Writing this is a must. Why do I constantly gravitate towards terrible eating habits? Given the choice, I usually make poor judgements about what to eat and how much of it to have. Enormous portion sizes, snacks, filling the freezer with junk food...
It's not that I can claim ignorance because I know exactly how fatty and sugary all these processed foods are, it's more just that these are things that in my head seem like tastier things to eat. We usually don't buy biscuits or cakes or chocolate, simply because I'll munch my way through them in no time at all.
Weekends and holidays are usually the worst time when regular good habits all but completely evaporate. All progress made during the rest of the time is quickly reversed (and then some) and it's pretty disheartening when you realise how long it takes to make any progress at all.

The question I have is why do I want to eat all the rubbish, when I know it's going to make me feel disappointed afterwards. I'm sitting here after a fortnight of excesses and wondering why this keeps happening. My usual idea of healthy eating isn't too strict, too restrictive, it's not celery and lettuce leaves for every meal.

I'm left meal planning week by week (as always) and hoping that my willpower will last me a good bit longer this time.
Sophie

Have you made any food discoveries lately?
Sophie

Snack time! I do benefit from a well timed nibble. The chasm between breakfast 6:30am and a 1pm lunch absolutely must get filled, no question of that. No matter how nutritious or filling my breakfast is my tummy starts rumbling before nine thirty and if left beyond half past ten I'm just about in need of smelling salts. The same goes between lunch and dinner, especially if we're eating after seven, which is most nights. I lead a fairly-to-really active lifestyle and regularly undertake exercise after work but before my dinner and always have to find something to eat to keep me going.

I can't lie, I sometimes have a round of toast and jam, which for someone who doesn't often keep bread in the house is amazing even though I know it's not the best choice. Recently, I've been trying to fit more fruit and nuts into my snacking instead of junk. Fruit is nice, that's no hardship... but nuts are distinctly unappealing for a sweet-toothed little monster like me.

Finding a compromise is hard, or so I thought. But here's the thing; you can get the best of both worlds too. While browsing through the GoNutrition site I found some super tasty sounding protein snacks which I just had to try out for myself.



The first thing to catch my eye were the protein balls. In my mind I thought these would be one of those gobstopper type dense balls of protein which sounded pretty good in sweet chilli flavour (I've only heard of sweet ones before so savoury sounded interesting). Nope, I was wrong. These are dinky little puffed balls about the size of garden peas with a scrummy coating of sweet chilli, it was perfect for my taste, with a bit of a kick. If you buy 10 bags at a time they work out at £1.29 per bag, probably a little high in terms of price but still something I would hanker after.



I tried the Muscle bar in mint chocolate flavour and while it smelt brilliant, I found it so filling that it was a bit too big for me to eat a whole one in one go (never though I'd be saying that!). They come in a box of 12 and equate to £1.50 per bar which is about average for this kind of product.


When I heard about Go Nutrition's protein cookies I got pretty excited. A cookie that delivers both taste satisfaction and fills you up a while as well as being 'guilt free' is something special. A regular cookie does feel naughty but a protein cookie is a treat that I want to look forward to! The three flavours are triple chocolate which did taste of rich chocolate which I enjoyed, cherry bakewell which I liked an awful lot and the mouthwatering chocolate orange which were my favourite. They smell delicious and taste delicious. I'd choose to have a mix of all three so that I could vary my treat. Pricewise, they come in a box of 12 and work out at £1.42 each which does sound a lot for a cookie, but compared to other bars and snacks I think it compares well especially considering just how good they taste.

Have you used GoNutrition before?Do you mix up your snacks to include a good amount of protein?

Sophie
Thanks to GoNutrition for sending me this fabulous selection of snacks to review! All content and opinions my own.

Finding that balance of a good, healthy diet and a sensible exercise regime is difficult. I know that over processed grains and sugars are no good in quantity and that lean meats and plenty of greens are good for you, but it's the finer balance of things that I struggle with.

Food is fuel.

It pains me when I hear people almost boasting about how little they've eaten. Seriously, you need to eat sensibly to fuel your body to be able to do what you're setting out to. You need a certain amount of fat and salt in your diet, it's vital to keep you healthy.

.

I'm in limbo at the moment between doing the bare minimum exercise (two one-hour boot camp workouts a week) and as much I can fit in (up to three runs as well, averaging 5k each). In order to make the most of my hard work I've taken to drinking a protein shake straight after exercise in order to stop me feeling hungry as well as to top up my protein intake. Muscles need protein to repair and maintain themselves, especially after exercise so it's really important to ensure that your diet includes plenty of protein to ensure you reap the rewards of your workouts. Monkey nutrition have this Whey Protein Isolate called Primal 26 which I've been enjoying in wild strawberry flavour. You can make it up with either water, milk or a milk substitute like almond milk, I prefer using semi skimmed milk and using a little less liquid than recommended so it's nice and thick. Protein shakes are notorious for tasting odd but I rather like this flavour, it's pleasant to drink. Having not heard of Monkey before I've had a snoop around their website and I'm impressed; I like their ethos and product range, which puts emphasis on getting lean and building muscle tone the healthy way.

The other important factor I've not yet mentioned about a healthy lifestyle is sleep and getting plenty of it. I'm working on it.

Sophie

Thank you to Monkey Nutrition for sending me this product to review. All content and opinions my own

It's high time my health and fitness plan was reassessed and given a much-needed shake up, today's post comes from Josh Mann, a personal trainer and nutrition advisor who is scrutinising my current regime and putting forward his recommendations. This is very exciting for me! Over to Josh
Sophie and I have been have been speaking recently on Twitter and I have offered to have a look at her current regime and see if there is anything she can improve upon to get the results she wants.
First, lets look at your current lifestyle and what you have done to get yourself where you are today………
Finding this out is crucial to understand what current activities a person undertakes on a day-to-day basis, but it is also important to find out and negotiate the time they have to dedicate to their goals. This will have a big impact on the advice and recommendations I would give to somebody.
· After an active childhood, you (as most people do) have fallen into the trap of becoming inactive as an adult.
· You’ve decided to attend a boot camp and gained confidence as you’ve gotten fitter. Since then you’ve taken up running and previously entered both 5k and 10K running events (with personal bests of 22min12secs and 46mins57secs respectively) – not a bad baseline to work from.
What activity are you participating in on a weekly basis?

· Daily dog walks
· 2x boot camp style workouts a week
· 2x interval style running sessions that last between 12-20 minutes
· Now looking to add a long run lasting between 45 minutes and an hour on the weekend.
From this you can see throughout the week you are quite active, I like that you’re out walking the dog and making the effort to do some form of activity. You do not have loads of time to exercise because of your work so you are keeping sessions short and intense so you can burn a reasonable amount of calories.
What’s the mission captain?
Let’s talk about goals – what do you actually want to achieve?
All goals should be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant & have a Time-Frame. This will help you keep focused throughout the duration of your journey.
Let’s have a look at your goal:
S – you want to be able to run 10k in less than 46 minutes
M – It is something that can be timed with a stopwatch
A – You already have a PB of 46mins 57secs, and are a regular exerciser so to improve by 58 seconds does not sound unrealistic to me
R – You’re a keen runner, who is looking to better yourself and improve your overall health and running is a great way of doing this
T – I feel 12 weeks is a realistic timeframe to achieve this in.
Lets have a look at the nutrition side of things……
Nutrition will make or break your goals. Getting enough good quality nutrients is key to helping you recover from exercise, but it will determine whether or not you get the body of your dreams.
I asked you to fill out a food diary, logging everything you ate and drank throughout the course of a week. I would recommend that everybody do this at some point in the near future, as it can be a really good indicator of bad habits.
From your Food Diary I was able to produce the following stats:

	Food Diary (Average)	Target	Difference
Calories	2102	2000	102
Carbs(g)	277	251	26
Protein(g)	81	104	-23
Fat(g)	59	65	-6

Over the course of a week you can see that on average you are consuming 100 calories a day more than you need to. It may not seem like a lot, but that’s an extra 36,500 calories over the course of the year – this will not help appearance or performance.
The majority of people do not eat enough protein and you definitely fall into this category – you are eating around three quarters of the amount of protein that you actually need. If you are active, you need more protein to help recovery and build lean muscle (this helps you burn more calories at rest). The NHS recommends 0.8g of protein per kilo of bodyweight – this is fine if you do no exercise at all. But if you are exercising (and doing so on a regular basis) you need to double that amount – and before you say anything, no, you are not going to get huge ladies!
To me it appears that you are getting enough fat in your diet. I like to aim for around 1-1.5g per kilo of bodyweight. Fat is vital for overall health and should not be cut out of somebodies diet (see my blog on low fat diets). You just need to make sure that you’re getting fat from good sources such as butter, lean read meats, oily fish and nuts.
Carbohydrates are the last things I tackle because you should get your protein and fat sorted first and let carbohydrates make up the rest of your diet. You have included a range of Carbs including oats, bread and cereals in your food diary. I think oats are a good source of carbs but bread and cereal on the other hand, I don’t. The focus should be on unprocessed foods like starchy veg and 100% whole grains. Lets not forget those green veggies, these should be consumed daily and in large quantities. They offer too many benefits to describe here.
Moving forwards
I like that you are currently including two intense running sessions a week in your regime as this will help improve speed. The only changes I would make to your current exercise routine is to remove the boot camp style training and get some more miles in. I’m not saying that a boot camp style workout is bad, but for your goals it is not a relevant style of training. These boot camp sessions should be replaced by two running sessions, each lasting between 30-45 minutes. One of the runs should be quite easy and the other running at the speed required for you to hit your goal.
If you implement the nutrition strategy that I have suggested above, you should see your recovery time improve, have more energy and feel full at meal times.
Anything else to look at?
Sleep……..
You have told me that you get between 6-6.5 hours of sleep per night. Now for me, I think you need at least another hour to aid recovery.
Sleeping continually for either less than six hours or more than nine hours in adults has been associated with poorer health.
Below are the daily hours of sleep people need at the different stages of their lives:
· Children: 10 to 11 hours of sleep
· Adults: 7 to 8 hours of sleep (adolescents need a bit more)
· Older adults: 7 to 9 hours of sleep
When we sleep the body carries out a number of functions that we are often unaware of; producing processes that help you deal with physical and mental stress, information processing, memory formation and the repair and restoration of (muscle) tissues. It is a natural process and something that is essential to our overall well-being. If you struggle with getting a good nights sleep then I would recommend using a supplement called ZMA. The zinc and magnesium will help you relax and help you sleep through the night.
Before you go…….Read this!

Before you decide to get started on a brand new health and fitness journey, whether that be running (like Sophie) or for general weight loss, really take the time to make an honest assessment of your current circumstances. Better yet get someone let myself to do it for you. We can discuss achievable goals and make sure you have all the tools you need to achieve them.
Thank you to Josh Mann for this report! It has definitely given me the motivation and direction I need to go forward with renewed vigour and positivity. If you want Josh Mann Fitness to set you on the right track then check out his site for details of all he can offer you, follow his blog for great health and fitness posts and give him a tweet @joshmannfitness on Twitter too. I'll be keeping you up to date on the new changes I'm making soon. Good times.
Sophie

Eat clean, eat often, eat a balanced diet. I've been trying out healthier meals lately and by this I mean less crappy processed for (including premade sauces and packets of stuff), less carby rubbish; bread, pasta, rice and potatoes and more homemade fare with plenty of protein and roughage. Apparently the last food catch up post was in September so I have no idea what’s happened in between then and now but here are some dishes from the last few weeks.

Black bean burgers with corn on the cob and stir fries vegetables (and a few noodles)

Sausages with swede mash and peas – home ish made southern fried chicken with chips and beans

Cowboy bbq chicken stew with brown basmati – Roast pork and all the trimmings

Left: Homemade fishcake and right: pan fried trout both served with stir fried veg and noodles

 

Lamb dopiaza (jarred sadly) with naan and onion baji with brown basmati

Ham, leek and cider pie (pre-rolled light pastry atop)

Pork loin, celeriac mash and steamed vegetables – sausages and sweet potato mash with peas

Home breaded chicken with bbq dip and salad – more ham pie with celeriac mash and veg

Smoked haddock, swede mash and steamed veg with cheese sauce – cruddy fish portion with minted cauliflower and pea mash with steamed veg

Chicken tikka portions with minted raita dip and salad – more black bean burgers with carrot mash and corn on the cob

Trout en papilotte with cauliflower puree and steamed vegetables -  - homemade lentil and bacon soup

Did you notice that (some) of my photos are better than usual? I’m using a new method and am so far pleased with the results. Looking back at these meals I have to proclaim that I’m pretty pleased with the efforts we’ve made as the dishes certainly are colourful with a good mix of different components.

Sophie

It's tough to know what to eat in order to maintain a nutritional diet day in, day out. The term 'eat clean' is bandied around like nobody's business but what does it actually mean? Getting enough of the right things in your meals is seriously important and plays arguably the most important role of living a healthy lifestyle. Exercise alone only has a certain level of effectiveness if you eat the wrong things. When fitness trainer Greg Johnson got in touch to give me a preview of his book Clean eating for busy people I knew this was exactly what I needed. I've been trying some of his recipes and have to say it's been fun. The first dish I tried was Seabass, sweet potato chilli mash and spinach. It was good!

Next up to try was Moroccan meatballs which I would never have labelled as 'diet' food, it was so tasty and filling. The meatballs recipe was nothing like any I've made before but they really worked and I'll definitely be knocking these up again.

Somehow the sauce ended up a little watery on the plate but that is easy enough to fix.

Spicy pork

The final main dish I tried was the guilt free shepherds pie. Although it bore little resemblance to a traditional shepherds pie, it was a super scrummy, hearty pie and using gluten free gravy was far nicer than the normal gravy - I don't want to go back.

I’ve been on the lookout for proper filling tasty breakfasts so this banana and cinnamon omelette (yes I said omelette) jumped out at me. It's become an instant favourite and I like to make it at least once a week. Deeeeelicious. Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.

I'm going to be making my way through some more of the recipes, especially the breakfasts and I can't believe that such healthy meals can be so tasty and filling. Thanks for showing me the light! Greg shares all his knowledge and experience with how to nourish your body to perform at it's best within this book, it does what it says on the tin, you don't need to be a cook to be able to make these meals. Easy, simple and tasty.

Sophie

Thanks to Greg Johnson for letting me test run his book Clean eating for busy people

I’ve been taking part in Fiona’s health and fitness challenge this month. The first week's challenge was to eat three healthy vegetarian main meals. By the time I read about this my weekly mealplan had already been made and booked for delivery so I wasn't about to make any changes but I knew that two healthy fish dishes were part of the week's meals. This one was actually horrible in fact, however I usually make it with trout which is delicious but using cod was a mistake as it stayed wet and fishy. All part of the learning curve. Super healthy and nutricious nevertheless.

Fiona also challenged us to has been to exercise three times. Check! Two bootcamp workouts (one of which was so badass, I'm so sore and it's getting worse) and one workout with Carly Rowena before my YouTube broke. After three busy but workout-less weeks it felt quite a struggle getting myself back into the swing of regular exercise but I made it.

Can you tell what it is yet? Abs looking far better than I deserve, but I think it was good timing....and light...and angle.

The hard work starts now

Fresh off my Blogging Good Read guesting with Alex I've decided to make more of an effort to get through the books that I've been meaning to read for some time. I'm halfway through The Buried Circle by Jenni Mills (which I started last year in holiday and have read about 10 pages since) and I'm determined to finish so I can move on to another, smaller novel. If you want to know what I thought of these three books then head on over. My choice was The Colour by Rose Tremain.

It's not Christmas, not new year just back to everyday. Time to get busy doing something useful.

Sophie