I don't know about you, but I love reading lists and tips, especially when the tips are concerning fitness and diet.

I've been coming up with this list of tips recently that I wish I had known before I'd set out on my fitness journey, so I thought I'd share some with you, I may need to add to this in future!

1) Progress is progress, and most progress is slow. Don't get disheartened because progress is always a step in the right direction

2) Regardless of your diet, unless you are eating enough to sustain your body through your exercise and general life you will not be able to function nor progress

3) You also need to stop yourself from going OVER your calorie allowance - it doesn't matter how 'clean' you eat if you are taking in too many calories for your body to burn

4) Don't make a big deal of your gym sessions - there's no need to snapchat, instagram or facebook your every workout. If I did that I would be doing it 4 days a week and lets be honest, nobody wants to see it. I am also firmly of the belief that posting your workouts on social media makes them seem like they're special - you don't post every meal or when you go to sleep, why post your workouts and make them more special than they need to be? Save it for your cheat meals and you know you've earned them!

5) Don't cut out food groups or foods unless you really do have an allergy/intolerance. Cutting something out just makes you feel like you're missing out, a balanced diet is the best lifestyle to live

6) Save your money on the latest 'must have' products - a decent protein and caffeine are probably all that you really need to complement your fitness plan

8) Put down the slimmer teas, stop drinking your calories in the forms of juices and fizzy drinks. Just stick with water and normal teas such as peppermint (good for bloat) and green tea (good for metabolism and natural caffeine) and you don't need to spend £25 on a few bags of stuff that will give you stomach cramps for a few days.

9) Concentrate on warming up, form, and cooling down. The benefits of these cannot be underestimated, it's no use pumping weights if you're doing it wrong and injure yourself.

10) Everyone is different, embrace advice and suggestions but know what's working for you - notice someone at the gym doing something you might want to try? Go for it, don't feel like you need to use the same weights or do as many reps

What do you think of my list? See anything on there that might help you?

I'm nowhere near perfect but if I had known some of these things a few months of years ago then maybe I wouldn't have fallen off the wagon so many times in frustration!

L xxx

After my post last week where I shared my tips that I found help me to get back into my work out routine in the new year, I thought I'd share with you some tips I've found from personal trainers that might also work.

It's always the second and third weeks of January where motivation starts to disappear and you can easily fall back into your old ways before you've even realised it!

So here's some of the best tips to help you keep on going:

1) The image you have of yourself will define what you will work towards - get a mental image in your head of what you want and keep it there. This is why I love pinterest and instagram for providing inspiration all the time and giving me something to work towards. Find something that will work for your body type and work on it.

2) Eat MORE good food MORE often - love this one! Snack more on veggies, keep your protein intake regular throughout the day and don't let your blood sugar drop. I try and eat every few hours, this means I never get really hungry and get to the cravings stage so I don't ruin my hard work. It REALLY helps and although you might think its weird to eat more food more often, as long as its the right food it won't cause you to gain weight. Since January I've been so hungry I've barely stopped eating but as its all good food its OK!

3) Carbs are GOOD - Carbs are necessary and without them you won't really get very far. Make sure you have them for breakfast and lunch especially as it will carry you through the bulk of the day, and particularly before and after a workout to fuel yourself and your body. I'm talking brown rice, oats, wholewheat pasta, sweet potato and quinoa, good carbs to keep you going and on track!

4) Don't let your body adapt - We're all guilty of getting into habits, it's the easiest way to make sure you keep going. Initially making yourself go to the same classes to create a habit is great, but after a while your body gets used to it and it doesn't have the same effect. Keep changing it up, try and go to a different class on the same day at the same time to keep your habit, go for a run outside instead of the gym or go for a hike on an unpredictable route. Anything to vary exercise will make sure you get the best out of it. I'll be doing body pump tomorrow morning and I might go really heavy for a different track each week for the next few weeks to shock my muscles into working harder.

5) Don't go all or nothing though - Stay consistent in terms of efforts, don't run every day for 2 weeks and then give up because you've got blisters and shin splints. Allow your body time to build up and recover but keep pushing and don't give up just because you ache more than normal.

6) Prepare everything - Workouts and food in particular. Don't turn up to the gym and wander around deciding what you're going to do, write it down or plan it all in your head and just go for it whilst you're there. Same goes for food, prepare your meals and plan out when you're having what meal, it will help when you're tired after a workout just want to eat, and stop you from going for a takeaway or a ready meal! One of the easiest ways I've learnt to do this is to prep a load of meals on one day and portion them up. You can then freeze some for later on and keep others in the fridge. I also find having cooked chicken and a tupperware of ready cooked quinoa in the fridge helps as I snack on that instead of crisps!

7) Perfect your form - Before you start piling the weights onto the bar make sure you know what you're doing and your form is correct or you'll injure yourself before you start. Not only that but knowing your form and performing the full range of each movement for each rep will get you the most out of each exercise that you possibly can; i.e. squat lower, push up harder and stretch further, it will make you sweatier without a doubt!

8) Focus - This means ignoring your texts, calls and emails whilst you're in the gym. Focus on what you're doing for the 30 minutes or hour you are exercising, not only will this make your workout seem like it goes faster but it will also ensure you get the maximum out of it too. Blast your favourite music and concentrate.

9) Hydrate - The most important factor in weight loss and exercise. Don't forget to stay hydrated and keep a bottle of water near you, I carry one with me all the time and the benefits are endless!

10) Make a record - Take photos for a before and after. You don't need to put these on the internet (I certainly haven't!) But it can help to show you progress that the scale might not. I've also started to keep a journal of my dirt and exercise habits so that I can see progress. An increase in distance when I run, or a change in pace, an increase in weights or just about anything really. I'm hoping it will give me a boost when I see how far I've progressed or how my body has changed.

What do you think of the tips? Are there any that stand out to you that you think might help? 

I know I need to keep changing up my classes and exercise and definitely need to prepare my snacks better!

L xxx

Hello!

A different type of post for today's 'fitness friday' theme. You can see the other posts I've written with this theme so far on this link.

Sometimes when talking to other people about losing weight, eating healthily and trying to get fit there are a lot of things we set ourselves that make it completely unrealistic to achieve which means you fail and more often than not end up going back to square one or worse.

Over the last few years I've slowly changed my diet and lifestyle which is how I believe I've been successful in losing some weight, getting fitter and maintaining it. So I thought today's post might be helpful to list a few things that I've found have made a huge difference and you could maybe try adding a different one each week or try something that you haven't before to try and make a difference.
I'm no fitness coach or nutritionist but I've found these have helped me, and maybe they'll help you too. I've split this up so there's 5 this week and 5 next week so it's not like reading an essay!

1) Never skip breakfast. This is my biggest hate, when people moan they're not losing weight when in reality their body is in slow mode because they didn't kick start it in the morning. Eat a banana if that's the only thing you can do but I'm a person that hates breakfast and I manage to eat it every morning at 6am so no excuses that there's not enough time in the mornings! Make time!
You have to train yourself but start with a piece of fruit and add in a yogurt or toast until you can eat a decent sized breakfast. This won't make you put on weight (as long as its decent food) but will kickstart your metabolism in the morning for the rest of the day.

2) Try and resist a snack in the evenings. The last thing you want to do is be really good all day and then ruin it by attacking the ice cream, crisps or chocolate at 9pm when you've got minimal chance of burning it off so it will be stored as fat. If you've been to the gym late and are having your meal late then that's fair enough, or if you are genuinely hungry try and eat some greek yogurt or something with nutritional value rather than going straight to the sweet cupboard. If you've got a sweet tooth try having a hot chocolate instead, Options do one for 42 calories per cup. Or if in doubt, clean your teeth, it will help to take the taste of sweet foods away.

3) Emotional eating - we've all been there, long hard day at work, stuck in traffic, plans are cancelled because of bad weather and you just feel crappy so you go straight to the cookie jar.
I read a quote once that was something along the lines of 'do not reward yourself with food, you are not a dog'.
I'm pretty sure we all understand that quote, filling yourself with stodgy carbs and high fat will only make you feel worse health wise and you'll feel guilty which will probably mean that you'll also decide to give up and 'try again on Monday'. Diets do not only start on Monday's, appreciate the day has been a useless one and start again in the morning, that's why there is more than one day in the week.

4) Change one meal at a time - by this I mean change breakfast or start eating breakfast, swap your crisps for fruit, chips for vegetables. If you vow to change your diet overnight it will NEVER happen. Give yourself some time to change everything and it will become habit. Change one meal or snack each week and don't forget to have a cheat meal every week so you can have a bit of what you really want without ruining your efforts.

5) Sleep! Apparently a study has shown (cannot find the source sorry) that most repair happens between 10 and 12 midnight so to maximise your body's repair you need to be asleep at this time. Not sure how true that is but we all know that 8 hours a night is the optimum time for sleeping, no longer or you'll feel sluggish and no less or you won't have recovered from the day before. I have to be up early for work anyway so an early night is usually a standard thing, but even if you're in bed earlier relaxing then that's a start.

Hopefully some of these tips will help you, I will be continuing this post next week with the second 5 tips that I've found helpful.

What would your number one tip be for changing a diet into a lifestyle? Are you a breakfast lover or skipper?

L xxx

I was going to write a post on how I clean my make up brushes but I thought I would include a link to a video by two girls who run a blog and YouTube Called A Brunette Duet. You can view the video by clicking here. They have some great videos I enjoy watching their tips. I've always followed a few tips when cleaning by brushes and after watching this video I've change how I clean my brushes to the same as this. This is a great video!

Cleaning brushes is important. Make up applies better on clean brushes, there is less chance of spreading bacteria around and it keeps your brushes in good quality.

When I first starting looking into the best way to clean make up brushes one of the top tips I always stick to is to make sure that you dry your make up brushes upside down. Having them lied flat of stood up in a pot means water can go into the handle of the brush and dry there and start to disintegrate the glue or handle and mean it could fall of quicker. 

I used to tie my make up brushes in a hair band and hang it from a door handle so that they would be secure upside down. I'd leave them like this for a day so they were completely dry.

After watching the girls video mentioned above I know roll a hand towel and lie it down so I can rest the brushes on and angle so the water doesn't go in the handle.

Nice clean brushes lied on the roll so the water comes out!1 These are the brushes I was most weeks.

I found my RT stippling brush the hardest to clean. With foundation brushes I think patience is needed to ensure it really is clean. I find it takes about 4 soaping and rinsing to get it really clean. I squeeze right at the top of the brush and don't stop till the water runs clear.

I currently use baby shampoo (but would love suggestions as my foundation brushes are feeling greasy and not clean anymore after they've dried) I place it on the back of my hand. Massage the shampoo through then rinse well and repeat if it's not clean.

I really want to try a proper brush cleaner and the ELF one seems reasonable so would love to know if you've used it before or if you have any cheeky ELF discount codes.

I try to do my brushes every Sunday night. I find getting into the habit of doing them on a Sunday easier. As I always think of it as a chore but it doesn't take that long once I'm set up.

During the week I have two foundation brushes I currently use as I find a foundation brush won't stay clean for a week. Also for foundation and eyeliner brushes I always wipe them clean with a make up wipe so they stay a bit cleaner.

I hate waiting for brushes to dry! They seem to take forever. I've now started drying them carefully with a towel before letting them air dry completely.

With my make up brushes my three top tips would be

• Always leave them to dry upside down or on an angle
• Wash till the soap suds are clear. Some brushes need more than one lot of soap
• Wipe clean after use for foundation and eyeliner brushes. It means I can get away with washing mine weekly.

Love M

xxx