I’m doing OK.

Since my escapades last weekend and resting this week I just wanted to say, I’m doing ok. I really am, thank you for your tweets and messages, they are super appreciated.

I’ve decided that I need to take better care of myself. No staying up till 2am working because I have to cram everything in, start earlier and give myself longer is what I need to do, I need to eat better and be less lazy. I need to workout more and sit less.

I can do this. I’ve got more to say on Monday but for now, have a great weekend.

Color Run UK Manchester

Yup, this is happening…

I’m going to Manchester for the first time EVER in July to run and walk a 5k with my wonderful friend Emma (you can follow her on twitter here) and say hi to her cause she’s full of awesome.

Anyway. I’ve never been to Manchester before, I can’t really afford to go to Manchester, or the race registration or the hotel but you know what, I want in on this badly. I won’t have a cheer squad as the boys will be having a boy weekend while I’m off with my girl so I’m hoping some friends may be able to come along.

It’s no secret that I’m struggling this year to find any motivation. I struggle to lose any weight when I eat well, so I lose motivation and don’t eat well which in turn sees my weight climb. It’s been climbing up and down since January. I have seen a scary number in the last week and it was sobering. My foot is still an issue but it finally prompted me to go to the doctor and so while I was there I discussed some other stuff with her. When I get the results you’ll be the first to know.

I need to find that motivational part of me again, I want to be able to eat well and live well. I need to cut out the junk completely, right now I can’t cope with it in moderation. I need to start identifying what it is that is sending me to this place. The last week it’s been stress, lots of work piling up, and the added stress of just not being able to do things I want to. Plus our washing machine spewed water everywhere and died. That too sucks. My car sucking everything out of my pocket doesn’t help either. I keep buying the wrong things. I keep eating the wrong things. I need to pull it together because I’m fed up of failing and I’m fed up of writing about it. I need to take action.

I know some things that have helped me get back on track in the past are:

  • Working out in some way. 
  • Keeping a food diary.
  • Being more positive about myself.
  • Seeking support from friends.
  • Cooking some interesting things.
  • Getting more sleep

I’m actually writing this on Thursday. I’m planning to be back on track on Monday after a mammoth shop arriving at the weekend. I’ll be logging on my fitness pal and I’ll be opening up my diary. I ask of you people, who are friends with me there, please talk to me. I need to stop bottling up the feelings I’m having about all of this and start talking, which seems an odd thing for a blogger to say but I think a lot of you will understand.

What Happened At My Weekend

So in typical becca style at the weekend I caused a whole lot of drama. A lot. There were ambulances, flashing lights, oxygen and a hospital admission. Thankfully I was released within 24 hours but it’s given me a massive shock to the system and now my work, and my whole lifestyle is hanging in the balance of some tests. And that sucks.

I had my first seizure in 8 years. Maybe closer to 9.

I was diagnosed as an epileptic at 22 and at that time I had seizure after seizure after seizure. Clocking up significant numbers until my medication controlled it. I was weaned off medication at 24 after my beautiful son was born. My life changed considerably at that point and the seizures didn’t return. Until now.

If this is a one off, I was running a slightly high temp which could indicate an infection or viral infection, I’d had a headache for two days and I’ve not felt ‘right’ for weeks. I’ve seen my doctor and felt fairly dismissed, I’ve presented with all the symptoms of hypothyroidism as well but am yet to have bloods.

I need to put my foot down about my health and start demanding things are done. I’ll keep you informed but don’t expect me around too much this week. I’m hoping that I can step back, take a few minutes for my health and get my life sorted out.

I’m sure you understand.

Activate Nutrition Diet Plus Protein Shake Review

A while ago Mark got in touch and said he wanted me to try his product, a low carb, high protein, low fat protein shake, obviously last week was live below the line week and I wasn’t allowed to accept aid so I got to finally try it out this week!

First a little word about its ingredients and it’s nutritional breakdown, this thing has LOADS packed in to it’s 148 calories per serving, green tea extracts, acai berry goodness and hardly any carbs propping it up.

I decided to mix it up with some Spinach and Berries to make a gorgeous shake and I have to say it tasted absolutely great. The man gave it a try too, he had it straight up with almond milk and loved it too.

You could do so much with this from drinking it to cooking with it, I tried it mixed in with porridge for breakfast which gave it a lovely vanilla punch, and I made a special treat to break the live below the line, Breakfast Toast!

Mix 2 eggs whites, 1/4 cup milk and 1 scoop of protein powder together, add cinnamon

Dip the bread in the mixture and transfer to a pan until cooked (2-3 minutes), then remove from heat, add a banana sliced on top and maple syrup.

Inspired

This months 13 in 13 is to write about inspiration, inspire someone else, inspire, it’s a strong word. Sometimes I think the strangest thing is the thought that by writing here, by talking about my struggles and my victories I might end up being someones inspiration when I rarely find myself feeling inspired by myself but maybe I should be. I’ve not given up yet. I’ve pushed up the hill lots of times, I’ve slipped back more times than I like to see, but one thing I can’t do is give up. Even if I’m still here in 10 years time!

That’s all I’m going to say about myself, because really what I want to talk about is what has inspired me recently, I’m suddenly feeling all kinds of inspiration, and I owe it to a few things and more specifically people.

One of those people is this wonderful lady. I’m deliberately not saying her name because I want you to click through and give her some love, she just had major surgery, MAJOR, and she’s smiled, blogged, and been positive throughout. She’s inspired me completely, I’ve been moaning about my foot for months without doing anything about it really. She’s inspired me to get my ass to the doctors and get this foot fixed.

Then there is this lady who is really really really inspiring me to sort my friking life out. Or at least my weight loss life. Not so long ago we were on par weight loss wise, meeting each other lb for lb most weeks, then I started going backwards and she carried on plodding forwards. She’s now approximately 30lbs “ahead” of me. She’s stirring a little something in me, something that reminds me it is possible, that I can do it, and dare I say it a slightly competitive part of me wants me to catch her up again…in the best and nicest way possible. I think she’s amazing and I love reading about her fitness and food adventures. If you don’t have her in your reader replacement (I’m using Feedly I recommend it) you should have it.

There are a few others but those two are my main inspirers right now. Some of the others are this gal who makes me want to lift again desperately, this fabulous lady did a half marathon last month, a HALF. Amazing.

Who is inspiring you? Who should I be reading?

American Pancakes

I love pancakes. I love them. Since my current plan is low fat its impossible to do the high butter versions you get in the restaurants so I was scouting around and there are several different recipes for them on the web, the one that looked most delicious was Siobhan’s over at Slimming Eats she really is the goddess of all things tasty and weight losing. She’s gorgeous too.

So you can find the recipe here but it really is so so simple, I just tossed everything in and blitzed it until smooth then popped it in the pan to cook. You can’t do any easier than that! I had mine with raspberries and banana and without the maple syrup.

 

Ryvita Thins Tomato and Herb onomnomnomnom Review

So last week I lived below the line and this week I’m relishing the goodies I have to review! First up today are Ryvita Thins new flavour and I have to say, it’s pretty yummy.

Ok, so they don’t survive the postal system all that well but I’m pretty sure if you buy them yourself they will be in better shape!

Like the packet says, my favourite thing to do with  these is to dunk them. Anything cream cheese based is amazing with it. Well I mean cream cheese can improve just about anything but I took these for lunch one day as an accompaniment to my salad and I forgot the cheese and they were still really tasty.

If you are a slimming worlder then you will happy to hear they are 1.5 syns each so a great way to dip without the naughtiness. I’d heartily recommend them as a little flavoury snack or add it to salad as an crispy addition.

I was provided the snack but that’s just because I’m fabulous not because I will lie for free stuff so all opinions are my own. 

Live Below The Line : Recapped

Last week I tweeted, facebooked, instagrammed and vlogged my way through the Live Below The Line challenge in aid of Unicef, first I would like to thank all the amazing people who sponsored me, you rock and Unicef thanks you too.

Video Blog Day 1
Video Blog Day 2
Video Blog Day 3
Video Blog Day 4
Video Blog Day 5

I survived the whole week with only one slip up on day three (where I mindlessly ate a cookie left on a plate by a child before I even thought about what I was doing) living under £1 every day and under a total of £5. It’s been a total lifechanger for me. Genuinely it’s had a large affect on my outlook and attitude towards food.  I want to talk a little bit about how my week has been in practice.

In practice I have been massively under nourished.

I got less than 1/5 of my expected and recommended fat consumption
1/2 my recommended carb allowance
Only 177g of my recommended 1201 g of protein.
I ate 6506 calories LESS than I should have done in order to lose weight.

Obviously this isn’t a massive issue over 5 days, although I struggled to concentrate, struggled to sleep properly and generally felt yucky, if I was eating like this forever I would lose significant weight, probably mostly muscle, and would suffer quite serious health issues after a time. I know that I have lost weight, because I can’t have failed to (I’ll find out tonight how much), but it’s far from the usual feeling I get when I’m losing weight through eating a balanced and healthy diet.

My diet was extremely carb heavy. Veg is expensive, meat completely beyond my reach, so grains were the staple part of my diet and my stomach HATED me for it. I suffered considerable discomfort, bloating and general yuckness.

 I’ve been frequently in a total rage at the press coverage given by the media, smug bastards totally ignoring the actual point of the challenge and proving “how easy” it is to live on £1 a day. This blog post sums up my feelings about this bbc offering completely but a few snippets if you don’t want to read the whole thing are

“In other words, the diet Mr Milligan provided for himself was not healthy, since it left him significantly undernourished.”

“…to get his 8.7p egg Mr Milligan actually had to spend £2.61 on eggs – that’s over half his total five day budget blown on one food item. Needless to say, if he had been doing this for real (rather than as a fun, pretendy game), Mr Milligan would have spent his 5 days eating eggs for pretty much every meal: a poached egg on toast for breakfast, a hard-boiled egg sandwich for lunch, omelette in the evening, and so on. So much for the idea of a varied diet, you might think. But, actually, having crowed over his first breakfast egg (did you see what I did there?), Mr Milligan never eats another one.”

“On his second day, Mr Milligan prices his lunchtime BLT sandwich at 26p: that includes a single lettuce leaf at 4p. Yes, you read that right – he is asking us to swallow the idea that a person on a tight budget can buy a single lettuce leaf. He does a similar thing with courgettes – buys a 6-pack for £1.60, uses ¼ of one courgette, then pretends that he only spent 7p. And the same thing again with sweet peppers – buys 6 for £1.51, uses ¼ of one, and pretends he only spent 6p. Potatoes costing £2.40 for 2.5kg make it into his budget as 6p for half of one potato. Celery actually bought for 89p is priced as 2p for a single stick.”

“would mean that Mr Milligan actually spent well over 8 times his budget – £40. And keep in mind that, even overspending by that much, the diet he ate still left him undernourished.”

The reason that this article really really yanked my chain is not because he cheated, not even because its shoddy journalism and disingenuous but because this article is no more than hastily written propaganda which further demonises the poor and propagates the myth that people can live on those kinds of funds and don’t need or deserve more. I strongly object to this. STRONGLY. The government currently leading the country feels that people in the UK can live on £53 a week, to cover everything that they need to survive, I believe that rent and council tax are excluded from this (for me that’s just shy of £200 a week alone) however my other basic expenses (water, electric, gas, food for Charlie and I) this week were around the £80 mark without including petrol costs or car running costs, internet costs, tv license, home insurance, mobile phone costs, telephone costs).

1.2 billion people live for less than £5 a week EVERY week. They don’t just pick it up and put it down as a piece of tourism like I have this week, they don’t buy in bulk because they can’t afford the initial outlay, rich people buy in bulk not poor people.

They don’t just have stuff “in the cupboards” because they can’t stockpile food.

The reason I started to do this challenge is because I was so distressed by peoples attitude to foreign aid. We spend 0.7 % of our entire countries budget on foreign aid, in a strange twist – because I rarely agree with our government – they have ring-fenced this funding. I absolutely believe this decision makes us a civilised country who understands that, even in the deepest financial storm in living memory, we have wealth as a nation. As a collective. We have become far more clever about our foreign aid spending, its target driven, we see the benefits and results from it on paper and on a people scale. Bill Gates spoke about how he sees Britain as world leaders, saving lives, and understanding the moral and practical reasons for aid.

The last five days have dragged, I can’t imagine how it must feel to live every single week like this but 1.2 billion people do. How is that possible in a world with people who have billions of pounds just sat in a bank somewhere? People who hoard diamonds like they are sweets and people who can’t afford to keep their children warm at night. When you look at it like that we don’t seem to have come far in the last hundred years.

I don’t have the answers, I certainly don’t know how to fix it, I know I will not be part of the onslaught of abuse aimed at our most vulnerable. I will support those who need and want support and I am happy to hand over part of my earnings to the tax man who will support those here and abroad who don’t have the basics or the luxuries. I will not fall in to the trap of wondering why they have more than me when I work so hard, because I understand it’s none of  my damn business and I don’t know their circumstances. Most of all I will not fall in to trap of using other countries as an excuse to back out of what we know is the right thing to do, just because we are better than them doesn’t give us an opportunity to get lazy. We need to realise we are privileged and I hope to never forget that again.

Twinings Infusion Range

After the Live Below The Line challenge has ended I’m so glad for one thing, a refreshing cup of tea! Yep, I’ve really missed it and there was no way I could justify the cost of tea in my £5 budget so first thing I did Saturday morning was break my tea fast!

The new Twinings range of teas are beyond fabulous, they have loads of different things for you to try from soothing you, helping you sleep, purifying you, and perking you up, check out your tea aisle and see!

First I love the Raspberry and Dragon Fruit one, its a rock star of teas, I mean, dragon fruit? I’ve only seen that in Fruit Ninja and it’s super rare!

Plus, what is super amazing about it, it turns the water pink. PINK. OK so for the manly amongst you you can handle it, you’re ok with your manlyness, for the girly girls amongst you rejoice!

My other favourite from the range is the Camomile and Maple Syrup, it turns a beautiful maple syrup colour in the cup and just smells so sweet and mapley.

Plus don’t you think the packaging is so cute? The bags come in their individual little package too, great for packing away in a bag for travelling or working.

I was gifted the tea because Twinings converted me in to a tea drinker last year, I always make up my own mind about products and  and give my very own opinion. 

What do you look for in a tea? Do you need perking up or chilling out right now? 

Live Below The Line Day 5

This week is Live Below The Line Week which means my food will cost no more than £1 a day and no more than £5 a week in total for all ingredients. You can read more about Live Below The Line at their webite. I’mfundraising for Unicef who support children in the most vulnerable of situations around the world. I’ll be blogging and I’ll update each day with a video blog on my facebook page and twitter or directly through Vimeo. You can see what I’m eating at MyFitnessPal and Instagram for the more visual of you.

Today is the last day of the Live Below The Line Challenge for Unicef and I have been using this post to record just little snippets of things that I’ve thought about as the weeks gone on, kinda my internal monologue if you like.

Day One

Video Blog for Day One.

Eating Lunch with other people sucks.
Egg Sandwiches smell awful.
This bread is awful, dry too, couldn’t afford butter.
More eggs *sigh* I wont be able to look at them after this week.
If I was in a hurry in the mornings there is no way I’d get up and cook. I’d skip breakfast.
Eating healthy is impossible.
Pasta is so bland. Pasta with tomatoes doesn’t make it much less bland. Wish I could afford herbs.
This week is going to be a challenge, I’m not really hungry but I am ready for bed at 9.

Day Two

Video Day Two

Starting to feel a bit hungrier, didn’t have much time to prep lunch today so ended up just having hard boiled eggs and an apple for lunch.
Food is really bland still. My palate is screaming out for something salty or sweet.
The boy has fish and chips for dinner, smells amazing and I don’t like fish. He eats half a child’s portion and doesn’t eat the rest. Torture throwing the chips away and giving the fish to the cats.
Stop in to the shop to get Charlie a treat, end up wanting to buy myself something and it takes MUCH willpower not too.
Am SO tired. It’s 7.30 and I’d happily go to bed. Have a headache.

Day Three

Video Day Three

Woke up with no appetite at all. Had an apple for breakfast. Still had no appetite at lunch and didn’t eat dinner till late.
Got on with my day, got really busy, didn’t really think about food at all.
Went to the supermarket for Charlie food and was made aware of how depressing it is to see a tonne of fresh food and for it to be out of reach, left feeling really upset that I couldn’t pick up anything, on  the flip side, Charlie had the “meal deal” which was £3 for a drink, crisps and a sandwich. That’s 3/5 of my budget for the entire week on one meal.
OMG, just shoved a cookie in my mouth before I thought about it! The kids were eating them and left them out. Completely mindless eating without any recognition of what I was doing. Made me think about I eat during the day.
Ate dinner really late, tried to make egg fried rice with no oil, it wasn’t terrible and probably one of the best meals of the week. I try and not think about the fact that the 1.2 billion people who live under the line may not have access to a wok.

Day Four

Video Day Four

Again my appetite has been low again, I think I’m just not thinking about food so my stomach doesn’t really wake up much, I ate an apple for breakfast because I thought I ought too.
Stomach finally wakes up around 10 so I had some toast, I couldn’t have done that if I was at work rather than working at home.
The tiredness kicks in from lunchtime, it’s hard work concentrating and working well when your energy levels are so low.
Starving by lunch, egg rice is great. I’m used to quite bland food right now, if I was shopping like this all the time herbs would be a must.
Tried to use the frozen veg for dinner, it’s so disgusting I eat around it.
I really want to eat something, anything but pasta or rice.
Bedtime.