Friday 13 February 2015

Having a (Nutri) Blast!

This year something has changed, something which is impacting on my skin, my exercise routines and my energy levels.

It is a new arrival in our kitchen.

And I am obsessed with it.

A NutriBullet.



My fiancé asked for the machine for Christmas and after a bit of exchanging (the first one was damaged) he had one of the popular food extractors (fancy blender/juicer).

I’ll be honest I wasn’t too fussed about getting one (particularly as we’ve already got a standard blender we bought when moving in and still haven’t used) and we were given a hand blender as one of our joint gifts at Christmas.

I thought this is another one of those dieting fads. ‘But look how fast it blitzes everything up’, ‘watch the video of how little waste there is’, ‘see how you get all the nutrients direct, it’s so good for you’. And so on.

Cut to now, I am addicted to this little black machine. I look forward to thinking up juices to make and in particular pushing down the cup to initiate the blades. I am like a big kid.

And it really does blend items so quickly and so well!

The biggest thing though? I’m still at this point unsure if it’s a psychological thing, but I feel great for it. I really feel like my energy has been boosted and my skin is clearer. It could be coincidence but the eczema I often get hasn’t appeared either.

I’m also finding when working out I seem to push myself more and I genuinely find coming home to a juice is something to look forward to, not a chore.

As someone who doesn’t regularly eat a lot of fruit easily, I’m also finding the NutriBullet a great way to incorporate more fruit and vegetables into my diet.

Typically on a weekend I don’t really have fruit, when I do during the week it’s as a healthy snack for the afternoon at work and usually the same types.

Now as well as my afternoon fruit snack and my vegetables with my dinner, I’m then getting a huge boost of fruit and veg from the NutriBlast I make.

We’ve tried a few that are supposed to have particular health benefits and are now trying to mix up our own recipes too. There are so many options though and I am constantly coming across recipe ideas online.

Plus I even – yes this is how obsessed I am getting – Tweeted the NutriBullet account for recipe ideas last week.

At first buying all these fruit and vegetables concerned me since it doesn’t come cheap (along with various nuts and seeds), but we’ve had so many juices out of it that it actually balances out.

I appreciate at this point you wonder if I am being paid by the company and am doing some sort of unofficial ad! Honestly, I’m not, but I’ve been so pleased with how I feel from having these juices I thought it was worth sharing.

I’m not using it as a meal replacement right now, I’ve been able to keep within my recommended calorie intake to lose weight and still have a juice. However, I am considering trying one of the actual juice/detox plans as a boost.

The next thing now is to add some colour, we’ve been following the general guidance of 50% greens, 50% fruit, top up with water and add seeds/nuts if you wish. However, every juice so far has been green so think we might need to start getting a bit more inventive soon!


Thursday 12 February 2015

Jillian Michaels: Maximise Your Life

Slashing all the tyres. An analogy that has really struck me.

Recently myself and my fiancé attended a motivational talk. The talk was given by American personal trainer Jillian Michaels.

Yes, the Jillian Michaels who is behind the 30 Day Shred, the workout DVD I have obsessed over, over the years! (She even jokes herself in the UK she’s known as ‘the Shred lady’).

Admittedly I’ve never really been to a coaching session like this before and I really enjoyed it. As cheesy and cliché you may imagine it to be, it was actually pretty useful and inspiring.

On her Maximise Your Life tour, the no-mess trainer covers diet, exercise and general approaches to life.

I love her no nonsense way of talking. She admits herself she can’t share a miracle cure to lose weight and that all the information and fitness basics you’ve heard before are all she can share too.

When people ask questions and make excuses she stops them in their tracks and makes them take responsibility.

I guess this is what’s behind her success.

But back to those tyres.

One of the things Jillian referred to are the air soufflé and dust dieters. This is typically me. These people are super strict and don’t eat much at all during the week and are tough on themselves. Then on the weekend they blow out on a ton of junk.

She then uses the analogy of slashing the tyres. How people take the view that when they are having a ‘bad’ day and have eaten something not so good for them or haven’t exercised that they should just go full throttle and then eat unhealthily the whole of that day as a result.

This is so me. ‘Oh well I’m eating out tonight, or I’ve had a chocolate bar I might as well pig out now and go mad’.

Jillian says this is like your car getting a flat tyre and you jumping out and slashing the other three.

How true is this for a lot of us ladies on diets I imagine?

The good thing is that now being aware of this and the useful analogy sticking in my head I’m more careful of taking this approach.

Case in point, yesterday, I knew I was having a ‘cheat’ meal for dinner. Normally I would have written off the entire day and eaten badly and had a ‘day off’ from exercise. Instead I ate healthily all day and went for a workout to help compensate for all the additional calories I’d be consuming.

Now, don’t get me wrong I’m sure this won’t always be the case, but I feel even if that’s all I take away from the session then it was worth it!