Jillian Michaels and the teeny dress

My name is Ciara, and I'm addicted to Jillian Michael's DVD programme, 'Ripped in 30', and I am SORE. And TIRED. And EVERYTHING IS WEAK. And I HATE her. And I love her. And the best part... I fit into my 'skinny' dress. I'm by no means skinny, by anyone's standards, but we all have a dress that lurks in the back of the warddrobe, usually strategically covered by mounds of winter clothes, that we can never fit into. I call it my skinny dress. Lots of my friends would likely swim in it, but its MY skinny dress. And I love it. And its way too short. And it FITS.

My OH bought it for me as a present after spotting me lusting over it online, but bought a size that was way to small for me. It eventually fit, but many years later I had forgone the dream of the skinny dress and cast it to the dark recesses of my wardrobe with my shame. I've been trying it on in some weird motivation/self-flagellation exercise since January. Back then, it wouldn't go up over my thighs (ho-hum). In March, it wouldn't go up over my bum. In April, it wouldn't even come close to zipping. In May, it zipped up half way. And I tried it on the other day and it zipped up. I don't look GOOD in it yet, I'm still a bit like a potato in a vaccum sealed bag, but I FIT INTO IT AND THIS IS ALL THAT MATTERS. My goal is to wear it on my birthday date night, which is in July. Fingers crossed!

I said at the beginning of this blog that I wouldn't be sharing my weight or measurements etc, but I can tell you that since February, I have lost 8" from my stomach, I'm aiming for at least 10" and I'll be happy out. YAY for progress.

Jillian is really getting me there with her punishing horrible evil disgusting awful workouts. They are based on circuit training - there are three circuits, starting with 3 minutes of strength, 2 minutes of cardio, and one minute of abs. This takes approx 35 mins with warm up and cool down. This sounds very doable. Let me assure you that it is not and I dont care who disagrees with me. I have been training hard since January and I have found these to be the most challenging workouts of my life. Jillian hits multiple muscle groups with each exercise (think single-leg squats with a bicep curl...ow) AND THEN she hits the same muscles in every exercise in the circuit. This means it feels like your arms are SCREAMING by the end of a series... and example would be from circuit 3 last night - here's JUST the strength part of the circuit: 

1. pike push ups (30 seconds)

2. single arm left side push up (30 seconds)3. weighted elevated leg tricep dip (30 seconds)4. pike push ups  (30 seconds)
5. single arm right side push up  (30 seconds)

6. weighted elevated leg tricep dip  (30 seconds)

My triceps were aflame. I honestly have felt like puking on several occasions during these workouts. . It was a pretty big step-up in strength for me, and Ive also recently moved up to 10kg dumbells on each side (I'm probably ready to go up to 15kg at this point). I've been sticking to this pretty religiously, because I'm scared Jillian will find out if I skip a day. I'm definitely seeing results with this, on the first week alone I lost a half inch from everywhere. I havent felt strong enough afterwards to do my yoga cool down so I need to start doing yoga in the mornings now, which I have been very lazy about. Honestly this workout has me pooped, too tired to blog, too....

So overall I totally 100% recommend Jillian's workout, I've done One Week Shred too and this is WAY harder, I think this might be her most advanced workout. She's total f*cking a badass and you mightn't be into her style, she barks orders and screams at you throughout, but you can do it with the sound down and 'Sissy that Walk' blaring, like I do sometimes. Although I secretly think Jillian is totally freaking hot and I do absolutely enjoy a woman screaming orders at me. #learnedsomethingnew

Jillian is a total bitch but she gets you through it, I find her counting down and screaming "come on, two more, you can do it" really helps when I'm about to die in a gloupy mess of flab and tiredness on the floor. And when things get really really bad, there's always a RuPaul megamix.

The Punnet: review

Where I work, in Ballsbridge, there is a serious lack of good places to get healthy food. There is an abundance of 'soup and a sambo' joints (eugh) where white roll after white roll is churned out with chicken tikka and extra mayonnaise. But if you are trying to watch what you eat, or just eat healthily, there's hardly anywhere. I mostly bring in my own lunch, but when I forget, I normally have to cycle to Camden St to go to Listons to get anything remotely salad-like.

This was why I was over the moon to discover The Punnet had opened literally a stones throw away. Calling itself the home of healthy living, and a 'health and beauty store', I was delighted to see they were serving shots of wheatgrass, fresh juices, smoothies, salads, herbal teas and GIANT TUBS OF ALMOND BUTTER OMG. They seem to have positioned themselves as a super healthy store for gym bunnies, with paleo boxes and protein bars galore.

Yesterday I popped in to have a look and was impressed by some aspects of the store, and was a little disappointed with other aspects. The store was bright and clean, but the selection of products wasnt amazing. They had walls of tea, and shelves of almond butter (I'm not complaining) but it seemed like they might have been filling space with a lot of the same product. It was also more expensive than Nourish and other health food shops for coconut water, tofu, and almond butter (my quest to find the cheapest almond butter in town has led me to Donnybrook fair so far, the quest continues). They have another store in Glasthule which seems to boast way more stock and looks really fantastic, so I'm looking forward to them branching out and stocking more of what they stock there.

I opted to have a salad box where you choose a leaf, 4 veg and meat/smoked tofu for €6.95. I didn't think the tofu would be worth an extra €2 so just opted for the €4.95 salad box with no meat. After I had selected my veg, I was expecting some dressing options - but this was the biggest disappointment, there were none! They did however supply a gorgeous spicy hummus, but in a tiny tub and it was too thick to coat the oodles of salad leaves they give. I would have loved to have seen a healthy option for dressing, even a lemon, apple cider vinegar, avocado or mustard-y dressing with extra virgin olive oil. If you were a meat eater it might have been better as you would have had more flavour with the chicken or ham.

I got an apple, pineapple, spirulina, celery, cucumber and avocado juice too, which was gorgeous, and well worth the €5 as it wasn't watery or full of crap, sugar etc. It could have been a little less sweet though.

Overall, the juice was really nice, and filling. Which was good, because my salad was just a bunch of undressed veg which was pretty disappointing for €5. I think if these guys started to look into creating their own salads, like Listons (with grains like quinoa, buckwheat, some cheeses, gluten free wraps, etc) they could have a really loyal following.

I decided to go back today to give them a second chance today. I got a wheatgrass shot with apple and cucumber which was gorgeous and I could drink one every day, and a tuna, quinoa, avocado and tomato wrap which was OK, but again a little mealy and would have hugely benefited from some dressing or flavour of some kind. The tiny hummus smear on the inside of the wrap really didnt add to the flavour. I'm all for clean eating but you should SO have the option to add a clean, healthy dressing or flavour to your fillings. The large chunk of quinoa in my wrap tasted like nothing at all, which was disappointing, when it could easily have been spiked with lime juice, chilli and pepper and still kept incredibly clean and healthy.

So far, I'm only convinced that its got merit as a juice bar... but I'll be keeping a close eye on it to see if anything changes, especially in terms of their ingredients. I'm delighted to have a shop that stocks juice and health food shop ingredients, and I bought a tub of their clean version of nutella which I'm dying to try. But I wont be back for lunch anytime soon...

http://thepunnethealthstore.com/

The Breakfast Club

Breakfast can be a total pain. When you dont plan ahead, and you leave the house without breakfast as I did three times this week (because I was working at 7am), you have so little in the way of choice of something that will fill you up and still be healthy and low calorie. On Friday I decided to have a cheat and had raspberry scones with jam and clotted cream. It was absolutely amazing. But you cant have that every day, right? So what to do?

I put together a list of breakfast options that are high protein, not hugely packed with calories, and a mix of 'loads of time' breakfasts and simple, easy, day to day options. Ive linked to recipes where needed.

This is as much for myself to get back on track with my breakfast eating habits which have not been great. The other thing to say is that I have a green drink for breakfast at around 7.30am every morning except on the weekends, so I usually will eat something from the below menu at around 10am, because I dont find a green drink keeps me going until lunch.

Option 1: Porridge

Ive had a blog post about my love for porridge before. I have eaten porridge every morning, more or less, since forever. I love it, but sometimes you need a break. I'm on a low-carb kick at the moment, so am looking for high protein options for breakfast.

Option 2: Porridge substitute

You can make any of your favourite porridge breakfasts with a number of different porridge substitutes, like millet, buckwheat, or any other grain. One great substitute is quinoa, which is a grain with an incredibly nutritional structure. Its a brilliant high-protein breakfast option, and its a complete protein, meaning it contains all 9 amino acids. Its also high in iron and other minerals and vitamins, and is a bit of a powerhouse of a grain. You can just eat it with maple syrup and a nut butter, which is my favourite thing. You can add nuts too - pecans are amazing with the maple syrup. Add a touch of cream if youre not watching your fat intake :)  This is something you will need to prepare the night before. What you can do is on a Sunday, make a massive batch of quinoa, then pop it in a container in the fridge. You can then portion it out during the week (and use it for savory dishes and as part of your lunch/dinner too).

Option 3: Desert for breakfast - Chia seed pudding

Chia seeds are little nutritional powerhouses too, full of protein, omega 3s, and they absorb 10 times their size in liquid, making a kind of tapioca/semolina pudding consistency. Dont knock it till you try it.

10 tablespoons raw chia seeds
2 cups unsweetened almond milk (You can also use coconut, soy, or regular milk)
(*For a thicker pudding, replace 1 cup of almond milk with 1 cup non-fat Greek yogurt or non-dairy yogurt of your choice)
1¼ teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 tablespoons good quality maple syrup
Pinch of salt

Suggested Toppings:
Orange segments and pistachios
Mixed berries and lemon zest
Sliced Bananas with cinnamon and almond butter
Blueberries, toasted almonds and maple syrup

Place the chia seeds in a medium bowl. Add your almond milk, yogurt, and liquid ingredients. Cover with cling film and pop in the fridge overnight.

During the summer this makes a great cold alternative to warm cereal, and chia seeds are nutritionally amazing.

Option 4: Eggs

I always used to see people talking about having eggs for breakfast, and who the hell has the time for that sh*t? You know who? Everyone. Because they take hardly any time to make. You can have a scrambled egg on toast in 3 minutes, tops. You can have an omelette or a poached egg in 4-5 mins. Preparation is key for anything 'involved', so the night before, you can chop any ingredients you'd like to have in your egg - making a basic breakfast omlette, I'd chop one chilli, 1 clove garlic, 1 small onion, a handful of cherry tomatoes, and mix with 2 eggs, salt, pepper, oregano, and a drop of milk/almond milk. Pop this in a frying pan first thing in the morning and youve got an amazing breakfast. Serve with sliced avocado, a squeeze of lemon juice, roasted tomato and a slice of spelt bread. You can serve regular scrambled eggs the same way, or a perfectly poached egg. On the weekends, I add vegetarian sausages and fried onions.

Option 5: Pancakes

Ive given a recipe for protein pancakes before, but you can make any pancake healthy by substituting white flour for wholemeal, gram flour (chickpea flour), coconut flour, spelt, or any other kind of alternative to white flour which is nutritionally empty and fat-making. Keep your recipe simple, 2 eggs, 100g of any flour, 300ml almond, coconut or other dairy alternative, and add anything else you like - chia seeds, flax seeds, etc. Fry with coconut oil or EVOO, and top with chopped banana, nuts, maple syrup and nut butter. Yum! Using a blender, it takes approx. 10 minutes to make a stack of pancakes.

Option 6: Fruit and yoghurt with a protein shake

If youre pushed for time, a great breakfast is simply a pot of 0% greek style yoghurt, poured over a punnet of blueberries, raspberries and a sliced banana (or any fruit of your choice). You can supplement the calories and protein by including a protein shake with this. I'm in love with chocolate protein at the moment, its like having chocolate milk for breakfast, and its delicious.

Option 7: Cereal

If you absolutely want to have a bowl of cereal, there are a few you can choose from. But all processed cereals are high in sugar, salt and sometimes calories. Dont fool yourself into having special K, you may as well have a bar of chocolate for all the goodness it gives you. You'd be much better off sticking with something as natural as possible - weetabix, all bran or museli. This is my last resort for breakfast as cereals are just pretty crappy when it comes to being healthy and filling a lot of the time. Read the side of the box before you buy and compare sugar and sodium levels!

Hope this is useful to some of you for whom breakfast can be tricky. Happy breakfasting :)

Yogalife.

When I was 21 I walked into my first yoga class. I didnt have a clue what to expect, and wasnt able to get into most of the poses. The teacher, however, was so inspiring, and infectiously enthusiastic for the benefits of yoga, I came back. I shook and shuddered and whimpered my way through thousands of downward dogs until I mastered many of the more complex poses. I was eagerly striving to be able to do all the yoga poses, especially the advanced ones. I had lots of ego wrapped up in striving for this mastery - wanting to be the best, wanting to impress my teacher, wanting to rock the shit out of it. But more recently, my yoga practice has become less about trying to master and more about just going with what feels comfortable. And this is a precise mirror of how I am now trying to approach my life.

When I graduated from University with a Masters, I was determined to get a really great job. Something that sounded important and made me lots of money. A couple of jobs later, and I wanted more qualifications. More letters after my name plz. I began a PHD and spent 3 years striving to master this. After 3 years chasing someone else's dream (trying to be what my family and what I thought society expected of me), I unceremoniously quit. Quitting was incredibly powerful and cathartic, and since then, I have become less and less seduced by mastery and more and more about what feels good and right for me in the moment. I had a realisation that no one really gives a fuck what youre doing, so long as youre happy (not even your grandparents who proudly gush about their grandchildren's PHDs, high flying executive jobs, etc). No one who loves you wants you to be unhappy to prove a point.

While I was on holidays, I googled 'yoga teacher training Ireland' for possibly the 100th time. I found the school Ive looked at time and again. I searched my emails for the contact address. In the past 10 years, I have emailed this school 7 times asking about their next course. Each time, I told myself it was a luxury I couldnt afford, and I needed to focus on my career.

Now I'm 33, and I have been in several great and some not-so-great jobs. Some have sounded fantastic on paper. None have been fulfilling. None have been working towards my passion. I began to ask myself, what is the point of striving to be better and better in a field where you really couldnt give a shit? Sure, I can be good at my job, but who cares if it doesnt make you happy?

Yesterday I made a financial plan with my beautiful and ever-supportive other half, and this week I'll be enrolling to train as a yoga teacher in September. I'm taking another couple of courses along with this and in a years time hope to be out of my desk job and working for myself 100%. I cant wait to finally give myself permission to begin this journey I have been waiting to take for ten years. I'm writing this here because my blog has been a fantastic way for me to hold myself accountable for my dreams and goals. And I'm writing this to make sure my life never becomes about trying to master for the sake of mastery, but rather keeps focus on what is comfortable, what is good, and what I love to do. Fuck the desk job.

Post holiday blitz, and what I learned while drinking my own bodyweight in wine and eating cheese and pasta

One week ago I came back from holidays in Portugal, where I stuffed my face like a complete pig and let everything all hang out. I went to the gym 4 times to keep myself fit and not drop all my motivation but aside from that, it was diet out the window. I spent the entire week reading, and read a couple of fitness and health books that have been really inspiring and have helped me have a much better awareness of the science behind the kind of workouts Ive been doing (weight training and body-building, less cardio). 

One thing I learned while I was over there eating 100% carbs (damn vegetarian food on holidays is all carbs and fruit!) was that carbs make me feel AWFUL. White pasta, pizza, breads etc - all make me really ill. I felt sick, tired, lethargic and sometimes anxious after eating. Also I drank lots of wine which I had been avoiding and this made me feel hideous altogether. I loved my holiday but I could NOT wait to get back to my proper diet and get something green into my belly.

One of the books I read while I was away was The 4 hour body by Timothy Ferris. Timothy is a life- and body-hacker and multi millionaire from silicone valley, and has worked all his life to refine body building and optimum health and nutrition for a low body fat and high muscle density physique which is what I'm trying to cultivate. The book goes into extreme detail on diet, supplements and training regimes. He's much more focussed on the diet though, and the more I work out, the more I know that my diet counts so much more than anything else. Even though I'm pretty sceptical about these kinds of 'diets', as what he advocates is so close to what I'm already doing, I'm going to do his diet for 30 days and let you know how I get on. Today is day 1.

Ferriss's Slow-Carb Diet

Ferris reckons you can lose 20 pounds in 30 days without exercise, by introducing what he calls a "slow-carb" diet. I'm always allergic to anything that promises a quick-fix, but the rules are are simple, intuitive, and tried and tested (see the 4 hour body forums), and worth a try. 

Here's what you have to cut out: white bread, white rice, potatoes, and other white carbs, whole grains and steel-cut oats, all fruit and dairy (except cottage cheese). This will be a challenge for me as I have porridge most days for breakfast :( I dont think I'll be sticking rigidly to the diet beyond a couple of weeks, by I'm going to try as much as possible to stick to it initially and test the theory.

He also suggests eating the same small meals over and over and over again.

He allows two glasses of red wine each night (preferably a dry Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, or Merlot). “Red wine is by no means required for this diet to work, but it’s 100% allowed (unlike white wines and beer, both which should be avoided).” Lucky for me as I love red wine, but have been limiting my intake seriously over the last while, and doubt I'll be having two glasses a night....

Finally he allows for one full binge day per week, where you break all the rules and have what you like, but you use supplements, food (like cinnamon) and exercise to keep your blood sugar regular and ensure your body doesnt store the binge food as fat. This is explained in detail in the book and is fascinating science so I'm going to try it.

Other stuff in the 4 hour body

Another thing I'm going to take from the book is the use of supplements, which I havent used before. He recommends the use of a fat-burning stack called PAGG. PAGG is a combo of 4 different supplements, taken in a combination at particular doses: Policosanol, Alpha-Lipoic Acid, Green Tea Extract and Garlic. All these simply increase your body's ability to burn fat. If youre interested in finding out more about the science behind this, just google PAGG stack. I'll also be supplementing with Magnesium. 

He also advocates something that I'm going to try but am not happy about: cold showers. He talks in detail about how plummeting temperatures can significantly help with fat burning. But really I am just excited about the challenge of cold showers, because I'm a cold creature and always tend to have boiling hot showers and HATE the cold. It'll be good for my mind to overcome the discomfort, so Im happy to try this without the fat loss benefits.... well, happy is a strong word... :)

Day 1:

Breakfast: Poached eggs with roasted tomato
Lunch: Giant salad with lentils and chickpeas
Dinner: Taco salad and roasted sweet potato chips
Snacks: Nuts