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Hi everyone, hope your having a lovely weekend! I’ve been enjoying my last few days off before going back to work tomorrow. It was so hot yesterday! I can’t believe I was talking around in shorts and a vest top on the 1st October.

Yesterday we headed in to Durham to get more fruit and veggies from my favourite green grocers. I managed to snag a few pics to show you the awesome range of produce they stock:

Their prices are so good too, I bought two massive heads of romaine, a large cucumber, large head of celery, large piece of fresh ginger and two reduced aubergines (making raw aubergine bacon right now!) for £4.50 with their discount, I love this place!

On Friday I also got my organic veg box delivered – this week I decided to add a squash box to my order:

Holy squash! I’m going to be enjoying these for ages :-)

Last night we went to my gorgeous cousin Catherine’s wedding celebration. She got married in Turkey and this was their big party for all the family:

OOTD:

 Orange floral tea dress: Warehouse, Black jewelled necklace: Next, black bangle: vintage, black skinny belt: Topshop, Black strappy high heels: Dune, Black clutch bag: Warehouse

This wasn’t the outfit I’d been planning to wear, James had bought me a dress as a treat but I noticed it had a stain on it, when I tried to rub it off the water made the mark worse! Anyway, I actually really liked my outfit, especially with the evening having a more summery feel. I also had my hair cut yesterday as it was desperate! Unfortunately this pic doesn’t really show my new hair colour that well, its not a dramatic change from before but it is darker and redder!

This weekend I have also been continuing my healthy feasting and it has been great! I’m feeling really good and have been enjoying some delicious food:

Each morning after yoga I’ve been drinking 6 cups of green juice made from cucumber, celery, romaine, spinach, parsley, lemon and ginger. I’ve had 4 cups first then the other 2 cups later in the morning:

I’ve also been drinking home made pumpkin seed milk:

I drank this straight up from the jar, so delicious sweetened with agave.

I’ve been going for green smoothies around lunch time (basically as soon as I start to feel hungry):

Kale, frozen cherries, raw beet, coconut water, 3 dates, ice, topped with raw almond butter, gojis and cacao nibs

 Spinach, kale, frozen banana, 3 kiwi’s, coconut water, 2 dates, ice, topped with coconut, gojis and black sesame seeds

I’ve also been snacking on lots of apples, giant fruit salads containing pineapple, raspberries, pomegranate, clemintines, melon, kiwis…

smoothies…

Frozen blueberries, pineapple and fresh ginger

 Frozen cherries, 2 pears, raw salted almond butter (try this – it is gorgeous!)

banana, nut butter, honey and bee pollen splits with more apples and nut butter…

and bowls of dried fruit and mixed nuts, delicious!

Yesterday also marked the start of Vegan Mofo! Click the link for more info.

I’m going to take part this year and will be posting on the theme of vegan on a budget! First up here’s a recipe I adapted from Oh She Glows for my healthy feast. This is made with seasonal veggies and relatively cheap raisins and sunflower seeds:

Healthy Feast Salad (vegan, makes 2 – 4 servings, adapted from Detox Salad, Oh She Glows)

• 1/2 head of broccoli
• 1 large head of cauliflower (I used romanesco)
• 2 large carrots
• 1/2 cup of raisins
• 1/2 cup of sunflower seeds
• 1 bunch of fresh parsley
• juice from half a lemon
• juice from 1 clemintine
• 2 tbsp of hemp oil (or olive oil)
• 2 tbsp of braggs 
• For topping (optional) sunflower seed or other nut butter

In a food processor, finely chop the broccoli, cauliflower and carrot then transfer to a large bowl. Add the raisins, sunflower seeds and chopped parsley. Mix the lemon juice, clemintine juice, oil and braggs and pour into the bowl, mixing well. Serve topped with a drizzle of sunflower seed or other nut butter. Enjoy!

This tastes delicious! I don’t mind raw cauliflower but I’ve never been a big fan of raw broccoli, but chopped fine like this it tastes lovely. The sweetness from the raisins really sets this off too, yum!

My healthy feast has been really good, I’ve been quite surprised that I haven’t been as hungry as I expected, especially when sticking to juice and seed milk in the mornings. I’ve also been amazed at the sweetness of my smoothies without having stevia or agave in them, I’ve definitely met my aim of reacquainting myself with the taste and texture of foods without so many added powders and potions! I’ve actually enjoyed it so much I might consider doing this every few months and I think 5 days is just about the right length of time. I still have tomorrow to go but will be easing out of it by eating more in the morning and adding bigger meals.

Sorry for the long post! I’ve just had so much to share from the weekend :-) How has your weekend been? Do you have a favourite place for getting your produce? I love my local green grocer and the discount makes it massively cheaper than the supermarket!

Hope you have a great week ahead!

As I mentioned in yesterdays WIAW, this week I am healthy feasting and having a ‘set back’ week in my training. I’ve still been working out, but I’ve been taking it easier. Yesterday I just did 1.5 miles on the tread instead of 3 miles and cut my overall workout time down. On Monday I made up my own little light strength routine although I think it must have been tougher than I realised as I’ve had the worst DOMS in my abs! This morning I did yoga for runners then instead of going to the gym after work I came home and relaxed with James. It felt good to be so kind to myself!

Eats wise I’ve been enjoying more smoothies (sans stevia and gums) and salads:

Spinach, romaine, courgette, vanilla sun warrior, agave syrup, water, ice, ground flax topped with figs, honey and bee pollen

Spinach, pink lady apple, almond milk, 2 tbsp almond butter, cinnamon, ice topped with more cinnamon, buckwheaties and bee pollen

Spring greens, 2 pears, chocolate hemp protein powder, water, ice topped with raw chocolate hazelnut butter and raw pear and ginger granola

‘Rainbow’ salad with romaine, finely sliced spring greens, alfalfa sprouts, yellow pepper, carrot, red cabbage, beetroot, sunflower seeds, lemony hemp dressing (lemon juice, good hemp oil, coconut aminos)

Snacks have been a mix of fruit, veggies, nuts and dried fruit:

Apple, carrots, dried apricots and hazelnuts

Clemintines, apple, macadamias

For dinner I had spiralised courgettes with green goddess dressing topped with roast kabocha and some additional tahini miso dressing:

This was so good!

Dessert has been lots of fruit:

Frozen cherries, frozen grapes and a chopped apple

Frozen raspberries, raw chocolate granola, almond milk

I’ve really enjoyed all these eats, just goes to show how tasty healthy foods can be!

Big Budget Challenge Update

I don’t really have much to report this week to be honest! Pay day is next Friday and it can not come quickly enough. I’m doing well keeping up with my good habits regarding my grocery spending but with Christmas fast approaching my thoughts are turning to Christmas shopping which I have to admit is a bit distracting!

I am starting to think about how I can be a bit thrifty over Christmas and not go over the top as usual. I’ve came across a few really useful websites I’m going to make the most of:

Money Saving Expert – this is just full of lots of money saving advice and tips. You can sign up for their weekly email and get alerted when certain discount codes are available.

Voucher Codes – A great website that lets you search for voucher codes

Top Cash Back – gives you cash back when you click through their links and make a purchase online.

With more and more of us doing our shopping online I think sites like these could be really useful ways of saving a little bit of cash, especially at this time of year! I’ve also came across a few great blogs:

A Thrifty Mrs – a fun frugal lifestyle blog – I love her ‘how to’ pages and may have to try out the home made Christmas decorations!

Miss Thrifty – another great blog full of lots of tips for saving money including shopping, fashion, cheap recipes etc.

Skint in the City – I only discovered this blog via Huffington Post today but I love it! Lots of great tips and tricks for the style conscious girl

Big Budgeters joining in:

Head on over to Celery and Cupcakes and check out her Tofu Meatballs recipe! Sharon at Bit of the Good Stuff has posted her update that’s really full of some excellent tips. Alissa at Not Just Apples has posted her update – sounds like she’s got some good deals from Waitrose and has posted a lovely sounding recipe for brown rice congee porridge. Thanks for the updates everyone!

Come on all you Big Budget Challengers out there, only a couple of weeks to go! How about we all try and post a recap / update in these last two weeks to share how we’ve all been doing?

In line with being kind to myself, I think I’m going to take the rest of the week off blogging – but I do have a fun post scheduled for you tomorrow! Tomorrow night I’m off to the amazing Durham Lumiere festival – I will be getting lots of photographs hopefully! Then the rest of the weekend I think I’m going to try and recharge my batteries a bit as I have an insanely busy work week coming up.

Hope you all enjoy the rest of your week and have a great weekend!

Don’t forget to check out my November sponsor giveaway for a chance to win Linwoods and Good Hemp Goodies!

Hello, hope your having a great week! This week I am healthy feasting alongside my ‘set back’ week in my training plan. The last time I healthy feasted I did it for 5 days, this time I’m going for the full week. I’m mainly avoiding caffeine and refined sugar but I’m also not using stevia as for me I find that it alters my taste buds after a while and I need things to be sweeter and sweeter. Having a break from it and using dates or agave syrup when needed almost ‘resets’ my taste buds. I’m also having a break from using the gums in my smoothies as well as loading them up with ‘super foods’ – I’m trying to keep things nice and simple. Obviously I’m also ramping up the fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds and trying to get lots of them in raw when I can. Happy WIAW!

These are my eats and happenings from yesterday (Tuesday). Quick OOTD:

Bird necklace: Oasis, Floral Tea Dress: Tesco, dark purple zig zag patterned tights: Accessorize, black suede effect turn over boots, H&M.

I started my day by doing the 20 minute Challenge Detox Yoga Flow from Yoga Download. I’m so glad I did it, I was so tired when I got up I almost ditched it but I felt so much better after I’d done it. I had my usual mug of warm water and lemon then had a large fresh green juice and a Vanilla Amaretto Teeccino (caffeine free) with home made almond milk:

The green juice was made from 1 cucumber, half a head of celery, two bunches of spinach, a large bunch of parsley, ginger and lemon. It tasted really good, and amazingly, didn’t leave me wanting to eat my own arm. The teeccino was really good too, usually I would have added stevia but it actually tasted fine as it was!

Mid morning I started to get hungry so I ate a pink lady apple, a giant persimmon and a big handful of cashew nuts:

I don’t often eat nuts plain like this as I love nut butters so much but these tasted lovely!

Lunch was a large salad with cos lettuce, carrot, home sprouted alfalfa, red pepper, raw beetroot and red onion. I chucked on a mix of pumpkin seeds, hemp seeds and nutritional yeast and a good amount of my green goddess dressing:

It was delicious! I think the mix of pumpkin seeds, hemp seeds and nutritional yeast is one I’ll be using lots of in future.

Before I left work for the gym I ate another pink lady apple and some sweet and sticky dates:

Instead of my usual high intensity intervals I took it easy and just did 20 minutes of steady state cardio at a relaxed pace.  My body pump class was great as always. I had thought about ditching the class during the set back week but I’ll be missing it next week as I have to work late so I wanted to enjoy it while I can!

Dinner was some Kabocha and Adzuki Bean Stew topped with chopped parsley with some garlic sautéed cabbage and leek in tamari:

I love that stew but it tasted a little burned as I had managed to let the pan boil dry when I cooked the adzuki!

A bit later I made myself a smoothie in a bowl with 2 scoops of chocolate sun warrior protein powder, water and ice. I topped it with cacao nibs and goji berries:

Not as creamy or thick as usual without xanthan and guar gums but tasty all the same! Plus lots and lots of peppermint tea throughout the day, I’m on a total peppermint tea kick right now.

I was actually quite surprised I wasn’t starving after eating this (I would have eaten more if I’d felt like I needed to) but I think I’ll only be having juice for breakfast on one more day, I much prefer to have a smoothie! I am feeling better already after just a couple of days, I think drinking coffee everyday and over doing it even slightly on the sugar seems to build up and build up and leaves me feeling a bit meh, so eating like this every once in a while is a nice way to give myself a break.

Do you find your body gets affected by too much caffeine and sugar? Do you use stevia and have you found that it affects your sweet taste buds? Do you ever ‘take a break’ from certain foods?

Hi guys, how’s your Wednesday going? Its a chilly day today in North East England, but at least its bright and sunny :-) These are my eats and happenings from yesterday. Happy WIAW!

I started the day with Yoga for Runners then had a mug of lemon and warm water while I had a shower and got ready. Breakfast was a bowl of Kashi Go Lean with a chopped banana, some frozen blueberries and rice milk plus a lovely vanilla coffee, black and sweetened with stevia:

I was working from home around a morning meeting so it was great to have the time to actually sit and enjoy that coffee! Before I left for my meeting I had a chopped apple with some ‘burnt caramel’ dip and a mug of green tea:

I just mixed some tahini, molasses and lucuma powder up with some water to make a  dip – I added the lucuma and it was a good way to mellow out the flavour of the molasses and add a caramel flavour. I decided that it would probably be a good idea to change out of the hoody I’d been wearing all morning for the meeting ;-) and as it was so cold and windy outside I thought a jumper dress would be in perfect, OOTD:

Gold swallow earrings: Topshop, patterned and crocheted scarf: Urban Outfitters, mustard yellow jumper dress: H&M, grey cotton tights: H&M, black turnover top suede effect boots: H&M

I absolutely love jumper dresses for this time of year, I think I have about 5 of them! I got this one a couple of weeks ago when I returned a dress that was stained. I’m still loving that mustard yellow colour right now!

When I got home from my meeting I had a huge bowl of Healthy Feast Salad and a pear:

Mid afternoon I got one of my home made raw cookie dough bars out of the freezer as a snack and for some gym fuel:

Love these! I got to the gym a little early so I did 10 min of intervals on the cross trainer, 10 min of intervals on the step machine and an extra 10 minutes steady state on the rowing machine before going into my body pump class which was awesome as usual!

Dinner was nice and easy to prepare as most of it was sitting in the fridge just ready to warm up and assemble! I had some steamed spring greens with brown and red rice, roast onion squash, baked tofu and a coconut ginger sauce:

This was so delicious! The coconut ginger sauce was lovely – just some light coconut milk warmed with 1 tbsp of coconut flour and 1 tsp of corn flour for thickness plus some shoyu and fresh minced ginger, yum! The tofu had baked perfectly as well and had a wonderful meaty texture.

For dessert I had my usual post body pump bowl of protein ice cream:

1 scoop of smores spiru-tein with water, ice and gums topped with dried cherries and cacao nibs, delish! I then warmed myself up with a huge mug of Cococardio sweetened with stevia:

This hit the spot on such a cold and windy evening!

All in all a pretty good day, I got loads of work done and a report finished for work so I was happy. Another thing that made me smile today:

Kale! James picked me up some when he was in town, along with another of my current obsessions – Shogun apples! I’d never heard of this variety – they are a type of Fiji apple and they are huge and so sweet, plus I like the name ;-)

Are you a fan of the jumper dress? I love wearing them with thick tights, leggings or skinny jeans when the weather gets colder. They can look really good but still be comfortable and warm. I actually wore a knitted hat today for the first time this season it was so cold! What outfit do you turn to as the weather gets cooler?

I thought it would be a good idea to a bit of a round up of how my last 6 week training plan has gone and how I found my week of healthy feasting and ‘set back week’.

Instead of my usual workouts I dropped the intensity and the overall workout time as well as skipping one workout altogether and having an extra ‘active’ rest day, i.e. just 20 minutes of yoga. The aim of the set back week is to give my body and mind a bit of a break to help prevent burnout and so I can get back into it with renewed enthusiasm. This has definitely worked for me, I was raring to go yesterday! I’ve started on a new phase from Female Body Breakthrough with new exercises, heavier weights and less reps on some exercises plus I’ve increased my speed on the treadmill.

I also found that my week of healthy feasting worked very well too. I aimed to focus on whole simple foods and avoid caffeine and refined sugar. I loved the comments you left on my WIAW post from last week about sugar and stevia (which I was also avoiding). Your comments really made me think about things. What I’ve discovered this week is that most of my smoothies really don’t need any further sweetener added, stevia or otherwise. I think I’d become an ‘automatic’ sweetener and had started to add stevia without tasting for sweetness first. I had the most amazing chocolate cherry beet green smoothie on Sunday night with no sweetener what so ever and it tasted fab, so rich and deeply chocolaty. My hunger has been fairly staple although I did have a proper snack fest on Saturday! I’ve also discovered some new fave snacks and meals last week – raw granola with tahini and raisins, frozen raspberries with nut milk and raw granola and a salad topping of nutritional yeast, pumpkin seeds and hemp seeds – yum!



I have to say I have missed my coffee! I didn’t really experience any caffeine withdrawal symptoms even though I’ve also avoided green tea for most of the week – not particularly intentionally I’ve just had plenty of peppermint on the go! I think I enjoy the ritual of coffee making and the taste more than a ‘need’ for the caffeine hit which I’m happy about. Saying that, I can’t wait to hit Starbucks at the weekend!


I have experienced a couple of ‘detox’ type symptoms in tiredness at the start of the week and I also got a massive spot after not having any spots for months! Towards the end of the week the tiredness lifted and I definitely had more mental clarity. Overall I really enjoyed taking a week to step back from my workouts a little, eat a bit simpler and be kinder to myself. Its definitely something I’m going to start doing every couple of months. I don’t think I’ll be using stevia as much as usual now that I’m more used to less sweet things.



I think the last 6 weeks has gone really well. I’ve kept to my ‘less than 1 hour a day’ workout rule and have enjoyed having a little more focus on strength training. I definitely feel like I’m keeping my fitness up, getting stronger and enjoying myself :-) My weight has also been pretty staple – I think I’m going to try and only weigh myself once every 6 weeks now to keep an eye on things. The scales are evil and I’m sick of them, but that’s all for another post me thinks!

I’m starting a fresh training plan for the next 6 weeks which is pretty similar to my last training plan but doing the new strength routine, increasing my speeds and levels on the gym machines and changing up my interval sessions. I’m going to try and continue my weekend outdoor run for as long as I can into the winter before I have to move it on to the treadmill. I’m continuing with ‘anything goes Thursday’ as I found it was a fun way to keep things interesting and varied!

Do you workout to a plan? Do you like to change up your workouts on a regular basis? How do you measure your progress if that’s one of your aims?

On Friday evening I visited the Durham Lumiere Festival. I live in a suburb of the beautiful medieval City of Durham, and the Lumiere Festival takes place right across the city featuring over 30 light installations by a variety of artists including Tracey Emin (I love her!).

Me and James met up with my Mam and Dad for a walk around the city. It really was a breath taking evening, especially the amazing ‘Crown of Light’ installation that projected images on to the side of the spectacular Durham Cathedral:

 

Other installations we saw included lots of glowing flying mesh figures, a brightly rainbow coloured lit tunnel, a giant glowing snow globe, another brightly coloured piece made from recycled plastic bottles and the beautifully lit Railway bridge arches:

 

 

  OOTD: fair isle hat and scarf: Next, Purple Princess Coat: Oasis, stripy tee: Zara, gold chain necklace: Topshop, Tan bag: H&M

I decided to bust out the warm hat and scarf, it was pretty chilly walking around outside!

I’ve still been healthy feasting over the weekend so have mostly been eating smoothies, salads and lots of fresh fruit:

Beet greens, frozen blueberries, frozen strawberries, strawberry hemp protein powder, water, ice topped with almond butter and freeze dried berries

Spring greens, pear, frozen blueberries, vanilla sun warrior protein powder, water, ice, flaked almonds and freeze dried berries on top

Spring greens, 1/2 frozen banana, courgette, roast kabocha squash, vanilla sun warrior protein powder, water, ice, cinnamon, ground ginger topped with more cinnamon, maple syrup, buckwheaties, shoyu roasted squash seeds

I got some giant persimmons from the green grocers that are so sweet and delicious:

Persimmon with clemintines

I’ve also been drinking the usual green juice:

Cucumber, celery, kale stems, ginger, lemon

Even though I’ve been healthy feasting I’ve still enjoyed getting a bit experimental. First up I tried making some ‘walnut lemon cheese’ to go on top of this beautiful salad with golden beets:

The salad included raw black kale massaged with hemp oil and lemon juice, romaine lettuce, alfalfa sprouts and regular and golden beets. I made the walnut cheese using 1/3 cup of soaked walnuts, lemon juice, garlic, sweet white miso and parsley. It worked well but as I only made one portion it didn’t blend so well in my processor. It tasted delicious though!

Today I had my first try of kelp noodles!

I got these from Viva Pure ages ago and thought it was about time I tried them! I soaked them in warm water for 10 minutes to soften and then mixed with a spiralised courgette and carrot. I made a dressing using tahini, sweet white miso, fresh ginger, ume vinegar and water and topped with raisins and black sesame seeds. It was wonderful! You can’t really taste the kelp noodles but they have a nice texture, and of course they are very good for you!

This morning I went out for a relaxed run. As I’m on my set back week I decided to go out without the Garmin for a change. I think I did about 4 miles but have no idea what time I did it in. It was a mega misty morning and such a pleasant run! The rest of the day has been almost perfect: hot shower after my run, green smoothie for breakfast followed by a morning of baking (can’t wait to share the recipes!) and an afternoon movie. All that could have made it better would have been a cup of coffee!

November Giveaway winners

Good Hemp Oils:

 

Lara and Lauren!

Linwoods Super Foods:

Flaxseed and Gojs: Rachel, Flaxseed, Pumpkinseed and Sunflower seed: Jessica 

Congratulations ladies! Can you all email me at laura@keepinghealthygettingstylish.com with your addresses and I’ll get these posted out.

Next week I have a pretty crazy one with several events and work and a couple of late nights so I’m going to make the most of the rest of my Sunday! I’m also looking forward to getting stuck into my workouts next week, I’ll probably blog more about how my set back and week of healthy feasting has gone soon. Hope your all having a wonderful weekend!