How to do cereal the Paleo way..

Breakfast: Whilst it’s well known to be the most important meal of the day, it’s something most people don’t find the time to enjoy, or at least, enjoy properly. It’s well known that having a good breakfast to start your day is key in managing and maintaining a healthy body, but when work and other commitments get in the way, it is easy to forget how important it really is.

For most of my childhood, breakfast consisted of sausages and boiled egg with soldiers (the best). I also went through various pancake stages when Waitrose used to do the homemade ones (so middle class it hurts). When I turned 14 and suddenly became extremely aware of boys and what I looked like, I eat what seemed to be the best weight loss option, aka Special K, which was fucking horrific in terms of actually being healthy but seemed to have some kind of crack like ingredient in it that made me desperate to eat about ten bowls a day. This has never been tested or proven but I’m convinced there’s something in that theory because every single friend I have who eat it said the same thing. Just a warning… I then moved onto porridge, and finally, to the relief of my trainer, I (Re) discovered eggs, salmon, and avocado. Whilst the porridge wasn’t necessarily terrible for me, it was really heavy and always made me feel bloated and a bit pregnant afterwards. I would have these super starchy, heavy, ‘healthy’ (special K, occasionally Shreddies) breakfasts and wonder why I felt SO exhausted and sluggish all morning, and until I started having healthier breakfasts with more protein I genuinely had no idea the food had something to do with it.

FYI – If you don’t have the right ratio of protein/carbs etc in your meal (ie – not enough protein), your body produces a hormone that makes you really sleepy, so that explains that symptom. You don’t need coffee, you need protein! And maybe coffee as well, depending on how much sleep you’ve had.

However, as is often the case with everything I love (songs, food, etc) whenever I find a food that I love, and is healthy such as the eggs and salmon, I obsessively eat it non stop for however long it takes me to get so sick of it that I can practically never look at it again. I had basically had eggs for breakfast every day for about 2 years, and I was fucking sick of it. I realized I needed to find healthy alternatives – not only for my taste buds, but for my metabolism. As your body’s metabolism can slow and get lazy if you always eat the same thing, I decided to try and switch it up a bit – and try not to eat the same thing every single day. Particularly since starting the Paleo diet last year, I really had to try and be more exciting.

Although there are obviously millions of other breakfast alternatives that are Paleo friendly, such as fish, meat and nuts, green juices and so on, which I will do another post about, I decided to keep this one just for Paleo friendly cereals – because let’s face it, cereal is fucking great. However, 90 percent of cereals are definitely not great FOR you – like Special K, they’re loaded with sugar and dreadful ingredients that you definitely don’t want in your body. Discovering healthy cereal has been FANTASTIC for me, for my metabolism, gut health, and also just because freaking YUM. Below are my favourite healthy alternatives to the shitty cereals, in no particular order – hope you enjoy!

• Primrose Kitchen’s Carrot, Apple and Cinnamon Muesli

I LOVE this one… I mostly try and avoid muesli as the majority of them are full of sugar (moment on the lips, forever on the hips hunnay) but this one is made without gluten wheat or artificial sugar. I think it’s also a great idea to add vegetables in. The chia seeds and psyllium husks make it great for breakfast, and it tastes amazing. There are also other flavours if apple isn’t your thing! It’s really reasonably priced at just under £6, this will last most normal people a couple of weeks, however I go through about 2 packs a week because I eat it like it’s my last meal on this earth and I’m hungry in the mornings. Find it at Whole Foods, Planet Organic or on the website :

http://primroseskitchen.com/shop/muesli/raw-carrot-apple-cinnamon-muesli-400g

• Bench Pressed Oats (Oomf!)

If you like porridge and oats but want to switch it up and add some protein in there too, this is the brand for you. Healthy, gluten free oats infused with whey protein. Bingo! Porridge without the mid morning energy slump. WERK those muscles…

http://giveitsomeoomf.co.uk/

• Roots and Bulbs – Quinoa Granola

This always gives me loads of energy before a workout – really nice with almond milk, coconut yogurt, or even blended berries (you can make a good acai bowl with this one!). It’s not like your usual granola – which can only be a good thing, as it tastes good AND isn’t packed with shitty ingredients and hoards of sugar. Find it in store or visit…

http://www.rootsandbulbs.com/

• The Living Food Kitchen – Buckwheat Granola

This is fucking DELICIOUS, especially with almond milk. However, although there is no added sugar, make sure you stick to a small serving (50g or less) because there is still quite a lot of natural sugars. This one is great for a snack when you are craving something sweet but don’t want to fuck up your diet! Again – find at Whole Foods, Planet Organic or…

http://www.thelivingfoodkitchen.com/sprouted-buckwheat-granola-18.html

• Paleonola

Paleonola do amazing granolas without the crap. I discovered this one at Whole foods (bit of a theme going on here!) where they have a whole section full of paleo friendly granolas, but this might be my favourite.

http://www.paleonola.com/shop_ep_53-1.html

• Whole Foods ..

Whole Foods also have a large range of buckwheat, rye and gluten free oats, which they sell in huge bags of pure oats in the gluten free section. These are inexpensive and will last you for absolutely ages. I believe the best store for these is the Piccadilly one, but they all deliver!

Let me know how you get on with these, if you’ve tried them, even if you hated them!

Bon appetite!

My favourite chemical free beauty products!

For most of my teen years, I used to spend most of my money the way most teenage girls do – obsessing over all the makeup and beauty products I could get my hands on. I never really gave much thought to what was in these products, or what they could do/were doing to my skin and body. I had literally built up a half used collection of half of Boots and Selfridges beauty department and (rather ironically) it was NOT pretty. I remember speaking with all my girlfriends about products and the massive annoyingness of being a 14 year old girl, and how various doctors/dermatologists had always gone on about how until you’ve ended puberty there’s nothing you can do to improve your skin. The older I’ve got, and the more interested in health and fitness I’ve become, the more time I have taken to learn more about the products so many of us use and how best to look after my skin and body. And let me tell you – it has been a long and difficult journey since I was a badly fake tanned and overly bronzered 14 year old in a pink juicy tracksuit!

One of the biggest mistakes I realize that I made when I was that orange 14 year old was the amount of chemicals I was putting on my skin. If you look on the label of something and it has more than about five ingredients in it, it’s PROBABLY not going to be very good for you. In loads of popular products there are a shit ton of dangerous chemicals which can do anything from irritate your skin to fuck up your hormones. As I’ve written before – you know eating junk food is bad for your body, so why would you do the same to your skin? Bad skin products and makeup are essentially the junk food of skincare and beauty products. I wrote in a previous post of the quote that I love, ‘invest in skincare before makeup – the better your skin is, the less makeup you need’ and it’s as true now as ever. I love makeup, but it’s no fun caking yourself every day and feeling like shit whenever you’re not coated in MAC products, and making your skin worse in the process.

Below are my favourite beauty products that I have achieved amazing results with and are all chemical free – and not tested on animals either, for any vegans reading!

HAIR: Hair needs looking after just like your skin! I always use Aveda when I’m washing my hair, which you can find at John Lewis – (http://www.johnlewis.com/aveda-shampure-shampoo/p236722). It’s slightly more expensive than your standard supermarket home brand, but a bottle of their shampoo and conditioner lasts me a good 6 months, (And I have really long hair!). They have a wide range of products but I just use their standard one about twice a week.

FACE MASK: I was never hugely into face masks. I tried quite a few when I was younger and desperate for amazing skin, such as the much coveted Eve Lom (which was horrendous and majorly messed my skin). Since then I’ve kept it fairly basic and just invested in good moisturisers and cleansers, but I visited Content recently (http://www.beingcontent.com/) and asked for their recommendations on the best masks, and they introduced me to REN skincare’s glycolactic radiance renewal mask, which ‘is a potent bio active peel mask designed to renew the complexion, reduce the appearance of fine lines and dramatically improve skin tone’. I have been using the REN mask for about a month now, once a week, and it is UNREAL – the day after I always have girlfriends asking me what I’ve used.

http://www.beingcontent.com/skincare/face-masks/glycolactic-radiance-renewal-mask.htm

CLEANSER: My favourite cleanser has for some time now been the purifying foaming cleanser from Suki. From the first time I used it about 18 months ago, it has been amazing. I usually use it once a day, straight after I’ve worked out. The package states it gives ‘long term results without side effects’ and it’s not wrong. Despite using this product every day, it still last me for a good 6 months. Holistic benefits include: ‘The sebum mimicking jojoba oil mingles with your skin’s fatty acids, allowing the actives & apple enzymes to penetrate pore channels where bacteria resides, “eating away” congealed surface oils & dead skin without clogging or drying out the skin.’ (http://www.beingcontent.com/skincare/cleansers/wash/purifying-foaming-cleanser.htm)

Makeup Remover: For the past couple of years, I have been using Bioderma, which has been good for not irritating my skin and does the job as good as the next. However it sometimes takes absolutely AGES to take my makeup off with this one, so I looked for an alternative and then I found NUXE rose miscellar cleansing water. This product is also really good if you have sensitive skin, and like Bioderma it also cleanses your skin as well as being a makeup remover, so you don’t have to go through the annoying process of cleansing as well as makeup removing when you’ve come home from a night out! It’s also great at removing eye makeup, and it doesn’t sting your eyes if you accidentally put too much on the cotton bud! It also smells AMAZING, so if you want to go to bed smelling like a bed of roses, this is the thing for you!

I had a bit of a pain trying to find it in-store at Space NK but you can get it online here.

http://uk.spacenk.com/micellar-cleansing-water-with-rose-petals/MUK200008751.html

Waist train, lose gains

Recently, I was having a conversation with a friend who told me she has bought a ‘waist trainer’. To those of you that don’t know what this is, it’s essentially a corset which is supposed to serve the purpose of giving you a smaller waist. If you remember Keira Knightly in Pirates of the Caribbean (I believe it was the first one) fainting due to her excessively tightly laced top, you have the right idea. Khloe Kardashian recently uploaded an Instagram of herself wearing her waist trainer, an idea she apparently got from the seriously bizarre Blac Chyna (Tyga’s baby momma aka the only woman with a faker ass than Nicki Minaj).

 

 

It is becoming increasingly unavoidable to check your social media site of choice whether that be Pintrest, Twitter or Instagram without multiple accounts or photos coming up of girls who look like they are straight up from a Drake video. Everyone is obsessed with asses and getting a curvy, hourglass figure, with butts bigger than planets and waists tinier than my little sisters wrists. The situation is fuelled further by image obsessed celebrities, particularly creepy rappers who appear to be solely motivated by women’s bottoms. (Jason Derulo is great, but ‘you know what to do with that BIG FAT BUTT? REALLY JASON?)  The world has gone curve crazy.

 

So when a friend of mine – who already has a body that makes Kim Ks look bad – told me that she had bought a ‘waist trainer’ corset, I was SO BAFFLED. ‘Doesn’t it hurt?’ I asked.

 

 ‘Kind of, I had to take it off the other night because it was so uncomfortable’, she replied. ‘It kind of feels like you can’t breathe’.

 

After she confirmed my suspicions, I decided to check out the hype further.

 

I literally cannot get my head around why anyone would do this to their body, if they had any idea of what it does to you. Corsets went out of fashion for a reason – they can literally kill you!

 

A waist trainer works something like this: crushing your ribcage and stomach slowly and rather uncomfortably so that your appetite and actual bones shrink down a few sizes. It’s so unnatural and wrong! If you were meant to have a tiny waist, you would have been born with a tiny waist. We have got to stop aspiring to be like these women who have bodies that are totally different to ours! Know your own body type and own it! And celebrities who know they have a huge influence on younger girls and their body image should be fucking ashamed to promote something which is so bad for you all in the name of vanity. They could be promoting healthy eating and working out, which would be a much more sensible message to put out there for young women and girls. But they’d much rather get their ten percent and instead show off a totally unhealthy and damaging piece of equipment all over the web, which effectively promotes laziness and not much else.

 

  – THIS IS SO BIZARRE 

What is the problem with going to the gym and putting in some work to reach your goals, please explain to me!! Shame on you, Khloe Kardashian! First it was workout rants and squat photos, which is all very well and good, but now this? Whyyyyyy!!

 

Much of me thinks this is part of a much wider issue which many people (particularly escorts on Instagram….bitch you ain’t no model….we know you’re selling pussy stop lying) seem to be affected by, which is basically laziness, aka paying for multiple surgery operations to make it look like they workout a fuckload but really don’t. It’s sad! Because if you do that, you’ll never actually get any of the benefits that you should from exercising, such as a stronger body, a happier and healthier mind, stress relief…the list goes on.

 

Also let’s be honest, does anyone want to look like Blac Chyna (or whatever she is called) when they’re 80? Unless you’re going to go into a weird kind of porn industry, I would vote no.

 There are plenty of examples of women who (literally) work their asses off to have small waists and amazing butts. These are the women to aspire to for this kind of training! My favourite people to follow on Instagram for these tips are:

@lyzabethlopez (she created @hourglassworkout and honestly her bod is just the best thing ever

@alexandrabring

@michellelewin

Also, if you get a chance, check out Brett Contreras, who has a page on Facebook, and a whole book on how to build your body and butt up, which I bought, and my ass is thankful!

 If waist trainers and corsets were beneficial to work out with, don’t you think you might have seen them in the gym or at sweaty betty? I think there’s kind of a reason they’re only sold on dodgy internet sites halfway across the world…

I think curves are amazing…I just don’t think they’re worth crushing your body to gain.

 

 

 

 

 

Content Beauty & Wellbeing : An amazing store with a revolutionary approach to skincare!

Call me selfish, but I was actually really hesitant to write this blog. This shop has been an obsession of my friends and mine ever since I discovered it, and a big part of me doesn’t want to share it with anyone! Please don’t take it from me! Situated on Bulstrode Street in Marylebone, the boutique was opened in 2008, and focuses on organic and natural skincare – no chemicals and no nasty stuff! After all, the world is a mean enough place as it is, and the same should definitely not apply to what goes on your skin and into your body!

 Content also specializes in beauty treatment and therapies, as the website will explain. This includes manicures and pedicures, award winning facials, mineral makeup consultations, acupuncture, grooming services, meditation, Chinese medicine, food and nutrition advice…the list goes on!




‘In the rapidly evolving natural & organic beauty sector Content provides a hand-picked selection of the most advanced, cult organic beauty products from around the world. Brand selection involves meeting a criteria which ensures undesirable synthetic chemicals are edited out whilst focusing on results driven high-end organic beauty brands. Proving that the desire to go natural is no longer a compromise on effectiveness or luxury.’ – Content

 

Like most girls, I’ve always been pretty into skincare products. I’ve often found that when reading magazine reviews of products or simply reading the label of any number of creams in Boots that claim they will revolutionize my skincare routine I’ve felt certain that’s what they will do, but 90 percent of the time these products are a complete waste of money and do absolutely nothing good for my already sensitive Irish skin. So when I stumbled across this hidden gem it kind of changed my life!

 

I often rant about the insane amount of chemicals which go into our bodies from the food that we eat, and Content has taught me that skincare is no different. The healthier your skin is, the healthier it’s going to look. So let’s think of skincare products like food for the skin: the less chemicals used, the healthier the skin. And therefore, the more confident the customer! I’ve been using the products from Content for about a year now, and I’m never going back! My skin has never been better. My favourites are the following:

 Suki Skincare – The best money I’ve ever spent! All of the line is revolutionary, my favourites being the balancing day lotion, and the creamy foaming cleanser. Really lightweight and will make your skin will be clearer than ever. Dreamy!

 

Hurraw lip balms – Forget carmex! These babies will make your lips so kissable all the boys will be going insane.

 

Green & Spring – these guys do pretty much everything, and I’m the most obsessed with their body lotions! To die!

 

Laidbare – ‘butter me up’ trust me, after applying this, that’s what your boyfriend will want to be doing!

 

Therapi skincare – Lemon myrtle honey moisturizer will make your skin softer – and clearer – than a babies bottom!

 

 

Bazaar nail polish – having cute nails is VERY important. The hands are the face of the arms, and they do loads of hard work, so you have to reward them accordingly. These amazing polishes are 85% organic and won’t dry out your nails like the standard ones. They also go on really nicely, and even clumsy idiots like me can paint their nails without getting 90% of the product on their fingers rather than their nails.

 

 

I once read that it’s better to invest in skincare rather than makeup, and I completely agree. The healthier your skin is, the less makeup you need – and vice versa. Who wants to pile loads of rubbish on their skin, clogging their pores, only to then have to ‘invest’ in more makeup to hide the problem? FIX the problem! Content do deliveries, so no excuses!

 

PS: If you’re a member at The Third Space, you can get a cheeky 10 % off! 

And in advance….you’re welcome! Find all products and more on the website at http://www.beingcontent.com

SHOP

CONTENT BEAUTY/WELLBEING
14 Bulstrode St,
Marylebone
London
W1U 2JG
VIEW MAP

Phone: +44 (0) 20 3075 1006

Shop Hours:

Monday / Wednesday / Friday / Saturday 10.30am – 6pm
Tuesday / Thursday 10.30am – 7pm

Topic of the week: Blowfish

This week’s blog is dedicated to the growing number of females in London town who have had their lips done. All of a sudden they appear to be everywhere – passing me on the street, creeping up behind me in Selfridges, all the sushi restaurants, at the fish counter in Waitrose….

  

What confuses me is not even so much the amount of girls getting their collagen fix, but the amount of girls getting EXACTLY the same trout pouts. Am I missing something here? Is there a doctor doing a 50 % off deal on lip injections? My initial response was to blame Kim K, who is also the perpetrator of the caterpillar eyebrows trend (FYI: colouring in your eyebrows so heavily it looks like you let your baby cousin loose with a brown crayon on your face is NOT CHIC, and you look more like a character of similarly NOT CHIC show The Valleys than an exotic member of the Kardashian clan). However, at least Kim’s many lip jobs don’t bear resemblance to a creature of the sea. My views on surgery are fairly open: whilst I do think that it can be an addictive process which only ends up making you more insecure as you strive for perfection which is unobtainable, it can look good if you have the right surgeon, who understands that less is more. But lip jobs baffle me.

 

It’s the whole concept behind why women get their lips done which I don’t understand. If you’ve had your trout pout done (it brings new meanings to the term plenty more fish in the sea…), it doesn’t make you special, because everyone else who sees Dr Lips is getting the same lips as you. When a man looks at your lip job, he is definitely not thinking, Oh, wow, her lips are amazing, I wonder what it would be like to kiss those lips. He is thinking about you kissing a region a little more southern. To put it bluntly, as I was told by a male: ‘They’re thinking about you sucking their dick’. (We can fuss all we want about men being so complicated, but they’re really quite simple: Me, My Dick and I, is the general life line).

 

 It’s also the rudest because half the time I feel like the people who have had their lips done are angry with me or sulking. Why do you look so unfriendly?

 

  My point is all of these women look exactly the same. They are paying good money to look like a TOWIE reject. Call me old fashioned, but surely beauty is about being unique and happy with yourself? How is something desirable if every other girl walking down Oxford street has it? I hate referencing this because it’s clearly subjective, but for arguments sake: Are the most ‘beautiful’ women in the world not successful because they posess something which is not really obtainable simply by nipping to the London Clinic in their lunch break?

 

To conclude, I am OVER IT. Most of these women also take all of the best Louboutin sizes and it’s pissing me off. Last year I bought a pair of lady peeps for £525 and a year later the price has been mysteriously upped to £695. The whole WAG look is far too accessible and getting tackier by the minute, ruining brands I once loved and upping prices by the second in an attempt to delay the situation. I can’t even buy a Hermes belt anymore, because I’ll look like an arsehole. In the words of Regina George: What is happening to the world?