Water on a Hot Day

Well on any day.  Water is so so important!  And if you think drinking half your body weight in water is too much every day, then think again!  We are made up on average 50-70% of water, so it is vital for life.

Now I know water can get extremely boring, although I utterly love a glass of cold refreshing water any time, but adding lemon or lime to it makes it utterly delectable!  Plus since my world into exercising, water is my key to successful weightloss, as I sweat so much and need it as replacement, so I end up drinking half a litre or more in the 2 hours I work out...

I am leading up to something here... Hang on!

This is my water of choice today - I didn't have a big enough jug, so used an old coffee 8 cup cafeteria - this is called flat tummy water and is utterly divine - I made it last night and am drinking it now.  It says you can drink it daily but must stop it after 4 weeks?  I find links like that totally bizarre - I'll try it for a week and see what happens.  Thing is I know it's healthy and I also know it's going to taste nice as I'm such a seasoned juicer and blender now, I love all tastes and always want to try something new!  So to tell you what it contains if you haven't pressed the link:

1 whole cucumber
1 whole lemon
1 tablespoon of grated ginger
A handful of fresh mint (I have it growing in abundance in my garden)
6 cups of filtered water (all these things are American measurements!)

Infuse overnight and hey presto, your own, refreshing, drinkable water which is in fact doing you good!  Well - I hope it is - I'll update you all in a weeks time! :) xx

Jessica Smith

Hello - I forgot to add yesterday on my first blog post how tall I am - 5ft 8 with my weight tending to go to my stomach sadly and it's still a daily battle to get it off, but it's beginning to burn off now after quitting the gym and upping my workout intensities and this is where I now begin to talk about...

Jessica Smith

I found her via a link to Leslie Sansone - now Leslie is a whole different kettle of fish, I'll write a whole blog post just for her soon!

Anyhow... Jessica - she is a certified personal trainer, a wellcoach, someone with high energy and extremely likeable with it - she's 'human' and I find many youtube videos with workouts which are not human, they're superhuman with perfect bodies... I'm not saying Jessica doesn't have a perfect body, because she does, it's just, she doesn't shove it in your face like some do!  I end up telling the video to shut the hell up and turning it off in disgust!  I realise it's to 'egg' me on, but please, stop throwing said 'eggs' at me - I know my body is somewhat lacking in rock hard abs and beautifully toned arms and legs, but I'm working on it, ok?!

Moving along.  Very quickly.

Yesterday my 6 new exercise dvd's arrived - yeah, I have an obsession, I love to mix and match, I never tire of any of it! - and today I did two of them, both featuring Jessica - the first:

Walking for Weight Loss, Wellness & Energy with Jessica Smith

Now I've spent a lot of my mornings walking with Leslie Sansone (a walking instructor for the last 25 years and a bit of a talker too!) and have covered 5 miles each time, maybe more, depending on my energy levels, but this was absolutely lovely!  On a beach in Miami (yeah, some people have got it made!), she and her mum doing the easier version and someone else doing the harder version and Jessica doing the bit in between - from the warm up there's a high energy walk and a power walk and then a nice relaxing cool down - it's doable and I managed to do the high intensity versions no problem - but an awful lot of sweating though!  I utterly loved it, great dancing music and I'd certainly recommend, it lasts about 70 minutes and it gives you choices and not many workouts give you that option which brings me nicely onto the second workout dvd I did...

10 Minute Solution - Knockout Body Workout DVD

Now 'most' people would only do one workout dvd a day, but I've always been used to a 2 hour workout, because I get so 'in' to it, I find it hard to stop and the more I go on, the more I push myself! Now this was kickboxing and she (Jessica) was using weighted gloves (I have a pair, but I don't know where!) and it was high intensity broken down into 5, 10 minute sections - which I did of course, the last one I struggled, as it was abs and my abs are surrounded by fat!  Enough said!  I tried, but I failed miserably - even after doing Pilates for almost 2 years, my abs just refuse to strengthen!  Anyhow - I punched and kicked the air and got really into it, jumping around like a dancing flea, looking like an utter idiot, stepping totally out of time and tangling up my legs, but I really enjoyed it and the music was fab - although there was no relief, she just kept pushing and pushing me, until my sweat band was so saturated it began to run down my face again...  I'm definitely going to do it again of course... But I think I might only do it once a week and I must find my weighted gloves!


2 hours later and I made myself a smoothie in my nutribullet - I'm not sure of the measurements but I made:

Pineapple, blueberry, raspberry, strawberry and banana frozen smoothie mix from Waitrose, 2 table spoons of full fat Greek yogurt, 2 handfuls of spinach, a sprinkling of cinnamon, 1 table spoon of whey protein powder (I'll talk about that soon) and filling the max line with unsweetened almond milk and it's utterly divine - my own recipe!  I usually have full fat Greek yogurt with fruit but because of the - dare I say it - warmer weather, a cold refreshing smoothie is more desirable!

If you're wondering how I fuel my workouts each morning - I've never been a big breakfast eater sadly, however many times I'm told it's the most important meal of the day... But I simply cannot exercise with a full stomach, so it has to be light and simple, and something I can eat and literally exercise immediately after - so for me it's half a banana and a black coffee, plus at least 2 glasses of water before my workout and lots of water in-between jumping up and down!

So that concludes my review of Jessica - oh and on her 'free' youtube videos, occasionally with her is her sweet bulldog - Peanut - I just love how she sleeps while Jessica is dancing beside her, sweating to the pumping music - Peanut hardly bats as eyelid!

Now for the all important shower.... :) xxx

Up With The Lark First Blog Post

This I think is my 5th blog... all 4 before have fallen by the wayside... These things happens, life gets in the way... And nothing really made me passionate enough to keep it going either!  But this one might!

For the last 3 years I've been healthy eating and exercising and I have acquired such a wealth of knowledge that I feel I need to bring it all forth into a daily blog... As I save so many links, write so many things down, but they're all lost in the jungle of my bookmarks and as for the written bits of paper... I'm not sure where they go!  (like socks!)

Now I'd like to make plain before I go on, I do not have any degrees in science, no certificates in nutrition, I am not a qualified personal trainer nor do I have any real skill in coaching - but I've used myself as a guinea pig over the years and if I've tried it, I can review it!  I realise not everyone is the same, we all react to things differently and one thing that works for me, will not work for anyone else exactly.

Now why 'Up With The Lark'?  There are two reasons, no, actually three - skylarks are my favourite birds (closely followed by robins, buzzards, barn owls and lapwings) and the name 'Skylark' I always used on nature forums.  Plus before my introduction into the world of fitness and healthy eating, I would roll out of bed by 11am, shattered... I was a night owl and I hated the mornings!  But I found out very quickly that my best exercising was done early in the morning and because of that I felt 'up' in mood and energy most of the days afterwards - so it seemed fitting!  And there's that old saying... 'up with the lark'.

To cut a very long story short - the first time I was made aware of proper aerobic and cardio exercise was when I was at art college in Canterbury doing a MA in Fine Art, back in 2006 and myself and a friend decided to join a private gym, I don't even remember why we did, but we did.  For a girl of 5ft 8 I was 11.5 stones... To me, I felt happy with that weight, but I always wanted to be just over 10 stone and a student life I guess wasn't really going to help that!  I quickly got fit (you do when you're younger) and utterly loved the cross trainer... So much so, I would plug myself into my 'disc man' of trance and dance the morning away!  When I left Canterbury, I always vowed I'd rejoin another gym at home in London, but it never happened, I lost all my fitness and went back to my bad ways ad gained so much weight.  I yoyo dieted after that - the usual thing happened, I tried every diet and nothing worked, so I just gave up.

Sadly on the 23rd May 2012, my mum lost her battle to lung cancer - my best friend, my soulmate, she left me, I didn't blame her, I told her to go when she had to and I'd be fine and look after Dad, but my whole world fell apart with her passing.  I became entirely sedentary.  I had no life, no social life, I just sat and ate and drank endless bottles of wine.  Also on the night she died, I gave up smoking!  I know, a strange time to give up when I'd need it the most, but because of going cold turkey, I've been smoke free since then and so much more healthy, but I also piled on the weight, as nicotine curbs appetite and without it, food became it's replacement!  Something very painful happened to me after that, something too embarrassing to admit and I needed an operation to have 'it' removed - I lost all my dignity and I hated myself for it as it was entirely my own doing.   After I recovered, I did the one thing I always promised myself to do and that was join my local gym, finally my local town (2 miles away) opened a gym and I joined and went every single day for at least 6 months, doing 2 hours a day of cardio... no weights, I had very little body strength!  And very little confidence too!  But nothing was happening, no weight was being lost, because I got stuck in the mentality that as I convinced myself that I had burned such and such calories, I could go home and have a glass of wine in the evening and some garlic bread, because I had 'earned' it - bad mistake!

So.... (are you still with me?), I had to find something that would 'work' for me and my friend suggested The Juicemaster, as in, Jason Vale and she told me about her 'bible' Keeping it Simple and inside that was the 3 day detox, the juice only regime and I fell in love, hook, line and sinker - as it WORKED for me - I ended up losing 7 pounds in 3 days (yes, I realise that was all water weight), but it worked!  So for the next 6 months, I ended up doing a juice in the morning before my gym workout, a juice for lunch and then a healthy meal in the evening - I can't remember how long it took me to lose real weight, but it certainly happened, from being weighed at 14.5 stone (yep, I got BIG) to a drop to 12.5 stone was the best thing!  I'm now under 11 stone and loving my juicing still, plus smoothies and although I no longer attend the gym (apart from Pilates every monday), I still exercise every single day - exercise dvd's are my new obsession and I'm hoping to review many on here and I run every morning (when it's not raining), I average about 5 miles, which includes 4 hills!  As I do live in North Devon - one of the more hillier counties of Great Britain!  (I left my hometown of London in 2007!)

And just to finish - a bit more about me - I love wildlife, I'd rather be outside then in, I'm a wildlife/nature photographer and I make my best images into jewellery, find me here - Larryware and why Larryware?  Well, that's another story, but not today... Some other time!  I'm also a fine artist, hence the art college attendance!  My website is Wild Art.

So to conclude the purpose of this blog, is a diary of my unending boundless information of wellbeing, health and fitness the people I most relate to who have helped me, reviews of exercise dvd's and youtube channels and which workouts I love the most (just invested in 8 new workout dvd's - I'll let you know!) and what smoothies or juices I'm drinking with relevant links to recipes I have found that have worked and are simply divine, plus any photographs of running routes, food I've made, exercise equipment and clothes I've purchased and anything else which I just find rewarding and which make me happy from beauty products, to getting outside and finding some fabulous wildlife and nature which always give me a huge feeling of euphoria - from the humble house sparrow to the spectacular elephant hawkmoth!  I would like to bring everything I love together right here!  And I hope you all get something or at least something beneficial out of it too!

:) xxx