Hello, hello!

After having a small break from my blog, I am back and I thought my first post back from said break should be something a little bit different.

Those of you that read my blog may well be aware that I have suffered with depression and social anxiety, and have done for over 10 years... which was incredibly hard to accept as I was scared of the label of "depressed" and the mental in "mental health";
But you know what? Once I did accept it, it's not all that bad... I have had an awful lot of knocks in my life, I have previously considered myself fairly unlucky for a lot of my life.

However, towards the end of last year I decided to at least try and stop being so negative, my anxiety and what not caused me to be a "glass half empty" sort of person, but I stopped and realised despite the amount of crap I've had to deal with, I've got through it and I'm going from strength to strength.

Since the beginning of secondary school, I've dealt with some bad bullying, some horrible medical issues, most of which is down to my thyroid, but hey ho, on I soldier anyway and then my self confidence issues due to my appearance, weight, past issues with bullying and people letting me down.
It's the smaller things with me that get down, even something as simple as being called "boring" or when I think people are talking about me behind my back, the smallest things can set my anxiety off, but I'm taking small steps being able to control it and feel better about myself!

But anyway, onto a more positive note (since its what this post is supposed to be all about!)

This morning when I went to the gym, I noticed they were promoting a small project called #LoveYourSelfie and I think it's a fantastic idea! You basically take a little paper heart (they have red hearts but you know...whatever you have available!) and put the heart next to a part of the body that they love/that they're proud of.

I think that it's such a good idea and I want you all to get involved with this where you can!

So on instagram or twitter or anywhere, put your "#LoveYourSelfie" it could even just be you holding a heart up to say you love yourself and that's great, we need more positivity in this world and it's a great way to start it off!

Be sure to tag me if you take part, I want to see self confidence and body positivity everywhere!

I haven't currently got any red card, so I'm going to share some images with you that show my progress and show that I am proud of my slow transformation! 

 I was featured on the "This Girl Can" campaign's social media platform, a campaign by Sport England who are attempting to get women everywhere, no matter what age, size, ability or anything to get involved and exercise and do sports, I 100% agree with the campaign, having been doing this for nearly a year now, I believe 110% that sports and exercise can make you feel a lot better about yourself, I feel more active, fitter and my confidence is getting better and better, see about their fab campaign here.

Being featured on their social media platforms was just another step in the right direction for me and if I can inspire women like myself or anyone for that matter to get up and feel better about themselves, I will!

Now to carry on with the self love and confidence theme I'm going to share this with you:

To be honest I was sat around for a good half an hour wondering as to whether or not I should actually upload it or not to any of my social media platforms, although I finally did to my instagram and even though I have a long way to go, I'm proud of my progress so far (also I need to work on my abs lol...) but my stomach and figure is getting smaller and fitter everyday with the effort I'm putting in!

The first photo was taken in May 2015 when I first started, the second was taken end of november/beginning of december time 2015 and the final photo was taken in 2016, well last week actually, I'm getting so excited about how much fitter I'm getting! I love seeing the difference between photos! Just inspires me to carry on and keep going!

Plus the best thing is, that I'm doing it all for myself, by myself (well somewhat) and achieving these is fantastic.

Actually the by myself is a slight lie, big shoutout of thanks to Beth from Tri 2 Swim who gave me the kick up the bum I needed to get started and Sian from Potential fitness who trains me and gives me 100% whatever I'm doing and of course my friends and family who have been there throughout.

To continue on as well, I have my own radio show now too, I've been doing this for a couple of months now and I love love love it, I'm basically talking to myself for a couple of hours into a big microphone but its definitely boosted my self confidence and it gets me out of the house on a wednesday night! Everyone is a winner hahaha! You can listen to me live on Redroad FM on wednesday nights between 9pm-11pm, be sure to listen and text in/tweet me, I'll give you a shoutout!
Listen live here.

So on one last note, I know its easier said than done but love yourself and brim yourself with confidence, take baby steps if you have to, because you can be whatever you want to be and you can do whatever you want! You just have to put yourself in a good frame of mind!

and #LoveYourSelfie!

Until next time,

Good Morning all!

I was hoping to post this last night, but it got late and spent most of my evening preparing my meals for the week!

I've managed to do 4 days worth of meals, well lunch and tea! as I usually have weetabix for breakfast... 

These are all the ingredients I used for my food prep, it's not an awful lot but they all make up different meals!

Frozen Kale, Chicken Breast Fillet, Medium Fat Philadelphia, Smoked Salmon Slices, Bacon, Frozen Avocado, Wholegrain Noodles, Wholegrain Brown Pasta, Lemon Juice, Pepper.

Not included in the photo is Semi Skimmed Milk, Chinese Five Spice and Reduced Salt soy sauce.

 

Before you start cooking, make sure you have plenty of storage for your meals, nothing worse than going and creating nearly a weeks worth of food and not enough to store it in!

 

So, onto the food...

I started off making off Smoked Salmon pasta which is actually one of my favourite meals!

Coffee Machine isn't included haha! but you basically boil the pasta, and then in a seperate pan, you create a sauce with Philadelphia cream cheese as the base, add a little bit of milk in (the more you put in, the runnier the sauce will be, but you don't need a lot!), a splash of lemon juice and a little bit of pepper then rip up the slices of smoked salmon and add in, you cook it with the sauce.
As soon as you put the pan on the heat, keep stirring until its at a runny consistency.
Once you've drained your pasta, add the sauce and the pasta together and hey presto! you're sorted!

Next I needed to cook the chicken as it was going in more than one of my meals, I had a rather large chicken breat fillet, so chopped it up into numerous pieces and then fried off in rapeseed oil (rapeseed oil is apparently better for you!) 

I then used the chicken in some wholemeal noodles with Kale, chinese five spice and reduced salt soy sauce to make some noodle dishes, which by the way taste great!

My final other dish is another favourite of chicken, bacon and avocado salad, it's a mixed leaves salad with little bits of chicken breast, chopped bits of fried off bacon and mashed avocado, no dressing needed as the avocado provides it all!

Here's the finished products:

I'm really looking forward to my meals this week now and it's so much easier for work that I can just pop in my bag for work, also I can freeze them to perserve them if necessary!

All together (including cleaning!) It took me about 2 hours, but its probably saved me a lot of time for the following week! so whether you're dieting or not, it might be worth preparing your food just to make it a lot easier for you!

Yes, that is a Bertolli Butter tub, but they're decent portion sized haha!
I'm hoping to do more of these posts in the future so I'll keep you updated with anymore other interesting meals I may prep in the future for you all!

So until next time!

Afternoon all!

Today's post is a little bit of a mish mash, I've recently bought some new gym and workout gear, and I've been meal prepping left right and centre this week! I also thought I would talk you through my PT session with Sian from Potential Fitness today too!

So first up, my new gym gear!

On Saturday I headed to Junction 32 shopping centre in Castleford, literally so I could visit the Nike Factory, Adidas and New Balance outlet stores and came away with my new gym shoes! For £45 I thought they were an absolute steal, as after doing my research it seems they were originally priced at near enough £100!

Although, they are men's 5.0 running shoes, the women's sizing was actually too small for my clown feet haha! But I absolutely love them, they're so comfy and I've felt a difference in my workouts since I got them, definitely worth the money!

Next is my new sports bra!

I saw this on ASOS for £28, which may seem a lot, but I still have a valid student card and it's again worth the money, great support and really comfy! - Would definitely recommend ladies if you're looking for a new one!

Also, I finally got my hands on a 'This Girl Can' T-Shirt!

Plus, to top it off, they featured this selfie on their social media channels! Which I was ridiculously excited about! View them here:

Facebook

Twitter
Instagram

Another ridiculously comfy piece of activewear, I also wear it for lounging about too, but I intend to wear it for when I start going to some classes which I'll be updating you on in the future!

 

So what else have I been up to?

Meal Prepping.

I wish I looked as glamourous as Beyonce when I was doing it but it was definitely far from the case!

I must of been cooking for about 2 hours but I managed to get about 4 days worth of food sorted! I did 2 lots of salmon, spinach, kale and brown rice, 3 lots of wholegrain pasta with chicken, quorn sausages, kale, basil with a chopped tomato sauce and then 2 lots of wholegrain noodles with chicken and kale with reduced salt soy sauce.

It is my first time doing meal prepping properly so I'm going to try and mix it up a bit and do some different dishes when I prep again tomorrow, I'm going to try and do a post with all my prep again if I'm not too flustered afterwards! - But so far, I'm finding it so much easier, I don't know why I haven't done this previously! But I'm hoping that this will get my eating back into good habits, especially whilst I'm at work, with the likes of subway, mcdonalds, kfc and greggs etc just across the road from where I work, it's almost too easy to give into temptation, no more when I have my prepped meals in toll! (wahey!), I forgot to take photos whilst I was prepping so I'll try and do a post on that soon!

But onto today's PT Session with Sian!

I started off on the Watt Bike - Where I had a normal 5 minutes and then did 5 minutes interval warm up with 10 seconds extra effort and speed, with a 20 second recovery, repeated for 5 minutes, I also tried 20 seconds with extra effort and speed and then 40 second recovery time for a couple of minutes too, to get my heart rate going.

After the watt bike warm up it was onto the treadmill starting with a 6% gradient (6.0 incline) and increasing the gradient by 0.5% every 30 seconds until I got up to 12% gradient (12.0 incline), speed varied between 2.5 and 3.0 as I have a previous knee injury and it can hinder my exercise at times.
Once I reached my 12% gradient I could gradually bring it down back to 6% which worked my legs and got my heart beating!

This went on for around 20ish minutes, afterwards I went on to work with these:

I would of done some situps/planks/pressups etc - but a couple of weeks ago I did some ligament damage to my left wrist, so we did the following for the last part of my session.

I started with single leg step ups on each leg with 4kg weights in each hand (the green ones in the photo!), after this I went straight into 15 deep squats holding a 6kg kettlebell weight, afterwards in was straight into 30 seconds of fast step ups, 30 seconds starting on each leg.

I did this process three times with small rest periods in between to get my breath back.

I'm feeling incredibly sore but feel so much better for it! I'm looking forward to my next session already! Be sure to check out Sian's page on facebook! Potential Fitness on Facebook

I've got a lot coming up in the near future which I'm hoping to both vlog and blog about! I'll be sure to keep you all updated, but until next time!

Afternoon all!

Another day, another blog post, but today I wanted to open up about a condition that I think is often overlooked or not taken into account.

Hypothyroidism.

What is it?

Hypothyroidism is a condition of the Thyroid which causes it to be underactive, which means it releases less thyroxine or none at all in and around your body.

For those of you who don't know what a thyroid is, it's a butterfly shaped gland that sits along the windpipe and if you're male, below the adams apple, you can't really feel it.

What does the thyroid actually do?


Taken from: British Thyroid Foundation

"The thyroid makes two hormones that it secretes into the blood stream. One is called thyroxine; this hormone contains four atoms of iodine and is often called T4. The other is called triiodothyronine, which contains three atoms of iodine and is often called T3. In the cells and tissues of the body the T4 is converted to T3. It is the T3, derived from T4 or secreted as T3 from the thyroid gland, which is biologically active and influences the activity of all the cells and tissues of your body."

"The T4, or rather the T3 derived from it, and the T3 secreted directly by the thyroid gland influence the metabolism of your body cells. In other words, it regulates the speed with which your body cells work. If too much of the thyroid hormones are secreted, the body cells work faster than normal, and you have hyperthyroidism. If too little of the thyroid hormones are produced (known as hypothyroidism), the cells and organs of your body slow down. If you become hypothyroid, your heart rate, for example, may be slower than normal and your intestines work sluggishly, so you can become constipated."

This is something I have suffered with from birth and luckily it's controlled with medication, however, I have to have routine blood tests to check that my thyroxine levels are where they should be and I have to take tablets every morning and I've had to do that since I was 2 weeks old!  

It affects me in a lot of day to day aspects and it can cause the following:

Weight gain
Slow movements, thought and speech
Pins and needles
Breathlessness
Dizziness
Palpitations
Loss of libido
Dry/gritty eyes
Hoarse voice
Difficulty swallowing
Hair loss especially outer third of eyebrows
Dry skin
Muscle and joint pain
Carpal tunnel syndrome
Loss of appetite
Constipation

Fatigue
Low Metabolism
Tiredness

 

These are just a handful of symptoms that people suffer with, sources say that there is over 300 different symptoms of hypothyroidism alone and an estimated 300 million people worldwide are suffering which is staggering.

Weight gain is certainly one I struggle with, which is the main subject of this blog, it's a known fact that its a lot easier (usually) to put it on than lose the weight!
However there is a bigger struggle with my thyroid condition as I get tired very easily and my low metabolism makes it difficult to get up and go, which means I can sometimes lack motivation, luckily I only suffer from a couple of these symptoms/factors on the list, but I can only imagine that its awful to suffer from nearly all or a lot of those factors.

 

Apart from weight gain and the struggle with weightloss, I can go through a lot of different emotions and phases throughout the day, I can often wake up tired and not really have the energy to get out of bed somedays (of course I do eventually!) and it has been said that you can be prone to anxiety and depression, two things I have again, suffered with for a large portion of my life, however, on a positive note, if I manage to get up easily in a morning, I try and stay positive and get through the day, no matter what it throws at me! It also means that I have a low immune system which means unfortunately for me, that if there's a bug going around, I am more than likely going to catch it! (sad face), but it can be avoided if I take extra care.

One stigma I've identified is that people use hypothyroidism as an excuse for being lazy, I can say that for the majority (at least!!) for us sufferers, this is not the case, we genuinely struggle and you need to be patient with us! I've noticed a positive change in my energy since I've started exercising reguarly, which can be a task in itself at times when I'm over tired and lack motivation, so if you're a sufferer and haven't tried doing exercise, even if its just walking or going to a class once a week, give it a go! it might surprise you!

 

The opposite to this is hyperthyroidism, which is an overactive thyroid, basically the complete opposite of hypothyroidism, feel free to research on that if you're interested, there is plenty of information online!

 

I hope this post has provided some good information about a condition that some of you probably didn't know existed and also gives you awareness as to how this illness can affect those that are suffering! 

Until next time,