health – Page 7 – MISS HOLLY P

misshollyparish health

My Fitness Pal- A life saver for weight loss

Hey lovelies!

I know this is a really well known app but it surprises me still how many people have never heard of it when I’m raving about it so I thought I would share the features and benefits. If you are considering trying to lose weight, start a healthy eating regime, go on a new diet, change your existing diet by going vegan or veggie or just like to keep track of what you eat my fitness pal is amazing, it will track, educate, inspire and help you on your journey! Its available in the Apple app store and or Android too for FREE!

My fitness pal for me personally- more than anything- just opened up my eyes to how many calories you can sometimes intake without even realizing it! One great thing is that it has a scanner facility so you can physically scan the packet of what you’re going to eat and it inputs all of the information for you, you just need to alter how much you ate of what you scanned, there is of course a manual feature too! You input how much exercise you have done, how much water you have drank and handily it also has a built in pedometer so it will tell you how many steps you have done and what that is in calories burnt. The range of foods stored into MFP is just so vast and amazing, including many popular restaurant chains too so you can still stay strict and focused even when eating out! For the more advanced trackers you can add tour foods by the single gram too if you don’t want to approximate.

When you first sign up it will take all of your details such as- your height, weight, goals and activity levels and then based on the information you have supplied it will work out how many calories you need to eat to achieve your goals, this doesn’t always have to be weight loss, it can be to help you gain weight too or just maintain. You can also put progress pictures on there too so you can really visually see the development of your goals. As you update your weight progress there is a graph too which measures your loss/gain or shows the maintenance.

A feature that I find really interesting too is the nutrients and macros. Nutrients shows you where you are sitting VS the RDA or a custom goal you have set yourself. This is so good because you could possibly be really lacking in a certain nutrient or having too much of something- commonly for a lot of people this will be sugar from overeating even good things like fruit and too high cholesterol from eating too many eggs or other high cholesterol foods.

The macros feature is like a pie chart of the balance of your macros- macros are your carbs, protein and fats and again is a good way to track if you are having a well balanced diet.

So what do you have to lose? It’s free, if nothing more it is a fantastic digital food diary, it certainly could teach anyone a thing or 2 about their own diet and what they are eating and it congratulates you when you do well!

Thanks for reading! Has anyone else found this or any other app really handy? I couldn’t live without this now!

Hx

misshollyparish health

Sweet Potato Toasts

Hey there folks,

I saw on an Ashy Bines Facebook video these sweet potato toasts and she made it look so easy I thought I would give it a go. I did a savory one and a sweet one so I had a couple of attempts.

Now as somebody that really struggles with bread and gluten and anything wheat based in general I have to make the choice of sacrificing toast (because

lets face it I’ve not found a decent store bought gluten free bread that doesn’t fall to bits- please enlighten me) or eating it and having a very painful tummy ache, many trips to the ladies and a good few days of bloating. I thought this looked perfect!

I started by taking my sweet potato and cutting into slices about 1-2mm in thickness. I tried cooking these in 3 different ways, Ashy did it in the toaster, this did not work for me but if you have a more powerful toaster you may be ok, under the grill from raw (turning regularly) and lastly and most successfully and the quickest I microwaved the slices for a minute and then grilling (also turning regularly)

After this for this particular dish I tried a microwave poached egg hack- half a cup cold of water in a mug, drop in the egg in and cover, microwave for 1 minute….. Worked ok but prefer the traditional method personally, good if you are in a rush or limited on cooking appliances.

I then finely chopped up half and avocado, jalepinos and cherry tomatoes, seasoned with chili flakes and black pepper… and applied all to my 2 pieces of sweet p toast! It was pretty delicious too!!

Then the sweet course…..

For my second trial I used the microwave then grill method on my sweet p and I applied a decent spread of Meridian peanut butter and applied some blueberries and sliced strawberries and it was delicious!!

Has anyone else tried these?? I feel brimming with ideas of different concoctions! These can be so easily adapted for a vegan diet, or the meat lover too by adding and removing and always nutritious and gluten free!!

What have you tried or feel free to make a suggestion for me to try!

Thanks for reading,

H x

misshollyparish blog

Apple Cider Vinegar for Weight Loss

Evening friends,

Just a quick one I’ve been trialling recently- Apple Cider Vinegar for weight loss.

Now I’m not trying to prove anything groundbreaking as there is masses of content on this out there in the virtual world about this I just want to share my experience without the fluff and facts- if you would like to find out the scientific stuff click here for a good source.

Since I have started doing this 2 weeks ago I 100% have noticed a difference- on my stomach particularly. I’ve been doing one table spoon in a glass of water first thing everyday but some of the girls at work have been doing it before every meal for an extra kick.

My stomach is my problem area- it’s chubby for starters, bit of a tyre like poodge going on particularly my lower tummy, I get bloated easily, retain water and also sometimes don’t have the most reliable digestion.

Two weeks on and HEY PRESTO I can wear tops tucked into high-waisted skinny jeans! Topshop Joni and Jamie’s specifically!! I have never ever been able to do this before so it has definitely altered the shape of my stomach. I haven’t been doing any ab work as a test- just my normal gym sessions and healthy diet!

I just wanted to share with you if you’re struggling to shift a few pounds or if you wanna crank your diet up a notch- my bottle of Aspalls ACV was like £3 so give it a go folks! I hope you all see the same results!!

When selecting go for raw and unpasteurised and “with the mother”, the Bragg one is very popular but slightly more expensive. Aspalls has done the trick for me! Available at Holland and Barrett, health food stores and most supermarkets but they may not have the variety.

Please let me know your results!

H xx

misshollyparish health

The Omni Diet

So after a starting the year so well and shedding like half a stone really quickly from being bang on it with the meal prep and doing classes like every other day minimum it all went a bit wayward as my social calendar started to fill and in came the burgers and booze and buffets! Goodbye diet, hello some of those pounds lost.

I was kind of not really too bothered as it was cold and sitting on my bum watching tv and eating cake seemed preferable to going to the gym in the snow and eating raw kale for lunch. When I was having on of these said couch potato days I came across a show on channel 4 called “how to lose weight well”. It’s on the All 4 player and is so worth a watch- I binged every episode season 1 and 2!!

In a nutshell each episode puts 6 diets into practice on real people dieting for real occasion on different time frames. Over the many episodes I watched the diet which stood out to me the most was The Omni Diet which the girl who did it lost a stone in 2 weeks!! I thought to myself “I can do that”.

I’ve been on a relatively clean eating diet plan for around 3 years now since I first had a personal trainer and I know that I enjoy that kind of food and I lost 2.5 stone from the start of my journey so for me the omni diet really was a case of cutting out the dairy, bread, grains, gluten etc.

Now I can’t necessarily guarantee how long I could sustain this for or how good for you it would be long term but this week I can assure you my cravings for sugar are reduced, I have been getting much fuller much quicker and I haven’t really missed the dairy at all! After doing it just for 7 days in the lead up to a work trip I can confirm I lost 6lb in one week, it works.

The diet itself main structure is a 70:30 ratio of plant based foods vs protein. It promises a weight loss of up to 12-15 pounds in 2 week, health benefits from the intake of the plant based foods, improved digestion, anti inflammatory properties and reduction of bloating. So instead of 5 a day I’m talking like 10 a day!!! It was created by Tana Amen who is a registered nurse and bachelor of science in nursing and she believes that this diet not only changes your body and eating habits but your mind too. You can read more about Tana here

The diet itself is pretty strict and could end up quite pricey if you are doing it completely by the book as all meat should be lean naturally raised and all seafood wild-caught which would be preferable in an ideal world so I have adapted it to suit me and really embody the key principles of the diet and steer clear of anything on the don’t list which you can read a handy summary here

I also used my fitness pal to track the calories and nutritional values which really helped and the diet was averaging about 1000-1200 calories a day.

I thought I would just share some of the meals and snacks I have been having which I found really quick, easy and tasty. I worked with the eating sequence of breakfast – snack – lunch – snack- dinner – snack.

Everyday for breakfast I had a green smoothie which I make out of a frozen mix I get from Aldi for £1.99 for 6 portions. They do an exotic one too, these are great if you are skeptical about having loads of fresh food around and an unpredictable schedule. It has a little banana in it which is on the no list but I figuered it shouldn’t hurt so…Coconut water, green mix (kale, mango, banana and lemongrass) blitzed in a Nutribullet. Nutritious, delicious. Other ideas include poached eggs and salmon, spinach, avocado, poached eggs and tomatoes and any combo of the above.

Morning/afternoon/ evening snacks– berries, almonds, carrot/celery/pepper/cucumber sticks, hummus, cold cuts of beef or turkey.

Lunch– a little repetitive but on the go and at work it was just super easy, I would cook up a load of kale and frozen peas, let it get cold to use as the base greenery for my salad (you could also use any salad leaves or spinach for this too), I would add cherry tomatoes, tinned sweetcorn, cucumber, sometimes avocado, olives, artichokes, beetroot the options are endless and then normally a tin of tuna to finish it off with a little drizzle of balsamic vinegar. Turkey breast and chicken breast work great too. I know that cheap tuna is a no no from Tana but to keep it affordable I have just used whatever meat and fish I can get my hands on.

Dinner– A staple meat or fish- turkey breast, chicken breast, steak, cod or salmon (you get the idea) a load of veg for my 70% so like asparagus, kale, broccoli, mange tout, mushrooms (high in protein and totally fills you up) and the beauty of this diet too is that you CAN have sweet potatoes! So a baked sweet potato with salad and tuna is not off the menu either (just sadly no butter allowed)

To cook everything I have tried to steam, boil or dry bake as much as I can or eat raw so I really can truly track what I’ve eaten.

All in all a really good diet, I am definitely gonna do another couple of weeks when I get home as it truly did work and anyone trying to push for a last couple of weeks for an occasion or holiday I thoroughly recommend it. I wasn’t starving on it, i think I was getting all the nutritional quality I needed and it has changed how I look at food in terms of discipline.

Advice- definitely keep a food diary, be prepared- make it in advance, have the ingredients you need to make it a success, drink a lot of water and try to enjoy it!

Thanks so much for reading! I’ll let you know of any future success I have! Any readers thinking or trying this diet? Or already tried it?

Love H x