically it is to be expected but I was still felt  annoyed with myself deep down.  Like pretty much everyone I am one of those people who puts myself down - I am my biggest critic. Sound familiar?  But really we shouldn't be so hard on ourselves.   

To summarise in short - don't be so hard on yourself!  You're not going to little miss or mr perfect all the time (note to self!). When you next see the plus on the scale,just smile and say I will do better next week.

Let the not so good be the trigger you need to make you work harder for a better result.

Good luck!

Angela

Scrap booking

I must admit I can be quite the magazine hoarder sometimes. I'm trying to be better and not collect them, but I can't promise it will be a forever thing that I'll stick to. 

Over the summer I have been taking the time to go through all my old slimming world magazines and the few fitness magazines I own and I've been snipping out the recipes.  It's very easy to forget when and where you find a recipe and I've been meaning to cut all the recipes I want to recreate. 

I thought it would a fun idea to pop them all in a pretty ring binder (I got mine from Tesco). I also got plastic wallets to protect the cutouts.  I know this technically is not 'scrap booking' as per say but I think the title is catchy. 

Now I can recycle all the left over magazines and declutter my home a little with these gone now. Happy dance. 

I hope you take this idea and use it in your home. 

Enjoy!

Angela 

Kitchen Gadgets to Have!

Hi there Slimming World friends how we all doing today?  Sorry for post shortage but with this warm weather I kind of feel like eating ice creams more than writing blog posts.  You understand where I'm coming from right?

This post talks about some of my favourite gadgets in the kitchen.  It might sound strange to say but I do love my NutriBullet and steamer - it's true.  Links for each item will be there for you if you fancy buying any of the products mentioned.  Now let's crack on...

// Scales 

I used to have big fancy scales, you know the kind with the big bowl on top??  Yes they may look nice and cute but they are not the most practical in the world. They are big and not very handy for a quick grab and weigh of your healthy extra A choice.  This is where I invested in a set of digital scales from Salter. I picked up my set from DunElm Mill for about £12 or £14. They are little which is great for storage, plus you have many options when it comes to weighing - grams, oz, mls.
Link HERE

// Joseph Joseph Bowl/Measuring cup set

Cup measurements are mainly a US thing but they have become much more popular in the UK over recent years.  Our friends in the US don't use the terms grams likes us Brits. I find having a set of these really handy. Mine show millilitres too so I always use the 1 cup spoon for 250mls of semi skimmed milk.
Link HERE

// Measuring spoons
The other day I was measuring out some low fat Mayo for a wrap I was making. I guessed what a tablespoon of it was by squeezing the tube and popping it straight on to the wrap. After i did that I thought to myself I should really measure that. So I grabbed my measuring spoon and to my shock I was totally wrong - I'd given myself about half the amount.  After this little story my point is, it is always important to measure out all your syns. 

Link HERE

// Muslin Cloth 

You totally don't have to have this as it's not an necessity, but if you ever feel like making a cauliflower base pizza ... well you'll be a fool not to have this to help you make it.  It helps to use the cloth to squeeze out excess fluid 😄
Link HERE

// NutriBullet Blender

I've had some gadgets that just don't get used after a while and I was kind of worried it would be the same when I bought this however I was wrong.  I get so much use out of blender and it's always out on my counter top. It's the perfect size and it's not even that expensive. This will make the whole soups, smoothies making process easy peasy. 

Link HERE

// Tupperware 

Is it sad to say that having good Tupperware is important. Investing a bit more cash is certainly better than not. I use my pots every day and they go through a lot. If you've got something cheap and not so durable then you are more likely to have to spend more money in the long run replacing them. My favourite brand is Sistema. They sell lots of different sizes and in different colours. They also sell bottles and other handy items. 

Link HERE

Enjoy!

Angela x

Nachos on Slimming World

I love Slimming World meals that resemble 'bad/naughty' versions of the same foods.  If you read my ramen receipe a few posts back then you'll see I created a healthy ramen which is SWF*.

Today we have 'nachos' and a healthy dip.  Now sorry to say there are no nachos chips in this recipe, however we do have their super healthy yummy cousin.... the sweet potato wedge.

Instead of naughty chips just swap those for a large potato chopped in to wedges.  Now you're on to a winner. Everything with this recipe is syn free with the exception of the cheese.  The recipe asks you to use your healthy extra A choice however you  could syn that if you wish to.  So basically it's syn free if you want it to be. Choice is yours!

All you need:

// For the nachos
Large sweet potato
Fry light
Paprika
Salt and pepper

// For the toppings
Canned corn
Mixed beans or just kidney beans
Jalapeños (optional if you don't want it a bit hot)
Cheese (syn this or use your healthy extra A choice)
Seasonings: I used a taco mix which is 3 syns for the entire pack however I only used a tsp amount.
Salt and pepper

// For the dip/sauce
Plain fat free yogurt
Paprika
Lemon juice
Salt and pepper

If you click HERE you can follow along with my video!

Enjoy!

Angela

* Slimming World Friendly

Less is NOT more!

Weight loss.... that thing pretty much 95% of the planets population are trying to achieve.  Well let me let you in to a secret ... when it comes to weight loss you have to eat.

True story!

It is driven in to us to cut this, cut that out of your diet and you will lose weight, it will fall off and you will live happily ever after. Well this is not the case my friend - it's a big fat lie.  If you want a quick fix then go ahead and starve... it won't work. Realistically we want our weight loss journey to give us a lasting life long results right?  And the only way that will happen is if we take the correct and healthy path.  How do you think you will survive without food any ways??  You can't.

The truth is the little you eat, it confuses your body... which in turn makes your body go into starvation mode.  It slows your metabolism as your body tries holds on to everything.  Your body will wonder when it will receive its next meal. Basically this kind of eating will screw up your metabolism and sometimes I may struggle to recover from it. 

The key to successful wait lose is to eat a balanced diet of proteins, carbohydrates and fats. Yes you NEED to eat carbs and fats - they are essential.  I will probably approach this in another post. 

Strangely enough you have to eat food in order to lose weight, but the most important thing is to eat the correct foods to begin with.  

Enjoy!

Angela

What I Eat In A Day

Hey everyone.

Last week was my first week back on plan (well kind of). On bank holiday Monday I decided to film a what I ate in a day video and here it is.  This includes all three main meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) and even dessert. 

There aren't many snacks as usual, as I was running around my house decluttering and tidying up when I got back from holiday so I was pretty occupied by that. 

I read Marie Kondo's book whilst away about decluttering which is making me do it all to be honest.  That book is a amaze balls!  I totally recommend it if you need help with decluttering your life... I think it's a life changer. 

Any way hope you enjoy.  What do you like to eat in a day whilst on Slimming World??

Enjoy!

Angela

Survival Guide: The Cinema

I love going to the cinema the hubby. We always make an evening of it, perhaps a nice meal before hand then a good old VIP seat with lots of pic n' mix, popcorn or even Ben and Jerry's ice cream.  Lots of sugary 'goodness' - NOT!  The meal definately, but not the sweets.

All these sweets can play havoc with your results when it is time for your weekly weigh in and we don't want that do we??  Yes you can treat yourself as ultimately that is what syns are for, but let's do it in controlled fashion instead of a fully loaded blow out. 

This is my mini guide on how to survive a night at the cinema and what nibbles to take if you're going.

Firstly my main and best advice is to avoid the cinema treats entirely and bring your own. This is where you'll need a big hand bag ladies, as cinemas don't obviously want you to bring your own lunch box of goodies. They want you to spend your money with them - business is business and you're their money maker ... so be discreet. 

In your hand bag pop in...

// Popcorn

This is a given really isn't it??  I like the Lightly Sea Salted ones by ProperCorn (pictured) as a 20g bag is only 4 syns. Compare this to a small carton of popcorn you get at the actual cinema that is soooooo big it'll fit over your head well I think the ProperCorn is a million times better!

// Mikado

Whether you go for milk, white chocolate or the Daim version these are 1/2 a syn per stick. If you save up your syns for the day you could nearly eat a whole packet if you wanted to. Yay. 

// Pick n' Mix

Might sound strange but you could make you're own pic n' mix.  Grab a small zip lock bag or Tupperware pot and pop in a few Harbios and marshmallows. Both of these are usually 1 syn each, so like above if you save up your syns you could have quite a hand full. 

// Fruit 

Not your traditional cinema treat but what about fruit sticks or a pot?  I've done this before as there is an Marks and Spencer's next to my local cinema and they sell great pots of fruit. I brought melon and pineapple slices/sticks and they were rather yummy. 

The trick of bringing your own goodies is you know you are only consuming a syn value you know instead of guessing.  Once you start guessing it all starts to go down hill. 

Enjoy!

Angela