Goodbye Flabby Thighs and Hellooo Healthy Heart!

 Here's the beginning to my weight loss journey and lifestyle change and my calorie controlled 1 month diet kick-starter plan easy for any-one to follow!

Underneath quite a few layers of 'flubb & chubb' is a health freak waiting to come out! Yes it might be hard to see it if you've seen my expanding bottom recently or noticed ( as I heartbreakingly have) that I may just be starting to grow an extra chin. But, alas, It's not who I am inside. I want to drag my partner to salsa lessons, I want to climb mountains and go trekking in forests and do charity walks. I am practically T-total, drinking a few glasses of alcohol a year, I don't smoke or take any kind of drugs (unless they are prescription) and I know ALOT about diet and health and superfoods and I actually LOVE fruits and veggies and even more so than that, I love cooking with them!  

But emotional times, boredom, a boyfriend who can eat as much as he wants while never gaining weight and a lack of will power and money have led me to the state I am in now and, at this weight, The thin healthy person inside is being overtaken by the slob of my outer fat person.

Today begins my official losing weight, getting healthy transformation story though. I have the food, I have the plan. The only one that can muck this up is me and... well that's not the right attitude!

Below are the images of most of the items I have towards the next few weeks of my diet plan 

 you may have noticed is that the sell-by-dates on the products in the photographs are from february. Don't worry I don't still have any of that in my fridge/freezer rotting away.  This is just a very similar shop to the one that arrived yesterday evening so I thought i'd re-use the pictures :)

My entire fruit and veggie haul laid out across my tiny kitchen counter!

The most organised my cupboard has looked in months!

I have even more legumes and grains this shop!

I do love me some fruit!

In answer to the question some of you may be thinking, Yes i think I may have just emptied a small shops worth of fruit and veg from my local Tesco!

It's taken me years to finally admit to myself that I really, truly have no willpower or self control. Of course there were some clues along the way ; Hunting for hours for the keys to the pantry to sneak in and stuff my face when I was 9 or even sneakily eating hidden bought food and stuffing the wrappers under sofa cushions or between the mattress and the bed during my entire childhood. But, it's only now I've realised that, even as an adult, I have the willpower of a 5 year old in a candy shop. If I am on a diet and I know there is some sort of snack in the house I WILL find it and I WILL eat it and i probably WILL dispose of all evidence in an entirely sneaky way.

BUT... just because that's the case doesn't mean I'm going to give up trying and resign myself to being unhappy, unhealthy and overweight because pu another stone on me and I'd refuse to leave the house to hide from the public and no-one REALLY aims to become a house-bound hermit.

So here is how i'm tackling it:

The first month of this transformation is all about kick-starting myself into action. It will be a strict, calorie controlled, meal planned, exercise regime type of scenario. I will become one of those people that refuses to let anything pass their lips unless they know the calorie and fat content and, well, i'm actually okay with that.

the first two weeks is really all about shocking your body into weight loss. It's really a 'lose a stone in a month' type of plan but after that month you regulate your calories and continue to lose weight as a steady, healthy pace. By NO MEANS should you continue with the original number of calories unless you are at the weight range to only need that amount of calories for your body to function correctly. Otherwise you can do lots of damage to your body and heart when the goal is to get fit and healthy NOT thin and poorly.

Here is my plan written out in simple terms for you:

Week 1 and 2:

Breakfast:  300 calories
Snack:       100 calories and below 5% of your daily fat.
Lunch:        300 calories 
Snack:       100 calories and below 5% of your daily fat
Dinner:       400 calories
Before Bed: this isn't exactly calorie controlled but having something small before bed can boost your metabolism just to keep going during the night. This is also the time where I take my daily vitamins as this is the best time for absorption.

You will of course be adding extra calories onto that with drink but as I drink mostly water or very low calorie flavoured waters this isn't something I feel the need to have to write down within my plan.

By eating the 5 meals it means your metabolism is constantly getting a boost. It is good to space the meals out every 2-3 hours and that way your metabolism is kept going throughout the day.

Week 3 and 4:

Nows the time to add a few extra calories. My personal preference is 200 calories added daily  The way I will be doing this is adding an extra 100 calories either onto my lunch or dinner and then giving myself 100 calories for a 'treat' per day. This could be anything from low-fat fruit and yogurt to a high-fat dessert or some chocolate etc. The way to stick to a lifestyle change is not to completely eradicate all your guilty pleasures from your life but just to moderate them. 

After Initial month:

this part I'll come back to and do an entire separate post on towards the end of the month. This is where you need to find out how many calories for your age and weight you should be eating and then mixing your new healthy eating with exercise to lose weight as a steady, healthy pace between 1- 2 pounds per week.

I will, of course, be posting meal plans, diet tips and recipes on my blog during this whole process but it's worth noting that I am a vegetarian so, whilst i eat a very limited amount of fish ( smoked salmon, prawns and scampi..) I don't eat any meat and my own personal meal plans will be vegan or vegetarian dishes with the option to swap vegetarian items for meat or fish etc.

For now though I think I've written enough so

Love Always,

Luciie B

xXx

The decision to make a change in my life!

       

            I don't want to get into the ooey gooey details of it all but rather tell you how I got to this chapter in my life and how I plan on getting to the next one

Recently, I've noticed, my life isn't quite going in the direction i'd hoped. I am now out of college and more terrified than ever before about my future and more than usual for the scaredy cat that I am.

The last few years my life hasn't been easy sailing for me, that's all I'll say about it for now. Unfortunately,I am not now, nor have I ever been, brilliant with stress. I panic, stress eat, cry a lot and eat some more. Let's focus on the eating for now though; I am someone who eats when i'm stressed AND bored and in the last few years i've either been caught up in stressing about something internally or ..bored. So not exactly a good sign for my confidence or waist line... which you'd know if you'd seen my magical expanding act over the last few years.

I've always had confidence issues growing up and I've always been shy yet it never really seemed to properly 'affect me' though before moving back to the UK to Wales in 2006. It may have been that I'd spent lots of my childhood in foreign land but somehow I just didn't seem to fit right in Wales like I had in Africa and ,Even in Pakistan for my short time living there. 

In africa there was no defined line between us kids. There were no Emo's and Chavs and every other sterotype 'defining' people and their friends. The line separating people was, at best, extremely fuzzy along the edges. I think it came as a shock to my system to come back to a country where everyone I met wanted to define me by placing me in a box.. and If they couldn't find the box to squeeze me into then they weren't quite sure what to make of me. Which, Spoiler, is what happened. Turns out i'm not so easy to fit into a box (*make funny joke about my weight here*)

To cut a very long story short since moving to Wales I've had a hard time fitting in, maintaining long term friendships and feeling like I belong. I have, on the other hand, not had difficulty losing all shreds of confidence in myself and putting on an obscene amount of weight. 

I am now at a breaking point though. Now, I want to take my life back!

           If you're reading this you most likely already know that I want to be a photographer. More than want.. I NEED to be a photographer. It's my goal. It's my ambition. It's my life. Not to sound overly-enthusiastic.

But, let's get to the point. I am now 19 years old with social anxiety disorder. For the people who have no idea what that is it basically as wikipedia states ( and almost a dictionary definition of myself) ; 

'Social anxiety is a discomfort or a fear when a person is in social interactions that involve a concern about being judged or evaluated by others. It is typically characterized by an intense fear of what others are thinking about them (specifically fear of embarrassment, criticism, or rejection), which results in the individual feeling insecure, not good enough for other people, and/or the assumption that peers will automatically reject them. As a result, they choose to isolate themselves from society to avoid such situations. They may also feel uncomfortable meeting people they do not know, and act distant when they are with large groups of people.

 The difference between social anxiety and normal apprehension of social situations is that social anxiety involves an intense feeling of fear in social situations and especially situations that are unfamiliar or in which one will be watched or evaluated by others so great that one may be so worried that he or she feels anxious just thinking about them and will go to great lengths to avoid them.'

It has really only developed in the last couple of years but it's now become something holding me back, keeping me from my dream ( as well as friendships and normal social situations).

But, don't get me wrong, I completely know that this social anxiety is a mental affliction and something I can get over, if my pathetic will power allows it, which brings me to my point;

Tumblr sourced- NOT my own image!

            At the end of January I decided, on a whim, to start writing down some of the things I'd love to do in my life, mostly travel things mixed with some personal goals. A 'bucket list' of such i suppose (Although I hate that term because, well how unappealing a word is 'bucket'?! It doesn't sound at all dreamy like such a list should). Hours later and a list of almost two hundred and I had this crazy idea that I would go for it and get some of these things done! (Oh I do love my evening, spur of the moment, life altering ideas.) I would kick-start myself out of the road i'm going down and back into life where i'm not afraid to pursue photography because of fear of the models and make-up artists and any other stranger that may cross my path and I'm not afraid of everyone hating my work and I'm not afraid of being automatically rejected and i''m definitely NOT afraid of going to my boyfriends gigs because of the crowds of strangers and fear of judgement and rejection by everyone around me and I'm not afraid of..blah blah blah :/

All it took was that inkling of a thought and now I'm hooked on it. It has become my goal, my future, and everything this year that I do will be leading up to the trip next year. I need something to THWAP! me out of the road i'm heading down, To shock my system and push me to do things I never thought possible with my anxiety. 

But now it's becoming a plan, not just a dream. I am planning a round-the-world trip for next year to drag myself and my partner out of our routine and into new and terrifying territories of travel alone as adults. I want to start a kickstarter fund and turn the entire trip into a huge photographic project. the exact details I'm not completely sure of yet because, well I've pretty much told you that this was a crazy spur of the moment decision gone mad, but it will be something exciting and terrifying and I have lots of preparation to do to get me mentally prepared. 

But before running away into the big ol' world I've got quite a bit to do!

And starting  ... today :P ( or i suppose it started the beginning of February but NOT for this blog it didn't :P) I will be bringing you all along with me on my journey of getting fit and healthy as a vegetarian, planning my trip,as well as my usual fashion and photography posts and more.

There will be some huge changes coming to the blog soon; getting rid of/changing certain tabs and pages to accommodate diet and fitness and travel within as well as a whole new name and look and hopefully, by April next year I will be stepping out into the world with a crowd of followers to tell my travel experiences to and share my photo's with.

Over the next few weeks there will be a lot more rough guides of plans till I come up with the perfect Kickstarter project but then it's down to you, the readers, and the rest of the world to help me make my dream to and bring my wanderlust journey to you with my travelling journey and tips and photography along the way. Perhaps even self- publish ; ' The wanderlust of a socially akward teen. Braving new countries, food, experiences and people, camera in tow.' Jumping head-first into the big-wide-world as a nervous youth.

Love always,

Luciie Panda

xXxXx