So It is August 1st 2015 and last night whilst watching Pretty Little Liars (My reward from me to me as long as I have worked out during the day. It works.) I was listing ideas that I could incorporate into my blog as permanent fixtures throughout this journey to a healthier lifestyle and a fitter future and to make this blog a little more 'alive'. 

The first idea that I came up with is 'Monthly Motives' ( some fine alliteration there, Shan.) the whole idea around this is to get back into setting regular reachable goals at the beginning of every month. Since being home from uni I have admittedly slacked on the mentality side of my journey. At uni I used to set reachable goals each week whilst in the gym of what I wanted that week. Some of the goals included things such as not allowing myself to leave the gym unless I have worked out for at least an hour each day or No snacking between meals, substitute with water, making sure I am asleep by 10:30pm to get the most out of a sleep ready for a workout in the morning...you get the idea. These are the kind of goals I set myself every week when I first started this journey to force myself and push me into a strict routine (I needed to do be this strict for it to work).

Since being home although I haven't given up on eating clean or working out everyday ( I never will, I love it too much). I feel I have really lacked in keeping my mentality in shape. My motto is 'Mentality Over Physicality' because I believe your body will do anything you push it to do, its the mentality you have that will make or break your dreams (cheesy but true).

So this is where Monthly Motives come in. At the beginning of each month I will be setting 3 new goals for myself one for fitness one for health and one for lifestyle. Then at the end of every month I will be looking at how I did, focusing on whether I carried it out for a month, if I didn't, WHY? and if I did, what I did well and what the next steps/goals are.

So here goes...

AUGUST FITNESS:

The motive I want to set for this month is to work on my running pace to improve my running time and distance. Running outside and not on  treadmill is a lot harder because your legs have to do more work to keep pushing you along whereas on a treadmill the floor moves and your legs just go with it. I find when I run I rush, I become very impatient and try and power through the run all the way although this can be a plus because it makes me do a high intensity interval run, I want to work on my running distance and time to improve my long distance running. I was reading an article the other day on About Health on '13 Tips for Running Farther' and one of them stood out to me which is: Run at a Conversational Pace. I d never heard this before and thought it was such a good way to put it. So this is how I am going to judge my pace, if I can talk and hold a conversation easily without being out of breath my pace is good, even if it is at slightly slow pace I will be building up over 4 weeks. 

AUGUST HEALTH:

For my health motive I am going to make sure I have at least 1 glass of water as soon as I wake up. Before I have a morning coffee, my breakfast or anything else. I am following the well loved saying 'Hydrate before you caffienate' 

AUGUST LIFESTYLE:

This is a kind of big one, cutting the alcohol. Now I'm not a massive drinker I don't go on a 'mad one' every weekend but lately ive been drinking almost every weekend due to going to festivals and going out for birthdays so ive decided im going August with absolutely no alcohol intake. This is also mainly because I will be moving back up to uni at the beginning of Septmeber and although I have pretty good will power and self control, trying to go through freshers week without some alcohol induced nights out just wouldn't be the same( the excuses of a student everybody).

So... the 3 goals above will be my monthly motives... the laws of august...the great goals! that I will be working towards,at and with throughout the month of august. On August 31st I will be doing a follow up blog post to update on how I did and continue through to September 1st to set 3 new goals!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Healthy Ice Cream For Breakfast?!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

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!

Saturday Morning Breakfast

So the gym opens a little later on a Saturday which means I get a lay in and can spend more time on my breakfast.
Today I’ve put together:
1 poached egg
2 slices of roasted sweet potato
½ an avocado and ½ a tomato mashed together
Handful of spinach

A lot of people have bread instead of sweet potato but because I’ve totally cut bread out my daily diet I didn’t have any so I opted for sweet potato which works just as well

My Morning Workout Routine

Yep, you did just read that I, a student, gets up in the morning and goes to the gym. From October to December last year I didn’t even know what the morning looked like as I had a horrendous sleeping pattern of going to sleep in the early hours and sleeping most of the day. Which looking back now is something I’m not happy I did but hey ho, it’s all one big journey.

But when I decided to change my lifestyle I was reading a ton of articles on what is the ‘best’ time to workout. Different articles said different things but my personal conclusion is whenever is best for you. At first I tried doing my workouts at different times during the day starting with evenings, as well as the gym being busy I was realising I was lacking in motivation due to being at uni all day and ended up just wanting to go home to bed.

So I switched it up and tried going during my lunch break at uni, which wasn’t too bad but when I had finished I was knackered and didn’t fancy going back to uni to do more work in the afternoon and again I then switched it up!

MORNINGSSSS!!
By far the best time of the day for me personally, at first getting into a routine of getting up at 6am to go to the gym for 7am and be back and showered before uni at 9am was quite tricky as my body wasn’t used to it but I powered through and now LOVE getting up early. To make sure my body would merge into this routine I was very strict at first of what time I went to sleep, it would be around 10-10:30 just so my body could get enough sleep to get up early. Making sure I got at least 8 hours sleep each night.

When my body started to get used to my new routine it was a lot easier and I had a lot more energy to start the day.

My Workout Routine:
At the moment because I’m mostly focusing on losing weight, I mainly focus on cardio in the gym. And loads of people say you need to mix it up with weights and stuff like that as well but so far my body is reacting well to cardio so I’m sticking with that for now. I mainly use 2 machines which are the cross trainer and treadmill.
Cross trainer: 45 minutes interval training, I will do a warm up then I will go on to doing:
2 minutes intense-1 minute cool-1minute intense-1minute cool-2minutes intense and repeat for 45 minutes. Raising your heart rate in small burst with intervals is a proven way to burn those calories and seems to be working for me!

I then head over to the treadmill and I’ll a lot of the time do a HIIT workout, which will start off as a fast paced walk, then a jog, then a standard run for 1 minute then a sprint for 50 seconds and back to a standard run for 1 minutes and sprint again for 50 seconds, I will repeat the run-sprint workout for 15 minutes.

My favourite type of workout is definitely a HIIT (high intensity interval training) workout, although it’s pretty tough and tiring depending on the level you push yourself to, You feel amazing after.

And that is about all I do at the gym at the moment, 1 hour of cardio a day is definitely enough to burn those unwanted calories and release the good toxins for your body.

When I go on to using other equipment at the gym to tone up after I’ve got to my weight goal I’ll update on my next gym routine