Fat Shaming

Isn't there just something about the New Year that makes us all want to better ourselves!

My post today is something that I do to myself. I make constant excuses and to be honest I'm bored of being disappointed in me.

I am a massive culprit for the New Year 'lets lose a few pounds' which is fine but it's never maintained. I do it for a few months, lose motivtion and then think 'bloody hell this is boring - back to the melted cheese I go'. And really it should be fine. I should just accept and be happy that I like my food but when I see pictures of myself I just end up thinking I'm not happy. Sure in the cheese infused moment I am, but not so much when I am crying over my reflection.

So to be honest I've just had enough. I've gone back to my Fitness Pal and I am logging everything I eat. I've already noticed trends and have made moves to change them. My problem areas are fat and sugar. Even when I started eating 'better' fruit still has SO much sugar so I've been trying super hard to keep under my 45g allowance for the day.

Anyway its paid off so far, I've lost half a stone but I'm not too excited as I always lost the first stone quickly, its the others I need to worry about.

I even bought my very first sports bra the other day so now my they wont hit me in the face...fantastic news all round. I spent most of last night shouting at my fitness DVD man for making me suffer but I think if I stick with it, maybe, just maybe, it might stop being so painful.

I don't know something seems to have shifted this year, I think I'm realising that it's going to get harder as I get older so if I really want to shift a significant amount now is the time I have to do it. Plus I'm fed up of my thighs rubbing together and I want to go bare legged this summer, tights in the heat are a real pain.  

I'm just going to keep ploughing through and changing little things like my portion sizes and hopefully I will be able to finally shift those couple of stone and keep them off for good. I'm still going to treat myself to a couple of pieces of fried chicken every once in a while though, I mean come on, I'm only human!

C x

The Christmas Diet

Let's talk about 'The Christmas Diet'.

Does anyone else do this? You know where you cut back on all the foods that are good in life and exchange them for the ones that you don't really want but feel that you should have. Like green beans. Today I ate green beans for the first time since I became an adult and realised that my mother couldn't tell me to eat them anymore. And why did I submit myself to this tragic bean eating frenzy? All so I can have that extra slice of turkey on Christmas Day.

It's like food just goes and ups its game when Christmas rolls around. How on earth are you meant to say no to tubs of mixed crisps, foot long jaffa cake boxes and mince pies? Not to mention the advent calendar chocolate, after eight mints and guzzling of glasses of mulled wine.

I love Christmas. I love the twinkly lights. I love the tinsel. I love the music. I love the presents. But most of all I love the food. All of the food. Even brussel sprouts get a look in.....

I have been planning what to cook for my Christmas dinner for weeks now and look forward to it with each passing day, but so I don't put on another stone in weight by the end of the year I decided that the best and most sensible thing to do was to lose a stone now so I can put it back on again.

So my Christmas Diet basically consists of a sandwich and soup for lunch and a reduced sized dinner. It's going to be so worth it though when I tuck into pigs in blankets dipped in bread sauce. Is it ok that my mouth is watering right now? I'm actually struggling to control my salvia flow at the thought of a cheeseboard. So you see its worth eating the green beans. Maybe I'll even learn to love them! Let's face it - Christmas is basically the only time of year that you can eat an entire cheeseboard to yourself and nobody judges.

C x

Amsterdam - Day 1

Rising bright and early the next day to a very silver room we headed downstairs to breakfast which was included with the room . Defeitely a European breakfast

 

After we had eaten our fill we consulted the map and headed out into the numerous alleys to explore all Amsterdam had to offer, which happens to be quite a lot. Bicycles filled with cheese, pretty canals, beautiful architecture, and bridges galore

On the way to the flea market which you can find in Waterlooplein we passed a bridge covered in padlocks. Leigh and I didn't have one on us but really do we want another bridge collapsing under the weight of padlocks?! It does look pretty though.

We headed round to the flea market to look at all the bright and shiny bits and bobs on offer. The good thing about going to a market on a weekday - it's a lot quieter!

With a taste for markets we headed towards the famous floating flower market to see what all the fuss was about. There are certainly a lot of tulip seeds to be found and I couldn't resist a trip into the cheese market which flanked the side of the flowers.

We walked down some more alleys and streets working our way towards Anne Frank's House where we had a tour booked for the afternoon.

Before that we needed to grab some lunch and so we found a cute little cafe, with a jetty and a free table. The only flaw to this was that I had to fight off birds through the whole meal, which given my phobia was pretty traumatic but still I soldiered on to put away a beer and one half mozzarella and pesto and one half brie and ham toastie.

Have you ever been to Amsterdam? If you haven't been please do go and visit Anne Frank's House. Even if you haven't read her diary it is so important to remember the atrocities that were committed under Hitler's reign. You are not permitted to take any photographs as you go round the rooms so I only have one image but it is one of my favourites because it portrays her so well.

After the thought provoking visit I needed a bit of cheering up so where better than a little tiny cheese shop and museum. There were tubs everywhere of tiny cubes of cheese all there for the taking. It was my dream shop!

 

Our tummies full of cheese and with the sun going down we decided to fill them up further with dinner. Another suggestion via my friend and a tasty one at that. She sent us to 'Bird' which is situated in China Town in the Red Light District. When the Dutch want Thai, this is where they go apparently!

We had a stroll through the Red Light District after our dinner and tried not to stare at the girls as they gyrated against the windows. The whole essense of that one small section of Amsterdam is like a Disneyland for grown-ups.

Once we were back at the hostel we contemplated how we were going to spend our evening, only to then get caught up in conversation with two fellow hostelers who were also at a loss for their evening. We decided to make good of our discount beer vouchers we received on arrival and drank the night away.

This is why I love staying in hostels. You meet so many different types of people from all over the places and I just LOVE to meet new people. We eventually crawled into bed where I fell asleep hoping I wouldn't have a hang over. (read - I threw up for 15 minutes and then passed out in my bed).

C x

Lack of Inspiration

I have been a little bit quiet on the blog front this month. No special reason, I've just been a little stumped when it comes to blog post ideas.

Once again I wish I could tell you about all the fun and interesting things I have been doing but really it is just a case of me working late, drinking on the days I'm not working late and sitting in bed eating fried chicken at 3am.

I walked through London earlier today, and when I say London I mean the center of it all. The hell that is Oxford Street. It wasn't actually that bad at 8.30am, there was still some ducking and weaving, but there were no shops open at that hour so there was less agro than normal. Anyway, I was walking through Oxford Circus heading toward Piccadilly with a Starbucks in one hand and my mobile and cigarette in the other and I thought, 'Oh get me, people might think I'm a proper Londoner',until I ruined it all because I'd forgotten to plug my headphones in and the incredibly helpful Google maps lady told me to 'turn right at Regent's street' and I lost all credibility because only a non Londoner would need Google maps to get them from Oxford Street to Piccadilly Circus. Unless you just happen to be utterly crap at directions like me. The illusion I'd created was shattered by this point though and I thought to myself 'well it can't get worse, I might as well be a legit tourists and take some photos'. I tried to resist the urge to tell my fellow commuters I do in fact live here and they shouldn't judge me.

I've also been watching The Riot Club trailer on repeat because those boys are just too good to look at and well... why not? Other things I like to do in my spare time include:

• Eating burger cheese slices
• Getting lost in Buzzfeed
• Questioning why as of late I keep going out drinking without eating first resulting in a whole load of toilet bowl hugging
• Watching my cat stalk flies
• Doing anything but blogging really

Things I should be doing in my spare time:

• Going to the gym or in fact doing any form of exercise that doesn't just consist of getting up to turn the TV on
• Churning out blog posts at an alarming speed so you can all share my joy in life
• Going to the bank to sort my finances 
• Being proactive in enjoying London and all it has to offer

I'm hoping that this is just a brief lapse in creativity but I need to find it soon because my course has started again and it requires me to write stories. If they need me to write a story about procrastination I'm the girl for the job. Or I might just have a sleep. 

C x

Thoughtful Thursday

Reading ~ The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Loving ~ Leigh for being there for me

Wearing ~ my Hawaiian print trousers and a strappy top

Anticipating ~ pay day

Eating ~ a prawn salad

Drinking ~ Guanabana juice

Wishing for ~ the end of the week

Craving ~ CHEESE

Listening to ~ All Night by Parov Stelar

Wondering ~ why I have to be so allergic to mosquito bites

Watching ~ looking forward to watching my first ever episode of British Bake Off tonight

Learning ~ that every so often it's ok to have a bad week

Searching ~ the housing sites for a home that doesn't look completely horrible

Planning ~ the best way to save some money for the future

Trying ~ to lose some weight again

C xxx

Wine & Cheese & Quiz night

Last weekend Leigh and I hosted our first (of many I hope) Wine, Cheese and Quiz night. I had been given a couple of quiz books for my Birthday and as a group of friends we do rather enjoy a quiz. We asked everyone to B.Y.O.C and they all stepped up their game and in the end we had 17 cheeses! We actually ended up with a couple of doubled up cheeses which was fine by me.

Leigh and I provided crisps, dips, quiche, bread, pickled onions and 2 melted Camemberts and then we were provided with a large loaf of tiger bread, baguettes, grapes, Port sault, Caerphilly, Brie, Wensleydale with cranberry, Smoked cheese, Edam, Cheddar with garlic and chive, Smoked sausage cheese, and Boursin.

We all tucked in, with the Cheddar being the surprising favourite and the melted Camemberts not far behind that. We managed to polish off both. In fact we managed to eat practically all of the cheese and drank all of the wine that had been bought along for the occasion too, although I have a distinct lack of wine glasses as they keep smashing so I gave my remaining wine glasses to my guests and I drank my wine out of a mug!

We left the cheese on the sideboard whilst we played several quiz rounds. We had some incredible cheese themed team names, such as, 'Your team may be Gouda, but this one is Feta' and 'I used to work as a cheesemonger, but I camembert it any longer', and they got more creative the more wine that was consumed.  We also kept stopping every so often to nibble at a little bit more cheese, it's quite addictive! I wish I had got more pictures but to tell you the truth it all went so quickly it was quite impossible to.

Say Cheese!

We sent everyone home at around 1am, wishing them all very pleasant cheese filled dreams.

xxx

Happy Christmas!

As you may have guessed I love Christmas. 

Every year Leigh and I alternate spending time with my family and Leigh's and this year it was my turn for Christmas Day and Leigh's for Boxing Day. I am pleased about this because my brother is moving to Australia in January and we don't know how long he will stay so it was nice to have all the family together.

It's so special spending time with family and although it's hectic it's so much fun. I'm so sad its over for another year  because I really do wish it could be Christmas everyday!

I hope you all had a very lovely Christmas :)

xxx