Dear August: An Experiment and Zaggora Hot Pants

In 89 days I hit thirty, which means that I have 89 days to slim down so that I can fit into the dress that I have bought for that very occasion. So August, I could really do with your support, because I don't know about anyone else, but I always find that sunshine motivates me to keep active. Therefore, I'm going to stay hopeful that you August will be the best opportunity for me to do the biggest bulk of my weight loss.

I know, I know - it's a lot of pressure on you. But, I have faith in you, even if other people don't.

So, as luck would have it, a couple of weeks ago, I was approached by a company called Zaggora, who -

for those who haven't heard the buzz around them - sell hot pants that are designed to help the wearer lose weight. Well, they're not really hot pants - as such - more leggings, really.

I have to be honest and say that I was incredibly sceptical of them, and have gone in to trying them with what I hope is quite an open mind, because although I have my doubts, I really want them to work. I think I want them to work since I have so many inches to lose, but I'm not going to expect too much.

On first impressions, they are a lot more comfortable than I expected them to be. This was surprising, because having measured myself I was actually on the verge of a XL and XXL, so since I'm attempting to lose weight, I opted for the smaller of the two sizes.

The only issue that I've had with the leggings has been that I don't feel that they are long enough in the body. I know that a lot of girls, these days, like trousers etc to sit on the hips, but for me hipster-type trousers and leggings, have a habit of just falling down. That is, of course, the exact experience that I've had with these. I am hoping that once I lose a bit more in terms of inches around the hips, they will (hopefully) fit me a bit better!

I'll do a fuller review in a couple of weeks, when I've had a better opportunity to try them out, but hopefully they'll help me to lose some inches :)

For me, losing weight - now - isn't about being "thin", because I have been never been "thin", instead it's about getting healthy

So August, I'm counting on you to stay nice and sunny (but not too hot) so that you can keep me motivated!!

*This series of posts was inspired by the Letters to July series run by Emilieofnewgloom, make sure you check out her YouTube Channel, because she's pretty awesome*

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2013: Year of the Weight Loss

For me, 2012 will pretty much be the year that I finally stopped biting my nails. Admittedly, at the minute most of my nails are relatively short in length, but it's nice to know that they're not like that because I bit them, but rather because they broke!!

Kicking the nail biting habit has always been a big issue since...well, since I started biting my nails at around the age of six. However, accomplishing it has really helped to motivate me to tackle another habit that I want to get rid of, and that is my unhealthy addiction to junk food. I know that I can get my act together, so this time I'm confident that I'm going to do it.

Some of you might already know this, but at the beginning of last week, I had a bit of a health scare that really shook me up. Although I've been assured that it wasn't - at all - as a result of my weight, I've still found that the reality of spending seven hours sat in A&E not being able to breathe properly, was enough of a shake up to get me to lose weight serious-style!

I've actually spent the last week, recovering at my parents' where my Mum has had me on a very high vegetable, fruit and soup diet. I did slip up on Saturday, when I ventured into town, when I bought a Shapers packet of Chocolate and Caramel Popcorn, but I'm not going to beat myself up about it, because I've been using an app that tells me what I need to do to burn off those excess (bad) calories, and hence I spent ten minutes burning them off intensely on my Stepper!

So far, I've lost about seven pounds and my Mum thinks that you can tell I've lost a little weight around my middle, which is great. I'm certainly feeling less bloated, and I'm not suffering any of the illnesses that I typically get from binge eating on incredibly bad snacks.

I've also noticed that when I had some Strawberry Fruit Flakes over the weekend, I found them to be far too sweet, so hopefully that is going to help kick the sugar addiction, because I'm pretty much the same with salt. My Mum cut out salt when I was in my teens, meaning that I never use it either and now there are some foods that I just can't eat because I find them to be far too salty, which is of course another thing I need to avoid.

So, that's a brief catch up on my current life events.

I hope that everyone else's New Years have gotten off to a good start :)

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Positive Beauty 30-Day Fitness Challenge: Day Who Knows!!!???

Hi Ladies. So, I realised this afternoon that it's erm...quite some time since I'm done a Positive Beauty Challenge, and I am definitely not going to lie, I haven't been keeping up with it. And, I really have not got a clue what Day we're on, although I'm fairly certain that the 30 days is probably over by now, right? Yeah, I've been a bad Kat, and I will accept my punishment!!

Source: commons.wikimedia.org via Christy on Pinterest

So, I've been thinking about carrying the challenge on, but in a more personal way. I don't want to keep clogging up my blog, with posts for fitness every single day, but I do want to get back into the habit of doing my daily workout, in sort of the same way that I was with the Challenge.

Some people might have seen me talking about this a few weeks ago, but I had thought about continuing the challenge using another method, and well, I really wanted to know if anyone else would be interested in taking part? I'm toying with the idea of setting up an email list where everyone on the list will receive a daily workout to motivate them.

Honestly, if no one would be interested, I'll probably set up the email thing for myself, to send out motivational emails, because I really need them, so if anyone wants to be added to it, then I'm more than happy to add people to the email list.

If people are interested, I'll look into putting a button in the sidebar so that people can add themselves to the list :)

I'd really love to hear your thoughts on this, so huge thanks in advance.

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Positive Beauty 30-Day Fitness Challenge: Day Twenty One

Source: sweetsimplicityblog.com via o on Pinterest

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Positive Beauty 30-Day Fitness Challenge: Day Twenty

Source: soon2befit.tumblr.com via Simi on Pinterest

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Positive Beauty 30-Day Fitness Challenge: Day Fifteen

Sorry everyone, in my crazy busy state, I completely forgot to put one of these up for yesterday, and I've left it really late today. But, I feel kind of better knowing that I did Yoga this morning. If anyone stills wants to give it a go, I've made this one a bit longer, to make up for yesterday ;)

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Positive Beauty 30-Day Fitness Challenge: Day Thirteen

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Positive Beauty 30-Day Fitness Challenge: Day Ten

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First Weekly Weigh-in and an OPI Treat

Hey hey, lovely positive beauties. How has everyone's first week been? Have you been keeping up? I'm not going to lie. I haven't done all of the daily challenges when I've initially seen them go up (and I genuinely don't know when they are going to go up. I literally put in a random time, press schedule and forget because I do several at a time!), but I have done every single one of them, by the end of that particular day at least. And I feel quite proud of myself.

So, if you too have managed it so far, then accept a positive pat on the good ol' back :) Well done you. I told you that you could do it ;)

It's Thursday (erm, as if you didn't already know, because it's only one more day to the weekend right?), and Thursday means weigh-in day, so I'm gonna take this opportunity to tell you about what I've been up to over the past seven or so days.

What I've been up to...

Being slightly agoraphobic, I'm not going to deny that I don't get out very often, so I've enjoyed the motivation of  my daily workouts. But about a week ago, I also ordered myself a couple of fitness DVDs, for beginners that I've been trying out. One was Pilates, and one was Yoga. Now, I have never ever tried Yoga, so it was an interesting experience, but I'll do proper reviews of those probably some time next week :) I haven't been doing my DVDs every single day, but I've been alternating between the two to shake things up a bit, because I was worried about getting bored if I tried doing the same one every time. I think that I might introduce more DVDs gradually, as I progress to more "intermediate" DVDs.

And, the Weekly Weigh-in?

The weigh-in isn't very exciting this week, because there was absolutely no change at all. I'm not going to deny that I am slightly disappointed, because fitness wise, I have definitely been doing a lot more, and when you're agoraphobic, that's hard to do at times. But, I'm just really glad that I haven't put any weight on.

Positive side of keeping active

I've noticed two big changes already in me:

1. I'm drinking a lot more fluids. This feels like it's come more naturally to me, because I know that I never drink enough water, but I'm definitely getting closer to drinking my however many litres of water a day, so I'm quite chuffed about that.

2. I feel like I have a bit more energy. This was something that I've often heard people say about going to the gym, but I really didn't expect it to occur so quickly. Okay, some days the workouts really wear me out, but most days, I definitely feel more motivated. I'll be interested to see how that effects my productivity over the next few weeks, as I continue on my Challenge.

On a completely different note:

I just wanted to let all OPI lovers out there, that if you head on over to Buyapowa right now, they have a fantastic deal that has just come up on OPI's Nicki Minaj Mini Collection:

How amazing do these colours look? I really look the turquoise and silvery-black ones!

Original Price: £12.75
Potential Lowest Price: £8

The Collection includes:

• Did It On Em - A hot lime green with a cream finish
• Fly - A neon turquoise polish with a glossy finish
• Pink Friday - A stunning bubblegum pink with a glossy finish
• Metallic For Life - An incredible black shade with lots and lots and lots of silver glitter eeeiii!

No matter what the final cost that you pay, you'll also pay £1.50 to cover postage, which isn't too bad, I thought.

As of writing this, the current price was at £11 with 18 co-buyers, and they need 100 to get the price down to £8, but with this beautiful collection, from one of my favourite nail polish brands, I really don't think that it'll struggle to reach 100.

I really love this Collection, and if I hadn't just bought myself a few polishes in the Lena White / OPI Sale, I would most definitely be grabbing this co-buy. but, I decided not to...I know, I know, it was a tough choice for this OPI-a-holic!

How has your positive beauty challenge gone this week? 

If you've done well, perhaps this OPI Collection would make a lovely reward for your hard work :)

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Positive Saturday: Fat does not Define You

Source: Uploaded by user via Kat on Pinterest

I know that the quality of this is a bit rubbish, but I thought that it was an important thing to share with you guys. And it really is true. So many of us define ourselves as "fat", and are even defined as being "fat" by others, but what does that even mean?

Does having "fat" make us a bad person? Of course it doesn't. It doesn't control the person that we are, our personality has full control over that. Just like slimmer ladies, people with a little extra weight can be lovely, just as much as they can be complete bitches.

You are who you are, because of the people around you and the things that you do. They are what define you. Not your weight, or the shape of your body, or the tone of your skin, or the colour of your hair :)

You are beautiful!

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Bloggers Christmas Weight Loss Challenge

I make no secret that I need to lose some weight (probably quite a bit of weight really), so when I spotted that Katie over at The Bristol Beauty Blog was running a Bloggers Christmas Weight Loss Challenge, I felt that I really had to join in :D

The Challenge: Lose 7lbs by 23rd December 2011.

Ultimately, I need to be losing a great deal more than that, but as Katie says, it's best to start small and be sensible than throw myself head first into some unhealthy crazy quick-fix kinda diet.

Other Bloggers taking part are:


Katie, the Bristol Beauty Blog - Week 1: Lost 1 lb
Rachelle, Behind the Shoes
Ray, Who is She???
Mrs Ari
Missy Ellie, Ellie's Beauty Blog 
Hannah, Betwixt Beauty
Lucy, Beauty and the Blogger
Kat, Kat's Beauty Reviews Week 1: Lost 1lb
Elle, Beauty Abroad Week 1: Lost 2lb already!

Good luck to everyone else taking part, and if anyone else is interested, then you can get in touch with Katie over on her blog :)

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The Food Obsession: A Confession

Every single day the media is full of tripe regarding celebrities being too fat or too thin, or of beautiful young girls obsessing so much about the food that they put into their body (food, I might add that is a crucial part of human survival), that they allow it to control a huge part of their life.

I have to confess to being one of those girls. Aged 17, I looked like this:

Not slim, but what I would consider curvy, slim(ish) legs, I was a little bit overweight (we're talking pounds, not stones) and definitely not what I would have called a "large" teenager. So, why is it that at that point in my life I encountered roughly three or four people of the male species that would call me fat or told me that I should lose weight?

It's funny because I've always believed that girls are incredibly nasty to each other, but at that part of my life, it was actually boys, which at such a young age was absolutely soul destroying.

I will never deny to being an emotional eater, and I fear that since those naive days, I have gotten myself firmly in this trap of a Catch-22 situation where food is what makes me fat, but being fat makes me sad, so I eat to quell that sadness. Unfortunately, weight isn't the only thing that has the power to make a person sad. I think it has gotten beyond emotional eating, whereby I now eat chocolate because something in my body is just craving it...

For people like me, food has become like an addiction, very similar to smoking cigarettes. We know that we shouldn't consume it, we know that we're doing ourselves harm, but it becomes like a compulsion that even though our bodies do not want it, we crave it until we cave in.

I've gotten to a stage where I don't think that I have any willpower left, and I'm not really sure what to do to stop myself. I want to lose the weight so badly, for the sake of my own health, and because I might want to start having kids when I reach 30. Am I too weak to help myself?

I honestly wish that I could fly back to ten years ago, slap myself and tell myself to ignore those idiots who are not nice people. I was not fat then, I was curvy and I was beautiful.

By the way, for any haters that might jump on this post, this is not a self-pitying post and it is not a "feel sorry for me" post either. We always see the struggles of people with eating disorders in the other direction, but I can't help feeling that us larger women get ignored. Because obsessive eating in any fashion, whether you're eating too much or throwing it back up IS an eating disorder, no matter how you try to mask it.

And telling people to "stop eating" is NOT the solution, because that might be easy for you to do, but it's exactly the same as asking a smoker to quit smoking, they probably can't do it that easily. Why? Because they're addicted!

I'm just sick and tired of yes, let's say it, fat people, just like me, being put down for the way we look, when if we could learn how to handle this illness we honestly would.

Food controls my life, and I hate it.

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Inspirational Blogger Awards: CrazyMakeUpGirl

As part of my one-year celebrations, I wanted to do something special, so I decided that I would share some of my absolute favourite bloggers. But, me being me, I wanted to do a little more than just share that information, I wanted to offer each and every one of them something back in return, as a kind of thank you for the big and little things that they've done.

Therefore, over the next seven days, I'm going to award seven very different (but all equally beautiful) young women with my Inspirational Blogger Award. They are all fantastic bloggers, with gorgeous personalities and amazing blogging skills and that special something that I have found truly inspirational.

None of the winners, that I'm going to be talking about know anything about the award that they're getting, because I wanted it to be a surprise, just to show them my appreciation.

I have to say that it was hard to just pick seven, because so many of you are so fantastic, but picking the first person to name was really simple.

I haven't really known Cat aka CrazyMakeUpGirl for very long, but in the short time that I have known her, I've discovered what an inspirational person that she is. Anyone who has read her blog over at Make Up, Calories and Rambles, will know all about Cat's plight with her weight. As a larger girl myself, I really do know how hard it is to face up to and actually conquer weight problems. But, the difference with Cat? She's really doing something about it, and she's lost a heck of a lot of weight.

If it wasn't for hearing about Cat's weight loss, I honestly don't think that I would have found the motivation to start eating healthily and set myself a target to lose weight by the time I'm 30!

If you haven't met Cat, or checked out her blog then make sure you do, because I think she's fab :)

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A Weighted Issue

I've always tried to keep my issues with my weight out of my beauty blog, but I've been thinking recently, that I'm trying to promote positivity to larger sized ladies, so it only seems right to include it. So, I've decided to talk about it a little, rather than have it on a seperate blog, as I occasionally do.

I recently had a conversation with Cat, from Make Up, Calories and Rambles, who has lost a large amount of weight over the past few years, and I really admired her for that. But, she said something to me, that really made me think. She said that to lose weight, you have to be in the right frame of mind, and in the right place in life to do it. And, I think she was right.

I have a very love-hate relationship with food. I'm an emotional eater. I'm a boredom eater. I'm all the cardinal sins of eater.

But, I'm twenty-seven years old, and for the first time in my life, I am seriously thinking about whether or not I want kids. For a very long time, I said "no way". But, as I'm creeping towards thirty, I'm starting to question whether I'm ready, and even though financially I most certainly am not, emotionally I'm getting there.

So, what's the problem?

I have no intention of having any children until I'm thirty. That has always been the way I said I would deal with it. No matter how I felt through my twenties, I did not want kids until I hit thirty, and nothing has changed about that at all.

But, I also have no intention of bringing a kid into the world whilst I'm the size that I am. I'm slightly ashamed to say that I'm a Size 22, verging on a Size 24. I've seen women much larger than me with small children, and it makes me want to cry. What kind of a parent can someone that size really be? I'm not saying I'm completely devoid of energy, but just watching kids tires me out, so how can these larger women play with their kids as much as kids need to stay healthy?

With that in mind, I've decided to take a sensible approach, and set my goal of losing weight to the date of my 30th birthday (11/11/2013 so you know). It's a long way off, but I think it's only healthy and wise to try and lose weight slowly, by being healthy rather than a ridiculous crash diet that has you losing weight really quickly, but just putting it straight back on again!!!

To be fair, I've slowly started already.

For the past two weeks, my drinking habits have involved swapping virtually everything (but not everything, I'd go mad otherwise) to water, and I'm doing really well at that. I'm also trying to drink Cranberry Juice too, which I looooove so much...nom nom!

On Saturday, I also headed over to the supermarket where I stocked up on salady stuff:

• Lettuce 
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Large Potatoes
• Beetroot
• Grapes
• Cucumber
• Etc...

So, I've been having low-calorie salad-based meals, with jacket potato and chicken to make it more filling. I also haven't eaten anything bad (chocolate-wise) at all this week, so I'm quite proud of myself.

I'm also trying not to skip breakfasts (it's not that I plan to forget breakfast, I just literally forget), and I'm also trying to cut down on white bread, which is another of my biggest vices.

Do you think that you have to be in the right frame of mind and/or place in life, to really lose weight?

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