Benefits of vitamin D

There are few supplements that i believe we actually need, most of them we can get ourselves from our diet, however one supplement that i personally take is vitamin D. I work in healthcare and the amount of people that are prescribed this supplement is continually growing.

So i just thought i would pop on here and explain why it is we may benefit from taking it as a supplement and how it effects your body.

vitamin D helps to regulate the calcium and phosphate in your body and these are needed to help keep you bones and muscles healthy. A lack of vitamin D can result in things such as rickets.

We can all simply get vitamin D from the sun between from April to September but in the winter months we do not get the vitamin D we need from the sunlight.

Even in the summer months people who do not get outside enough, for example the elderly or us with full-time jobs that are constantly inside may not get enough vitamin D from sunlight alone.

Good sources of vitamin D to add to your diet are:

• salmon
• red meat
• mackerel
• whole eggs (the vitamin D is in the yolk)
• and then there cereal which has been fortified with the vitamin D

 

The recommended dose of vitamin D is 10mcg (this is often on the packaging as 400 units).

The department of health in the UK states that because vitamin D is only available in a small number of foods that everyone should consider taking a vitamin D supplement.

I personally take vitamin D as i work indoors a lot in the North west of England, its not often sunny here and i personally believe that i do not get enough vitamin D from the sunlight alone and so i choose to supplement with the recommended dosage about, it is pretty cheap to buy, most supplement places sell it and you can pick it up in most pharmacies.

there has been a lot in the media regarding vitamin D in the last few weeks and when i went to get my usual bottle of vitamin D tablets there were several people crowded round it debating whether to buy it or not, which is what prompted this blog.

It has been hailed as the “sunshine vitamin”, which as a vitamin you can mainly get from the sun i can understand, it has been stated in the media as being able to fight off diseases, depression and boosts your immune system and therefore fights off colds and flu’s. Im not sure that taking this simple vitamin alone will be able to do them things however having a healthier diet and lifestyle that contains vitamin D as suggested by the department of health will contribute to these things, just not taking the supplement alone.

What supplements do you take? And are there any other supplements you would like to know more about?

 

 

My Top YouTubers

Several mornings a week i like to get up and do some cardio, obviously for health and cardiovascular benefits but mainly to catch up on my favourite YouTubers.

Here’s my  top picks but please comment before some of yours for me to check out.

•  6 – Lauren Tickner – This girls knowledge is unbelievable, watching her channel takes out all of the struggle of learning things for myself as she chats aways through her vlogs dropping loads go knowledge bombs all the way through. Although pretty new to the floggings scene Lauren has a fair few videos up now due to her daily vlogs back in September. As a bikini competitor its been great to watch her journey through it all. Visit her YouTube here

•  5 -Elle Darby – This girl has everything from how to do make up tutorials, booty workouts and full day of eating vlogs. Elle has recently competed in a bikini competition and watching her during prep has been so insightful for me. Her competition was around the same time as my wedding and although they are two different things entirely i felt like i was going through the whole process with her. She genuinely is the most lovely girl and i love watching her journey. Visit her YouTube here

• 4-Sophie Aris – I love Sophie’s blogs, as a Gymshark athlete and previous my protein athlete i feel she is a genuine inspiration of mine. She is proof of what hard work and dedication can do. Sophie is also a bikini competitor but until recently also had a full time normal job which she was fitting her prep around. I love watching her workouts and vlogs, which include her mum and family. I have laughed and cried and her watching her channel and her videos are always watched as soon as possible once she puts them up. Visit her YouTube here

• 3-Zanna van Dijk – Zanna’s channel is a real mixture of travel, workouts, health and lifestyle. She gives great advice and has really helped me with fining some sort of a balanced lifestyle of my own. What i love about her channel is that there are lots of short videos that are between 5-10 minutes long but she still gets everything in there that needs to be which is great if you don’t have much time. Visit her YouTube here

• 2-Tally Rye – I love this channel, i love watching her vlogs and seeing what Tally eats in a day. Tally is a personal training and her workout videos are great for showing you workout inspiration and how to do an exercise properly. I think i must have similar food tastes to tally as i genuinely love watching what she eats in her day and also more recently her recipe vlogs too. Visit her YouTube here

• My number one Youtube channel has to be Grace fit uk. Grace is just the happiest bubbly person and i feel like she genuinely makes my mornings brighter watching her. If you try one of her booty workouts that she has posted be warned you will be hurting the next day. From her informative workouts, her travel vlogs to Bali and her hilarious ten thousand calorie eating challenge i love them all. visit her YouTube here

I got married?!?!?!?

It has been what feels like forever since i have written a blog post, well 6 weeks to be exact. I have been super busy doing a few little things like getting married, going on my honeymoon and then coming back to study for my exam and pass it!!

Which only means one thing, i now have more spare time than ever…(i still feel like i have no time just like everyone else).

So i thought just to get me back into the swing of things i would post a little update and show you my results from my cut for my wedding.

My aim was to be in the best shape of my life and i most defiantly was, I felt totally amazing on the wedding day and I love every single photo that i have seen which was all that i wanted.

My results were that i lost around 10lbs over 6 months through a steady cut. I have talked a few times now about what sort of routine i was following and it was hard work, i was working out A LOT and the plan isn’t sustainable for me to keep doing forever and that fine it was just something that i was working with to get these results.

Here are some shots from the day:

I don’t think that i have ever actually realised how tiny i am until i saw these pictures, because i have always been still that big girl in my head. As crazy as that sounds that is the truth that i still always feel big and that is something that i now need to work on for myself.

I honestly had the most fantastic day with the people i love most in the world, everything was perfect and can’t thank the people enough that did my cake, flowers and dress

The only thing left to say is what are now my new goals?

Well as hard as it is for me i am now going to be going on a bulk, my fantastic hubby has written me a new strength training plan focussing on the main big lifts, dead lift, bench press and squat where I’m hoping ill be able to improve a lot on in the nest few months.

I have been dieting for about 9 months of this year and my body and mind really does need a break from it so hopefully an increase in food with mean an increase in my lifts.

Why your low carb diet works.

OK – so first of all this is probably a little bit of a controversial post and i have been contemplating writing it for some time now. I first saw the subject brought up on Instagram over six months ago and unfortunately i cannot remember by whom to give them the credit for it.

Low carb diets have got a he interest at the moment and seem to be the in thing and are giving amazing results. Heck until January this year i was one of these people on the low carb band wagon shouting from the roof tops that low carb was amazing and helped you to shed undated fat very easily.

But the reason why a diet works, the reason why you loose weight and unwanted fat is down to simply science:

CALORIES IN VS CALORIES OUT

If you are eating more food then you are burning in calories then you will but on weight and if you are consuming less food than you are burning then you will loose weight.

So why do so many people see such amazing results on a low carb diet? I have been thinking about this for a while and when you think about it as a society we eat a lot of carbs. If you take the average persons meals for the day a normal diet would be something like:

Cereal or toast for breakfast

Sandwich for lunch

Meat, veg and rice/pasta/potatoes for Tea

Snacks – biscuits, crips, fruit ect…

And whats the common theme there? CARBS.

Yes this is very generalised but i personally know so many people that eat the about day in day out. So when they start a diet what do they normally do, especially if they have been told to eat more protein and fats and less carbs. They would normally start eating something like this:

Breakfast: fruit and greek yoghurt/ porridge / scrambled eggs

Lunch: chicken salad

Tea: meat and vegtables

Snacks: fruit / protein bars / greek yoghurt.

The reason why a low carb diet works is that its pretty easy to take away the carbs from your daily diet, even if a person just did this for their main meal at night if they just ate the meat and the vegetables and got rid of this nightly portion of rice then that would save them around 180 calories and that for a measured 125g portion and how many people just have that amount?

So if you’re taking this amount away thats a simple 200 calories to get rid of a day, if you take the bread away from your sandwich at lunch and just had a simple salad and chicken instead of it in bread that would be another 200 calories saved.

Basically when most people do a ow carb diet they just get rid of the carbs and they don’t replace the carbs they have taken away with fat, if they did this then i suspect they would see no difference in their weight.

If someone told you to do a high carb diet and to get rid of the fats that is a much more difficult thing to do. There is not vey often a single fat source on your plate at a meal, of course you can choose leaner cuts of meat and stop adding fatty sauced to dishes but how many of the British population eat a handful of almonds with their meals or half an avocado?

I just wanted to show you that low carb doesn’t have to be the only way. This year I have seen my best results yet and its all been done on high carbs. I have felt so much better for it, of course that isn’t going to work for everyone so get to know your own body first and see what it works best on. You don’t need to fear carbs and not all carb sources are unhealthy ones there are plenty of great healthy carb sources out there to help fuel your body and fuel your workouts.

Fudge chocolate brownies

Now everyone loves a brownie even us “healthy eaters” so have have been trying to find a great healthy alternative for a brownie. These have amazing macros with them and they are just so fudgy and yummy. I have added some Lindt dark chocolate into them which are included in the macros but if you left this out they would be even less calories or you could also add in come nuts if your macros allow for it.

They contain a healthy ingredient that some people might not think they would like in a brownie but honestly try them first as you can taste it at all.

Ingredients:

1 scoop of beef protein from myprotein

1 scoop of chocolate cake flavour whey from myprotein

150g of cooked beetroot

25g of sukrin almond flour

10g of sukrin peanut flour

3 tbsp of coco powder

1 tsp of baking powder

90ml of egg whites

100ml of milk i used koko coconut milk for this recipe

20g of lindt dark chocolate with cherry and almond (any dark chocolate can be used here or left out)

Pre-heat the oven to 180 Simply add all the ingredients apart from the chocolate  to a blender and mix together then stir in the chocolate broken up into small pieces and then pour into a baking tray lined with baking paper. Then pop in the over for 15-20 minutes. They don’t take long to cook and the mixture is thinner.

I made 8 largish squares which worked out at a mere 73 calories per slice, 4.7 carbs, 2.1 fat and 9.1 protein.

 

Goal weight

Today i stepped on the scale and i had hit my “goal weight”, now i don’t like the term goal weight mainly because even when you get to your goal weight you still seem to never be happy and still want more, and also because every weight looks different on every person.

I have spoken in previous blog posts how i am heavier now than i was a year ago and my goal weight reflects this it is still 3lbs heavier than my lowest weight but i think this reflects the extra muscle that i have put on over the last year.

I won’t lie the last three weeks have been a struggle for my they have been my lowest calories doing a lot of exercise and it has been tough but i wanted to push and test myself. I have felt extremely tired and last week when the scales told me i had put on 0.8lbs i could have cried. So i took a little time out last weekend relaxed my diet and had a “refeed”. This week i have been back on it and when i stepped on the scales that 0.8lbs had come off and another 1lbs.

My weekly struggles are always Friday night for some reason i just seem to think that i deserve a treat on a friday. It’s normally my rest day but i do my cleaning and I hate doing the chores, so normally what happens is i pick at food while I’m doing it. This week or last night i managed to not pick at a single thing and that is a massive victory for me.

My bad mood has been reflected in my motivation and that is why there has been a lack of blog posts for the last few weeks. My calories are now going to start going back up its 4 weeks to my wedding so that when we go on honeymoon i won’t just pile the pounds back on. So hopefully i will be feeling a bit more energetic and back to the blogging from now on!

slow progress is better than no progress

Well it’s that time again for me to share my progress with you guys. The last six weeks have flown by and I just wanted to show you where I am currently at.

The things that have happened in this six weeks are that its only been in the last two weeks that i have been able to deadlift and i’m still keeping the weight relatively light so that i don’t hurt myself again and just gradually increasing the weight up, it has genuinely taken that long for my oblique to heal its self.

While that was healing i couldn’t deadlift or train abs like normal nor could i do a good hit session or go to the crossfit bootcamps that i usually attend and it hurt to jump!?!?!

I have also had what has felt like a really stressful six weeks with one thing and another but i have still gotten on with my workout routine as i have posted in earlier blog posts and stuck to my cardio session a week, i was just having to go for runs rather than go to the bootcamp sessions.

I have also stuck to having one untracked meal a week, a meal where we go out for food and i just pick whatever i want to eat and know that i won’t be able to track it 100% accurately

This last six weeks the scales have being playing hard ball and even though i know i have lost inches from the way that my clothes are fitting me and i have all of a sudden gone from a size 10 in the shops to a 10 being huge on me the scales haven’t really budged a lot until yesterday morning where 2lbs flew off this week.

Progress pictures:

When i first saw these two pictures side by side i was pretty disappointed but there is some subtly process here that i have been working on and slow progress is better than no progress. You also can’t see that shape of my legs or my arms in either of these and i have lost a lot of weight from my chest.

From the front you can see that my stomach appears to be flatter.

When i look how far i have come in 12 weeks though i am pretty happy with my progress.

In six weeks time it will be my wedding so i am just going to be keeping pushing and sticking with my plan for the next six weeks and hopefully be in the best shape of my life for my wedding day.

The plan for the next six weeks is that my macros are due to change this week to be at their lowest which i will stick with for two weeks before slowly reversing back up for the wedding and our honey moon. My workouts won’t change a lot but i will be doing a few more higher reps now rather than low reps and high weight as with my calories being low i know my strength won’t be the same and i won’t just be able to keep adding on the weight.

My Feature in womens health

So In the July edition of Womens Health I had a little feature in it with an article that they have every month with a different member of the public called “fat burners”. This is basically where they ask a member of the public, one of there reader to come along for a photoshoot and to tell them how they managed to loose weight, asking things like what their diet and exercise routine was like before hand and comparing it to how it is now.

I got an email off them last February after they had seen my article featured in the daily mirror and with the PR agency that did that and asked if i was free to come and see them in the first week of March, I happened to be off work that week and so it just seemed a perfect opportunity that i couldn’t miss.

When I go to the womens Health HQ I was taking to the wardrobe department to get an outfit for the day where they dressed me in some M&S leggings which i loved, an adidas top, a nike bomber jacket and some nike trainers. I then went to hair and make up which was amazing

This was my hair and make up after shooting for three hours in the rain.

Once all my hair and makeup was sorted we went out onto the streets of soho to shoot at five different locations which was literally the most surreal thing that has ever happened to me. I got to be a model for the day and loved every minute of it, even though its really hard work.

Once we had the shots we went back to the HQ and i sat down with the interviewer and went through my story with her.

All the girls there on the day were lovely and i thoroughly enjoyed my day pretending that I was a fitness model.

Plan update

So if you have been reading my previous blogs you will know that i have started a new plan that i have now been following for around 6 weeks.

I wasn’t really sure how it would go as i made most of the structure myself and it’s the first time i haven’t been following someone elses plan to the letter.

The second week of my plan i took some photos to record my progress and i can remember at the time i was feeling pretty lean until i looked at the pictures and thought ugh..

I took the new progress ones on Friday morning and I’m pretty impressed with the results, this is 6 weeks of heavy lifting, increased calories and HIGH carbs.

This is the first time that i have tried a high carb programme and have always followed a low carb, high fat programme until now but I’m pretty sure that my body loves the carbs as i haven’t felt bloated or puffy on them but in fact tighter and they have given me so much more energy.

Ladies don’t be afraid of carbs! Do what your body works best on, for some people this is high fat and low carbs but for me i have genuinely felt so much more energetic and been able to lift a lot more with the higher carb plan than i ever have before.

In the last 6 weeks I have lost just under 4lbs and 3% of body fat so I’m pretty pleased with the results.

This week i have had a rest week and just been generally active going for walks with the family ect, and so i lowered my carbs slightly as i knew i didn’t need as much energy for these activities.

This week it will be 12 weeks until my wedding(!!) so its time to get serious now, i will be continuing with my plan and i can’t wait to see what the next six weeks can bring! Is it ok for me now to write #12weeksout?

Rest, it’s part of the programme.

It’s been 6 weeks since i started training with my new programme and everything hurts right now.

I have been battling through a right lat injury and still doing all my planned workouts but what started as a small niggle is continuing to get a lot worse. It doesn’t actually hurt when i am doing the lifts but afterwards it is really beginning to ache.

As i was in the gym yesterday in the heat and the pain I could tell that my body needed a rest so this next week I am going to be giving myself a deload or more a contrast week. Normally on a reload week i will just lower the weight but with this niggling injury I’ve decided a week off from the weights is probably going to be more beneficial to me and so I will be doing a few at home workouts, runs, walks and just generally keeping active in hope that after a good few days of rest ill be back again and ready to smash it!

Now truth be told i am terrible at resting, I genuinly can’t remember the last time that i skipped the gym or had any time off, even when i have been ill i have done my workouts rested one or two days and then been right back on it, and thats the same for if i have been away or on holiday. I know that this isn’t a good idea and the reason why i have this injury at the moment is probably down to over training and not letting my body have enough time to recover.

My goal for the next few weeks is to make sure that i really look after my body and ensure it get the appropriate rest so that it can perform at its best in the gym.

Rest is important as:

• Your muscles grow when they are at rest and also prevents injuries happening
• overtraining can cause weight loss plateaus
• it helps stop training plateaus, you would need two consecutive weeks away from the gym before you saw any strength or gain losses.
• It can effect your sleeping as your body goes into a constant state of restlessness
• Helps stop mental fatigue so that you’re ready and raring to go for your workouts each and every time

This week i will be most defiantly getting plenty of rest as i have a million things to do and sort out for the wedding, loads of coursework for me to catch up on so i know i can keep myself busy, but right now I’m writing this from my back garden in the sunshine and its pure bliss 🙂