10 ways to stay MOTIVATED this January

There is no better time to start a new regime than January. Not only is it the start of a new month, but the start of a new year, making it the perfect time to leave all of (or most of!) your bad habits in the previous year. And usually at the top (or fairly near) of peoples list is getting fit – or rather just looking fit as fuck – but there’s no avoiding the two pretty much go hand in hand. After a month of Christmas parties fuelled with mulled wine and dinners consisting of mostly stuffing and sausages, however, January is often a bit of a struggle, and more often than not, what starts off as a constantly rammed gym slowly dribbles off into peace and quiet again come February. I read recently that much of peoples gradual weight gain as they get older comes from gaining it during the holidays and never quite managing to shift it afterwards (I did read this on the Daily Mail though so don’t quote me on that, ha ha!) and I can definitely see how this happens, especially as workloads get bigger and the weather is somehow colder and darker than ever – not exactly the nicest morning wake up, having you feeling like running to the gym when it’s pitch black and sub zero. Below I have decided to include my top ten tips for staying motivated in January and working off your lard arse for the rest of the month, no giving up!

Currently on my bedroom wall…

• Set goals and stick to them

With no clear idea of how you want to improve your physique and fitness, progress is tricky. Try making a four-week plan with weekly goals of upping your treadmill time, weight on the squat bar, and so on. Mark your progress as you work through the month. It’s a million times easier to stay motivated and focused when you can see yourself changing and developing!

HIT IT BITCHES!

• Plan your workouts

Instead of just hopping over to the gym and doing whatever, plan your workout before you get there. Make sure you diversify your activities and keep moving from exercise to exercise – you don’t have to be at the gym for hours, an hour or even 45 minutes of hard work is much more realistic and better for you than 2 hours of moving like a snail!

Don’t do it for the people you love, do it for the people you hate!

• Switch it up

If you go to the gym and do the same workout every single day, chances are, you’re going to get extremely bored – and stop seeing results after about a week. Thanks to THE WORLD WIDE WEB, finding new exercises and workouts online is easier than ever. Get on Instagram and check out some of the fitness pages – check out videos of exercises you’d like to try, and don’t be shy! (Have an instructor show you if you’re not sure…don’t hurt yourself!) Everyone at the gym is there to do the same thing, so don’t be embarrassed. Better to feel a bit awkward at the gym than super embarrassed to take your clothes off on the beach! Make sure you try and check out workouts from people whose bodies you admire as well – no point copying Arnold Schwarzenegger’s moves if you don’t want to look like him!

YES IZA

• Make an inspiration board

I’m not ashamed to say that the wall above my desk is literally covered in photos of hot girls whose bodies I would totally not mind having. Although it’s important to love your own body and accept that you will never look like Beyonce, it doesn’t hurt to have a little motivation to keep you going. When I first started working out, I literally had the Victoria’s Secret catalogue stuck to my fridge, and it seriously works! When you’re opening the fridge for a late night snack, nothing puts you off quite like staring at Candice Swanepoels abs. Abs over alcohol!

• Go to new places to work out

If you haven’t got a new gym membership, try moving one of your workouts outdoors (if you can bear the cold for the first few minutes, it’s pretty refreshing), or going to a new class – check my previous post on the best workout classes in London for ideas. Nothing wakes up your body quite like starting a totally new activity!

• Give dry January a try

If alcohol is a regular and important fixture in your life, try and cut it out for a month. I work out fifty million times better when I haven’t been drinking for a while, just because – aside from the shitload of sugar and empty calories, plus the post drinking carb binge – my body is that much less tired and I feel a lot fresher and more energetic from getting it out of my system. You’re not going to be so up for a 7am workout if you’ve been knocking back the Pinot the night before, no matter how much water you had afterwards!

• Remember REST is as important as your hard work

I remember asking my biology teacher once why we seem to need so much sleep and I’ll never forget his answer – ‘think of it like literally recharging your batteries’. You can’t hit a workout with a full battery life if you didn’t charge it overnight!

• Be hard on yourself

I know that everyone goes on about how you shouldn’t be hard on yourself, but sometimes you fucking should. Do you think Beyonce became Beyonce from saying to herself, hey, I’ve done enough and I’m all good now? NO SIR! The first person you need to be hard on is yourself, otherwise you’re never going to develop. Push yourself to get better! You don’t come into this work a baby and stay that for the rest of your life – change is vital, especially when everything else is improbable. I feel an intense wave of guilt when I miss a workout or a set (slightly OCD) but I’m also grateful for that, because that’s what makes me work ten times harder the next time.

• Keep a record of what you eat

There are loads of apps where you can track your eating and actually even find out more about what you’re putting into your body, which in turn can help you lose more weight as you become more aware of what you eat. A great one is MyFitnessPal, which is free on the App Store (so no excuses for not getting it!) and you can actually scan your food into it, allowing you to see, for example, how much sugar is actually in that drink you got at lunch. A lot of the time, food companies are fucking cheeky and that ‘2g’ of sugar you THINK is in the bottle is actually ‘2g’ per 100ml…when the bottle is 500ml. Stay conscious! You don’t put diesel in a Ferrari engine…..fuel your workouts with the right food – first that swims, then that flies, and plenty of greens!

• Find a workout buddy

It’s way easier to work out if you have someone to work out with. If you get super bored, it’s nice to have a buddy to work out with – as long as you still get your shit done! You’re much more likely to get to that workout if you have to meet someone there, so find someone you enjoy working out with and push each other to get better!

Good luck for January…Stay focused and in the words of Arnold…DON’T BE A BABY!!

Why S Club 7 are still the best 90’s band ever

Like many 90’s kids, I had the pleasure of being one of S club 7’s biggest fans. I sang and danced my heart out in the mirror to all of their songs on a daily basis, had a S club 7 themed 7^th birthday party, watched their TV show religiously and often stayed up all night worrying about whether I wanted to be Rachel or Tina when I grew up. When playing ‘S club 7’ with my best friend next door, we would have our cuddly toys play out the male parts and it is fair to say I fantasized not un-obsessively about whether I would marry Paul, Bradley, or Jon.

Most people who have been through something tragic never forget what they were doing in the exact moment they found out what had happened and the S Club break up was no different for me. When I found out S club were going to split in 2003, I was actually practicing my facial expressions for my future music video in the mirror when one of my friends called to tell me the news (my mum was on the phone so the computer was out). I went through the 5 stages of grief very quickly.

1. Denial and Isolation

IT’S NOT TRUE! YOU’RE LYING! S CLUB WILL NEVER STOP MOVING TO THE FUNKY FUNKY BEAT

2. Anger

DAMN YOU! WHY DID YOU TELL ME THIS? I COULD HAVE STAYED IN MY HOUSE FOREVER AND NEVER FOUND THIS HEARTBREAKING INFORMATION OUT! HOW COULD S CLUB DO THIS TO ME? WHAT WILL I DO AT MY NEXT BIRTHDAY PARTY? WILL I STILL GET TO BE RACHEL WHEN I GROW UP?

3. Bargaining

DEAR GOD PLEASE LET S CLUB 7 GET BACK TOGETHER AND I PROMISE I WILL STOP HIDING ALL OF MY VEGETABLES UNDER THE TABLE AND FEEDING THEM TO MY CAT

4. Depression

WHAT THE FUCK AM I GOING TO BE WHEN I GROW UP LIFE IS SO BAD AND MY SADNESS WILL NEVER END

5. Acceptance

AT LEAST I’VE GOT S CLUB JUNIORS

After OVER A DECADE of my heart leaping when I read rumor after rumor of how S club were to reunite, I had basically given up.

Until Friday.

Watching the BBC Children in need performance by S Club put me in the best mood I have been in for over a decade. Hearing the songs again and the crew all back together has had me bouncing around all week since and a reminder that even when shit happens, all I need to do is BRINT IT ALL BACK TO YOU.

A lot of people have criticized Friday’s Children in need performance, commenting on the quality of the bands performance, and all I can say to those people is seriously FUCK YOU because S Club haven’t performed in over a decade and it was for fucking CHARITY and if I may, could you think of a more perfect band to play Children in Need because they actually made songs for kids that were age appropriate and didn’t prematurely end my innocent and naïve childhood with twerking and swearing and drugs and strippers and big booty hoez, and instead of inciting violence they used funny and COOL insults like ‘we’ll TAKE YOU TO THE CLEANERS AND HANG YOU OUT TO DRY LIKE A PAIR OF GRUNGEY OLD SOCKS’ (LOL).

I’m not saying that swearing and twerking and big booty hoez don’t have their place in music, because they do. Now that I am officially an adult, I have plenty of time for swearing and twerking in music, and some of my favourite artists are the most controversial and often much scrutinized swearing, twerking big booty hoez around town. However, I’m not 7 anymore, and I don’t spend my life (not AS much time anyway) copying all of my favourite singers and rappers actions in the mirror.

I feel thoroughly blessed to have had the privilege of growing up with a band who were fun and silly and made songs that were just about having fun and GETTING DOWN TONIGHT and WAVING YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR LIKE YOU JUST DON’T CARE. Although you don’t really think much of it when you’re a kid – and I certainly didn’t, it must be fucking confusing for kids sometimes being surrounded by all of these hugely adult responsibilities before they are mentally mature enough to understand what it all really means. I’m 19 and I still find it fucking confusing – and I bet I’ve got the rest of my life to feel otherwise about all of the sex, drugs and violence which, whether we like to admit it or not, is often glamourized in the media. It makes me sad that there isn’t a band like S Club 7 (that I know of) anymore, who can sing about PG fun to 7 year olds (AND ME BECAUSE I AM NOT READY TO GROW UP) without dropping in sex suggestions and references to all the Molly they take. There is a serious gap in the market here: producers take note!!! (I’m still available).

I am not disputing the huge talent and level of diversity in the music industry in 2014, as well as the evolution of new forms of music, which is of course hugely exciting. The rise of new pop and superstars in the past decade has created some absolute bangers. But when I look to the future and think about what my children might be listening to when they are 7, I do feel extremely uncomfortable. I don’t particularly warm to the idea of my 7 year old singing about how she popped and molly and now she’s sweatin, woo! Or telling me that she’s a bad bitch. Having her tell me she’ll take me to the cleaners and hang me out to dry like a pair of grungey old socks is a much more pleasant thought. LONG LIVE S CLUB! They’ll kick your butt from here to buttkickin’ville.

On that note, can we all please WELCOME the S Club 7 Reunion Tour with open arms, and CELEBRATE a band who inspired a generation of children to have fun, be silly, not grow up too fast, and REACH FOR THE STARS.

I’m yelling TINDER……

 

It’s no secret to anyone that the TINDER app has taken off massively in the past year. 17 months old, the ‘dating’ app allows men and women to shallowly flick through potential suitors who are in their nearby location and decide whether or not they ‘like’ them. (I’m not on it, but I believe you vote ‘hot’ or ‘not’? Correct me if I’m wrong). If you both like one another, you are ‘matched’. I’m using quotation marks because ‘matched’ is a term I’d prefer to use loosely. Tinder is basically GRINDR for straight people.

 

 Like most dating sites, I find the concept quite weird – why can’t people just meet in person like the old days? I used to meet boys in the playground at school and we would be ‘married’ by the afternoon. Is it really so hard to find love in person nowadays? 

A friend of mine has started documenting her pursuers on the site, which is what inspired me to write this, from her album ‘100 sad days’ – and it is literally the best thing ever. I think it also says a lot about WHY a guy joins Tinder… and the kind of guy who is on it ….

 

 

 But is the problem the app or just men? I’m aware girls can be inappropriate also, but I’m yet to hear about a guy friend complaining a girl is sexually harassing him on Tinder.

 

I have to admit, I’ve always really hated the idea of Tinder, and I am yet to hear a positive thing about it – although it clearly gets some boys fast action. “The way Tinder works is the way people tell us they see the world,” says Chief Executive Officer Sean Rad. “They walk around, they see girls, and they say in their heads, ‘Yes, no, yes, no.’ ” Rad, 27, lives in Los Angeles, where the company is based. (I found this from an article on businessweek.com, BTWs)

That is SO depressing. Every guy who sees someone just thinks ‘yes, yes, no’? What?

Also, WHO are these people who meet on dating websites – Tinder in particular – who get into a relationship/married? The funny thing about these people is that NO ONE actually knows who they are. Where are they? They are URBAN DATING MYTHS.

And let’s say you do get married to your Tinder date. It breaks my heart how the wedding speeches would go: ‘I knew Kate was the one whilst I was speaking to her along with 50 other girls online’ is not what anyone wants to hear.

Does anyone know a male who joins Tinder for anything other than an easy fuck? If you do, salute that guy for me.

 

Obviously a lot of guys – not all, but many of them – are fairly one track minded. I don’t think this is anything new, I reckon if I asked my great great great great grandmother about men she would probably agree. Men are often excused for their weird behavior simply because ‘they’re GUY’S’, which pisses me off because it allows them to get away with it scot free instead of growing the fuck up. However, although women’s rights have improved in many areas, we now live in a culture in which porn is easier to access than alcohol and sex is literally everywhere. We are technologically spoilt, and there are naked people literally EVERYWHERE. Can we blame guys for assuming if a girl is on a dating app she MUST be looking for a bit of wham, bam, thank you m’am?

 

On the one hand, it’s naïve to think that, poor boys, it’s not their fault, they don’t know any better. On the other, having grown up just able to see old school dating fade more and more and online relationships step in (or stampede), I think for coming generations – as well as the current ones – I think it’s vital that boys are actually taught how to speak to girls. The problem is not due to mechanics (ie the it’s how boys brains work), it’s due to socialization. I don’t remember sex ed ever covering pornography, and definitely not how to respond to horny boys – and I think it should, because it provides people with unrealistic sex-pectations and attitudes, which dating apps such as Tinder fuel the fire with. They are too easy to access, and involve using the opposite sex (or same) like an online shopping basket. It would seriously be easier and probably more satisfying for me to swipe on the Net-a-Porter app than a nice guy on Tinder.

 

 

 

5 Things that annoy me

5 Things that annoy me

 

Today I’m feeling super angry at the world because city life is GETTING THE FUCK ON MY NERVES. As I’ve been a little clueless this week and have been wondering what to write my blog on – I WILL be posting my five favourite restaraunts ASAP but I decided it would be really bad unless I got good photos of them all – it came to me that whilst I wait, I could get rid of some of my negative energy on here instead. So here are the 5 things about London right now that are pissing me the HELL off.

 

1)    Girls taking photos at Cirque le Soir.

 

I get it, you’re super edgy. You’re taking photos with small people and you probably saw a coupe of women take their boobs out. You had a mega photoshoot looking super seductive in a swing and you want the world to see how the lighting makes you look like Cara D. But is it possible that I could one day log onto my Facebook account without having to scroll through 500 photos of girls posing in front of that fucking black and white stripy wall? ENOUGH WITH THE WALL. GET OVER THE WALL! I know that you can lose your head after slogging down fifteen vodka orange juices, but this annoying ‘I’m in a members club’ instagramming has GOT to stop. The only thing you’re actually gonna be paying for is a sore vagina the next day girlfrieeeend 

 

2)   People who walk slowly.

  

Why is your life so unimportant? Why do you have nowhere to be in a hurry? Why do I have to feel bad when I push you out of the way? Haven’t you ever heard of cardio? Slow and steady ain’t gonna win no races.

 

 

3)   Having to see every other girls bare stomach

 

ENOUGH with this trend which is apparently going nowhere in a hurry. Every other girl I see has got her high waisted leggings, looking she’s about to do the freaking Tour de France, matched with her Topshop crop top with some kind of slogan across the front: ‘GEEK’ , ‘NERD’, ‘NEW YORK’. Call me old fashioned but what is this constant need to show off your pasty flesh? I know it seems like a trick to make your waist look thinner but seriously put it away! If my daughter came to me about to go out with her womanly parts all exposed I would wonder if we were even related. What ever happened to a little thing called mystery? *Cries*

 

4)   Weird chat up lines

 

I was talking to my friend about this yesterday and London boys are the worst culprits for this because they apparently work on a chance basis when picking up girls. FYI, the line ‘hey, hey, I was just wondering where you’re from?’ is NOT fooling anyone. It always comes with some weird kind of dance move as well, whilst the creep in question kind of bounces around you whilst you try and escape. Also not sexy: when boys yell at you stuff like ‘Yo babes’ or ‘What you saying’ or the classic ‘Hi’ whilst looking you up and down. I’m not saying anything you freak! Why do guys think this works? My only suggestion is that like bad gamblers, they come at every girl that passes by, hoping that out of the 99 who disgustedly walk off, one will appreciate the attention and become their next prey. Listen up girls: No wedding speech ever starts with: ‘I remember the magical moment when Harry met Sally, on Oxford street, when he romantically asked her what she was saying’

  

 

5)   Mobile phones

 

I am OVER having lunch or coffee with people who can’t get off their phones!! In the words of Kingsley – have you ever had a conversation with somebody and you don’t get anything from them apart from their motherfucking SCALP?

 

This sums it up pretty perfectly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn1wV7n4alQ&list=UU-vSh8UCm0tFaLYAIXqqKLA

Women’s magazines: THE FUCK?

 

 I came across this amazingness earlier this week on @thefatjewish  ‘s instagram and it prompted me to think about magazines. Like most girls, I am usually pretty happy to flick through a few glossy pages. Vogue is usually my magazine of choice (I was given a monthly subscription as a Christmas gift) but if I’m waiting to see my dentist or WHATEVER, Tater or Elle will also do – I’m not fussy and this is probably because there is not a lot of difference between the ‘monthlies’. All contain fashion, makeup, and some kind of inspiring celebrity story. Every time I go on holiday, I also develop a weird obsession with the weekly magazines (if you’re a boy, think ‘heat’) which last for about two weeks and involves lots of lying to my parents at the end of the trip about who signed for lots of highly taxed goods on our bill at the hotel shop. However, I’ve come to start questioning the material I am reading. 

 THE FUCK?

It has often occurred to me that the reason I don’t really stick to a particular magazine is due to lack of inspiration. A conversation with my cousin confirmed I’m not alone: as she quite rightly put it: “Women’s magazines are boring – I know how to do my hair and makeup and I don’t need to read through hundreds of pages of adverts to figure that out”. She also agreed that men’s magazines – for us at least – are far more interesting.

 

I realise this is a big statement to make – I don’t ‘hate’ women’s magazines, I just wish there was more to them. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but there seems to be something really backwards about them, and I often feel really fucking patronized, and it’s annoying! In November, I was in the bath, and I just wanted some downtime with some interesting articles (hopefully) and a few pairs of shoes. I started reading an article. It was a 3 page spread on a woman who has a hobby which is – wait for it – MAKING JAM! SOO INSPIRATIONAL! THIS IS THE STUFF GREAT ARTICLES ARE MADE OF. The highlighted quote from the article read: ‘How could I have known that the politics of jam making had its own set of rules and regulations?’

OMG, this is almost too dramatic to handle. How could she have known? How on earth did she manage to get through that stressful period in her life?

The content of women’s magazines is misleading, the sex advice in particular. Who walks past the magazine stand and reads the cosmo headline: ‘How to orgasm EVERY time you have sex!!!’ and actually thinks it will work? If it was the case that all you have to do to understand how you can orgasm is read an informative magazine article, they would be selling a lot more copies. 

 

On the other hand, when I buy GQ (don’t judge me), although there is still the usual mix of fashion and grooming advice, the articles contain much more DEPTH. I can read about sports, film, TV, food – there’s even a jokes section, people. This makes much more sense to me and seems a much more solid investment. I may not be dying of excitement at every article (I will never be able to pretend I care about football) but I will finish my bathtime read with satisfaction and humour. And there’s only so many models one can look at in a women’s magazine without feeling kind of fat, so looking at the James Franco’s of the world makes me waaaaay more happy.

 

I don’t want to change the world. Just women’s magazines.

 

 

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?