Weigh in #1... It all begins.

Hey guys!

So here it is, the beginning of my weight loss journey. These measurements are from my first weigh in with my trainer last week and I completely forgot to post them until today, sorry! But I'll now post measurements every Thursday, as my monthly official weigh in is once a month on a Wednesday so it gives me enough time to write and post. There's not much to say, I'll discuss my goals afterwards so it's documented and I can't back out! This blog has definitely been great motivation for me. Okay so here we go!

My height: 5'6" (167cm)

Starting weight: 210lbs (15st, 95.3kg)

Current weight: 206lbs (14st 10lbs, 93.4kg)

Body fat percentage: ~40.3%

Measurements:

Chest: 44" (111.76cm)

Waist: 38.5" (97.79cm)

Abdomen: 43" (109.22cm)

Hips: 46.5" (118.11cm)

Arm: 12" (30.48cm)

As you guys can see, I'm already 4lbs from my starting weight! Seeing that on the scales really was a great first confidence boost and made me feel like this was the right thing to do. 

Goals

Weekly: Go to the gym 3 times a week on alternate days to do my resistance circuits.

Include one extra cardio session per week. I'm thinking maybe jogging on the beach. I have a huge fear of running in any form but I'd love to be able to actually do it.

Monthly: I really want to hit under 200lb this month. I haven't been under 200lb in a long while so I'd love to see 199lb on the scale by the start of December. 

For the whole journey: Obviously due to the name of this blog, my ultimate goal is 140lbs and to get under 30% body fat. Also, something I'm kind of frightened to admit but ultimately I'd love to be able to complete a triathlon. Eek!

Hope you guys enjoyed this post, and if anyone's joining in definitely leave me a comment or tweet me @jadoreux.

Lots of love to everyone!

J xo

The Craving Challenge!

So here's my first weekly challenge! I feel like mini goals to changing my exercise/diet routine will help a lot more than trying to change everything at once. 

This weeks challenge is simple. I'm going to keep a craving diary. I've realised on this journey that my biggest problem is late night cravings, where I'm too tired to fight them so I just cave in. I'm going to be keeping a craving diary, and writing down the craving and what sort of time. Then I'm going to research what these cravings can mean, and try and find a healthy alternative for them! I'm awful at just ignoring cravings so a healthy alternative is the next best thing for me. Next Thursday, I'll post how it went and what alternatives I've come up with!

Lots of love to you guys!

J xo

What's for dinner? #2

Here's the second instalment of What's For Dinner! This time I loosely followed a recipe and it's a great meal for a family, or a dish that can last a few nights.

Pumpkin & Ginger Pasta Bake

This was a recipe I tweaked from the internet in an attempt to not waste any of my pumpkin from the
Halloween carving. A delicious pasta dish, with no cheese! Of course you could add cheese if you wanted to.

Ingredients:
12 oz wholewheat pasta
15 oz pure pumpkin, either fresh or canned
1-2 medium onions, diced
2 garlic cloves, either crushed or chopped finely
1/2 courgette, chopped width-ways into circles and then cut into quarters
1/2 cup water, kept after boiling the pasta
A small amount of ginger, grated - a little goes a long way!




Recipe:
Preheat the oven at 200 degrees Celsius.
Boil pasta for it's allotted time minus two minutes. While the pasta is cooking, sauté the the onions and garlic until soft with a little oil (I use the one calorie spray). Once the onions and garlic is soft, add the courgette and sauté further. Add the pumpkin into the frying pan, and toss all the ingredients together in the pan for a little while. Then add the pasta and the 1/2 cup of water to the pan, mixing all the ingredients together for a couple of minutes, until the water has mostly evaporated.

Once this is done, all you need to do is put all the ingredients into your tray, I used an 11"x6" glass casserole dish. I then added the ginger and mix it in to the dish with the other ingredients. You can also sauté the ginger with the ingredients in the pan if you want to, but I didn't decide to add ginger until it was too late.

All you need to do then is put the dish into the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes, and it's done! It's a super duper easy recipe, I did it late at night (when I probably should have been sleeping) but it was a very quick preparation and cooking time, and it was definitely delicious!

I really enjoyed writing this recipe and I hope you guys enjoyed it too! Let me know if you tried this recipe out and if you tweaked it in any way.

My first day!

Well here we go, the first day to the rest of my journey! I thought I'd fill you in with how the day has gone.

1. What I ate.
For breakfast, I had my usual of overnight oats (recipe to come, if you're a fan of porridge but fancy something without the heat and less stodgy, this is definitely for you!). I didn't have anything on top of it today, however I did buy some dried fruits for future breakfasts, and I think I'll try putting some flavoured yoghurts on top too!
I had a late lunch after the gym, and I made myself a green juice using spinach, rocket, cucumber, lemon, garlic (just a little bit) and an apple. I added a couple of ice cubes just to thin it out a little bit. Basically I just threw them all into a container and used a hand blender on it until it became a smoothie/juice.
For dinner I made a delicious pasta bake using the innards of a pumpkin I carved today. I didn't think I'd enjoy a pasta bake without the lashings of cheese but it was very refreshing. The recipe will be coming up in a "What's for dinner?" post very soon.
As for snacks, I'm still oversnacking, but at least now I've chosen more healthy foods to snack on as opposed to salty crisps or sandwiches. I had one snack of pistachios, in attempt to curb my craving for salty foods. And guess what, it worked! I love pistachios. I also had some of the Kelloggs Cracker Crisps which were also delicious and only 95 calories per 21 crisps, so it's a crisp snack I can get away with. I also did have a mini coffee that they were giving out as a trial from a Nescafe stall in town.

2. My first session with my trainer.

As I've said before, I love my new trainer. Today I had my first training session with him where I got to try out the routine tailored to me. My main routine is resistance training which consists of a circuit of push resistance, leg resistance, pull resistance then 3 minutes of cardio repeated 3 times. It's a really tough routine but it's going to make such a difference. I do this routine 2-3 times a week spread out over the week. For the days in between, I also have an cardio interval training program to follow. I've learnt from my trainer that it's not about pushing yourself until you can't breathe, it's about finding your optimum heart rate and keeping yourself there for the whole workout to burn the most amount of fat. It's been a huge lesson for me and I can't wait to continue.

3. Water, water, water.

I've improved my water intake drastically. I haven't started recording my water intake which is my next step but I've been drinking a lot more water and making it fun. My favourite thing to add to water right now is a few slices of cucumber (cut into quarters) and some slices of lemon, leaving the glass of water in the fridge for up to 30 minutes then drinking it. It gives water a much more fresh taste without the sugar of a cordial.

Hope you've enjoyed this post, I'm feeling positive about this!

Love always, J xo

What's for dinner? #1

So I thought I'd share some of my healthy dinner recipes, which are more than affordable for students. Now I'm no chef, or even a particularly good cook, so these recipes will probably be pretty simplistic but that's probably a good thing!

Turkey and Vegetable Pasta

This was a bit of a spur of the moment meal, made with what was left in my fridge, but it was delicious so I thought I'd share it. This recipe is very simple, full of veggies and delicious flavours!

Ingredients:
1/2 cup of whole wheat pasta
An amount of lean turkey mince of your choice (I only used a small amount)
1/2 a small courgette
1/2 a red pepper
1 small onion
1 clove of garlic
1 handful of frozen sweetcorn
1 handful of frozen mixed vegetables.

Recipe:
Firstly put the pasta in a saucepan of boiling water & leave it over the heat for 10 minutes. After these ten minutes, put in the frozen vegetables & frozen sweetcorn. This saves on things to wash up! Leave the saucepan over the heat for another 5 minutes.

While the pasta is cooking, put the turkey into the frying pan to cook. You can use low-calorie cooking spray to cook it in. After it's cooked for a while, add the fresh vegetables. I diced my onions, cut the courgette into circles and then into quarters, and I cubed the red peppers. I also cut the garlic into small pieces, but you can also use a garlic crusher. Put all the vegetables into the pan and fry it along with the turkey, until the turkey is cooked through and the onions are browned. Once it was all done, I halved the amount and had the other half as a snack later on. You can also do this, or keep the leftovers to put with a salad the next day, or just have all of the turkey and vegetables with your pasta.

Drain the pasta and the frozen vegetables, and put on your plate. Then add the turkey and cooked vegetables on top. Season with pepper for taste. I was going to try adding ginger but I didn't get round to it. I then had a low fat yoghurt with raspberries for dessert.

What I think I'd like to add to this is a light sauce, or some sort of dressing. I haven't found anything yet but I've got my eyes open!

Hope you enjoyed this type of post.

Love always, J xo

Welcome to my journey!

Hey guys!

Welcome to this blog. If you haven't been able to tell, this is my blog for recording my weight loss journey. It's a journey to lose weight, improve my fitness and be more healthy overall. I hope to do a variety of posts to inspire anybody on this kind of journey, and especially anybody, like me, who does have a huge goal ahead. For me to be a healthy weight, I need to lose 70lbs. That's 5 stone, aka a third of my current weight. It's a huge goal, but I'm not doing this alone.

I will go into my routine more thoroughly once it's been established clearer for me, but for right now I'll just explain where I am right now, at my starting point.

Currently I've just started with a personal trainer in my gym. He's been great so far, and I'm just about to start my program with him. I'm going to be working with him mainly on weight training (This might sound crazy as I know a lot of women fear weight training because they think they're going to 'bulk up'. This won't happen, I'll explain this in another post). I'm going to do sessions with him every so often, beginning at once a week. Alongside these sessions, I'm hoping to go to the gym at least another one time a week just to repeat the circuits that my trainer and I come up with. Alongside my gym sessions, I'm planning on cycling 3 miles every five days to University, as well as 1 mile to work twice a week. It's going to be difficult I know, but so worth it :)

My diet is the next thing to be sorted out. It's all about being a lot more healthy, and this is something I've been working on for a while, and I will continue to work on it and track it here.

I can't wait to go on this journey, and I hope that some of you guys will come along with me!

Love always, J xo