For the last week or so I've been feeling really tired and sluggish, the Christmas excess has truly hit me and last week when we went for our first 10k walk of the year I knew I had to get back to living much more healthily again.

Although I have no regrets about leaving Slimming World because I managed to maintain most of my 3.5 stone weight loss, I have now put on around a stone just basically because I love cake too much and the weather has been rubbish, at least I'm honest!

At my thinnest, I was still curvy and that's all I want to be so here and now it's time to get back to being healthy Mandy, it still irks me a little that I completed Couch to 5K and then promptly stopped but that's me, I like a challenge and when I've completed something I move on, plus if I'm honest I think I can burn just as many calories from a good dog walk.

Harriet also feels she wants to get back onto a healthy lifestyle program and I find that these things work better when you have support, she says Slimming World worked for her and so we're going to try a new group on a new day and I'll just adapt it by cutting down on sugar without replacing it with artificial sweeteners something I feel quite strongly about.

There's also the fact that the enzyme I lack which makes me alcohol intolerant is also affected by too much sugar so I'll be turning to books like Lean in 15, Davina's Smart Carbs and her new book, Sugar Free in a hurry which I've just ordered, when I was sugar free I can't tell you how well I felt, I could partake of the occasional glass of wine without worry, I had super skinny legs and I was ten levels above bouncy, yes it's probably time to go and break out the Agave Nectar, it's the only sugar substitute I actually love and it tastes great when you make a baked rice pudding with almond or coconut milk.

Look, I'm going, to be honest, I doubt I'll be giving up cake in all of its glory but if I can get it down to once a week and then maybe my own cake made with brown flour and honey or maple syrup then that can't be such a bad thing can it?!

What I won't be doing is swapping to skimmed milk and sunflower spread or Frylight, if you have ever looked at the ingredients in some of those things, well let's just say I believe you're far better having butter from grass fed cows, whole organic milk and cooking with olive oil if you can't dry fry.

With regards to exercise it's simply going to be a matter of getting out there for more 10k walks with Holly Bobbins and maybe the occasional 5k run a couple of times a month, I'm going to start again with the running and see when I find my boredom level, I think it's possibly somewhere around the 4k but if I can run from my house to Jesmond Dene, across Armstrong Bridge and back it's around 4-5k and with headphones in listening to bouncy music which makes your stride a little wider then that's not a bad thing.  If I can drag Harriet on some epic walkies with me too, well then that's half of the battle as you don't notice how far you are walking when you are with your best friend having a good chinwag!

And so, my plan to get back to happier, fitter, slinkier, bouncier me is underway and with a trip to London at the end of the month to visit Mr France, well that's just a little extra in the motivation station, if you are undertaking any kind of lifestyle changes then do comment and we can all supoort one another, lets all get fabulous in time for spring!

Run, Mandy, Run, Couch to 5K week 4

So it's week 4 of Couch to 5K and it's still going extremely well, last night I went out for my longest run to date, it was 16 whole minutes of running interspersed with just a couple of minutes of walking to recover and yet again I felt that I could have continued to run when I'd finished my session, Jo Wiley is definitely proud of me this week.

My scales say I've put on 1lb again but I think that might be more to do with Le Petit Chateau, Hawthorns (more on that one in the next post) and a girls night on Saturday.  I took 3 nights off in between my last run of week 3 and my first run of week 4 so i'm not exactly feeling sprightly, fit and I think if I'm honest I still feel more rotund than I hoped I would at this stage.

I have a plan though, this arrived last week from Nutribuddy, now I know what you're thinking and yes it does look suspiciously like one of those meal replacement things.  I'll me honest, my reaction to meal replacement is a sad, unhappy, crying face but wait, before you get all maudlin and start sending sympathy...

I have a plan, Nutribuddy sent me their kit in the hope that I'd give it a go for 2 weeks and I don't even have to use it like a meal replacement, all I plan to do is replace cakes with shakes, yes that's right, chocolate sculpting whey shake instead of gooey chocolate fudge cake, I'm not going to use the vitamins because I'm already totally vitamin'd up to the max with my daily Vitl which is my monthly vitamin subscription, an indulgence for my body if it were.  There's a suggested diet book and lots of lovely yummy recipes which are things I'd cook anyway, lots of Quinoa and salads and healthy yummy tasty things.  One thing I definitely haven't tried before though are their hunger fix capsules, so what you do is take them an hour before your lunch or dinner and then apparently some kind of miracle happens and you just eat less.

So here's the thing, I'm a size 14 and I've been this way, pretty happy for a couple of years now but just for 1 whole week I would like to be a size 12, I'm not looking further ahead because it's never happened yet but combined with running I want to give my legs and my knees a little extra incentive to be super bouncy and maybe I can get my 11 and a half stone of me to get down to 11 stone and that really would be a miracle.

It's a 2 week plan and Rome was not built in a day but if this gives me a little bit of a leg up in the continuing adventure that is me respecting my body in the way I should have done in my twenties it's got to be a good thing.

I'm not replacing meals with shakes though, you can do meal replacements if you want to but Mandy cries when Mandy gets hungry or "hangry".  I think I was supposed to do one of those in the mirror look at my lardy tummy photos but believe me when I say that no one needs to see that and I don't even own a full length mirror, be sure if I suddenly end up with a paddle flat tummy I will be lording it about though, or lets just take a moment to think about that, i'm 42, I've delivered 3 big babies, had 2 C-Sections, and had a radical hysterectomy, no one ever needs to see my tummy, I don't even look at it myself if I can help it! So here's me with lovely Elanor, I have lots of squidgy bits which need improvement and that's all you need to know.

Things I'm loving this week, running in the rain, it's empowering, I feel like I'm in a running movie, that is until someone fast goes past me and I feel like I'm standing on a slow conveyor belt, in fact I'm so slow that when someone fast ran past me last night I had a momentary wander if I was actually running in reverse.  I'm also loving running to the Hamilton soundtrack, get it in your ears, it's a musical, I suspect Rent was the momma and Eminem was the papa, it's part rap, part camp, part awesome, I never thought I would like it and by some strange parallel Abigail discovered it on the same day and we both love it just as much as each other!

A 14 day weight loss kit with Nutribudy costs £34.99 and they sent me one of those in exchange for following my progress, as ever the words are mine, the views are honest and the hunger pangs wouldn't be very much fun on one of those actual diets, this is just a helping hand people, I repeat, just a helping hand.

The Running Man(dy)

After my last run, I look fine, I smiled the whole time!

About a month ago if anyone had asked me if I ever ran I would have laughed at them, run? me? Not even for the bus if I can help it I would have wittily retorted.  It's just not something I thought I would like, I'd seen runners, they were sweaty, they were out of breath and they just looked knackered.  

Now lets fast forward to today and I'm just about to move onto week three of the C25K program and you know what?  I absolutely love it. I smile the whole way around, especially at passers by (yeah, look at me, I'm a runner, heehee) Ok, so we're at the end of week two and that means I have a brisk warm up walk for 5 minutes and then I run for 90 seconds and then walk for 2 minutes and repeat for a total of 20 minutes followed by a warm down walk for another 5 minutes at the end.  I can't even begin to tell you how good it feels to be able to do this at the tender age of 42 and a half, I feel like Paula Radcliffe.  My coach on the podcast is Jo Wiley, she's been there you know, she knows how it feels.  I did start with Sarah Millican and then, well, she just wasn't all that motivating really, I later read somewhere that she was eating crisps whilst recording the podcasts but I'm not sure if that was true or a rumour.

It's funny how your mindset can be changed by exercise and I do feel that I was in a place where I was ready to start running, I was already walking ten to fifteen thousand steps a day and I was definitely outpacing Holly on our daily walks, even when we have our power hour walks, incidentally as soon as I put on my running gear she hides in her crate and growls at me, she knows, this isn't some kind of leisure jaunt (well except it is really) this is serious running business.

The first run, I did literally feel like I was dying at the end of it, possibly why I'm glowing!

Whilst you might imagine I have a playlist containing lots of dance music with heavy beats you might be surprised to find that I like running to musicals, they keep me at a pace which is slow enough not to exhaust or kill me and I quite like running over the brow of a hill whilst listening to a crescendo in the music, trust me it works, I do however admit that I also quite like running to Disney, bouncy happy music and sometimes, just sometimes I run to David Guetta but don't tell anyone I told you that or you'll ruin my reputation.

Another thing I've obviously had to embrace is running gear, I've never owned so much lycra, if you'll allow me to, let me transport you to the world of Karrimor Run, I absolutely love the stuff and it's so cheap from Sports Direct, I have 3 pairs of Karrimor Run trainers, my excuse is that Looby can also use them as we have the same size feet.  Oh and one other thing, if you are a woman of ample bosom, you might want to consider the humble shock absorber sports bra, it keeps my boobs where they are supposed to be and being an F cup I really do need it.

I'm going to share regular posts about me, The Running Man(dy), hopefully it might just inspire more people of my age to take up running or any age and size in fact, running isn't just for the teeny tiny sporty ones, there are so many people out there doing the same program you are more likely to get encouragement from others in the park than you are to be heckled, there's a running revolution out there you know and that makes me feel good, I just wish I'd shown as much respect to my body in my 20's and 30's!

I have of course still got a very long way to get to 30 minutes of solid running but you know what, I feel like I've got this, I set myself challenges all of the time in my life, work and business and mostly I succeed!

I use affiliate marketing to facilitate the feeding of my children, I also write great content just because I care and I want to inspire more people to get active and to get out there!

Run Fat Girl Run #thisgirlcan

I can't believe I'm actually about to say this but I've just been for my first run ever, yes, in my whole life! I completed day one of the couch to 5k tonight with Sarah Millican as my coach!

This is obviously a brand new thing but it's been coming for a while.  On Wednesday in the Lake District with my lovely friend Harriet we accidentally ended up on the wrong trail in Dodd Wood and ended up nearly at the top of Skiddaw, I say nearly because I didn't know it was Skiddaw and just before we got to the summit we found another forest path which would take us back to our hotel, the Ravenstone Manor.  My heart rate was 147bpm and I thought I might keel over but we got to the most amazing viewpoint.

Then on Thursday whilst on a boat across Ullswater I nearly froze in the keen easterly breeze so I popped in to a brand new shop in Pooley Bridge and bought myself a very outdoorsy top, it's fleece lined and has a pocket for my phone.

This afternoon I invested in some Karrimor Run trainers and a couple of sporty running numbers and that was it, running Mandy was born!

I guess that it wasn't much of an extension from what I already do, after all I'd already done my power hour when out with Holly Bobbins but that was mainly to deflect the cake calories from afternoon tea.

I've been walking 10-15k a day now for about 18 months and I really do achieve it most days, if I can't achieve that I try to get my 30 minutes of exercise according to Apple watch and to think a few years ago I was a very rotund girl who weighed more than 14 stones.

Whilst I can't say that my first couch to 5k was fun, I really did struggle with some points but I felt a massive sense of accomplishment when I got to the end of the session.  

Tomorrow is a rest day running wise but I'll still do my 10k and ideally I'd like to lose a stone by Christmas and I'd like to be running 5k a couple of times a week too.

I'm putting no pressure on myself but I love how my life has changed so much, I'm not fat Mandy anymore, I'm that Mandy, outdoor Mandy, running Mandy, this girl who has achieved so much definitely can!