June Review and July Goals

Oh my darling faithful cherie's! What will I do without you all? I don't know why I left you for quite so long but the days got so busy and the nights got so blurry that I really don't know where all the time went! I can't believe it's been two weeks and you see I hate leaving you so much because I hate playing catch up! But catch up we shall, because you my beauties deserve it! There is so much to tell you, so many new places I've been and people I've seen andI can't wait to churn it all out till I'm tired of rambling on about my life to you lovely people who stop by my blog! But before I get into the people I've seen and the places I've been let me first assess my June goals and set some new ones for July, I am quite behind you see! Let's start with the wins shall we?

Complete 16 week stretch

This one is a big fat win and infact the stretch is still stretching! I'm exactly 16 weeks post today and trying to decide between relaxing ASAP or carrying on and transitioning to natural... I always have this debate in my head whenever relaxer due date comes close but I also always end up relaxing! Who knows? Maybe this time will be different

Wash hair every 2 weeks

I should have stated that this was meant for while I stayed in braids, when my hair is out I usually wash every week! Wash day is currently on Mondays :)

Moisturise every other day

Yipee! Although if this was a July challenge I would have failed already!

Pole

I thought I'd finally treat you to a picture of what I've been getting up to in pole dancing, this one was taken a few months ago in March or April and I have progressed immensely since then! I now do cool upside-downy moves! :D

Try a new recipe or two

Well you read about my Skinny Shrimp Curry with Coconut Rice so yay to trying something new! There are a couple more recipes to share since I startted Mankofit's 30 day eat clean, train dirty challenge!

I did infact also become a 'yes' girl! Life is so much more fun when you let go, I used my proper camera loads while I was on holiday last week (oh yeah, did I forget to tell you that as well? Goodness I'm awful!) AND I wrote a story to go on THAHW, It's a series actually! I just need to get further along in the plot before I start posting it, so keep your peepers peeled!

And now for the sad part, womp womp!

• I didn't run 5k twice a week, it was simply too stressful I really don't enjoy running all that much!
• I failed the squat challenge because I kepy missing out days but I'm sure my backside still benefited greatly!
• I still cannot plank for 90 seconds! Sadly
• Failing to drink 1.5 litres of water a day really hurt because I did always drink at least a litre! Adding on that extra 500ml is much harder than I previously though!
• Blog more after exams, I'm not sure if I should count this as a fail or not yet but seeing as I only managed 5 posts in June and my highest was 9 in March I'm thinking it will have to count as a fail :( Sad times!

As for July I don't have too many goals you see, I mostly plan on finishing my dissertation or at least getting halfway through the beast! The main thing in July is to complete Mankofit's Eat Clean, Train Dirty 30 day challenge. There was a grocery list at the start and she posts up an exercise for us to do every day, it's been difficult but fun at the same time because I'm doing it with one of my besties and friends really do make everything better! This challenge is intense enough in itself to cover my food and fitness goals for the month! If you're curious about the challenge her instagram and twitter handles are @mankofit, it's never too late to join in on the fun!

Her grocery list is a pretty hard one to stick by so I allowed myself three small changes! I'm eating red meat because I need all the iron I can get and I added carrots to my veggies because I hate cauliflower and asparagus which were both on the list! More to come on the challenge soon.

Hair wise I think I need to just keep doing what I'm doing! I'd post an updated hair care regimen soon as it's changed quite a bit and I also need to decide if I will relax or not! I think I will... Or maybe I wont!

More on my lovely short vacay to Antalya, Turkey  soon and also my experience at the Diamonds World Tour! I think I've gotten over my writer's block now!

Speak soon lovelies!

Reni x

Skinny Shrimp Curry and Coconut Rice Recipe

So I got one of my favourite compliments of all time recently, the "Oh, I read your blog, I really like it" or other variation. Fellow bloggers out there will understand when I say that finding out that 'actual people' read your blog is one of the best feelings in the world, I feel like my little corner in the big big interweb is actually useful to someone and that gets me all smiley :) :) :)

The person made a comment about really liking the health/foodie posts and since I haven't done one in a little while I decided to do a recipe post, welcome to "Skinny Shrimp Curry" as done by The Londoner. (In case you haven't noticed, I'm slightly obsessed with her blog! She does post the most amazing "skinny" recipes alongside a couple of really yummy looking "not-so-skinny" ones. This particular recipe has calories only 300 calories in a big bowl! Sorry I can't come up with anything more concrete!

So let's get started with the ingredients, I've slightly modified her recipe to suit what I had in my cupboard at the time:

• Olive Oil
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• Piece of ginger the size of your thumb, grated
• 2-3 tbsps Hot Masala (depending on how hot you like your food)
• 2 tbsps of brown sugar
• 1 tin of plum tomatoes (blitzed quickly in the blender)
• 1 tbsp low fat greek yoghurt
• Salt & pepper to taste
• Aromat seasoning to taste (or you can use about 2 Maggi/Knorr cubes too)
• 250 g of prawns (mine were the kind that are already cooked)

• Chop the onions, grate the ginger and chop the garlic

• Heat the olive oil in a pan and then add in all the chopped ingredients, fry them in the oil until the garlic and ginger become fragrant and the onions soften and become translucent (3-5 minutes). Be careful not to let the garlic burn! Burnt garlic tastes foul!

• Add the plum tomatoes and stir it in, adding the aromat(maggi/knorr), salt, black pepper, hot masala and black pepper. You don't have to add them in all together, i find it easier to do them one at a time, tasting in between to make sure nothing becomes too overpowering.
• You will need to cook the tomatoes for a while so they lose some of their water and have a less distinctive "tomato-y" flavour. Cover your pot and leave it on medium heat for approximately 15 minutes or till you have a thick sauce. Don't forget to check back frequently.

• Because they are already cooked the prawns can be added near the end to heat them up. Then add the tbsp of greek yoghurt. I must admit I was pretty nervous about this step but it turned out to be THE best thing about the recipe! It also gives it a nice orange colour which I really liked!

The Londoner suggested eating this yummy curry on its own or with some na'an bread but being the African I am, some rice seemed necessary to eat the "stew" with! So I opted for some coconut rice which is so simple to make it barely needs a recipe!

You wash your rice to remove some of the starch, put it in a pot, open a can of coconut milk and pour it into the pot, add a sprinkling of salt and cover. Once the coconut milk has dried up you can add some more water if the rice still isn't cooked but I prefer to 'steam' the rice to softness so it doesn't lose the coconut taste. To do this I turn the heat to the lowest to prevent burning add a tiny bit of water, cover the pot firmly and leave it for a few minutes and voila! 

Serve it up and enjoy your yummy skinny shrimp curry and coconut rice whilst it's still hot! 

Voila!

Reni x

Hair and Fitness Catch-Up Session and June Goals

So at the end of March, I wrote a post called April Goals and Bloglovin Love where I wrote a list of things I would like to have achieved by the end of April, then in typical me fashion, I completely forgot to come back with an update as to how things went, I just realised I never even gave a final Insanity update! Shocking behaviour really, thanks for not calling me out guys!

So let's start with the goals from April which carried all the way through till right now because honestly, life was a bit too hectic in May to think about setting any new goals! Begin with the successes shall we?

Drink at least one litre of water a day.

Yay to this one! It's weird, i now find myself actually wanting to drink water over many other things. You might not understand the severity of this because I didn't document the time i actively tried to convince one of my best friends that I was allergic to drinking water, oh dear, the silly things I've said! Overall though I find it so much easier to think of drinking 500ml two bottles of rather than half a 2 litre bottle. Weird huh?

I mean just look at how gigantic that bottle is! The 500ml is so miniature and cute in comparison!

I know I'm nowhere near the recommended daily intake but this is a massive achievement for me :)

Try a Tea Rinse/ Apple Cider Vinegar Rinse

Ouuu this was such fun, I must admit it felt extremely weird to pour tea over my hair and I was having one of those "You know you don't have to try everything you read" moments, but I'm glad I tried it because after dousing my hair in Twinnings Green Tea and doing my regular deep condition with ORS Replenishing Conditioner, my hair felt so nice and soft, yet strong and I hardly had any shedding at all! I was amazed actually, seeing as I was at least 7 weeks post by then!

Do Two Protein Treatments

This one I did and overdid and found myself face to face with the monster that is protein overload! Lord I could have cried, I'm even a bit too embarrassed to share what I did but I would anyways. So.. here goes... don't laugh! Basically, the long and short is that after I took my weave out, I washed my hair as normal then thought to go heavy on the protein because of breakage/shedding. So I mixed two types of protein treatments. Motions Protein Reconstructor and ORS Hair Mayonnaise and then deep condition. I then spray my usual leave-in by Motions as well which contains silk amino acids, read protein. By the time my hair was dry I was almost in tears from how hard/dry/crunchy it felt. After a couple of deep conditions later that week it was back to normal-ish but I'm never doing that again! Lesson learnt.

And now the not-so-fun parts, trust me I have an excuse for each one of them but I will just take them as fails for now and try harder next time!

Apply JCBO to my edges nightly and scalp every other day

I was clearly feeling extremely optimistic when I wrote this! But the real reason it didn't happen was because I got a weave.

Have a side of veggies with lunch every day

Even more optimism! Ha!

Finish Insanity by the 7th of April

Not completing this one really hurt me but my knee was starting to act up again! I got to day 57 and could never be bothered to do the last three days after I felt better :( Here's my update on how I was doing before the setback though Insanity Month 2: It's Not a Diet, It's a Lifestyle.

Start a new workout regime including Hip Hop Abs and Swimming

This only counts as a fail because I dont actually have a regime but I have been working out loads and training for Race for Life! (more on that soon). I started the Hip Hop abs and can I just say that as an avid Shaun T fan, it sucks! Ugh, it's so boring and you do the same video everyday for 6 days or something crazy! As soon as I saw the schedule I was bored, I think I made it to day 5 or so. Some very good information about engaging your core on there though with the "Tilt, Tuck, Tighten" method, if you like relatively low impact exercise (because everything after insanity is low impact!) and want to work your abs definitely look into it though!

Random view of the pool at my gym, taken from my favourite stretch spot. There's just something so calming about water.

Whoosh! That was a pretty long review, but I guess a lot has happened since I last posted any thing mainly hair/fitness related.

Now that all this catching up is done and there's only a teeny bit left to do, I thought it'd be a good idea to make some new goals for June.

Hair

Nothing fancy here really as I'm currently 11 weeks post but my hair has been in braids for about 2 weeks now.

• Complete 16 week stretch.
• Wash hair at least once every 2 weeks.
• Moisturise every other day.

Food/Fitness

• Run 5k at least twice a week in preparation for Race for Life on the 14th of July.
• Complete the 30 Day Squat Challenge (Day 12 today, whoop!)
• Be able to plank for 90 seconds (I'm currently on a measly average of about 45).
• Pole!
• Try a new recipe or two.
• Drink at least 1.5 litres of water a day

Others

It's summer time and bar my dissertation I intend to have as much fun as possible!

• Become a 'yes' girl! Life is nothing but the experiences we make out of it!
• Use my proper camera more, it's so much better than the iPhone 5.
• Write a story or two to go on THAHW.
• Blog more after exams are over

What are some of your goals for the next 30 days?

P.S. My donation link for Race for Life is here, I'd do a separate post to give the details properly but just incase anyone already knows what is and all that and wants to donate :)

Reni x

April Goals and Bloglovin Love

Hello everybody and Happy Easter to you all!

I finally got my act together and created a brand new "About Me" page on the blog so you can see a little overview of my life also Google Reader is closing down for good soon and even though not that many of you follow me on there I thought this might be a good time to introduce you to Bloglovin. Do you hate the feeling of visiting a blog you love only to find that the writer hasn't posted anything new up? And then you keep checking back frequently till you eventually lose interest and stop? Then finally one day you go back to check and see that he/she has three new posts you have to catch up on? Annoying right? Well this is where Bloglovin comes in, it's basically ONE website where you can follow all the blogs you want at once and it's automatically updated each time one of your bloggers posts something new, I just started using it and it's the best thing to happen to my blogging experience, no more crushed dreams and false hope as I hold my breath waiting for the page to load, all my favourite blogs are just one click away! I keep adding new blogs everyday it's my one stop shop for blogs. So yeah, follow me on Bloglovin to keep up to date with LTV! Link is to the right of this page, the same picture as below

Okay now that that's over, in an effort to take my own advice in this whole healthy lifestyle thing, I've made up a "goals list" for April to start tomorrow and I'm excited to see what happens if I keep it up properly!

Hair:

• Apply Jamaican Black Castor Oil (JBCO) to edges nightly and scalp every other day to increase thickness.
• Do two protein treatments to try and combat shedding/breakage
• Try a tea rinse/ Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV) rinse one wash day for fun!

Fitness:

• Finish Insanity on time (7th of April)
• Drink at least 1 litre of water a day
• Try and have a side of vegetables with lunch every day
• Start new workout regime including Hip Hop Abs and maybe swimming (?)

What's on your list for April? Drop a comment in the box to let me know. Hope you all have a lovely long weekend!

Reni x

Insanity Month 2: It's Not A Diet, It's a Lifestyle!

Hey beautiful people,

So I thought maybe it's time for another update on Insanity and how it's all going. Well I'd start by saying month 2 is whooping my ass! My goodness, in the first week my body was so sore, I could barely move! My calf muscles ached, my thighs were burning, everything you can imagine aching, was aching... So awful! But now I'm in the third week and even though the workout is still as intense it's not so bad anymore. Two of the workouts are about an hour long so waking up early enough to do them before lectures has been a task, I start at 9am most days so that would mean waking up at 6.45 to start working out so I can be in the shower by 7.45/8.00. Anyone that knows me knows that getting out of bed before 8 is such a problem, so I do them mostly when I get home just before bed instead.

Before I started month 2 I was complaining to my friend that I wasn't seeing any differences in my body and blah blah but finally that is changing slowly but surely, I feel so much better and more confident, clothes are fitting better and I even lost 3-4 kg as well! So yeah, Insanity is doing me justice finally! Also my fit test results have really been improving (except the suicide jumps/burpees I can't do them to save my life). Basically the fit test is where you do each of the moves below in one minute and see how many you can get while maintaining good form! I have only 1 more left, hopefully there will be even more improvement!

Move	Fit Test 1	Fit Test 2	Fit Test 3	Fit Test 4
1. Switch Kicks	52	94	100	102
2. Power Jacks	31	38	46	53
3. Power Knees	45	78	87	108
4. Power Jumps	7	17	28	43
5. Globe Jumps	5	6	7	8
6. Suicide Jumps	9	9	9	10
7. Push-Up Jacks	8	14	19	27
8. Low Plank Oblique	29	24	35	45

I've learnt so much about correct form with exercise and I've been modifying some moves so there's less impact on my knees. Anyways, enough with the bragging and trumpet blowing (but if I don't do it then who will?!) here's some stuff that I've found has helped me so far in my journey to a healthier body.

• Eating breakfast; usually people don't eat because they aren't hungry or there isn't enough time but the longer you take to eat after you wake up, the more likely it is that your body will go into starvation mode and start holding on to fat, obviously a big no-no. So I've been trying to get out of bed 10 minutes earlier so I have enough time to make a Quick Smoothie or have some cereal before uni.

• Eating 3-4 times a day; same sort of theory as before, it's better to keep your metabolism running through the day than have long periods of no/junk food then one massive meal to compensate. When I was being really good, which has been so much more difficult of late, I'd have a smoothie around 9, 'light lunch' at 12.30, lunch again at 3/4 and then dinner at 7, 8 at the very latest and try not to eat anything really carb heavy like rice/pasta after 4.

• Setting weekly/monthly goals; for me this is such a great motivator, just trying to reach the goals always motivates me to continue, and finding people; friends or otherwise, to hold you accountable when you slip up is always a good way to ensure you at least try and stay on track. I have a really good buddy system going on right now with two friends, we hold each other accountable for working out and also clean eating without being judgemental.

• Having a cheat day or two; nothing much to say on this one except we are human beings with weaknesses and sometimes we just want that little bit extra love to come from our food!

Just look at these bad boys from Home Sweet Home! "Sweet Carolina" burger with fully loaded fries on top and the massive Chilli Dog with sweet potato fries below! Amazing!

It's not a diet or a phase, it's a lifestyle! Trying to change your lifestyle and incorporate some form of clean eating/regular exercise into it now means not having to do it at 40! For some more tips look up the Anti Diet by the Londoner, she has some really good advice on there and even though I just found it I'm already addicted! It's charm is in the simplicity. Here's to conquering the last week and a half of Insanity! How are you guys doing with working out and eating good? Any other helpful tips for me? Let me know in the comments box. 

In Need of Pure Processed Unadulterated Refined Sugar!!

As I type this I'm desperately waiting for my phone to restore itself from my last backup because I just deleted the funniest message history in the world! Yes, it's that serious, thankfully my last backup wasn't too far away and so I have all the pictures I've been meaning to put up and stuff! Time remaining is 24 minutes, who knew these things took so long?!?! Goodness. So this post might be a little random because I don't really have a "theme" in mind, but I handed in my final deadline of this half of the semester so I'm feeling a lot more free now! My mind needs to snap out of holiday mode and into dissertation proposal mode! But for now at least, I'm chillin'!

Was going to do a couple random OOTN snaps till I realised I didn't take any pictures of myself this whole weekend, no random vain moments, I must say I'm surprised! Haha. It was my friends birthday and a couple of us got her a cake from Patisserie Valerie! This was both the best and worst thing ever, best because ours was the biggest cake and worst because I discovered that they do macarons!! I've been craving these since I had them in London a couple of weeks ago with my baby brother. These sugar filled goodies are just divine! But for obvious reasons *i want my abs!* I can't have them and this make me really sad. I'm really fighting every sector of my mind, begging it to stop being stubborn and just let the macarons go. Forget that I was going to order some online and get them delivered to my apartment. x_x. Sometimes I think all I need is some PURE processed unadulterated refined sugar! Haha, didn't think you could have so many oxymorons in one line did you? Neither did I really... Not listening to my sweet tooth is making me go crazy! I'm off to have some birthday cake, just one slice....

Birthday girl! Our cake is the biggest one on the bottom left, jealous though! Look how many cakes she got :O lol 

This whole clean eating thing is soo difficult but I'm determine to not give up, the other day I made banana pancakes, i found the recipe on Instagram and it was basically just pancakes made up of only 3 ingredients, 1 ripe banana and 2 whole eggs all blended/whisked together and then shallow fried in coconut oil on very low heat. The bf was appalled when he saw me using the coconut oil I usually use on my hair in food, he freaked the heck out, it was kind of funny actually. Lol. Yeahh, I didn't really like them, they were like banana flavoured eggs and I really don't like eggs, *ew, yucky yucky!*but if you like eggs and bananas then I think you'd really like the combination! I even had to have regular pancakes to combat the taste, mmmmmmmmm, yummy pancakes with flour are so much nicer!

Banana Pancakes, they look just like regular ones don't they? Deceivers!

Couple of bonus pictures since I didn't have any outfits to show off!

Bowling at All Star Lanes on Sunday!

My hair is red now! Well it has been for a while, update soon.