My experience of the introductory session at the gym & a yummy summer salad recipe

After pretending to know what I'm doing when it comes to free weights for a while now, I finally decided to do an Intro session at my gym! This was offered free of charge when I first joined but I felt like I didn't need it / couldn't be bothered to book it. The trainer I spoke to was really nice and I didn't feel nearly as embarrassed as I thought I would! Plus I really needed to go to the gym after creating what we thought was a healthy smoothie for breakfast but ended up being over 800 CALORIES!!!!!!!

Goals
The first thing he asked was what were my goals and I said 'to tone up my arms and stomach' (classic girls response). Of course he said I have to have a good diet and do cardio for the second of those areas and never to do a crunch again! YAY to the crunch ban! 

Arms

• Tricep extensions - 3 sets of 10 reps
• Bicel curl - 3 sets of 10 reps
• Arm press - 3 sets of 10 reps
• Kickbacks - 3 sets of 10 reps
• Hammer curls - 3 sets of 10 reps

Resting for about 45 seconds between sets

Abs

• Leg raises - 3 sets of 12 reps - I HATE these!! They burn so bad and you look a bit of a nutter doing them.
• Spidermans - 4 sest of 10 on each leg - imagine climbing up a wall like spiderman.. but on the floor... with less grace
• Russian twists - 4 sets of 45 seconds - I did like these before doing them for 45 seconds non-stop. Now they are not my friend.

Again resting for about 45 seconds between sets

Cardio
Since I am so lazy when it comes to the gym (I'm talking 15mins on a bike and that's it), he suggested classes which suits me! I like to go to classes because once you are in there, it's hard to sneak out without looking like a quitter or a lazy fart!!

• Tuesday - Body Attack
• Thursday - Spin

I also play stoolball every Monday and Wednesday AND he knew what it was. No one knows what stoolball is!!

Diet
He was impressed with the use of almond milk but said I should stop eating so much M&S Guilt Free Sweet and Salt Popcorn. That stuff is so flipping good I usually have more than one bag a day and then end up defeating the object of them being in low calorie bags! He said that I need fat in my diet to lose weight (what?!) and suggested snacking on almonds instead. 

Overall I'm really glad I went to the session and now feel like I know what I should be doing when I go to the gym rather than wondering round aimlessly half the time!

To reward myself I had one of my favourite dinners:

Italian Mozerella Salad
Be Good To Yourself Mozerella
Baby leaf spinach
Organic tomato
Cucumber
Green pesto

For pudding we had home grown strawberries from our garden with a cheeky bit of sugar (my boyfriend put this on before I could stop him)!

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CP x

Diets, Diets and MORE DIETS!

I think I have spent most of my life from my late teens up until now consciously thinking about my weight and how I look as most girls/women do! CW and I spent many a time at university trying out new things at the gym, doing Davina workouts in the living room to hilarious effect and attempting to be healthy food-wise but nothing ever really stuck. Although spending most weekday evenings out at the union bar doing shots and living opposite a corner shop in our final year probably wasn't the biggest help! At one point we were having a chocolate bar a day which I would like to blame on one of our friends for starting as she is one of those lucky people who doesn't seem to gain weight! Anyway, we seemed to be constantly trying new things including some rather scary diets that, looking back on them, were mental! One of them had me only eating 500 calories a day and taking a herbal spray (what was I thinking...). They all seemed to work at the time but none were something I could stick to in the long run and the weight slowly sneaked back on. My love of food was too great to deny eating a whole bag of chocolate raisins!

The latest tipping point was when I met up with CW and some of our other uni housemates a few months ago and we all decided it would be a good idea to weigh ourselves. OH GOOD LORD. I nearly cried! CW had been trying out this snazzy new diet called the 5:2 diet which is basically 2 fasting/500 cal days a week and then 5 days of normal eating. This went well for a while until I thought it would be a good idea to have a bunch of chocolate on my fast day and then be really hungry the next day because my body hadn't got the goods it wanted. I would end up demolishing even more food than I normally would.

Then a few weeks ago, CW spotted a girl on Instagram who had an amazing body AND got to eat loads of food every day. We were sold at 'food'! Since then we have been eating whole/'clean' foods (raw foods, as they are or put into a meal) and trying to include weights into our exercise routine. I have to admit I live with a guy whose whole family run off this WOL (way of life) (minus the exercise) and not a single one is fat! I don't know why I didn't start doing this earlier?! Since starting this, CW and I have constantly been messaging each other with recipes and a LOT of photo's of our food/meals which I think has really helped us stay on track. 

Dinner tonight - Tomato and Red Pepper Omelette with Courgette

In summary, fad diets do not work as a long term lifestyle. All you need to do is eat the foods your body loves (no your body does not want a whole family sized bag of Malteasers) and get moving!

Some of the good points I have noticed since starting are:
- Increased energy levels
- Rarely hungry
- The bloated/food baby/stomach pooch has gone down
- We have lost weight without really thinking about it
- My skin is looking better (I think this might be the reduced amount of sugar in my diet)
- I look forward to going to the gym - WHAT?

I think the only downside is that you will end up buying more fresh produce which is more expensive than canned/processed stuff and the time you have to put into the meal prep but I think we secretly enjoy that, right CW? Sunday = Meal Prep Day = Yay! PLUS, once you have done all your meal prep you don't have to think about it for the rest of the week!

If you have any questions on how/what we are doing, feel free to comment below!

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CP

Free Weights Section Virginity

When psyching myself up to try out the free weights section for the first time yesterday, my thought process went something like this:

'I'm just about the go into the gym and I'm really nervous! I don't want to look like I don't know what I'm doing!'

4 minutes later...

'Why do men have to take over the whole weights arena?! I wish I could go to the gym with CW and then we could tackle the weights at the same time and look clueless together!'

20 minutes after sitting on a bike still deciding what to do I brave it into the machine weights section (or whatever those machines are called that you do weight exercises on) which is next to the free weights are...

'There are so many boys/men in here... I swear it's all men!!'

2 minutes after fannying around on one of the arm machines that I don't know the name of...

'Why do they (the men) all look at each other at the gym?! Just keep your eyes on the floor! Waaa I am so scared to try and get a bench!!'

I stand up and look over to the free weights section to not find a free bench in site. After all that panicking/worrying/procrastinating, I can't even use the man area if I wanted to (which I secretly didn't)! I resided to the usual floor space which only seems to have the odd man in and always has space on the floor for me feeling very annoyed with myself! Darn it! I was so sure I was going to do it! I explained to CW what had happened and she told me that her boyfriend had just had a really good Intro/Personal Training session at his gym which was the same chain as mine. YES! What a great idea! Someone can help me not look like an idiot and as a bonus I can rope in a girl from work to come with me and look silly with me too! Hurrah! So this time next week I will be a pro! :D

Until then I have my circuit that I am loving at the moment (apart from the final move that make me lie face down and look like I've had a few too many glasses of wine!) - http://www.fitsugar.com/Full-Body-Circuit-Workout-Dumbbells-2825394



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CP

Protein Powder Review - Active Woman Refuel vs. MyProtein True Diet

I am totally new to the protein powder game so it’s really interesting to see the huge variety of different options out there! I’ve only tried out chocolate flavours so far and I prefer the Active Woman - Refuel which I found in Holland and Barrett during a lunch break last week while I was waiting for the True Diet to be delivered. It’s more chocolatey and sweet than the True Diet one but does that mean more sugar? I should really look at the ingredients!The True Diet one I have only tried once so far with almond milk which was still lovely so the jury is still out on this one.

I’m really enjoying having one after a workout at the moment and it feel almost like a reward for the hard work!

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CP

Introduction

You may be wondering why we have started a blog (that is, if anyone is even reading it… it’s prob just you and me CP! ha). Well I, (and I think CP) have tried loads of faddy diets and I have never lost any weight and kept it off… not that I was fat to start with, I just would rather lose a bit of the excess, as I’m sure practically every girl would like to!

After scouring (lurking’s what we do best) the internet/pinterest for fun and diet-related things, we discovered that the girls that look best (in our opinion,) are those that are toned and not too skinny! We also found that these girls are ones that eat a high protein, low carb, (not no carb) diet and incorporate weight training in their work outs. So we started browsing recipes and getting ideas etc. 

The reasons we love this wol (way of life, a cringey term…) are:

1. You get to eat quite a lot and there is always a yummy snack juist round the corner to look forward to in a few hours!
2. Eating ‘clean’ feels really good. (God, I hate the phrase ‘clean’ but basically I think it means the less processed food the better!)
3. Making all the food/smoothies/sharing recipes with CP is really fun.
4. We are looking forward to the progress we are (hopefully) going to make, whether that be just having a healthier life style, or whether it also helps us lose a bit of weight/get toned! 

We are also trying to up our exercise and have found that there are loadsssss of weight training exercises/routines for people out there (www.bodybuilding.com) that are for beginners too. As we have only just started our new WOL we haven’t quite managed to get the weight training routine down, but as soon as we do we will share it with you. At the moment I am just trying to do as much exercise - mostly running with a bit of weights at the gym - as time allows.

The other girls that write these types of blogs already look amazing, which, in my opinion, is a bit disheartening as I feel like I will never get there. We are just two, ordinary looking girls trying to balance fitness and healthy eating whilst still enjoying busy lives.

We LOVE food, but want to feel good whilst being able to actually eat more than one lettuce leaf a day! The aim of this blog is to feel healthy, happy and more toned. If we lose weight along the way then that is a bonus and we are just beginners in this, who find all this really interesting so hopefully you can follow our journey with us!

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CW