How To: The Glorious Green Smoothie

Check out the video below on how to make my Glorious Green Smoothie!

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Healthy Ice Cream For Breakfast?!

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This is a suuuuper easy recipe to change up your normal breakfast especially as it is summer now (yes, English weather it's summer, do what you gotta do!) so ice cream for breakfast sounds pretty fab if you like ice cream!
This is not my original recipe but it's just ideas pulled from other recipes and made into a quick and easy recipe I use for breakfast

 You'll need: 

•  2 chopped bananas (or 1 depending on how much ice cream you want)
•  A choice of your own ingredient, I have used frozen raspberries but you can use anything to add flavour like cinnamon, Cacao powder or another type of fruit, anything! 
• Some toppings (nuts, dried fruit) 

 How to: 

• Chop the bananas before you go to bed and put in a freezer bag in the freezer for the night
•  In the morning whack out the food blender, and put your frozen bananas in with the other flavouring ( I used frozen raspberries)
•  Blend it all up, it takes a while to go into an ice cream like consistency, just leave it blending while your sort out your topping
• Once it's in a smooth consistency put it into a bowl and chuck your toppings on, and yes mine is ever so slightly 'Instagram ready' ( slight perfectionist) but it's just as good to chuck them on top
• Finally, grab a spoon, a glass of water and dig in!

Granola Galore!

Recently I have become a very big fan of having granola for breakfast because of the energy that the nuts and fruit give. So I thought I would give a home-made granola recipe a go that has a lot less refined sugar and other nasty's in, that some of the shop bought brands have in them.

If you want to try out this recipe its super easy to make and will normally last for about 1 week/2 weeks if put it into a airtight sealed container. 

Ingredients:

2.5 Cups of Rolled Oats

3/4 Cup of Honey

1/4 Cup of Vegetable Oil or Coconut Oil

1/2 Teaspoon of ground Cinnamon

1 Teaspoon of Vanilla Extract 

45g Brown sugar

Mixed dried Fruit and Nut - however much you prefer to put in

1.Preheat oven to 180ºC (356ºF)

2. Mix the rolled oats and Brown sugar in a mixing bowl and add the Honey, Vegetable/Coconut Oil, Vanilla extract and Cinnamon into the mix and stir all the ingredient together.

3.Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper and spread the oat mix evenly over the baking tray.

4. Put in the oven for 15 mins

5. Chop the dried fruit and nuts into your required size and mix together in a bowl

6. Take the oats out the oven and mix the fruit into the oats on the tray

7.Put back into the oven for another 20-25 mins but stir occasionally to prevent the top burning.

8.When the oats are golden brown take out the oven and allow to cool for an hour, they may still feel soft when you first take them out but when they cool they will harden into a granola type texture. 

9.Seal the granola into an airtight container.

The fruit and nuts I put into my Granola were:

Raisins 

Currants

Apricots

Chopped walnuts

flaked almonds

My 4 Top Tips on Eliminating the Excuses.

There are so many positives to working out not only in terms of fitness and health but it can also just generally help you as a person.
The Number 1 positive I love about exercising is:

• It releases endorphins 

So learning about the good old endorphins in my old Health A-level class I found really interesting how they can be our 'natural feel good' hormones that are often released during exercise resulting in putting you in a fabulous mood after a workout! ( I know, what more could you want?!) 

• Stress Reliever

So you're near exams or a project due in date and you are last minute having the ultimate stress out? Well get those running shoes on and run it off or get to the gym! exercise has also been proven to help improve and control your mind set in stressful or anger fuelled situations. Whilst exercising your body releases 3 main chemicals (adreneline, serototin and dopamine)  that work together to relieve stress and enable to you take a better control over your negative emotions and ultimately bring you mood up from a low to a natural high. Even just 10-15 minutes of vigorous exercise can eliminate negative feelings, so I am sure revision could hold for 10 minutes while you run out the stress and create a revision ready mind set for you next session in front of your books/laptop.

So, so far I have briefly explained that exercise can have a pretty positive change on you generally i.e your moods, on your mind set, emotional control and of course your fitness and health so why are you still reading this and not outside exercising yourself into a good mood?!

okay wait before you go and do that take a look at the next 4 points to eliminating the excuses...

NUMBER 1
Setting yourself goals:
Now with this one alot of people set goals that are slightly out there and don't carry them out because "Its not working and its taking to long to reach the goal" and im not an expection to this because my goals used to be ridiculous ( I mean 'looking like Michelle Keegan in a matter of weeks' at 16 my goals were a bit excessive) and I always ended up giving in because I felt like I wasn't getting anywhere near to my (slightly ridiculous) goal. SHORT AND SWEET, these are the best goals in my opinion. 
Of course everyone that sets out on a journey of creating a better lifestyle and to get fitter will have the long term goal of a better body image, health and fitness but I mean REAL short and sweet.(and no I don't mean doing a 10 minute run with the goal of reaching Express Diner to get some fried chicken.)

Achievable goals are key. If I am in the gym I will set a specific goal for that gym session keeping them short and sweet. For example: I wont allow myself to leave the gym until I have done at least 60 minutes of working out no matter how long it takes or how much my mind keeps telling me to turn around and walk out the door ( burst into song, I know you want to) I will not leave (being strict and having a lot of mental strength really helps). Its just the same if I am outside going on a run, I wont allow myself to go home until I have done a HIIT run for at least 40 minutes. Achieving a goal is honestly the best feeling and will definitely motivate you to go out and smash another goal during your next workout!
So keep them short and sweet on a daily/weekly basis and it will all add up to achieving a long term goal!

NUMBER 2
Compete with yourself: (or the oblivious person on the next treadmill along)
Now anyone that knows me knows I am not a competitive person...HA who am I kidding I am UBER competitive! If you get on the treadmills or any other machine next to me in the gym you have just entered yourself into a competition without knowing, that's all I'm going to say...
I love being competitive with others especially in sports but also competing with my own personal bests. I am constantly trying out new workouts or new levels of workouts to beat my usual ones which, can make a workout so much more fun and interesting.
So what are you waiting for?! your personal bests wont come to you! GO GET THEM!

NUMBER 3
Reward System:
As childish as this point may sound it can really work. 
Yes, you can totally have that glass of wine or the Jaeger bomb while you're going out on a 'mad night out' tonight IF you've done your workout for the day! Simple as that folks, you get that workout in during the day, you can get the double vodkas in during the night!

NUMBER 4:
Nullify The Negatives:
"Its just who I am" 
This quote above is the one that I have heard the most when it comes to excuses of not exercising, and yes I always used to think this too but not one word of that is true when it comes to body image or your fitness levels. YOU can change that.
Way too many people influence your own thoughts and will ultimately lead to you believing you cant just because someone else says so, this then results in your attitude being the main negative that is stopping you from saying you can or you did. Take matters into your own hands, its easy enough saying that 'you can' but until you do you wont gain anything from it. So because 'YOU DID' read to the end of this blog post ( thank you for bearing with)  now 'YOU CAN' go and put it all into practise so you can say 'YOU DID' and 'YOU ACHIEVED'. (An awful lot of cheesiness in that last sentence)