Monday May 2 2016

Well, it was almost a struggle to sit down and write this update! 

The other half and I decided to venture to the gym today as the weather was grotty, which made us decide we didn't want to go off on a long walk for fear of being caught in an almighty rain storm! As a result, leg day happened, and now my thighs, butt and legs are on fire. But, it's that good "I did something" kinda pain! Especially as I smashed my previous personal best on the Leg Press machine, managing 52kg!

Even took a picture, I was so proud of myself!

Pretty happy with my food choices today too:

Breakfast: 1 slice of toast with marmite

Lunch: Tesco sweet chilli chicken noodle salad with a packet of wotsits and a bottle of Trop50 orange and mango juice (all this came in at under 450 calories - BONUS!)

Surprisingly filling actually - and tasted good too!

Dinner: Mexican chicken again tonight - I will pop up a recipe for this, because honestly it's so filling and so tasty!

Nothing like some colourful veg to make you feel good!

So all in all, I'd say I had a very successful and productive Bank Holiday Monday! (I also cleaned the hob and it's now gleaming - it's the little things in life)!

I'm looking forward to getting back into a normal routine from tomorrow and introducing my new healthy choices into everyday life!

What are your plans or goals for the week? Let's chat!

Ciao for now!

L x

Sunday May 1 2016

Can you believe it's May already?! I know - neither can I! Especially with today's somewhat cold, overcast weather! 

Today myself and my partner have been gardening (a rarity in our household)! Definitely a good workout though; and the garden looks much better for it!

Overview of today's food:

Breakfast: None! This is my worst habit - I really need to teach myself to eat breakfast. Maybe it will be my May resolution!

Lunch: Ham and cucumber sandwich on seeded batch bread 

Dinner: We're having a jacket potato with a nice big salad :)

Water: 1.5 litres but I've just got myself another bottle so on track for two litres!

Other than gardening, today has been pretty non-eventful, and therefore this is a bit of a short update!

Tomorrow there are two posts scheduled, so make sure to check back in! 

Ciao for now!

L x

Recipe - Turkey Bolognese

As a household, we are careful not to eat too much red meat, and since my Dad introduced us to Turkey Bolognese, it's become a staple of our diet!

Ingredients (To serve 4):

• 300g lean turkey mince
• 1 red onion 
• 1/2 red pepper
• 1/2 red chilli
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 carrot
• 1 handful of mushrooms
• 1 handful baby plum tomatoes
• Handful chopped basil leaves
• 400g tin chopped tomatoes 
• 1/2 glass of white wine
• 1 tablespoon of tomato puree
• 1 teaspoon Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce
• 1 teaspoon Paprika
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 1 chicken stock cube & 1 beef stock cube
• 1 teaspoon marmite
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder (optional)
• Splash chilli sauce (optional)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Firstly, grab your turkey mince and whack it in a pan to cook off. This will release any extra fat that's in the meat, making it slightly healthier for you! 

Make sure to break your mince up well and keep it moving, so it doesn't start to burn! (I also tend to find if I don't take the time to break it up, the mince takes on the consistency of scrambled egg, and then it's one lump or two in the finished product)!

Whilst your mince is cooking off, chop up all your vegetables into small chunks/slices/however you like your bolognese to be! Obviously, if you have the time, you could do this beforehand and be ultra prepared - something that I never am.

Once your mince has cooked through, remove it from the heat and pop into a colander to drain any excess oils/water/fat from cooking. At this point I decided to swap pans as I could tell that I had too much veg to fit in the frying pan that I was using!

Pop a splash of oil (I used rapeseed oil) into the bottom of the pan and place on a medium heat before adding your onions, garlic and chilli. Leave these to soften for a couple of minutes before adding the rest of your vegetables, and dry fry for around 5 minutes. 

When the vegetables have started to soften, take a sip out of your glass of wine (just for testing purposes - obviously), and then pour the rest into the vegetable mix. Of course, if you would like to be even healthier, this can be done with water; however I go by the idea that most of the alcohol will cook off anyway! 

You want to leave this to simmer down until the wine has almost disappeared (it should resemble a thick syrup if you stir the vegetables at the bottom), and then start adding the rest of your remaining ingredients (I just crumble the stock cubes into the pan, I don't mix with water). When you have added these and given it a good stir, you should also add the turkey mince back into the pan. 

Now, as a rule, I leave it to simmer for 20 minutes before tasting it to give the flavours a chance to infuse. On this occassion, the garlic cloves that I had used were quite small, so I ended up adding a teaspoon of garlic powder, and also a little extra fresh basil (I do love fresh basil)! It would be ready now, however you can leave it to simmer for as long as needed - or you can save it and reheat it when needed (making sure it's piping hot - we don't want to make anyone poorly)! 

I served our bolognese with 75g each of wholewheat penne and that was plenty for us! It's left enough bolognese sauce for a two-person portion to go in the freezer as well! I'm pretty sure dinners like this always taste better after they've been in the freezer too!

What's your favourite recipe? What could be changed to make mine better?! Send me some pictures over on twitter or instagram if you recreate this recipe!

Instagram: cakeeatersjourneytohealthy
Twitter: @cakeeaternomore

Ciao for now! 

L x

Saturday April 30 2016

Why happy Saturday everyone! 

Today has been a bit quiet really. Been drafting up a few blog posts for the coming days, and generally relaxing. Plans for a long walk were put on hold due to torrential rain showers for most of the morning, and then us getting distracted by life admin this afternoon! 

Must confess there was a little bit of snacking action last night - two curly wurly's. Not the end of the world, but I'm still annoyed at myself today! 

Here's a little round up of today's food:

Breakfast: None - this is frequent on the weekends and really is a habit that I need to snap out of!

Lunch: A cheese and ham toastie on white bread, with a packet of wheat crunchies. 

Afternoon "snack": 2 giant haribo bubblegum bottles

Dinner: Tonight I'm cooking us cod fillets, with homemade chips (par boiled and then ovenbaked using rapeseed oil to crisp up), and vegetables

Water: 1.5 litres - ish!

So to be honest, not the best choices for the most part of today and last night in regards to food. Rather than let it get me down I'm going to make tomorrow a clean slate! 

How has your Saturday been? Keep an eye out this weekend for lots of extra posts. A review of the Fitbit Charge HR went up earlier on and my recipe for Turkey Bolognese will be going up at 7pm UK time :)!

Ciao for now!

L x

100 FOLLOWER GIVEAWAY

I am planning on a giveaway once I reach 100 followers on Blogger! 

All you need to do to be in with a chance is:

• Follow the blog publicly 
• Share my pinned tweet on twitter (@cakeeaternomore) (not vital - but hey it's nice to be nice)!
• Leave a comment with your twitter handle/instagram name, so that I can contact you if you win :)

The giveaway prize will be:

• A copy of 30 day shred workout DVD
• A full size La Roche-Posay Effaclar Purifying Cleansing Gel
• A mystery prize

Get sharing guys!

L x

Review - Fitbit Charge HR

To many, it may seem like a glorified pedometer, but since getting my first Fitbit almost a year ago, it has become somewhat of a prized possession of mine!

I purchased my first Fitbit, a Fitbit Flex back in May 2015, just to see how active I was on a daily basis. It turns out, not very! However, the great thing about the Fitbit is, you can set up challenges with family and friends, and you quickly become motivated not to come last! 

In February this year, I upgraded my Fitbit to the Fitbit Charge HR. This was mainly so that I could gather more detailed information about my activities, and also as I had started to become more active in my weightloss journey. The Charge HR has features including: 

• Continuous wrist-based pulse monitoring
• Tracking of steps, distance, calories and stairs climbed
• Caller ID display
• Alarm system
• Exercise statistics 

The alarm is great - it gently vibrates against your wrist at your set time to bring you out of sleep without the harshness of a whacking trill from an alarm clock; and the caller ID can be useful if you're away from your phone (the wristband will vibrate and the name will appear on-screen). The pulse reader is interesting, although naturally given the simplistic concept, is at times slightly off kilter. The tracker also monitors your activity and can pick up on a period of exercise without you having to tell it; something which is great when you're at the gym! 

The app is brilliant too; giving you the option to record your calorie and water intake, look at how well you've slept, look at the core hours of the day and see how active you were and much more! I find the sleep aspect particularly interesting - 

I was ill on this particular evening - it recorded my movements and sleep/awake periods very accurately!

Being totally honest, I probably don't use the app to it's full potential. Now that I'm embarking on this weightloss journey with 110% dedication, I should probably make use of the weight tracker, water intake and calorie intake functions. Perhaps I will have a fiddle around with them this afternoon and get used to using them!

This is, however, my second Charge HR. The first one became faulty after 6 weeks, with the tracker actually becoming unattached from the band (it's built/glued/screwed in). However, Argos were brilliant and got a replacement out to me within a couple of weeks! The battery life is pretty good; I normally charge mine about every four-five days, and it's easy enough to do whilst your sat at your laptop doing some work as it has a USB cable! 

Overall, the Fitbit has definitely had a positive impact on my activity levels, as I'm always determined to meet the daily target of 10,000 steps; often exceeding it to try and beat my friends in the daily challenges! At a cost of around £100 (Currys, Boots and Amazon are examples of stockists), it's not cheap, but I have found results from using it, and I hope for those results to increase even more now that I am drastically overhauling my lifestyle!

Have any of you used a fitness tracker? What are your thoughts on using technology? Let's chat!

Ciao for now!

L x

Friday April 29 2016

Peace and quiet has gone, the boyfriend is back, the bag is laying still packed in the lounge, and the duvet is getting stolen in the middle of the night! Ahhh how I've missed normality! 

We both had the day off today, so we decided to make the most of it and do something fun. Then it started persistently hailstoning. Well, there goes that idea out of the window! As a compromise, we needed a few bits from Tesco so we took a stroll down to our local store, and also popped in for a cheeky subway (oops)! I'm making a Turkey Bolognese for dinner, so at least that's fairly healthy!

Yesterday, I only just made it to 10,000 on the fitbit (I was lucky)! Fingers crossed the stats at the end of the day today are more impressive!

Round up of today's food:

Breakfast: None! Bad!! Me and the Mr ended up staying up late last night and as a result didn't get up until nearly 10! D'oh!

Lunch: That sneaky Subway - I had a 6 inch Spicy Italian on Hearty Italian bread. I added lettuce, cucumber, peppers, red onions and a little squeeze of ranch dressing! Totally worth it. Plus, I guess we walked there so at least I earned maybe...one bite?! 

Dinner: As I said before, I'm making a Turkey Bolognese - of which I will post the recipe. It's delicious :), I will be serving it with some wholewheat pasta!

Water: Not enough :) - I've had less than a litre so far today and it's currently 4pm. I will need to rectify that before the end of the day!

I'm very much looking forward to the long weekend, we've planned a couple of long walks if the weather holds out, I'm going to get some blog posts written, and take my "before/motivation" pictures, which if I feel confident enough, I will share on the blog.

Look out for some extra posts this weekend including some recipes, a review of the FitBit Charge HR and also a post on something a little bit more personal!

What have you guys got planned for the weekend? Let's get chatting!

Ciao for now! 

L x