IM BACK!

Okay so I took a longer break that originally planned but I am super excited to get my teeth back into blogging and sharing my own journey based around, healthy eating, fitness, and lifestyle.

Where have I been hiding?!

This past year has been really full on due to it being my last year of my degree and therefore I wanted to put all my head strength into achieving my original goal I set at the beginning of my degree and that was to achieve a first-class degree. All the head strength paid off and I have now gained a shiny new qualification; A First Glass degree in Graphic Design.

I could not be happier with the outcome of my 3 years hard work and I cannot wait to get back into my blogging journey and make StudentVsFitness a frequent blogging platform, continuing to follow my own journey to a healthier lifestyle and a fitter future.

The future of StudentVsFitness

So now I am a graduate and no longer a student I thought about changing the name of my blog but I then thought the whole reason I started this blog was to encourage other students how to eat healthy on a budget, give tips on how to help the dreaded hangover with natural nutrients and how to stay active during tough times with exam stress and coursework deadlines. So I have decided to keep the name the same and continue my blogging journey through the eyes if a student/recent graduate.

I am SO excited to get back into blogging and sharing my experiences through my blog and hopefully starting to network with other similar bloggers to me and work together to inspire other students to take their own journey to a living a healthier lifestyle and working towards a fitter future (all within a student budget!)

A Pompous Porridge Brekkie

This is a quick and easy brekkie for all you students that have woke up late and only have 20 minutes before your lecture starts...

Ingredients:

• Grab some rolled porridge oats
• Pour 300ml of milk
• Slice a banana 
• Grab a handful of Blueberries
• Sprinkle that cinnamon 

1. Throw ( not literally) the porridge oats and milk into a sauce pan and bring to the boil on the hob and keep stirring until a thick consistency ( or however you like your porridge).
2. Pour into a bowl and chuck your banana and blueberries on top, sprinkle that cinnamon and get eating!

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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 Food Shopping Habits.

When I moved out my accommodation a few weeks ago I found all my food shopping receipts from the first half of the year at uni and my gosh it was horrendous what I was eating! ranging from buying big packets of crisps to 3 packets of biscuits and numerous ready meals and fizzy drinks. yikes what was I thinking?!

So I now do a food shop for all my long lasting foods every 3/4 weeks. e.g. sweet potatoes, tins of tuna, rice, quinoa, pasta and so on... which would be an online shop because being at uni without a car makes it difficult to get 3/4 weeks of shopping in 2 hands whilst walking home, so that's done online and then every 2 weeks ill do a fresh food shop that I do myself in the supermarket (im super picky on the state of my veggies and fruits when I buy them). A lot of people think doing 2 types of separate food shops would amount to a lot of spending, when if you do it properly it definitely doesn't amount to a lot of spending.

Before I started my huge lifestyle change I made myself cut a lot of shit out of my diet which then led to me spending less money on food shops, and it was easier that I thought it would be, not having the rubbish foods in my cupboard because I cut them completely out of my shopping lists made it a lot easier to just forget about them and not be tempted by them.
The main foods that I have cut out my regular diet are:
Bread/doughy type products.
Chocolate
Sweets/sugary treats
Crisps
Fizzy drinks.

So how do I make my fresh food last 2 weeks?
Your freezer is your new best friend.
I know buying frozen vegetables wont be as fresh and as fabulous as fresh vegetables but we are students paying £9000+ a year for Uni so buying frozen veg will be a lot cheaper and will last longer in your freezer than buying a ton of fresh veg that will probably go out of date before you can eat all of it! So most of my veg is frozen, apart from spinach and the odd salad veg that I buy. I buy fresh spinach because I love spinach cooked and uncooked, however I do eat spinach like there is no tomorrow so I don't have much of a problem with it going out of date quickly.

Another tip: if you're buying fresh veg, look at the back of the product section. Whilst working in Tesco for a bit as an online shopper I HAD to pick from the back because that is where the product with the furthest away used by date is, meaning you'll most of the time get a product with a longer used by date. Don't grab from the front they are normally nearing the end of their used by date.

My fruit that I buy varies from frozen to fresh, I buy frozen fruit for my smoothies and breakfast, like blueberries and other berries because they last for agessss! and then fresh fruit for eating on a daily basis, I do keep a lot of my fruit in the fridge as I find that normally keeps it fresh for quite a while I mainly get fruits such as apples and bananas because I find they last longer than maybe a mango would.

Top Tip On Fruit: Buying un-ripe fruits, like slightly green bananas, these will slowly ripen over time meaning they will generally last longer than buying ripe or over ripe bananas which will go squashy and gross in a shorter time!

When I am fresh food shopping I often go for the supermarkets own brand purely because of money and it is often cheaper, it may seem like an effort at the time but spending more time on comparing prices of fruit and looking for longer used by dates of the fruit will definitely be worth it in the long run.

Happy Shopping!

Breakfast Option

I like to mix it up a little bit and change up how I eat what my body needs so I decided to warm my blueberries up to make like a blueberry coulée that I put on top of natural yoghurt and a banana.

Pre gym breakfast:

Sainsbury’s own blueberry whole grain wheats
Sainsbury’s own Greek yoghurt
1 banana
Handful of blue berries
Honey.

If I don’t have all these ingredients I’ll just have the blueberry whole grain wheats with skimmed milk